[Music] democracy is a double-edged sword it places political power in the hands of the people to be successful however it needs those people to be well informed well informed citizens will not be easily manipulated not easily oppressed well-informed citizens will guard their freedoms jealously and when those citizens get it wrong and they will get it wrong from time to time they'll disagree with one another and this keeps things from moving too far in the wrong direction but the inherent tension of a democracy is the need to place political power in the hands of people who
may or may not be well informed our founding fathers the ones who wrote the state and federal constitutions under which we live firmly believe that the only solution was to create public education systems that prepared people to participate in democracy today I want to talk to you about the real dangers our nation faces when we fail to provide those educational opportunities and when we as adults just get lazy in our everyday lives today civics and critical literacy are well critical by civics I mean how government works most people have next to no idea three-quarters of
people cannot name the three branches of government most cannot tell you why the Declaration of Independence was written only one in three people can a name a single thing that the First Amendment protects and that's just basic stuff how about federalism the role of the Senate our tax system all right leave that out but we've got a long way to go in terms of just basic knowledge but we need critical literacy to evaluate what we learn about government about one in three Americans are either illiterate or only rudimentary readers less than half can read a
book at an eighth grade level and tell you what it's about and the rest of us those sitting in this room and myself from time to time those who can do better we don't fifty nine percent of the time we don't even bother to read the stories behind the links that we post on social media and the Internet if our democracy depends on a well informed citizenry we should be afraid or we could just write it off because half of us don't vote anyway but the reason why we don't vote is because we're not well
informed education levels are the best predictor we have of who's going to show up at the polls better than income levels people with advanced degrees many of you out there you show up 80% of the time at the other end of the spectrum people who don't finish the ninth grade they vote less than 20% of the time this is not a new problem our nation started as an experiment in democracy our founding fathers were familiar with Monarchs of Europe and taxation without representation here at home they wanted Americans to govern themselves not be ruled by
the elites or by kings and queens but funny enough a lot of those founding fathers weren't sure this little experiment called America would work they knew democracy had real risks that democracy could easily turn into mob rule that the masses could take land away from the wealthy and redistributed to the poor to the poor but what they seem to fear most was the possibility the average everyday people would be manipulated but unscrupulous politicians or defrauded at the ballot box rather than seize power for themselves the people would just give it away to someone else so
our first president's people like George Washington John Adams Thomas Jefferson implored the young nation to invest in its education system John Adams before we even had the United States Constitution John Adams was busy writing the Massachusetts Constitution and in it he put this nation's very first education clause and he said that education is necessary to preserve our individual liberties and rights and for that reason it should be the duty of government so long as that government existed to support the public education system Thomas Jefferson followed John Adams Thomas Jefferson said that we should if necessary
amend the United States Constitution to support the public education system we didn't have to amend it because Congress started giving out land to support the public schools and these early efforts paid off surprising to a lot of folks but this rough-and-tumble nation by the mid-1800s enrolled a larger percentage of people in public schools than any country in the world except for Prussia but these systems were still rudimentary in many respects they had a long way to go we still weren't living up to democracy's promise we excluded a lot of people from the ballot box women
people without land the south still held millions of African Americans in slavery and it was a crime to teach them to read and write so the nation had to transition towards a better democracy a more full democracy and it faced many of the same channel that we face today extremely polarized political parties a congressperson from South Carolina actually came senator Sumter on the floor of the Senate we had highly polarized political parties we had serious debates about who could be a citizen and how they might participate or not we had enormous education deficits and we
had a system of self-government entirely dependent upon the ability to decipher the written word we tend to think of those times as much different today than today but just like today everything revolved around the flow of information and it was a very chaotic flow of information in the 1800's they had the penny presses those penny presses were in many respects just like the blogs that we read today everybody had one and they were just as polarizing every national state and local political party had its very own penny press every little city and town and hamlet
from the tip of Maine to the western frontier had its own penny press and a lot of people scattered in all of those places they just wrote their own penny presses because they thought somebody might want to read it some focused on scandal intrigue some focused on politics in the 1800's late 1800s there were more newspapers than any other period in history people say Donald Trump has his own news station in the 1800s the president had his own newspaper they called it his official organ and it's express purpose was to do his bidding sometimes they
even had federal employees helping them out and think about it at that point in time the nation was largely rural and disconnected if you are a citizen in most places in America you'd have no way of knowing what was going on in Washington DC in your state capital what was being voted on unless you read the newspapers and those newspapers had lots of conflicting accounts people had to sort through them to get the bottom of things so at the end of the Civil War Congress saw a solution to bind this nation back together to rebuild
this democracy and to bring millions of new people into our nation as citizens that solution was public education Congress told southern states that if they wanted to re-enter the Union they had to get serious about democracy that meant two things first they had to extend the ballot to African Americans second they had to vastly expand their public education systems as a result all the southern states rewrote their state constitutions and in them they guaranteed access to public education many northern states soon followed their lead and in fact following the Civil War no state would ever
again enter this union of the United States of America without guaranteeing public education to all of their citizens in their constitutions this time period offers a few important lessons first is the general importance of public education to democracy second those public education systems have to be uniformly and equally open to everyone and those public education systems have to prepare young people to grow up to be citizens to participate so what do we do with these lessons today well I think there's two things we need to do as a nation and there's a couple of simple
things that we can do as individuals as a nation the first thing we need to do is to make sure that our schools are providing the skills and now and lessons our children need to become citizens to participate in our democracy as the flow of information continues to evolve and continues to be increasingly unreliable as Judge few suggested our children need to know how to do a lot more than just read and write the written word they need to be able to evaluate sources to decode factual claims to spot bias and to ultimately make a
judgement about what they've read studies showed that young people are basically lost in their ability to distinguish fake news from fact and we have spent the last two decades moving our school systems away from the top of learning opportunities that our children need we've spent so much time narrowing the curriculum focusing on standardized testing and accountability for those tests we've rendered civics some of that basic stuff that's in when everyone seems to not know we have rendered civics and critical literacy into sideshows unfortunately so much of what our children need to know to breathe to
grow up and participate in this democracy aren't things that you can easily test on a standardized exam the second thing we need to do is to make sure that our schools have the resources they need to deliver these opportunities money studies show that a 20% increase in school funding is enough to cut the black-white graduation gap in half recent studies also show that this past decade of budget cuts have decreased student achievement across the board and yet today most states continue to spend less on education ten years after the recession including in this state then
we did a decade ago and has always been the case and sadly been the case the most disadvantaged children in the most disenfranchised communities in America get less than everyone else we cannot claim that our education system is leveling the playing field we cannot claim our education system is ensuring our democracy's future if we will not adequately and equally fund it so what can we do as individuals it's not quite that serious well there's some easier stuff that we can do we as adults face many of the same challenges as our children but nobody's coming
to rese call us it's on us to make things better and for now it's in our hands that this democracy is entrusted we're in both a worse and a better position than we have ever been in the entire history of the world we're in a worse position because we got a lot more to deal with we got radio TV internet television social media cell phones it's a lot to keep up with it's a lot of distraction but we're in a better position because for the very first time in history we have direct access to real
information we don't have to take anybody's word for it we can read Betsie devices speech on school vouchers we can download and look at the data that she bases her opinion on we can read transcripts of congressional hearings on school safety the achievement gap school choice we can research anything we want from the comfort of our couches thanks to Steve Jobs we need to take advantage of that opportunity and be better stewards of information so how do we do that I think there's two pretty simple ways we can do that as a researcher as a
scholar as a citizen I propose these two things first pick something to be an expert in and learn that area you can't be an expert in everything but you can learn a few things really well and learn them really well means getting a hold of basic information with that information you'll consume the news much differently than you ever have before you'll participate in the conversation much differently than you ever have before my area of expertise is public education and I know exactly where the foundation of my knowledge is and I read some basic information same
stuff every year right just a little bit different so when new stuff comes to me I can filter it through that basic information I can draw real opinions based upon some basic facts I don't have to take anybody's word for it so pick something decide to be an expert in it and research it like you bind something on Amazon the information is there it won't be in review format but the information is there take advantage of it the second thing that I would suggest is never ever retweet or post anything that you haven't read right
start reading real stories if you need another rule for yourself just make a full and substantive comment on anything that you decide to post this will force you to read the underlying story and think about it before you put it out there for the rest of us you won't post as much but what you do post will be better for the rest of us but reading the same old stories is far from enough we need to spend a lot more time finding resources we can trust not stories that we like new sources today are much
like the penny presses they're far from being created equal they all have different motivations and different levels of quality control we need to evaluate those sources distinguish news from opinion news from entertainment and if there's something really important never rely upon one source look for another source with a similar story and remember the stories that we tell and retell will impact our friends our families our communities so much of what we absorb as being true or untrue depends on those around us and this is most true for young people no matter what our schools do
or don't do we will play a huge role in shaping their futures so whether you're a parent and aunt uncle brother sister friend cousin engage young people and the issues of the day but never ask them to regurgitate your opinion pepper them with questions not information and if they decide to volunteer an opinion don't say that's right or that's wrong say where'd you hear that and why do you think that but just asking those simple questions whether it's of young people our friends or ourselves we can put this nation back on the path to engaged
an enlighten citizenship in the democracy that our founding fathers first envisioned for us thank you you
