Arizona Civics Podcast

Inside the Classroom: Why Civics Teaching Feels Risky—and How to Fix It

• The Center for American Civics • Season 3 • Episode 7

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A quiet chill has crept into civics classrooms: teachers are pulling back from timely, contested topics because they fear blowback. We sit down with Liam Julian, vice president of programs and public policy at the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy, to unpack what that looks like on the ground, why vague standards and thin district guidance leave educators exposed, and how to rebuild a culture of confident, evidence-based civic dialogue.

Liam shares striking findings from a new policy brief—nearly 80% of teachers report self-censoring—and explains why “safe,” purely procedural civics isn’t just dull; it deprives students of the core skills democracy needs: civil disagreement, compromise, and reasoned argument. We explore practical strategies teachers are using right now to lower the temperature without ducking substance, from anchoring debates in founding documents and Supreme Court cases to designing classroom norms and protocols that keep criticism on ideas, not people. The conversation also dives into preparation gaps—many educators never had strong civics themselves—and what high-quality professional development looks like when it blends deep content with facilitation moves for tough moments.

Looking ahead to America 250, we talk state standards that are clear and teachable, district leadership that backs educators when complaints arise, and the power of making civics visible across the campus—in band rooms, math classes, and student councils. If you care about democratic literacy, teacher support, and helping students connect government to daily life, this is a timely, hopeful roadmap from fear to confidence.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a review telling us the one change you want to see in civics education. Your feedback shapes what we explore next.

Check out the policy briefs here: https://oconnorinstitute.org/research/

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SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to Arizona Civics Podcast. I am, I feel like I always say I'm excited, but in this case, this is genuine. I'm excited as a scholar. I'm excited as a doctoral student. I'm excited as a former educator to have our guest today and to have the conversation we're going to have. So today's guest is Liam Julian. He is the vice president of programs and public policy at the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute for American Democracy. Previously as the managing editor of Policy Review Magazine in Washington, D.C., a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institute. His writings and his commentary on public policy have appeared in many publications like The Washington Post, The Atlantic, National Review, Rocor Politics, on all things considered. He's also directed the development of advanced placement curricula at the College Board, including leading the redesign of my favorite course to teach, AP US history, or AP US government and politics. Liam, thank you so much for being on today. We are talking about a policy brief that you just put out. The title is Why Are Teachers Uncomfortable Teaching Civics? So, first of all, thank you for being on. Secondly, your research shows nearly 80% of teachers have self-censored in the classroom because of fear pushback. What does this look like in the classroom and what kinds of topics are sparking the most concern?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, thanks for having me, uh Liz. This is this is going to be fun. I'm excited to talk about this. Um yes, the self-censoring is real from from our from what we heard from teachers. And it what does it look like? Well, I think what it looks like is in is mostly walking back from having those sort of engaged discussions with students about um sort of how civics is playing out today. Um, so talking about issues that are in the news, um, discussing sort of you know government workings that are sort of happening today. Um and to a to some extent, actually sort of just kind of cutting back on those conversations completely, um, to where we were not only are we not having conversations about current events, but we're not even having robust discussions about things that happened 100 or 200 years ago. Um, I think teachers are just a little bit um worried that those discussions um are going to give rise to some kind of incident. And the next thing they know, they'll be in the principal's office with a parent, uh, or worse, they'll be on social media. Um, so that's kind of what it looks like in practice.

SPEAKER_01:

And, you know, if you have not read this policy brief, I will put it in the show notes. Um, I will share it as widely as possible because it's not a long brief. And I actually I really love the briefs that you've produced because they are quick reads, there's graphics, it's really easy to understand. So one of the things we talked about is fewer than one in five teachers feel like they have clear guidance from their districts about what they can and cannot teach. Why is that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, you know, every state has got their standards, you know, for civics. But um what what we found when we looked at them and also what other organizations have found is that few of those standards are really specific or really prescriptive to the level that a teacher can really confidently use them in the classroom without a little bit more guidance. Why are they not getting that from their districts? It's a great question. I think sometimes it's just that the districts themselves may not um have an answer for them. Because in order to have an answer, right, it requires having some hard conversations about what we in this given district are or are not going to teach, what our civics courses are going to look like. And it almost seems like at every level, whether it's at the state level, I mean, we could even go to the national level, but at the national level, the state level, the district level, that those hard conversations aren't happening enough. It's kind of just being pushed down, pushed down, pushed down. And then it all shows up in the classroom where the teacher doesn't have the guidance that he or she needs and is kind of sort of left hanging out there to try to figure out how I'm supposed to teach a civics course in today's obviously very polarized environment. Um, so yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And you you describe this like fear of controversy, right? And how it pushes teachers toward this safe procedural civics. What important learning is getting lost when teachers avoid these deeper discussions of current or contested issues?

SPEAKER_00:

I the first important learning, right, is civics, the skills, I think. So every every class, right, has you've got your content and you've got your skills. And you would think in a civics class, you could you could think of skills as being um how to uh be comfortable with disagreement, how to work toward a productive compromise, how to make a case using evidence, these kind of things. And these are the types of things that typically happen in a civics class through those conversations and discussions that teachers facilitate. Um I think that's probably the first thing that's being lost. And um, I would also say looking at, you know, sort of our environment today, those skills are they've always been important, but um, are they not incredibly important at this moment for people to be able to have uh conversations that lead to some sort of kind of productive compromise at the end? Um and but interestingly enough, I think that when teachers don't have those conversations and then they are teaching just kind of the bare bones facts without the context. I wonder if the students aren't missing out on the facts too. I wonder, and I mean, if you look at all the tests in civics, it's not as if, oh, teachers are walking back the conversations, we're only teaching the facts. Now students know all the facts and nothing else. They don't know the facts, they don't know the three branches of government. I wonder to what extent, and and I hope that we at the O'Connor Institute can kind of dig into this more in forthcoming briefs, but to what extent teaching civics content without skills really um undermines the transmission of that content because it's just being sort of dropped on students without sort of context or um really facilitating engagement with it, you know?

SPEAKER_01:

That's such an interesting thing, right? Because I think that without relevancy, like without showing a student this is why this is relevant in your life now, or here's where you can see this in current events, it does kind of lose the it goes in their brain and out, right? Like I know I can think way back when I was a student, there were times where I definitely just like shoved a bunch of facts in my head, put them on a test, and then they're gone. And not having that relevancy just it doesn't stick with you. And I think that one of the things I learned as an educator is you have to make it relevant to students. They have to understand, you know, you talk about the three branches of government, like why does that matter to them? Where can they see this in their everyday life? Which thanks, you know, to social media and to a lot of things, you can easily see like, here's what's happening, you know, here are some of the things happening in Congress. Here is an executive order, here's something happening with the Supreme Court, both at both at the national and at the state level. And that's such a hard thing. And it's interesting that you say, you know, well, if they're just teaching the facts, it's fine. But your argument is like, but they're not even learning the facts because there's nowhere for them to put it, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you can see how you could you could teach students about the three branches of government, but to your point, if they don't see it in their lives, or if in the classroom they're not actually exploring the sort of tensions. I mean, civics in our country is all about tensions, it's all about those trade-offs and checks and balances. And I mean, why is that? Well, it's because of how our country is structured, and then there's a million different people with a million different beliefs. Students need to sort of engage in that because that makes this come alive. Like, why are we doing this? Why are we learning about this? Um, interestingly, in the in the policy brief, and thanks so much for saying such nice things about it. Um, I hope that people will find it interesting and useful. But in that policy brief, one of the things we did is ask teachers, experienced teachers, how um are you um making this work in your classroom in our environment today? And one thing that came up over and over and over again was grounding those classroom discussions in founding documents and in sort of lessons about sort of sort of core ideas to the country. The notion here being that it takes the temperature down. So we can sort of, yes, we're sort of talking about a current event, but we're talking about it in context of discussions we've been having in this country for hundreds of years. But it also, I think, reframes the student's sort of perspective. Like, oh, I'm we're not just arguing about this today. Like in this country, there have been debates on these kind of things since the beginning. This is just what we do. And then the third thing is to what we're talking about, right? Like it makes this relevant. So you're talking about the three branches of government or the constitution, you're situating it in a discussion or a debate, and it makes it sort of alive and relevant. And the student feels like he or she is able to have an opinion about this, um, grounded in evidence, of course. So um, so yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And and teaching students too that I think sometimes they get caught in this presentism rate of things have never been as bad as they've been now. And it's like, actually buckle your seatbelts, let me take you on a little journey through American history. Like even talking about um the Federalist and anti-federalist debates. Like, I think sometimes people think like, oh, it was so long ago, and they compromised, and then we got the constitution. And it's like, but there are so many pieces of writing where they're going back and forth. And, you know, as I recently learned in one of our Civics in a year podcasts, some of them weren't very nice to each other, but for the most part, it was, I hear what you're saying, here's why I disagree. And this really back and forth of an exchange of ideas, as opposed to um yelling at the person, right? Attacking the person. They were not attacking ideas, but they were like the Federalist and anti-federalist papers go back and forth forever, right? We have the election of 1800, which was very politically volatile. And I appreciate that you said having conversations about current events is grounded in these documents because that is, you know, that is why that's why we do what we do. So that's some of the solutions. In the policy brief, you bring up some other. So can you talk about the other solutions you uh recommend that could reduce fear and also empower our teachers to teach civics in a bold manner?

SPEAKER_00:

Sure. Yeah, you know, one of the solutions, I mean, um, suggestions. I don't I won't go and say it's a solution, but it's a suggested solution. Um is uh better preparation for teachers. Um, this kind of gets back to something that we heard from teachers and we've seen in other surveys. Um, teachers themselves don't actually feel prepared to teach civics. So it's not just the fear piece, it's also a lack of preparation. And it's funny, you gotta you gotta keep in mind a lot of these teachers are Gen X or millennials, and it is highly likely that they in school got very little, if any, civics instruction when they were in their own K-12 careers. And then you you fast forward, right, to you know, teacher preparation, and they're not getting a lot of content there either. And, you know, a lot of this has to do with, you know, the history of civics and the fact that it it kind of got lumped in with social studies as educational priorities shifted and there's just only so much time and teacher preparation programs. So, you know, you can have somebody teaching civics who truly has never had any instruction in civics. That is absolutely true. This person could be the gym teacher, uh, could be an anthropology major. I mean, this this is kind of where where we're at. So that's a problem because in order to confidently lead a civics class and especially the discussions that we're talking about, you've got to have the content background. Um, and there, and by the way, teachers are saying not only that they don't get the content preparation, but also that they themselves are not getting the sort of skills preparation, i.e., what do I do if I have a classroom conversation and all of a sudden a student is in tears? I mean, how do I rectify that situation? How do I avoid that situation? Like, what are the best practices here? Uh, teachers are saying they just are not getting that training. So, yes, one of our solutions is that that professional development for teachers, um, both before and after they're in the classroom, has got to improve um on this, on this, on this uh uh uh topic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And I'm glad you brought up actually your previous policy brief. The title of that is when and where or when and why did America stop teaching civics? It is again fascinating to understand this. And I also appreciate that we're bringing up that it's lumped into social studies because I think one of the biggest misconceptions I run into is people think, oh, well, I got civics, I learned about the world wars and whatever else. And it's like, that's really awesome. That's history, right? We we need to separate the social sciences and civics, and you might have a different definition. To me, civics is everywhere. Civics is in a math class, it's in a science class, it's in your ELA class because we live in a society where you can't avoid civics. It's ever, I mean, our trash people came today, right? That that is my town, like understanding how all of this works and defining that we don't just throw it in with social studies, it needs to be kind of this bigger thing. I do want to ask, because it's also something I appreciate about this policy brief, is you went straight to teachers and asked them, can you tell me why you did that and why that kind of research matters?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, yes. So why did we go straight to teachers? Well, in part it was because of our previous brief that you just mentioned, when and why did America stop teaching civics? And what we what we've started to figure out in that brief was that teachers, it wasn't only a reduction in civics being taught quantity-wise, but also you might say quality-wise, because teachers had this trepidation. And so we wanted to understand this, and we figured who who how better, you know, how should we understand this? What's a better way than to actually talk to teachers? And I think it's important to, because sometimes with policy, um, there's this tendency to, you know, you want to shape these policies at the state level or the national level, even. But really, how is this playing out in practice in a classroom for a teacher? And so that to us was was just key. I mean, if to understand this issue, um, you needed to talk to the people who were in the classroom right there on the ground. So that's why we we went that route. Um, we were honestly shocked by the findings. I mean, I did not expect the findings to be as um, I mean, as you said, almost 80% saying that they've self-censored. Um, I think it was was 86% saying that, you know, fear uh uh is a primary challenge to them, fear to teaching civics. And you start to, you know, you ask yourself, I mean, how are we really going to improve civics education in this country if we're requiring this sort of level of courage that shouldn't be required in the classroom, you know? This is like a systemic problem. So um talking to teachers was so, so illuminating and so important.

SPEAKER_01:

It is, it is incredibly eye-opening. And I, you know, I'm looking at the chart now. And if anybody is looking at the policy brief while they're looking at this, it's on page seven, but but talking about these things and I appreciate both the policy briefs together because personally I am a Gen Xer. And when I went into the classroom, I have no civic knowledge. And that's if we're just being honest, right? I went into the classroom in 2003. Um, I didn't, I had a social studies methods class in my undergrad, but again, social studies methods, there wasn't specific civics. And you bring up teacher training. Um, and that's what we do at the Center for American Civics, and a lot of our partners do that too. Um, I've been to civics events with the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute that I really appreciated. And those are the things that got me to be the civics teacher I became is I actually went to professional development specifically for civics. I also went to one specifically for US history or specifically for, you know, AP government and politics, um, which incorporates a lot of civics, but the teacher preparation part, I think, is the most widely, I don't want to say ignored, but it's kind of like, oh, well, you know, they're already in the classroom, not understanding that the more you invest in your teachers, the better the outcomes can be for your students, for your school. Because would it be fair to argue if you have teachers who have great civic preparation, who have professional development, who can have these conversations because things happen every day and kids want to come in and they want to say, Did you see X, Y, and Z on the news? And if a teacher knows how to handle that, um recently political assassinations, if a teacher knows to say, let's talk about political disagreements in history, let's talk about how these things have played out in history, because we don't necessarily want to talk about immediately the political violence, because that could be a hot button issue. That's you know, not a lot has come out about it. But if we can, I don't want to say pivot and ignore, but if we can show them this is actually something that's happened in history, you know, fear goes down for teachers, parents feel feel more confident, parents feel more confident in the teachers, in those discussions. It just all around is a beneficial thing. So looking ahead, because your organization, my organization, lots of our civic friends are getting ready to celebrate America 250. Um, and we've actually, I feel like our organizations celebrate the Declaration, counting principles all the time, but this is a big thing for us. What is at stake for us if we do not address these challenges? And what do you feel is the best case vision for civics classrooms moving forward after 2026?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, great question. Um, you know, Justice O'Connor uh said always, you know, that um civics is not passed down through the gene pool, right? This has got to be taught. Um, and I think we're starting to actually see the results of what happens when you don't teach civics. Um, you brought up our previous policy brief about the history. People, um, it's really useful to keep in mind the context here. In our country, the founders um were super concerned about education. And when when I say education, what I mean is civics education. That was education 250 years ago. And why were they so concerned about that? Well, because they knew this was an American experiment. And they knew that, unlike a monarchy where who needs to be educated, the king or queen, that in our country, everybody needs to have some baseline context. And so, you know, civics education was core to education in this country until relatively recently. Uh, until, you know, there started to be the decline that we've seen started, say, the 1960s. And there are a lot of reasons for that. Um, and people can read our previous report to get into those, but um, I think we're seeing the results. The polling with young people today is alarming. The percentages of young people who are kind of like, eh, democracy, take it or leave it, um, the percentages of young people who believe that speech and violence are like the same thing, the percentages of young people who believe that political violence is sometimes okay. If we are not teaching what you know, our civic history and civic processes, they are going to learn other things. And they are learning other things from TikTok and from social media. And I don't know, I really don't think that we it cannot be overstated how much social media impacts young people today. I mean, I wake up in the morning and I read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and they wake up in the morning and they get their news from TikTok. That's just how it goes now. Yeah. And uh, and I mean, we don't need to belabor this point, but the fact of the matter is, I think we all know that people are fed on these social media sort of things, things that reinforce what you already believed. It's a bunch of clips taken out of context, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, so this is important. Um, I believe, Liz, that people are starting to wake up to how important this is. Um, I've used this sort of stock metaphor before, where you know you hit a low point and then this stock just has to go up. And I think in this country we've we've sort of realized that. You know, we we've we've been focused on STEM for so long, we've been focused on other priorities, and that happens. These things are cyclical. But I do believe that now we're getting more of a focus on civics. So um, and to what what does that look like? Well, you know, our report would suggest that there's reforms that have to happen at the the state level and also at the district level. And at the state level, it really does mean crafting standards that are specific, that are clear. Um, and also um, it really means figuring out how to get in a room and compromise and try to leave sort of and and everybody should should leave that room a little unhappy. Um that's yes, you know what I mean? And that's just not something that we want to do as much today, but it's super necessary. And I will say, because a lot of people when I say that say, oh yeah, right. Well, it's possible. And you brought up, you know, um, the college board and the APUS government and politics course. And and yes, I worked on it. So I mean, I might be biased, but this is the most um widely taught civics course in the country. Hundreds of thousands of students take it every year. And let me tell you something, you can get credit for it at Oberlin, you can get credit for it at Liberty University. There are scholars on the left and scholars on the right who have all signed on to this course. And I think, you know, Liz, you can talk, speak to this maybe, but it is a robust civics education. So you can do this. It's not impossible, um, but it does require a lot of hard work. So at the state level, that has to happen. And then at the district level, right, what teachers are saying is we've got to have teacher, we've got to have leaders who are going to care about this and are going to step in and say the expectation is that our civics teachers will be having these kind of conversations. That's not that that's the expectation. And so if a parent calls and is upset, um, it it means getting in the room with that parent and sort of explaining the import what we've just talked about in this conversation. Yeah, the importance of this, how it's core to this district or this school's perception of what civics education should be, et cetera, et cetera. So those would be some some starting points. And then, of course, as you said, the professional development for teachers, um, which is as you will, as you point out, there's a lot of organizations like yours that are really doing great work to sort of help teachers kind of get up to speed so that they feel more comfortable um leading these conversations. So those are just a few things, but um yeah, and good, good, good, good to point out. This is the 250th anniversary. Like, let's go, right? Um, you know, like let's get let's get the like right this ship, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Um thank you for bringing up compromise because I think sometimes people hear compromise and it's like they think it's a flowery word, and it's like it's really just not, because the entire point of compromise is that nobody leaves 100% happy. Because then that's not a compromise, right? If if there is that give and take, that that has to be a thing. And I know at the center, we really like looking back on the declaration, looking back on these documents and and having these conversations. And I feel like when it gets paired, you know, with the policy briefs that the Sandra D. O'Connor Institute and yourself put out, it is it just puts an exclamation point on the need for civic education, but also the army of people behind civic educators who are ready and willing to say, we have stuff for you, we've got you. You know, I know for administrators, for a long time it feels like they had to they had to focus on math in ELA, right? Especially in the state of Arizona, because that's where the state test was. Um, and then science comes in. And I want to be very clear that I don't want to pit any subject against any subject because I think they all have value. I think that, and your policy briefs speak to this, civics has just been pushed down. We just want to come back up and be on the level of every other one's. And we want administrators to understand there's a difference between social studies and civics. There's a difference between history and civics. They can coexist, but they're not the same thing. Right. One of the things I really appreciated about the high school that I was at, um, and this actually goes with the Arizona, uh, there was um civics awards for schools. And it has unfortunately, it just hasn't been a thing in the past couple of years. But part of the civic award was how does your school encapsulate civics? Like, what are kids doing in Spanish? What are they doing in band? And I think people think like, why would they be learning civics in band? Well, the way they operate is civics, right? And understanding rules and how we do things and how we interact with one another is such a big thing. So is there anything before we kind of close this out that you want to say to teachers? Because I think that, you know, we have a lot of listeners who are teachers, but any words of encouragement you have for teachers going into this 250, going into hopefully what we're seeing, like you said, is this upswing of support for teachers and civic education.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Um, well, I mean, the first thing would be thank you. Um you know, as we've talked about right now, being a civics teacher, um, it takes, it takes a lot of courage. Um, and I would argue that, you know, it it shouldn't take nearly as much courage to teach civics. But I do think that there are reasons to be optimistic, um, as you point out. And I and I think that the perception of uh this subject is changing in in terms of the importance of this subject. And I think that people are also starting to come around a little bit to the idea that, yeah, that we can't continue to do things the same way. Um, you know, you said about compromise and how sometimes it has this flowery reputation. Um, so too does just basic civility sometimes. People act as if civility is like a nice to have, oh, it's, you know, but it's not essential. And I think that people are waking up to the fact that actually it is essential. Um, it's not a flowery thing, it's a core concrete thing that that that is absolutely key to any type of productive decision making. Um, and so I would say to teachers, you know, you can go to our policy brief. We have a section in there where teachers have sort of talked a little bit about how they, as I as I mentioned, how they've sort of navigated this environment. There might be some good advice in there, but um, there's a lot of us, as you point out, Liz, who are trying to do what we can to support teachers. And so I'd encourage them. To to check out your organization, of course, and to see what we've been up to at the O'Connor Institute. And um and you know, and to reach out, you know, reach out if they have questions or they want to share something, or if they think there's a topic that we should look at and study in our next policy brief. Um, yeah, because because teachers are the ones we should be listening to. They're the ones in the classroom that are on the ground doing this. So um, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you so much. First of all, for writing these policy briefs, because I think it shines a light, an easy-to-read light, because sometimes we do research and it's not really consumable by the mass public. This is short. I mean, this policy brief, I'm looking at it online, and the conclusion is on page 14. And it is, again, not a big read. It would be really great to look at in PLCs, both for teachers and administrators, um, and maybe at the district level with boards. But thank you so much for the work you do at the O'Connor Institute. Uh listeners, I will be putting all of these policy briefs, anything we talk about, in our show notes. But Liam, thank you for your time. Thank you for your expertise, and thank you for what you're doing for civic education.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks, Liz. This was fun.

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