In the age of Donald Trump, America’s multiple safeguards to protect against the rise of a strongman exerting authoritarian powers are being tested more strenuously than at any time in modern memory. The early results are not good. Congress has failed to jealously guard its powers. The Supreme Court has repeatedly deferred to the executive. Major media organizations, universities, and law firms have bent to the president’s will.
Things could be much worse, to be sure, but the erosion of liberal democratic norms has raised the importance of another crucial protection built into the American scheme: our system of free and universal public education. At its best, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, the teaching of history can help young people come to “know ambition under all its shapes” and the teaching of civics can “enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom.”
This bulwark of liberal democracy, however, is also faltering. Schoolchildren do worse on civics and history exams than they do on any other subject. Only 22 percent of American students are proficient or advanced in civics on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and just 13 percent are proficient or advanced in U.S. history. Moreover, young people are not very enthusiastic about democracy. A December 2023 YouGov poll found that whereas only 5 percent of those over 65 agreed that “democracy is no longer a viable system, and Americans should explore alternative forms of government,” a shocking 31 percent of youth ages 18 to 29 concurred.
