The confluence of inadequate civics education, poor media literacy, and deepening polarization in American civic society poses intolerable risks to the vital national interests of the United States. America is unlikely to compete effectively in a 100-Year Marathon or any other long-term competition if it is wracked from within by a sickness that metastasizes throughout the body politic, inhibiting effective action.[1] A critical theoretical and empirical question that should inform the next U.S. National Security Strategy is: what are the policies the United States must enact to educate its citizens thoroughly on their civic responsibilities and to reduce their susceptibility to disinformation created, spread, and/or amplified by adversaries? The U.S. must place greater emphasis on civics education— to include media literacy and critical thinking skills—along with engendering greater civic engagement as fundamental components of any strategy about great power competition.[2] While previous national security strategies highlighted the need for education to meet national objectives—specifically in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)—to maintain a technological and innovation edge over adversaries, a refocus on civic education is just as essential to competition. Adversaries have already and will continue to employ asymmetric methods to undermine U.S. strengths and will gladly exploit vulnerabilities of a highly partisan, civically isolated, poorly informed, and media illiterate society living in an environment rife with disinformation.[3]
Defining the Problem- and Why the National Security Strategy Must Address it.
The next National Security Strategy must address the decline of civic engagement in the United States, along with the rise in truth decay that exposes vulnerabilities to foreign threats either through foreign-directed or domestic disinformation campaigns amplified by foreign sources.[4] Such recent examples as the spread of false news stories and emotionally charged memes during the 2016 U.S. election campaign, as well as targeted disinformation campaigns within online groups prone to confirmation bias and groupthink, highlight the importance of addressing this issue.[5] Left unchallenged, these problems create a general condition of anomie in society, hobbling America’s ability to leverage traditional advantages in the information element of national power to compete effectively.
Three consistent vital national security interests likely to remain in one form or another in the next National Security Strategy are: 1) to secure the American people and their way of life; 2) furthering prosperity, and; 3) advancing American influence and values around the world. The challenge of civic decline and rampant media illiteracy threatens all three of these vital national security interests.
Including domestic educational and civic engagement programs in the National Security Strategy may seem far outside the document's usual purview. Why should domestic education policy concerns receive attention among the myriad of other challenges in this document? First, the National Security Strategy identifies core American interests and how the United States intends to secure them using all elements of national power––DIME or diplomatic, informational, military, economic––regardless of method.[6] Three consistent vital national security interests likely to remain in one form or another in the next National Security Strategy are: 1) to secure the American people and their way of life; 2) furthering prosperity, and; 3) advancing American influence and values around the world.[7] The challenge of civic decline and rampant media illiteracy threatens all three of these vital national security interests.
Second, previous National Security Strategies have already discussed domestic education goals and priorities to underpin prosperity and competitiveness within the context of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. For example, the 2015 National Security Strategy discussed domestic education in terms of promoting prosperity mainly in terms of affording access to early childhood and higher education and to “strengthen science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education to produce tomorrow’s discoverers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and high-skills workforce.”[8] The 2017 National Security Strategy echoed the 2015 National Security Strategy seeking to “nurture a healthy innovation economy that collaborates with allies and partners, (and) improves STEM education.”[9] Neither the 2015 nor the 2017 National Security Strategies discussed the need to strengthen American civil society through education, even though the 2015 National Security Strategy addressed the value of strengthening civil societies in other nations.[10] The United States must come to grips that the battle of narratives that accompanies great power competition is just as vital to success as shrewd diplomacy, a favorable correlation of military forces, and economic metrics such as gross domestic product or industrial capacity.
Finally, if the United States is serious about competition in a global, informationalized arena against other aspiring great powers, a better-informed and engaged populace capable of thinking critically about the veracity of information it encounters daily should strengthen America’s intrinsic informational and economic strengths. A better-educated and informed public is a cognitively armed population, better able to participate in the processes of government, drive civic outcomes, and thwart disinformation while also producing innovative products and solutions.[11]
The Civic Knowledge and Engagement Gaps and Why They Matter
Ironically, a focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, as well as international test score rankings such as the Programme for International Assessment, may have inhibited the U.S.’s ability to compete effectively by exposing a gap in civics education.[12] According to the Education Commission of the United States, while forty-seven states and the District of Columbia address civic education in statute, only thirty-seven states require students to demonstrate proficiency through an assessment in the subject area.[13] Civics education is uneven across the United States, where the legislatures and departments of education in each state have different curriculums, balancing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education with other subjects.[14] For example, Florida requires one-half credit (one semester) in U.S. Government while requiring seven credits in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subjects for all high school graduates.[15] While civics education at a basic level is present in most states, the subfield of media literacy education is woefully lacking. Currently, only 14 states have media or information literacy language in state law, with only two of those states––Florida and Ohio––requiring their respective Departments of Education to develop standards that integrate media literacy across the curriculum at all grade levels.[16]
The United States must come to grips that the battle of narratives that accompanies great power competition is just as vital to success as shrewd diplomacy, a favorable correlation of military forces, and economic metrics such as gross domestic product or industrial capacity.
While many states offer electives in civics-oriented courses, recent studies and reports explain why citizens, policymakers, and strategists alike should care about this issue. Students are learning critical and higher-order thinking skills in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subjects. Still, these skills may not transfer to the areas of civic knowledge and associated media literacy. The annual “Annenberg Public Policy Center September 2020 Constitution Day Survey” found that while civic knowledge in key areas such as naming branches of the government and knowledge of the bill of rights increased from previous years, just over half (51%) of those surveyed could accurately name all three branches of the government, while almost a quarter (23%) could name none.[17] A 2019 study by Stanford University—“Student’s Civic Online Reasoning: A National Portrait”—surveyed 3,446 high school-age students, identifying significant knowledge gaps. The study highlighted how 52% of respondents believed a grainy video on a website claiming ballot-stuffing during a U.S. primary election showed strong evidence of election rigging, even though further research on the student’s part would quickly show the video actually occurred in Russia and was debunked by reputable sources.[18] The same study indicated that two-thirds of respondents could not tell the difference between sponsored content advertising and a real news story, and fully 96% of the students did not make the connection to how a fossil fuel industry-supported website could potentially lessen the credibility of information on climate change topics hosted on that site.[19] While these studies are a sampling of America, they point to a significant issue ably highlighted in Like War: “information literacy is no longer merely an education issue but a national security imperative.”[20] This educational gap creates opportunities for adversaries to continue to undermine and possibly negate the information element of American national power, providing an indirect approach to sap American strength and resolve.
In addition to the erosion of basic civil knowledge, civic engagement and trust in institutions have also been eroding for decades. The National Conference on Citizenship noted in its “2017 Civic Health Index” a general downward trend in civic engagement across the United States since the 1970s, specifically in terms of newspaper readership, participation in religious activities, and declining participation in civic organizations.[21] Education's role in reinforcing civics is critical, especially with the emergence of “civic deserts,” or areas where over 60% of rural and close to 30% of urban and suburban Americans surveyed feel there are limited to no meaningful ways to engage in civic life. Additionally, only 28% of those surveyed thought they were part of an accountable and inclusive organization.[22] The full effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on civic engagement are unknown at this point, but one can anticipate that the pandemic will accelerate the downward trend of civic engagement.
Towards a Renaissance of Civics Education and Engagement
To compete effectively, the U.S. must have a well-educated populace. In addition to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, the United States must also emphasize civics and history courses, with a solid grounding in historical and empirical facts about the history of our national institutions and constitutional form of governance. While several competing projects involve historical interpretation of pre and post-revolutionary U.S. governmental policy—such as the 1619 Project and the 1776 Project—the overarching goal of any civics education program must be to provide an inclusive, truthful accounting of the history and functions of the U.S. government. Such education must focus on making better informed and involved citizens who can participate constructively towards the common future we all share. Media literacy should begin at an early age.[23] The U.S. government can also reinforce this early education through public education campaigns and expanded national service opportunities.[24] Additionally, a decline in participation in civic organizations is precisely why a civics education renaissance in primary through university levels that focuses on presenting a broad survey of contemporary civic issues to expose students to divergent viewpoints can enhance their knowledge of actual public policy, tolerance of others, and engender a sense of legitimacy of democratic outcomes.[25]
As previous National Security Strategies articulated the case for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to enable American prosperity, so too must the next National Security Strategy articulate the case for civics and media literacy education, accompanied by a renewal of civic engagement to live up to American values and expand our influence abroad. Former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster succinctly captured the importance of education in his book Battlegrounds: “Educated citizens are best equipped to foil efforts to divide communities and pit them against each other.”[26] The ability to function as an engaged, media literate citizen within civic society is not just essential for the continued strength of our democracy; it is an essential foundation of competition and directly counters an asymmetric method for adversaries to gain advantage over the United States to further their own ends.
Ryan W. Kort is a U.S. Army officer and strategist. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
Have an idea for your own article? Follow the logo below, and you too can contribute to The Bridge:
Enjoy what you just read? Please help spread the word to new readers by sharing it on social media.
Header Image: “Whatever Happened to Civics Education” by David H. Folz and Cameron Dodd (American Society for Public Administration, October 31, 2014)
NOTES:
[1] Drawn from two sources: The Hundred Year Marathon as an example of competition, and Dr. Christopher Prebble’s comment on the Net Assessment Podcast equating concerns about America’s ability to compete after the January 6th, 2021 U.S. Capitol breach as “like saying that stage 4 lung cancer complicates [one’s] ability to compete in the New York City Marathon.” Michael T. Pillsbury, The Hundred Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. (San Francisco, Griffin Publishing, 2016); Prebble, Chris. “Capitol Breach and Cold War Lessons For Sino- U.S. Ties.” Episode. Net Assessment. War on the Rocks, January 8, 2021. https://warontherocks.com/2021/01/capitol-breach-and-cold-war-lessons-for-sino-u-s-ties/
[2] For the purposes of this essay, the definition for media literacy comes from the 1993 report Media Literacy: A report of the National Leadership Conference on Media Literacy, as the ability to “access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate various media messages in a variety of forms” is appropriate to enable a further examination of the subject. See: Aufderheide, P., & Firestone, C. M. Media literacy: A report of the National Leadership Conference on Media Literacy (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1993), 7; While there are also interrelated literacy fields-- ‘information literacy’ or the ability to recognize when information is needed; ‘digital literacy’ or the ability to navigate, interpret, analyze, and contribute to information on the internet; and ‘news literacy’, which is rooted in journalism and to some extent, civics--this essay will treat these as subfields of media literacy; See: Huguet, Alice, Jennifer Kavanagh, Garrett Baker, and Marjory S. Blumenthal, Exploring Media Literacy Education as a Tool for Mitigating Truth Decay (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2019), 13-15, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3050.html
[3] For some contemporary examples, see P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, Like War: the Weaponization of Social Media (New York: Mariner, 2019), 112-116; see also: McKay Coppins, “How the Left Lost Its Mind” The Atlantic, July 2, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/liberal-fever-swamps/530736/. McKay Coppins from The Atlantic highlights how left-wing conspiracy theories flourished and were able to receive a high amount of shares and likes on social media accounts.
[4] ‘Truth Decay’ is defined as comprising four trends: 1) an increasing disagreement about objective facts and analytical interpretations of data; 2) a blurring of the line between fact and opinion; 3) an increasing relative volume, and resulting influence, of opinion compared with fact, and; 4) declining trust in key sources of information that used to be viewed as sources of factual information, such as the government and the media. Kavanagh, Jennifer and Michael D. Rich, Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life. (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018), 21-40 https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2314.html
[5] Singer and Brooking, Like War, 111-117, 144-147.
[6] US Joint Staff J7, Joint Publication (JP) 5-0, Joint Planning, (Washington, DC: December, 2020), II-3.
[7] For example, despite the differences in administration rhetoric, both National Security Strategies from the two previous administrations list essentially the same interests: securing the U.S., economic prosperity, supporting allies and partners, and some appeal to promotion of either values or influence. The vital national security interests in the 2015 National Security Strategy were: Security, Prosperity, Values (promotion of) and International Order. Those vital interests identified in the 2017 National Security Strategy were: Protect the American People, the Homeland, and the American Way of Life, Promote American Prosperity, Preserve Peace through Strength, and Advancing American Influence.
[8] “National Security Strategy of the United States of America” (Washington, DC: President of the United States, February 2015), 16.
[9] “National Security Strategy of the United States of America” (Washington, DC: President of the United States, December 2017), 20.
[10] “National Security Strategy of the United States of America” (Washington, DC: President of the United States, February 2015), 21.
[11] H.R. McMaster, Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World (New York: HarperCollins, 2020), 77, 423-424 ; The Editors of Scientific American Magazine, “STEM Education is Vital, but not at the Expense of the Humanities,” Scientific American, October 1st, 2016, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stem-education-is-vital-but-not-at-the-expense-of-the-humanities/
[12] Valerie Strauss: “Expert: How PISA Created the Illusion of Education Quality and Marketed it to the World” Washington Post, December 3rd, 2019 https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/12/03/expert-how-pisa-created-an-illusion-education-quality-marketed-it-world/
[13] “50 State Comparison: Civic Education Policies” Education Commission of the States, December 2016 https://www.ecs.org/citizenship-education-policies/
[14] A survey of the different state requirements found on the Education Commission of the United States website shows a disparate set of high school graduation requirements across the states and territories, with an average of one class (i.e. one semester) on civics and/or American government. See: “Civic Education Policies: High School Graduation Requirements,” Education Commission of the States, December 2016, http://ecs.force.com/mbdata/MBQuest2RTANW?Rep=CIP1601S
[15] Florida State Code § 1003.4282, “Requirements for a Standard High School Diploma” (The 2020 Florida Statutes) http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?mode=View%20Statutes&SubMenu=1&App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=1003.4282&URL=1000-1099/1003/Sections/1003.4282.html
[16] Media Literacy Now, US Media Literacy Policy Report 2020, January 2020, 10-11 https://medialiteracynow.org/mlnpolicyreport/
[17] Annenberg Civics Knowledge Survey, “Amid Pandemic and Protests, Civics Survey Finds Americans Know More of Their Rights” Annenberg Public Policy Center, posted September 14, 2020, https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/political-communication/civics-knowledge-survey/
[18] Breakstone, J., et al., Students’ Civic Online Reasoning: A National Portrait. (Stanford: Stanford History Education Group & Gibson Consulting, November 2019), 16-17 https://purl.stanford.edu/gf151tb4868.
[19] Breakstone, J., et al., Students’ Civic Online Reasoning: A National Portrait, 14-16.
[20] Singer and Brooking, Like War, 265.
[21] Matthew N. Atwell, John Bridgeland, and Peter Levine: Civic Deserts: America’s Civic Health Challenge- 2017 Civic Health Index (Washington DC, National Conference on Citizenship, 2017), 4 https://ncoc.org/national-reports-typ/civic-deserts/.
[22] Atwell, Bridgeland and Levine, 20, 27.
[23] Atwell, Bridgeland, and Levine, 29; Huguet, et al, Exploring Media Literacy Education as a Tool for Mitigating Truth Decay, 19.
[24]Atwell, Bridgeland and Levine, 29-30.
[25] Joseph Kahne, Nam- Jin Lee, and Jessica Timpany Feezell, “ Digital Media Literacy Education and Online Civic Participation,” International Journal of Communication 6 (2012): 5.
[26] H.R. McMaster, Battlegrounds, 424.