Today I’m updating my report on the civics problem. It’s still bad out there. According to a recent survey, just 22 percent of kids grasp basic civics and just 13 percent are proficient in history. However, there’s hope in a new program announced by First Lady Jill Biden and endorsed by former First Lady Laura Bush. (See the bipartisanship there?)
The core of the curriculum will be a dozen music videos about our founding documents and government processes. Think of it as an updated version of the fifty-year-old School House Rock videos that appeared on network television. The new songs are loaded with the kind of earworms that will stick and, one hopes, come to mind when a student becomes a voting-age citizen. (The videos will also be available online and on the Nickelodeon cable TV network.)
