While it is very important respect and honor ethnic, racial and financial differences, Pondiscio suggests, democratic impulses are fed when schools teach all the issues that bind Americans collectively as well. Just as Soviet technological advances triggered funding in science education within the Fifties, the 2016 election should spur renewed emphasis on the necessity for schools to instill an appreciation for liberal democratic values. If schools are doing a poor job of imparting civic data, they are also doing a poor job of inculcating an appreciation for the democratic values embodied within the Bill of Rights. In the 2015 Annenberg Survey, for example, over one-quarter of individuals (26 percent) would vote to alter or remove the Fifth Amendment in order that courts could require an individual testify towards herself. Performance among college students on the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was additionally disturbingly low.
But getting the hidden …