Written by Emma Humphries, chief education officer at iCivics, and Katherine Prince, vice president of foresight and strategy at KnowledgeWorks
Most of us will never experience the amount of interaction with diverse people and ideas that we did in school. While the country grows increasingly divided along partisan lines online, the schoolhouse could once again become the place to rediscover the pluralism needed to move forward together. To do this, we must recenter civic education and strengthen it with the same technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), that students are already using in other facets of their lives.
We must also shift focus from immediate needs to long-term planning. As highlighted in the most recent future forecast from KnowledgeWorks, education leaders face tough decisions about what to prioritize and how to lead toward education systems that will meet the needs of all learners and help seed a strong civil society.
The good news is parents across the political spectrum support civics education, and numerous bills are being proposed in state legislatures across the country to strengthen it. Yet polarization and political maneuvering are giving rise to ideologically driven civic curricula and are making the teaching of civics education increasingly fraught with difficulty.
To make civic education stronger, teachers need more administrative support, more instructional guidance and more professional learning. Useful ways forward include:
- Expanding resources for civic education by capitalizing on this parental support and momentum
- Developing comprehensive, inquiry-based core curricula and high-quality instructional materials for social studies
- Using AI to customize, localize and enhance existing instructional materials
- Growing district-supported educator professional learning in civic education
Shaping young people as civic contributors, giving them the knowledge and skills they need to engage in civil discourse and reach compromise, has never been more critical. To prepare for a future marked by uncertainty, we must design civic education that is rooted in civic trust, embedded across multiple settings – including schools, community organizations, online spaces and informal learning environments.
Strong civic education could help communities adapt to challenges and strengthen civic health, community culture and engagement in solutions. Moreover, states and districts that excel in civic education could offer learning experiences beyond their geographic boundaries to scale impact.
But limited resources and political divides are already pushing civic education to the margins, making it a battleground for political contention instead of a foundation for shared knowledge, common purpose and collaborative problem-solving. Seeing another source of conflict instead of connection, young people who already struggle to find relevance or voice in school may disengage further.
This is where tools like AI can help.
In response to these challenges, iCivics is launching a “first-of-its-kind” civics education, curriculum-design platform powered by AI. This platform will support the creation of standards-aligned, research-based social studies materials that teachers can easily adapt. Through an intuitive interface, educators will be able to customize lessons to align with state standards, add local context or provide scaffolds and enrichment activities. These capabilities will make the hidden, often unsupported work of adapting curriculum much easier.
By leveraging generative AI, this platform exemplifies the types of creative solutions that can be implemented to tackle today’s pressing needs while also preparing for a future in which educational approaches may look different.
While emerging tools like AI can play a constructive role in ensuring that civic learning reflects the full plurality of our nation by offering students access to diverse perspectives, fact-based content and personalized learning experiences, AI alone is not enough.
Meeting this moment while keeping an eye on the horizon will require a sustained commitment to character, courage and integrity, equipping teachers and learning environments with the resources, support and vision needed to make civic education meaningful, relevant and resilient in the face of the polarization that threatens our democracy.
Emerging tools and models hold promise. AI could help educators design personalized, localized curricula that connected civic learning to students’ lived experiences. Innovative governance models could bring students into decision-making, showing them the power of collaboration across differences. And access to civic education could improve through the expansion of learning providers and instructional materials. Together, these possibilities could help civic education move beyond the division that is currently eroding public trust.
The path forward will not be easy. But it seems possible to overcome such divides by supporting teachers and involving families as advocates for learning. Finding ways to instill in our youth a sense of belonging, problem-solving skills and the confidence to shape the world around them will strengthen both education and democracy for the future.
