In American civics classes, children once learned the timeless principles of the Founding and the rights and responsibilities of citizens. Starting in the 1960s, schools shifted away from civics and history, with troubling consequences: today, only 36 percent of Americans can pass the citizenship test required of immigrants.
Chicago is reviving civics education, but not in a way that aims to nurture informed, patriotic citizens. The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and Chicago Public Schools designated May 1—May Day, or International Workers’ Day—as a day of civic action and enlisted students as young as kindergarten in large pro-labor and anti-Trump demonstrations. CTU’s “city-wide civics” campaign exploited students as pawns to advance a partisan agenda, disrupting the school day with political activism rather than genuine civics instruction.
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The district arranged field trips to May Day protests and other civic engagement events, providing buses and bagged lunches for students. The CTU promoted its May Day activism as “the next step in civil society to reclaim our country from the authoritarian billionaire in the White House.” The field trips were optional for students, but those who remained in class were still exposed to these “civic engagement activities.”
Even if the union genuinely sought to impart civics, it would face a major obstacle. The study of civics is vital to democracy, but it depends first on the ability to communicate. Fewer than one in three students in Chicago Public Schools can read at grade level. If students struggle with basic literacy, they aren’t prepared for civic action. But for the CTU, politics always takes precedence over education.
Students in Chicago Public Schools would be far better served if their teachers taught them how to read, write, and express their ideas clearly. As one parent told the Chicago Tribune, she refused to send her third-grade daughter to a May Day protest since she “would benefit more from the classroom . . . than at a protest that wasn’t necessarily geared toward kids.”
Some appropriate field trips for Chicago students would consist of the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium, and Brookfield Zoo—not protest marches attended by activist groups and unions such as the Coalition Against the Trump Agenda or the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE).
CTU officials released a statement that portrayed bringing students to these events as part of their “civic duty” as educators: “Our students have something to say, and we as educators have a responsibility to speak up and support them in finding their voice, their vision, their agency, and their place in the community.”
On the contrary, teachers’ civic duty begins with training students in reading, writing, and arithmetic. The CTU-dominated Chicago Public Schools have fallen well short of fulfilling that core responsibility. May Day offered a convenient excuse for teachers to shirk their educational duties for a day and engage in their preferred activity: political protest.
The CTU appears less focused on cultivating intelligent and informed citizens than on mobilizing future voters to maintain Illinois’ corrupt status quo, including its broken pension system and the high taxes that support it. At a field trip to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters, high schoolers were given the chance to pre-register to vote, and younger students received coloring sheets on civil rights history. Mayor Brandon Johnson spoke to the students about black and labor history and encouraged them to “carry on the legacy of our ancestors.”
If they really want to follow in the footsteps of Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King Jr., Chicago Public Schools students must first learn reading, writing, and math. That can’t begin to happen until their teachers stop manipulating them and prioritize their education.