Bringing Civics To Small Town America

That the United States has entered a crisis of civic knowledge is no secret. Students’ knowledge of American history and politics in recent years has plunged to an all-time low while partisanship rises to an all-time high. In an attempt to address this crisis, state legislatures across the country have funded academic units at their large state schools designed to tackle the civics deficit head-on. Such institutions can only ever be the first step in solving America’s civic literacy problem. This is because state flagship universities, for all their prestige, make up only a small fraction of our higher education system—and not always the best fraction. 

This simple fact about the reality of education too often eludes both legislatures and the general public, who tend to think of state flagship universities as the heart and soul of American education—the true home of their state’s future generation. If we set aside the fact that many people do not pursue an advanced degree in the first place, it is still the case that the majority of students are educated at a mixture of regional state universities, community colleges, and small liberal arts schools. 

For this reason, when I returned to my native Eastern Kentucky about four years ago to work on enhancing civic education in Eastern Kentucky from within a small liberal arts college, I knew there would be something of an uphill battle. Sadly, the private funders and political attention often overlook private colleges and universities that are not ancient and unusually prestigious. This meant that the center would have to work gradually to build a portfolio different in nature from its more institutionally connected competitors in the private and public sphere. 

For the University of Pikeville’s Center for Public Service, we chose to try and lean into the unique attributes of our university: small, mainline Protestant, and, most importantly, deeply embedded in our local Appalachian community. Practically speaking, this means working with local community members to help expand civic knowledge not just among college students but also local residents and K-12 students. This requires programming that takes me, other professors, and members of the university out into the schools and the town itself to engage in providing the tools of self-government to every pocket of the local area.

For example, we offer a political philosophy book club to the community, a three-week civics summer camp to high schoolers, and host a large Constitution Day event open to high school students across the region. More than this, though, we also try to build out initiatives that go beyond civic education to include research and cultural renewal in a region that has suffered a more robust collapse of civil society than almost any other place in America. 

These programs are obviously unique to the particular problems of Central Appalachia and are not necessarily a good fit for every civic center in the country. Not only this, but if every program dedicated to American civics started to do the same things, the invisible hand of the market would surely destroy most of them. However, behind our programming at UPIKE lies an attitude that should animate every attempt to rejuvenate civic education in this country. This is the belief that universities and civics centers in particular should not be detached from the community that houses them.

Instead, by its very nature, civic education should be deeply rooted and bottom-up. The idea of forging citizens through a forceful top-down methodology feels entirely counter to the whole endeavor. The very idea of a democratic republic is that citizens rule themselves—not through large distant state institutions, but through mechanisms that are private and very often local. Educationally, such work—as a matter of course—flows from colleges and universities that may not be wealthy or famous but that are already embedded in their local community. 

This is why we should do what we can as a society to encourage the growth of hyper-local civics centers like the UPIKE Center for Public Service. Small liberal arts colleges across the country are better equipped than almost anyone to solve the crisis of civics that we confront. We need only to empower them to do so. 

Jeffery Tyler Syck, Ph.D is an assistant professor of political science and the founding director of the Center for Public Service at the University of Pikeville in his native Eastern Kentucky.