Lindsey Cormack: Raising Responsible Citizens

SPEAKER 01 : 0:03

Welcome to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Rahn. She’s a master educator and author leading the conversation to restore the American mind through wisdom, virtue, and truth.

SPEAKER 03 : 0:17

Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to Restoring Education in America. I’m your host, Priscilla Rahn, and I’m so excited that you’ve decided to join the conversation today. Are you a parent that’s looking for a great school for your child’s kindergarten through third grade? Well, there’s a new private classical school that’s opening this fall in Centennial. called Excalibur Classical Academy. And their mission and vision is restoring America’s heritage by developing servant leaders who are keepers and defenders of the principles of freedom for which our founding fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. And something really fantastic is they’re offering 100% tuition scholarships this fall. So make sure you reach out to Excalibur. Their website is ExcaliburClassicalAcademy.org. If you’re a teacher looking for a great teaching environment, please submit your resume to their website. So we’re living in a time where parents are looking for better options for their children. And I have someone really special I’m bringing to the stage that has tools and advice for parents on how to raise children. I’m bringing her to the stage now. Welcome, Dr. Lindsay Cormack. Hi. Hi. Thanks so much for having me today. I’m looking forward to chatting with you. Well, I had the distinct honor of hearing you speak and meeting you at the LPR retreat in Colorado Springs. And I was just so impressed by your knowledge. And I am really thrilled that we are connected today. But before we get into the conversation, I’m going to share a little bit of your bio with my listeners. So Dr. Lindsay Cormack is an associate professor of political science and director of the Diplomacy Lab at Stevens Institute of Technology. She has authored two books, How to Raise a Citizen and Why it is Up to You to Do It, and Congress and U.S. Veterans from the GI Bill to the VA Crisis. She created and maintains the digital database of all official Congress to constituent e-newsletters. She earned her Ph.D. in government from New York University and currently serves as the secretary for Manhattan Community Board 8. Her research has been published in numerous publications as well as in popular outlets, including the Bloomberg Business Wire, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New York Post, NBC News, The Hill and more. Just a few. Just a few. Amazing. Thank you. We sang patriotic songs. And I don’t know, maybe at a young age, it was just instilled in me that this was normal. But things have changed, Dr. Cormack. And you’ve written your wonderful book about how to raise a citizen. Why were you compelled to write this book?

SPEAKER 02 : 3:34

So I’ve been very blessed to work at a university for 12 years that has some of the smartest children I’ve ever had the opportunity to be around. I’m at Stevens Institute of Technology, and the students that come in there are bright. They are eager learners. They go on to great careers. But what I found in having them in my Intro to American Politics class is that most of them didn’t know the very basics of American government. They didn’t know the setup, the structure, their own routes of power, so many different pieces. And so I set out with six of them as research assistants to go figure out how are we teaching government, politics, civics in American schools? And what we found is that instead of finding one sort of state that’s doing it really well, no state is doing it that well. So it became a parenting book that takes the arguments into our homes and communities and says, if you really want to change this, you can’t wait for a school to take care of it. It’s going to be something that has to start at home.

SPEAKER 03 : 4:26

So Dr. Cormack, why do you think it’s the responsibility of parents to raise their children to be citizens? Because a lot of people send their kids to school and they expect that the schools will teach their children how to be great citizens. But you think that we need this book to help parents.

SPEAKER 02 : 4:44

I think there’s sort of two reasons for this. The first is just it’s not happening in the schools. We have really good indicators, whether that’s looking at the nation’s report card at eighth grade or if we’re looking at AP U.S. government scores in 12th grade or if we’re looking at youth voter registration. On none of these indicators are schools doing what I would consider an adequate job in preparing our young people to step into being citizens once they turn 18 and earn the right to vote. But the second reason is that it’s really a foundational thing of the family to say, like, you know, if we want to have our family understand where it belongs in this country, how it’s rooted, how it can be more powerful than it is really a role of ours to take on and showing our kids what that looks like, not only in our own lives, but what that can look like for them as they grow and mature into this country.

SPEAKER 03 : 5:27

Well, I’m going to do a plug for our parents and educators to find your book. It’s How to Raise a Citizen and Why It’s Up to You to Do It. I’m assuming people can find it on Amazon, basically.

SPEAKER 02 : 5:40

Yeah, it’s anywhere. It’s Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop. You can go to my website, howtoraisacitizen.com, and you can ask it to be inscribed or personalized. I’ll send it to a new mom or a new dad of yours. But anywhere books are bought, it’s being sold.

SPEAKER 03 : 5:54

You had a really cool idea at LPREtreat where you have a book that people who purchase your books in person can sign almost like a yearbook. I thought that was really clever. I mean, I think that it’s beautiful. Do you go back and remember who you spoke to? Talk a little bit about that.

SPEAKER 02 : 6:14

Yeah. So when I first started this book tour, this is my second book, but my first like cross state different sort of two year span book tour. And I was on the road by myself and I was lonely. And so I started at my very first book signing. I was like, instead of me just signing people’s books, why don’t I have them sign my first copy of the book, too? And it’s become sort of this like totem, this yearbook for me, where then after events are over, I go look and I find the new signatures. And then before events to sort of like hype myself up, I go back and like touch the ones that I really like. There’s some that are from really young people. There’s kids who have drawn me pictures. There’s really talented adult artists who have gone in there and draw me pictures as well as signed it. And so it’s just something that helps me remember what’s happening as I’m on tour. And I also think it like lets me be connected to the people who then have my signature in a way that I otherwise wouldn’t be.

SPEAKER 03 : 7:05

That was so clever. I love it. Well, I want to read a little bit from your book. It’s on page 47 and it’s entitled Pushing Civics Out of Schools Testing Today. Okay. Civics education is often sidelined in U.S. schools due to curricular crowd out in the pursuit of high standardized test scores, none of which includes civics. Ben Lewis, a Texas middle school teacher, echoed many educators concerns that the preoccupation with tests has pushed social studies aside. With schools focusing on math and reading intensely in middle school, high school educators struggle to fill the civics education gap with incoming students who have never been exposed to basic governmental concepts. Dana Davenport, an AP US government teacher in California, noted in her interview that while school boards may try to influence curriculum standards in favor of more civics, the lack of civics in standardized tests leads to little enforcement of civics education benchmarks. And I thought… that you just hit the nail on the head because what’s not tested is not really important. And then you think, well, okay, so in Colorado, students are required to have a semester of civics before they graduate. But the question is, who’s teaching it? What curriculum are they using? How are they being held accountable for the content? So can you unpack a little bit more about this connection between civics education and the pressures of testing?

SPEAKER 02 : 8:34

Yeah. So when we think about what our pinnacle of achievement is for a high school student, it’s usually what score do they get on the SAT or what score do they get on the ACT? And neither one of these tests has any component that requires you to have some content or background knowledge in civics or understanding politics or government. Because it doesn’t have any of these parts required in the assessment materials, teachers with constrained environments don’t have the time to necessarily get to all these things. Now, it might be the case that you have a requirement of a semester or maybe a year of civics. But what we heard in interviewing teachers in 47 U.S. states is exactly what you just said, which is if it’s not tested, it’s not taught, which is there’s a time tradeoff. There’s constraints in every day about what you can fill the classroom with. And if you know that test is coming and it always is. then the things that don’t get assessed are the ones that get short shrift in the classroom time. Even if teachers don’t want that to be the case, the incentives just aren’t aligned correctly.

SPEAKER 03 : 9:31

So Dr. Cormack, I’ve been having debates with friends on social media, which is not the best place to have debates about civics and our history. With it being America’s 250th birthday, it gives me more of an excuse to engage people in a conversation about their understanding of our heritage. And I say more than just the history of America, but our heritage and what makes us unique compared to other nations. And lately the debate has been because there was a state rep who led the pledge in the well, and he purposely left out under God. He got silent under God. And so the debate has been with my friends, you know, I’m not debating whether or not people have freedom of speech or whether or not they can practice their religion freely. My point is that If we look at our founding documents like the Declaration and it talks about our inalienable rights that come from our creator, like there was no debate that our rights come from God and not the government. And if we forget that, then we open ourselves up to what I consider a threat to our freedoms. If we don’t understand the origins of our freedoms, then we might not understand a threat to our freedoms. And therefore, we don’t know how to defend against those threats. am i off on that or i mean what would be your historical understanding of this term under god when it comes to our constitution and our freedoms

SPEAKER 02 : 11:06

So I think it’s a great sort of place to dig in and have conversations with people, but it is sort of a fraught history. So we know that the Pledge of Allegiance is not a foundational document. In fact, it’s something that’s created by a pastor who’s trying to sell more flags while we’re celebrating Columbus Day. And so the history of that is not sort of like as enshrined as the Declaration or the Constitution or these other sorts of pieces. When we think about under God, that doesn’t get added until World War II to show that we are different than the godless communists. I think having these debates with others about what does it mean to place faith in God or what faith would our founders have had in God, It’s sort of a very fine place to have a back and forth. I don’t know that I would put too much on the Pledge of Allegiance, though, because it is a human artifice that then gets edited later. And so I think there’s other sorts of things that we can look at, like looking at the Declaration or looking at how our founders talked about providence or this notion of this creation of the rest of the world for us to inhabit. So I think there’s other places where we can have those arguments that are probably deeper than the Pledge.

SPEAKER 03 : 12:09

Yeah, I love that. And I agree 100% and that it did open a discussion and having those healthy debates and intellectual debates about the history and what makes us different because, you know, people will say, well, we weren’t founded as a Christian nation. And I’m like, well, we weren’t founded. under Sharia law either. So like, how do we have these conversations? And I think that’s, I’m guessing that’s the crux of your book, like how to raise a citizen to talk about these things and then be able to articulate our heritage and our nation to what makes us great. Like what might be those threats and how do we continue to preserve our republic? But let’s go back a little bit, Dr. Cormack, where did your love and your passion for politics and political science come from?

SPEAKER 02 : 12:56

So it’s a funny one. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently because someone asked me, what was my civic spark? Like, what’s the thing that turned me on to this sort of work? And it wasn’t like one sort of turning point. What happened was when I went to the University of Kansas as an undergrad, I said to myself, what is it that I don’t know a lot about that these people here could teach me? And it’s not that I didn’t have a great education. I was in public schools in Kansas, which has like notoriously good public schools at the time. They were overfunded. I had really good teachers. But when I got to the university level, I was like, what are things that I haven’t learned about yet? And so I ended up majoring in political science and minoring in African and African-American studies because I was like, these are two big pockets that like there’s plenty of things I don’t know. But these were really glaring ones. And I was like, oh, they seem to have a robust faculty here that can teach me about these things. And so that’s really what started it for me is just saying, like, what can I learn on something I don’t know? Finding teachers that I liked and then I continued this trajectory of study all the way through graduate school.

SPEAKER 03 : 13:53

Wow, that is fascinating. I was just talking with someone yesterday about, again, America’s 250th birthday and looking at great figures in history, one of which is Frederick Douglass and his amazing story. So for me, as a descendant of enslaved Africans, how his story really has impacted me in a positive way to look at holding our government accountable, but holding ourselves as citizens accountable, because a lot of us have relinquished our quote unquote, authority to the government and washed our hands in a way because we’re all so busy. Sometimes people think it’s too complicated to understand how government works. And so we trust. But the next thing you know, you wake up and a lot of your rights are being controlled by a small group of people. What are you seeing today? 250 years later, in your opinion, are we better off? Are we worse off? Are there things that you would recommend that we as citizens start to do differently to make it look more like what our founding fathers originally envisioned for us?

SPEAKER 02 : 14:58

So when I think about the 250th, I also like to remind people that it’s the soft launch. Like we first have that Articles of Confederation, which I was just reading the other day on a plane and I was like refreshing on it. And I was like, you know, we really are an iterative nation because for the span in which we had that, it didn’t really work. And then, OK, we wait again and we get the Constitution as we know it today. So I think in that exercise of seeing like, oh, there are problems that we have made, mistakes that we have made, but we have the power to correct it. That’s what I wish we as citizens could take up more. This notion that like, yes, it’s not perfect. We’re forming a more perfect union. And yes, it’s not fully founded. We are all founders and continually finding America. I want us to have not only a pride in that, but to see it as an honor. It’s truly amazing to be born in a country that allows you to have agency over what the rest of your future is going to look like by virtue of being in a democratic republic. So instead of seeing our politics as like, I’m too busy or it’s too boring or it’s too fractious, it’s really, truly a gift that we get to be in it. And whether that’s caring about the federal politics or caring about state or local doesn’t much matter to me. But I want us to see that there’s value in it, happiness, joy, and really a gift in doing it.

SPEAKER 03 : 16:11

if you’re just tuning in my special guest today is dr lindsay cormack she is an associate professor of political science and author and very very articulate when it comes to uh making sure the masses really understand and dig into something that we’re both really passionate about um so my show is called restoring education in america A lot of people have a lot of opinions about where we are in public education today. But in your mind, what’s missing and what do we need to do to restore education in America?

SPEAKER 02 : 16:48

It’s such a hard question because I don’t know that there’s one answer for every part of this country. As you know, you know, our educational policy landscape is really fractured in the sense that every state has guidelines under every state. We have different things for public schools or independent schools or parochial schools or religious schools. homeschool, and so I think the notion that we ought to care about it is something that we all sort of agree on, but the how do we do that caring looks different. And I think one of the really big challenges that we have is when we’re thinking about what we want our kids to come away with their education having known. And if we do civic education as we do now, which is usually one little class in seventh or eighth grade, and then one little class in 11th and 12th grade, we’re not gonna get the citizens that we want. There’s just like too little time, too little attention. And so if I could wave a magic wand on changing education, at least in the civic space, it would be that we do this K through 12 everywhere. And that’s not just because I like this subject. But if you think about how religious traditions are passed down to children, that sort of building happens in their very young ages. Like if you think about when bar or bat mitzvahs happen or when confirmation happens, all these things build up to kids being 12, 13, 14. And so we really have to lay the groundwork early. And I would wish for more of that in civics education so that our children can grow up proud and understanding about what their country is and their roles that they can have in it.

SPEAKER 03 : 18:10

So you talked about becoming a citizen. And can you unpack for our listeners, because people might have different definitions of what a citizen is. And, you know, I do want to ask you about this big debate right now in Congress about the SAVE Act and a citizen being able to vote and how do you prove that? Can you just unpack a little bit about citizenship?

SPEAKER 02 : 18:35

Yeah. So when I’m talking about a citizen, I don’t mean the strict technical legal definition of like, do you have the eligibility to be a part of all the sorts of things that happen in the country that you are a part of? I mean it a bit more broadly. I mean a citizen as someone who gives back to the community that they are a part of, whether that be through the formal legalistic structures of voting or running for office, or whether that be through cleaning up your parks, making sure that your sidewalks are brushed if you have snow. So someone who has a community of import and a community of care and raising our children to know what that is and be citizens of wherever they are. I do recognize that in the American context, there are really clear markers on citizen or not citizen for eligibility for things like health care or educational subsidies or the ability to participate in government. But I think we want our children, no matter where they’re at, to be parts of their communities that are not just taking, but are also giving. And so this is an opportunity for us to talk about it in a broader way, or at least that’s how I conceptualize it in the book.

SPEAKER 03 : 19:35

Yeah, I love that because we do need to raise great humanitarian, caring people who give back. What are some descriptors that you think of when you think of a great citizen?

SPEAKER 02 : 19:49

I think a great citizen recognizes a responsibility. Being a citizen of a place isn’t just about enjoying all the perks of being in that place, but recognizing that along with that sort of perk comes a responsibility. I think a great citizen is someone who sort of sees a lane that matters to them and shows up for it, whether that be I care about bike lanes or I care about environmental issues or maybe I care about making sure my roads are safe. I think it’s like finding something to care about and making the world a little bit better in that way. I think a good citizen also cares about others. It can’t be something that’s selfish. It has to be something that’s much more selfless in the sense that if you’re making the world better for yourself, usually you’re making it better for someone else. And as long as that’s sort of folded in to sort of the conception of what you’re doing, I think you’re more likely to be a better citizen than not.

SPEAKER 03 : 20:38

Yeah, that’s a great descriptor. In Colorado, there’s a granting organization called Daniel’s Fund, and they’re supporting financially this civics fee. And it’s for middle schoolers, and I teach middle school. And I had my students apply, and they had to pick a problem that they see in their community, connect it to an action. Like, how would you solve this problem? Like, who would you go to? What steps would you take? Would you do a petition? Would you go to your elected official and speak at a public hearing in front of the city council? How would you get other people involved in, you know, fixing these problems? And I think that was a great exercise for my middle schoolers to think about, you know, there’s homeless. They’re so smart and so perceptive. They see, well, there’s a homeless problem. And I think, well, how do you how do you pay for that? How do you fix that? Who should be responsible? How long will you be responsible? Because those are things that we’re seeing today that are big issues. For some reason, our smart people in elected office still haven’t figured out. I don’t understand why we still have all of the problems that we have. I’m just going to ask you, do you have a philosophy as to why we still have some of these major debates around things like health care and homelessness and jobs? And should we get involved in foreign wars and these types of things?

SPEAKER 02 : 21:58

I think sort of having a disunity of opinions is intrinsic to what we’re doing here. We are not going to come at everything with the same lived experience. So we are not going to all want or be desirous of the same outcomes. And so I don’t necessarily see disagreement at the national level as something that’s like reflective of dishealth in American politics. I do see indicators that seem like problematic disagreement. So I think when we get into the place where we’re name calling or when we’re really undermining someone’s sort of motive for doing something in a way that is ugly. That is not a model that I hope our children care to emulate. And I don’t think it’s something that if we were to like travel back in time and see the founders, they were vicious and how they describe each other. But they did sort of grant each other the grace of saying, like, we might be coming at this in a different way. We might want different ends, but we’re both trying to do what’s right and what’s good. And I think too often the way that I sort of see our national discourse is that these people, whether those people be some other side or some faction or something, But the notion that the people who are against you are either evil, like they’re out to do harm, or they’re really, really stupid. And I, in my experience, working with people both on the left and the right and in the end parts of government, I found that everyone is pretty smart and most of them are trying hard, but they don’t agree on what those outcomes should be. And so I think if we can accept that we don’t have to agree on the outcomes. and we can take it down in terms of like attributing motives to something like evilness or idiocy, then we’re probably gonna have better sorts of disagreements and enable us to move forward.

SPEAKER 03 : 23:33

Yeah, I think we’re living in this digital age where the clicks get people hyped up and I call it adrenal fry. I mean, you see the ones that are constantly throwing out this toxicity out there around politics and individuals and really, like you said, like putting down individuals. has become the norm, unfortunately. And I hope the pendulum swings back to an era of more Kennedy or Reagan, where people were actually working together in Congress and making decisions on behalf of the people. I miss that era. And I mean, do you anticipate, when we look at history, that maybe we’ll go back to that? Or are we kind of too far along in this type of culture of debating? Yeah.

SPEAKER 02 : 24:16

So I actually am pretty hopeful. I think you said a word that I try to talk about a lot, which is pendulum. But a pendulum, sometimes we think of having like a natural rhythm, like a clock or something. A political pendulum, as I see it, is one that has pushing and then counterpushing. And so not always do you get the same amount of counterpush back to something. And so you’ve also pointed out that like in this online space where outrage is something that’s incentivized, where like we know if you say something really crazy or really mean, it’ll ricochet around the Internet. versus if you say like, you know, my opponent makes a good point. No one really cares about that sort of anodyne center of the road sort of conversation. We will have to tire of it eventually or it’s going to eat us all alive. And I do see sort of heartening things with my younger students who are very unexcited about really like sort of ugly, monstrous versions of social media. And so I am hopeful that we are pushing in that direction. But I think right now we’re still really deep in it.

SPEAKER 03 : 25:09

When you were at LPR, you showed a lot of data. You had a lot of slides and data. And I thought, wow, that’s really important information. I wouldn’t know where to go, but you’re a researcher. But is there some place, a reading, would you say, you really should read this, the New York Times every day or a website? What would you recommend for people?

SPEAKER 02 : 25:30

That’s a great question. And I get sort of variations of this, which people are like, where should I tell my kids to go get their news? And I don’t really think there’s any one answer. But I think wherever it is that you feel most natural and at home getting your news, it’s very good if you can find a counterpart that sees things a little bit differently than you and be willing to exchange that. I have plenty of these counterparts in my sort of social network where I have people from like every different walk of political life. And when they send me something, provided we have that sort of working relationship, I’m very happy to go through and read what they’re seeing because it’s never going to be the same as what I’m seeing. And that’s true for all of us. And so I don’t think there’s one place we should all say, like, let’s point ourselves here. It’s that we know we’re in a very cut up, bifurcated, trifurcated landscape. And so we really need to make sure that we’re checking in and seeing what is everyone else seeing? Or at least what are the people who we care about who share sort of values with us, but maybe have different outlooks trying to see what they’re seeing? Because it’s probably not something that’s just going to naturally get put into your algorithm.

SPEAKER 03 : 26:32

So Dr. Carmack, as we start to wind down this term democracy versus republic, that’s another hot topic. The phrase, we have a republic if you can keep it. What do we need to do in your mind to keep our republic?

SPEAKER 02 : 26:48

Oh, I love this question. I think we need to see that it’s our work to do. We can’t think that it’s someone else’s responsibility to take care of this. And when we think about, you know, the debate between democracy versus republic, I actually have something that’s coming out in a few weeks with Everything Policy, which is an organization that tries to equip teachers with sort of like. Just facts on the ground, a 360 perspective about policy, which is on this debate about are we a democracy or are we a republic? And the answer is we’re both. We’re a democratic republic and a republican style of democracy. So I don’t think we should get too wound up in those names. But I know that if we want to keep the good parts of what we’re doing here, we have to see it as our task to take on and not necessarily a burden, but really a task that we can take on with the joy of knowing it’s great to be in a country that allows you to do that sort of thing with your own agency.

SPEAKER 03 : 27:37

Well, Dr. Cormack, thank you so much for your time today. I have loved learning from you and having this conversation. Where can people follow you on social media?

SPEAKER 02 : 27:47

On Instagram, I’m how to raise a citizen.

SPEAKER 03 : 27:50

And then on things like LinkedIn, I’m Lindsay Cormack. Wonderful. Well, I would encourage my listeners to follow you and thank you everyone for tuning in today and catch me next time. And remember, educating the mind without the heart is no education. So seek wisdom, cultivate virtue and speak truth.

SPEAKER 01 : 28:09

Thanks for tuning in to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Rahn. Visit PriscillaRahn.com to connect or learn how you can sponsor future episodes to keep this message of faith, freedom, and education on the air.