Published February 7, 2025
In an article previewing his forthcoming book on civic education, noted author and reporter James Traub argues that conservatives — including me — are wrong to claim that K–12 schools are teaching civics and social studies from a left-ideological point of view. Traub observed dozens of classes in government and social studies during 2023-2024 and says that the vast majority of teachers he encountered take political neutrality as a “sacred obligation.”
At the same time, Traub acknowledges that the academic literature on teaching, statements from educational administrators, and social-studies standards in blue states are all pervasively leftist. He thus concedes that “conservatives aren’t simply making this stuff up.” So how to explain the discrepancy between Traub’s classroom experience and the admittedly leftist cast of the education establishment as a whole?
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Stanley Kurtz is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Beyond his work with Education and American Ideals, Mr. Kurtz is a key contributor to American public debates on a wide range of issues from K–12 and higher education reform, to the challenges of democratization abroad, to urban-suburban policies, to the shaping of the American left’s agenda. Mr. Kurtz has written on these and other issues for various journals, particularly National Review Online (where he is a contributing editor).
