Responding to the Crisis in Civic Education | Hans Zeiger

On this episode of Anchored, Soren is joined by Hans Zeiger, president of the Jack Miller Center, a nationwide, nonpartisan educational venture that is dedicated to America’s founding principles and civic education at every level. They discuss Hans’ journey from public policy to the Jack Miller Center, and the crisis in civic education that sparked his interest. They explore the importance of knowledge for self-governing citizens and for the survival of the country. They also discuss specific areas where the educational system has failed, and some of the university programs that provide beacons of hope. 

Transcript

Soren Schwab - CLT (00:01.125)
Welcome back to the Anchored Podcast, the official podcast of the Classic Learning Test. My name is Soren Schwab, VP of Partnerships here at CLT. And today we're joined by Hans Zeiger. Hans Zeiger is president of the Jack Miller Center, a nationwide nonpartisan educational venture to build pipelines of academic scholars who are dedicated to teaching the American political tradition and to grow the national movement for civic education at every level. With a focus on education, Hans challenged an incumbent

for a seat in the Washington State House of Representatives in 2010, winning the election by a whopping 29 votes out of 52,000 cast. He served as ranking member on the House Higher Education Committee before going on to serve in the Washington State Senate, chairing the Senate's Education Committee and helping to pass the state's half credit civics graduation requirement. Hans led the Chapman Center for Citizen Leadership at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute from 2012 to 2020.

He was a leadership fellow of the Henry Jackson Foundation, Rodel fellow of the Aspen Institute, and a trustee of the Washington State Historical Society. holds a bachelor's degree from my alma mater, Hillsdale College, and a master's in public policy from Pepperdine University. He also studied American politics at Claremont Graduate University, and he previously served as a public affairs officer in the Air National Guard. Hans and his wife, Erin, have two daughters,

and currently live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And it is such an honor to have him on the podcast today. Hans, welcome.

Hans (01:32.365)
Thank you so much, Sorin, and great to connect with you. Not only are we both Hillsdale alumni, but I also just found out that you're from the same area in Germany where my ancestors came over in 1858 and settled in Illinois. so anyway, we may be distant relatives back in the...

Soren Schwab - CLT (01:50.885)
What a great, what a great game. Who knows? might, we might be related and I, I, and I can pronounce your name pretty well too. that I, I, in the, in the pre conversation, the recording, I asked Hans, you know, am I allowed to pronounce it the German way or so many, you know, German names are Americanized. And so I'm really glad that you stuck with the, with the German pronunciation. So

Hans (02:13.995)
Good to be with you.

Soren Schwab - CLT (02:14.989)
As we always do, we start the Anchored podcast by talking about our guests own educational journey. So I'm curious. I know you ended up at Hillsdale College, but what was your education like K-12?

Hans (02:25.449)
Yeah, well grew up in Puyallup, Washington, just south of Seattle, not too far from Tacoma. I'm the son, grandson, and great-grandson of Puyallup public school teachers, so there was a lot of family pride in the enterprise of public education. I had some great teachers going through school. Also had some experiences outside of school that I would say were formative, very positive for me. Boy Scouts, church, some teenage jobs, mowing lawns, delivering newspapers, that kind of thing.

But maybe most importantly for me in terms of my own kind of career trajectory, I started to take a lot of interest in what was going on in politics. And as a teenager, I got very involved in campaigns, really loved that world of winning votes and strategy and building coalitions and grassroots networks. And that shaped my outlook on what I wanted to do with my life. So I learned how to organize sign waving and phone banks and just love that stuff.

got involved in the American Legion programs like the Boys State program. And I read everything I could find on political history. But as I started to think about where I was going to go to college, I learned about Hillsdale College in Michigan and went out there for a summer economics program between junior and senior year of high school. Cited that was the place for me. So I went out to Hillsdale, had a very activist mindset with the outlook that I had.

Soren Schwab - CLT (03:50.213)
Ha

Hans (03:52.201)
But interestingly enough, it really moderated me. Here I was sitting in these classes learning about the great tradition, the great books tradition, and the lessons of history, and that really had a moderating effect on me. Hillsdale has a terrific core, just some terrific professors. So I started out as a political science major, but I quickly realized that there were some really outstanding professors in literature and in history.

So I switched over to the American Studies major because that was a way that I could take classes in politics, history, and literature. But it really wasn't until about halfway through my time in college that I became a serious student, really into my junior year, that I became a serious student and realized, OK, I've got a heck of a lot more to learn. There's so much that I don't understand about the world. So I decided at that point that I should probably go to grad school.

and I was part of an intercollegiate studies institute honors program. After my junior year college, met an intellectual historian named Ted McAllister who was teaching at the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University. And that seemed an unusual fit, somebody to be in intellectual history teaching a public policy program, but I learned that Pepperdine was this different approach to teaching public policy.

that they included history and great books and ideas on statesmanship in their approach to policy. So I said, that'd be a great place for me to go get a master's degree. So I got my master's in public policy there in Malibu, California. And then after that, I went over to the other side of Los Angeles and started a PhD in political science at Claremont Graduate University. But I was a bit conflicted at that point. I was thinking I could go on this academic track and I could become a professor or I could go back home and

do politics, do real world politics. And I ended up deciding to drop out of that PhD program. 2010 was coming up and that seemed like it was going to be very anti-incumbent year. I could go home and challenge an eight-year incumbent for a state legislative seat. And I did that. I had time on my hands. I could go. I went to 13,000 doorsteps personally. Had a nice little army of volunteers that went to another 12,000 doorsteps and just learned so much through

Hans (06:18.984)
just the campaign process and when all was said and done, we had to go into a recount. was a very short election. Did not know until a month after the election that I had actually won the election and I had won by 29 votes out of 52,000 cast. So every vote matters. Never let anybody tell you that it doesn't. certainly as we were recording this before election day and lot of get out there and vote.

Soren Schwab - CLT (06:25.354)
Hahaha

Soren Schwab - CLT (06:38.011)
It does.

Soren Schwab - CLT (06:43.557)
Right? Yeah.

Hans (06:48.636)
Yeah, so during my time in the state legislature and politics, I learned so much about how ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things when they work together. You know, I could tell you about a landmark school funding case that came along. I could tell you about how we passed a major bipartisan transportation funding package or how we changed the conversation around poverty.

learning disabilities and support for low-income moms and babies. I learned how to lead in settings where you have to collaborate and gain buy-in from people to get things done. And I learned above all, as a former legislator told me just after I got elected, relationships are more important than policies. And I just saw that confirmed at every stage in my time in public service and learned along the way.

kind of reinforcing that or adding to that, that if you want to make good policy, that you have to have good relationships. That's just fundamental and that's, think, very closely tied into just how our constitutional democracy works. So as time went on, I learned that we have a heck of a lot more in common with each other than we give ourselves credit for and that, you know, friendships really matter in public life and in civic life in this country.

Soren Schwab - CLT (08:14.885)
Mm-hmm.

Hans (08:15.522)
and it was a great experience, learned a lot.

Soren Schwab - CLT (08:17.849)
Yeah, I mean, what a fascinating, what a fascinating story and how much talent in those years coming out of Hillstill. You mentioned ISI. I went to college. I overlapped with Johnny Burka, who, of course, now is the president of ISI. And so remarkable. You are now the president of the Jack Miller Center, which is a a nonpartisan group, nonpartisan institute. Tell us a little bit about kind of the history of the Jack Miller Center, how you got involved and some of the work.

you're doing.

Hans (08:48.966)
Yeah, after I had been, I'll share more as we go along in the conversation about just my growing awareness over the course of my career about the importance of civic education and the really there's a civics crisis in our country and we've got to address that urgently. And as I became aware of that, more and more aware of that, realized much as I love public policy, much as I love the world of politics,

want to do something about our country's civic education crisis. I've also been in legislative roles and I thought I would like to run something and an opportunity came along to work for the Jack Miller Center and I am very blessed to have landed this position a couple of years ago and the background on the Jack Miller Center is that Jack Miller had built

very successful office products company called the Quill Corporation out of Chicago, sold it to Staples in the late 90s for a nice fortune and decided he was going to spend the rest of his life investing in civic education at the university level. That civics had been neglected, certainly at the K-12 level, but also at the university level, which we often overlook. And he was particularly concerned about that issue. And so we've been around for 20 years and we start with an assumption.

that academic scholars fill a critical role in the American Republic, where we depend on ways of thinking about self-government and liberty that must be taught in each generation. And that means that academic scholars are essential to the ecosystem of civic awareness, purpose, and preparation in our country. So the Jack Miller Center's theory of change, to use a term that gets thrown around in the philanthropic and nonprofit world a lot.

Our theory of change is that we must grow the talent pool for academic scholars of the American political tradition if we are going to build a lasting movement for civics to educate the rising generation of leaders at every level. By investing in talented entrepreneurial college professors of American political thought, history and related fields, we're going to see effects at the K-12 level. We're going to see those effects in civil society and politics.

Hans (11:07.603)
with journalists and thought leaders and beyond. So we do this work through talent spotting, we do it through community formation, forming of an academic network now 1200 strong, and essential career investments for outstanding scholars. So we're interested in helping scholars to get tenure, to start up campus centers focused on the American political tradition. And we're also trying to leverage our network to change the way that

we do university-based training of K-12 social studies teachers in this country. That's a very exciting project. We call that Founding Civics, and that's quickly growing. And because we operate in the thought leadership realm, we're convening a national summit on civic education. We started doing this two years ago at George Washington's Mount Vernon, and we moved it to Philadelphia last year, and we're to do our third national summit on civic education in November. And that's all about forging greater collaboration among funders and...

nonprofit organization leaders and civic educators and really to elevate civic purpose and awareness as a national priority going into America's 250th birthday in a couple years. mean this is a big opportunity for us to really rally around the cause of civic education and we ought to seize the moment.

Soren Schwab - CLT (12:23.045)
So obviously you were drawn to that mission of the Jack Miller Center and your desire to promote civics education. In the years leading up to that, was there a moment or time when you either one really grasped the importance of civics education or was it a realization that there has been just a huge decline in students or in adults civics understanding and their knowledge or maybe a combination of the two?

Hans (12:49.651)
Yeah, I knew that civics was important since I knew it had been important in my own formation. I knew that there was a lot more to it than just memorizing a set of facts in middle school. think a lot of people think of civics and that's where their mind goes. They think, you know, passing a test or something like that. But it really came home to me in a new way when I was serving as a legislator and I was getting opportunities to go speak to classrooms, elementary classrooms, high school classrooms, college classrooms. I got to help citizens of all ages.

understand and learn about the legislative process, navigate the legislative process. And I got to spend time with kids who were coming on field trips to the state capitol. That was a thrilling experience in part because I remembered being a kid going to the state capitol and my state legislator coming into the state reception room and talking to our class. I remember some things that he said about the constitution and about our form of government. And so I would think about that when I would go into the state reception room and talk to those kids.

And over time, I really came to see myself as a kind of civic educator. Then in 2017, I got to chair the State Senate Education Committee, and that was just a thrilling experience. We got the process started to add a half credit civics requirement as a graduation requirement. And that ended up passing the following year. But eventually, you know, in the last several years, I've just had this

growing sense that we've neglected the intellectual foundations of citizenship at every level and that this is a crisis for our country. And in the midst of growing political division, a sense of real alienation that people have from our governing institutions, I realized that something much more fundamental was at stake. You we can have all kinds of debates and discussions and, you know, fights about public policy, but I decided we need to get involved, that I need to personally get involved in a national movement for civic education.

in a significant way. So that's how I ended up taking this job here at the Jack Miller Center.

Soren Schwab - CLT (14:51.919)
Yeah, I I, as a lot of our listeners know, I'm an immigrant to this country and my first stop was Hillsdale College. There's certainly a focus on, on founding documents and every student has to take a gets to not has to gets to take a constitution class and, and history classes. And then I taught at a classical charter school where, well, we read primary source material and we read the constitution.

And really recently through CLT and now serving some public schools. Am I realizing my goodness, you know, I've been told by by heads of school at some public public k-12 institutions that they don't breed anything older than 50 years anymore. And so I'm wondering, mean, there's so much talk about, you know, civic activism, right, and getting involved and making a difference.

How is that impossible? is self-governance possible without a basic understanding of our past, of those documents, without civic knowledge? I would assume it is not, but can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Hans (15:54.225)
No, it's a great question and it's actually a question that essentially was addressed by George Washington in his first State of the Union address where he said that knowledge is an important thing for people anywhere. But in a self-governing country where the people have to rule themselves, you absolutely need this advanced level of civic knowledge.

And he went actually, he listed out the kinds of civic knowledge that citizens should be prepared to think about. It's not just the kind of factual memorization stuff, know, that the eighth grade test like we were talking about. is citizens should be prepared to think about themes like freedom and the difference between freedom and tyranny and their rights as citizens and their responsibilities as citizens.

elected leaders need to know that they have a fundamental dependence on the people, that they have this relationship to the people, that if we neglect that, then something has gone wrong in our free society. So he talked about that, and he said this is critical. I mean, think the founding generation had this understanding that civic education is essential to the survival of our republic. They knew that this is not to be taken for granted.

and that you need a thinking citizenry. And if you have a thinking citizenry, then that can be the basis for taking action in the very difficult circumstances that come along as we try to navigate shared life with all of our differences and in a country as large and as complicated as we are. Boy, this stuff is really darn important and we've neglected it for so long.

something has gone wrong and we've got to make this a priority. This needs to be the rallying cause of our generation, just as was the, you know, just as George Washington said, this is really darn important at the beginning of our country. This is really darn important here in 2024, as we're thinking about our country's 250th anniversary. If we're going to survive as a country, we've got to make civic education a priority.

Soren Schwab - CLT (18:08.571)
Yeah, yeah, amen to that. Now, you're you're a young man. You went attended public high schools, a public K 12, right in, in a pretty liberal state, I would say, up in the Pacific Northwest. But you were saying that you actually received a pretty good education. A lot has changed the last 10 1520 years. Can you point to either on the K 12 side or

or maybe in our institutions of higher ed, where you can say, we're failing our students as it pertains to civic education. Is there a certain trend or a pattern that you can point to?

Hans (18:51.541)
Well, you know, across education, we've made a much bigger deal about economic competence than we have citizen competence. And that's understandable because parents want their kids to get a good job and they want their kids to be successful. But we have sidelined the civic purposes of education all the way through. And when most people think about civics, they think about the K-12 level. But let me zero in on the higher education part of that question, because much of the challenge

at the K-12 level starts in higher education. And we don't think about this enough, but that's where teachers get their undergraduate and graduate instruction. It's where a lot of the curriculum and textbooks are written, and it's where a lot of the ideas shaping our education, the educational environment, originate. So, okay, let's think about this challenge. I'll just talk about it from my own perspective.

Soren Schwab - CLT (19:23.419)
Mm-hmm.

Hans (19:49.493)
my own difficulty in finding a PhD program where I could study political history. Turns out that political history is not trendy in the history discipline or in the political science discipline for that matter. Political science often rewards research in political behavior and voting trends and the like. History often rewards research in social history across a variety of subfields.

in related disciplines that train people for public roles like public policy or public administration, the interdisciplinary focus tends to draw more on economics and statistics and management than the ethical and philosophical and historical foundations of self-government. The main thing is to say, I there's so much to be said on this topic, but the main thing I think is that the academic disciplines that ought to be most focused on the preparation for civic life

have become too focused on narrow research agendas. And no wonder that fewer and fewer students are gravitating toward majors like history. And I could go on, but I would just leave it there because I think that that need, I think we have to address that problem. That's the problem that our organization is set up to address. And we've got to tackle that if we're going to deal with other things like teaching at the K-12 level.

Soren Schwab - CLT (20:50.394)
Hmm.

Soren Schwab - CLT (21:14.189)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm thinking.

how many universities still have core curriculum? Where we have a common text that we share, that we read together, that we study together, thinking of Edie Hearst's cultural literacy, right? That kind of unite us. It doesn't mean we have to agree on everything, right? But at least we have a common language and a common focus of study. I mean, that has been gutted. And now even some of the heck, liberal arts colleges are gutting their politics, their humanities.

departments in favor of kind of following these cultural trends and thinking that STEM is just a little bit sexier, right? Like if you're thinking about marketing your programs, right? And so your center, the Jack Miller Center, you're working both on the K-12 and the higher ed side. I don't know if that's an either or question, but if you had to point at one where right now there seems to be

a bit more hope or a bit more excitement, or is it really just the one leading to the other? Or do you feel like you're kind of tackling it from both sides and seeing success there?

Hans (22:23.369)
Well, we're seeing success at both levels. mean, there's certainly more attention to civics policy and state legislatures than when I was a state legislator. And there are states that you can point to like New Hampshire, Indiana, Virginia, that have made strides in new state standards for civics in history that are commendable, graduation requirements that are commendable.

middle school learning requirements that are commendable. And then at the higher ed level, would point to the emergence of schools of civic thought and leadership at public universities, now 13 of them across eight states. And I know that on your podcast, you you guys have highlighted Will N. Bowden from the University of Florida's new Hamilton Center, as well as Justin Dyer, who is the Dean of the new School of Civic Leadership at UT Austin. And we are

We are very excited about these new schools and the potential that they have for innovative new ways of doing things in higher education, bringing some outstanding scholars into these new departments and schools. And we're very excited about that. But then there's some other things that are very interesting going on across higher education where I would say there is a genuine awakening to the need for a renewal of civic purpose for the civic mission of our

universities were seeing this at places like Stanford University where they have a new civics emphasis in the curriculum at Johns Hopkins University where Ronald Daniels, the visionary president there, has been sounding the call for the importance of civics, America's first research university, but saying that we've got to recover the civic purpose of higher education. And then Purdue, where Mitch Daniels, when he was president, instituted a pretty ambitious civics program that

that continues to this day. anyway, there's a lot of reasons to be encouraged about some things going on both at the K-12 level and higher education. But again, I think if we can get some things right at the higher ed level, I think that's going to have effects at the K-12 level. So for example, these new schools of civic thought at public universities, for the most part, have charter language in their enacting documents, enacting policies that charge them with providing

Hans (24:48.033)
professional development to K-12 teachers. so there's going to be a lot of experimentation in that way. I would point to Utah Valley University as a shining example where the Center for Constitutional Studies, one of these programs, has partnered with the School of Education to create a content-based master's degree for educators. It's a master's in education, and that's not going to happen just anywhere. But they've pulled it off, and it looks very promising.

Soren Schwab - CLT (25:17.103)
Yeah, I mean it's very encouraging. we can say we've begun the of the rebuilding of civics education, k-12 and higher ed. And I'm wondering too, and I asked Dr. Dyer that as well, there seems to be some of these schools seem to be a response to a probably imminent demand, right? As we're looking at you know school choice legislation and just the growth of these

Classical schools, classical Christian, classical charter that value these things, same things, right? And then most likely in higher education, one at least attend a university where those ideals are not compromised, right? But at the same time, if a UT Austin or if, know, UT Knoxville, University of Florida, you're also creating demand, right? By creating these programs, you're also signaling to students in K-12 and to families that

We value this as a university. mean, it really seems like it is a kind of a both and approach, wouldn't you say?

Hans (26:23.725)
Absolutely, you know there's a, there will be ripple effects if you can get thousands and thousands of undergraduates and then graduate students going through programs focused on civic leadership, civic thought. These are people who are going to go and work in a variety of professions who are going to have, you know, I believe tremendous role in shaping their communities as civic leaders, many of them.

I'm sure we'll get involved in political leadership roles. And I mean, that's worth mentioning of its own. We have neglected this idea that people need to take part in public leadership in our free society. And this is very personal for me as somebody who, I call myself a recovering politician, but I take a lot of pride in having served in public office. That was a great experience for me. It was an honor to have that role in working on behalf of 150,000

of my friends and neighbors in that way for a dozen years, both at the state level and in a short time in local government. more citizens ought to be aspiring to serve in those kinds of ways. And we need educational forums that will encourage people to do that and provide them the kind of thoughtful basis to think about statesmanship, not just the presidency.

but many, many thousands of state and local offices that are spread across every kind of jurisdiction across our country that deserve and need serious leaders getting involved.

Soren Schwab - CLT (28:03.931)
mentioned earlier, Jack Miller Center is a nonpartisan venture. I think the perception is, you know, some of these new classical charter Christian schools, some of the folks in higher ed that are kind of bringing back these civics education tend to be more center-right. But obviously, it's not a partisan issue or

maybe it's political, but it shouldn't be partisan. How do you reach across the aisle and reach out to our friends on the left that we might have some disagreements policy-wise, but still persuade them that civics education is good for all Americans, not just of a certain political party?

Hans (28:54.756)
Yeah, we say that we are for the American political tradition. That's a broad tradition. It spans left to right and people of goodwill who value our country, value our constitution, wherever they are on the political spectrum, they ought to see themselves as part of that American political tradition. I would add to that, we did a poll of parents.

in the fall of 2022 where we asked over thousand parents, you know, what should be taught to their kids in terms of their civic education at the K-12 level. And 89 % said, spanning the political spectrum, you know, said that it's very important to teach the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the responsibilities of citizenship. So there's this.

common understanding about what is important. Now, you can frame civics and history education as, I think many people think about it, as a controversial area, because it can become that. It can become an area to fuel our divisions in society rather than an area to equip us to navigate those divisions. But the kind of civic education that I prefer and that I think is so badly needed in our time is the latter one that equips us

to navigate our divisions that allows us to deal with one another across all of our differences and to have some common understanding of this enterprise of citizenship in a free society. It's a great privilege to be a part of this experiment in Liberty and we need more people getting involved. We need more people getting a quality education to prepare them for that involvement as well.

Soren Schwab - CLT (30:46.875)
Yeah, I love that I I grew up as a lefty in Germany and then come into Hillsdale College and I mean I was I was even when I was in Germany always drawn to the founding documents and this great American experiment and to me at least growing up it never had a political I mean it was historical right and so I it took me a while to realize like wow this is this is controversial some of this is considered controversial now

But I really do believe it can be the one thing that actually unites us, right? A love for our founding documents despite the messiness surrounding it and historically, right? So I really, really appreciate all the work that y'all are doing. I'm excited to join you all in Philadelphia for the summit. I'm a big fan of Barry Wise and I know she's gonna be keynoting, so that'll be, again.

Hans (31:37.136)
Yes.

Soren Schwab - CLT (31:40.635)
Speaking of someone who's defying kind of political lines, right? Will be incredible. I do have one more question for you, and it's my favorite and probably the most difficult to answer. You have to be very disciplined to just pick one. But if there's one book or one text that you can point to that's been just hugely impactful in your life, maybe a text that you go back to year after year, what would it be?

Hans (31:51.568)
Yeah.

Hans (32:02.298)
Yeah, and I, you know, there's several I could mention, but I think one that just rises to the top is Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. And there's a book that contains such deep insight on the mindset and culture of American democracy and this enduring relevance, you know, all the way from 1835 to this day. It's prophetic in many ways about what democracy is and can become.

It helps us understand the opportunities and the pitfalls of a free society, both the resources at our disposal and the tensions between community and individual, between government and civil society, between liberty and equality. There's a lot there and anybody who is a serious student of American politics and government and our country's history and culture really ought to spend time.

in Democracy in America's thick book, but it's absolutely worth getting to know that

Soren Schwab - CLT (33:05.691)
Sure is it sure is wonderful. Well, thank you so much, sir. It was a pleasure to have you on the podcast again We're here with huns eiger who is the president of the Jack Miller Center? Hope you have a wonderful rest of your day Hans and thanks for all you do

Hans (33:19.108)
You too, thanks so much, Soren. Take care.