Trump Education Department Partners With TPUSA, Hillsdale College To Revive Civics Education

WASHINGTON—The Education Department is partnering with a coalition of private organizations to revive civics education in American public schools and on college campuses, Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced today.

The America 250 Civics Education Coalition “is dedicated to renewing patriotism, strengthening civic knowledge, and advancing a shared understanding of America’s founding principles in schools across the nation,” the coalition said in a press release.

McMahon officially launched the coalition at an event in the nation’s capital on Wednesday — Constitution Day — alongside coalition partners from the America First Policy Institute, Turning Point USA, Hillsdale College, and more.

“Civic knowledge, engagement, and constitutional literacy among our youth — I’m going to say it’s in decline, but I could almost say it is absent,” McMahon said at the event, adding that she’s been “dismayed” by “the lack of enthusiasm for our country” she’s encountered at schools across America.

“Why don’t these young people love America?” she asked. “Because they don’t know America.”

“We have to restore this love of patriotism,” she added. “We have a president who takes the flag and hugs it! Let’s see if we can’t bring back that spirit of love and devotion to our country.”

The America 250 Civics Education Coalition “will unveil a robust programming agenda” in the coming year, including a “Fundamental Liberties College Speaker Series” that will bring speakers to all 50 states and “The Trail to Independence Tour,” a K-12-focused guide to how each state joined the union.

The group also aims to foster civic engagement in schools by distributing toolkits to teachers and honoring students with “a competition recognizing student knowledge of American history.”

The coalition builds on the Trump administration’s efforts to promote traditional civics education in the United States. President Donald Trump, in his first term, launched the 1776 Commission, a response to The New York Times’ revisionist 1619 Project.

“Rather than learning to hate one’s country or the world for its inevitable wrongs, the well-educated student learns to appreciate and cherish the oases of civilization,” the 1776 Commission wrote in its final report. “In the American context, an essential purpose of this honest approach is to encourage citizens to embrace and cultivate love of country.”

Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn, a member of the 1776 Commission, said at Wednesday’s event that America was currently engaged in its third great crisis, following the American Revolution and the Civil War.

All three crises shared the same central feature, Arnn noted: “We’re fighting about the meaning of our central idea.”

“We’re in a crisis because there’s a disagreement about the purpose of the Declaration of Independence today,” Arnn said. The Hillsdale president stressed that education, not conflict, will solve the problem.

“Charlie Kirk was murdered,” Arnn said, recalling his fellow 1776 Commission member who was assassinated one week ago. “They killed him. It didn’t settle anything.”

Kirk’s memory hung over Wednesday’s event, and the late activist was invoked by several speakers, including TPUSA’s Chief Education Officer, Hutz Hertzberg.

“We believe that though Charlie had an incredible influence,” Hertzberg said, “his influence will extend in even greater ways than it did in his life.”

“That’s why this partnership is so important. By locking arms together, we can do more to accomplish the very things that Charlie stood for.”

Erika Donalds, one of the commission’s co-chairs and wife of Florida Congressman Byron Donalds (R.), noted that the coalition aims to snuff out violent attitudes among American youth.

“If our students truly understood the Constitution of the United States, they would never think that violence is the answer,” she said.

More than 40 groups have joined the coalition, including the Heritage Foundation, the American Principles Project, PragerU, and the Claremont Institute.

In bolstering classroom efforts, the civics coalition aims to boost patriotism across the country. Just 58% of Americans say they are “extremely” or “very proud” to be an American, according to a recent Gallup poll — a record low.

Reversing this trend has been a major focus of President Trump’s second term. In addition to reviving the 1776 Commission, which President Joe Biden shuttered shortly after taking office, the president has ordered the Smithsonian and all taxpayer-funded museums to eliminate “woke” exhibits, lamenting last month that the Smithsonian is solely focused on “how horrible our country is, how bad slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been,” with “nothing about success, nothing about brightness, nothing about the future.”

Greg Sindelar, Interim President and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, noted that new AFPI polling found that 73% of Americans believe their children aren’t getting a good civics education, while 93% say all Americans do not know enough about their history. That ignorance, Sindelar said, is directly responsible for the rise in anti-American sentiments among the populace.

“To know America is to love her,” he said. “This is the real purpose of what this coalition is doing.”

“Together we are making history and we are teaching history,” he added. “To remember who we are, and what America is.”

In his remarks, Arnn stressed that actually reading the Founding documents and writings of the men who built this country is “the exercise we have to go through today if we are to recover ourselves.”

“We are going to lose our nation if we lose its central idea,” Arnn said. “And therefore there is no more urgent work, no more work dispositive of the future, than to read, and celebrate, and learn about” the Declaration of Independence and the tradition of American liberty.

“Learning and freedom go together, and ignorance and slavery go together,” Arnn added. “We’re going to choose one of those pairs.”

Donalds was optimistic that the coalition would ensure America chooses the former pair, saying the group’s ultimate goal is “to ensure that our children, our grandchildren, and generations to come are able to have this same celebration of pride in America at its 500th anniversary, 250 years from now.”