A striking new Gallup poll reveals a sobering truth: just 58 percent of Americans describe themselves as “extremely” or “very” proud to be American—the lowest level since the question was first posed in 2001. The decline is sharpest among two groups long seen as pillars of our civic and cultural institutions: young Americans and Democrats. Among Gen Z, just 41 percent express high patriotic sentiment. Among Democrats, only 36 percent do—a staggering 26-point drop from the previous year.
This isn’t drift—it’s a full-scale abandonment of civic confidence.
Many rightly point to recent events—polarizing politics, economic inequality, the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the chaos of recent Presidential administrations—as contributors to this decline. But the generational collapse in national pride predates the most recent two occupants of the Oval Office. Something deeper is happening.
Today, cohorts of younger Americans have come of age in an era of institutional failure: endless wars, a housing crisis, mounting student debt, and public trust in government at near-record lows. Their disillusionment isn’t imagined. It’s lived. A recent Harvard IOP Youth Poll found that a majority of Americans under 30 believe the country is heading in the wrong direction, and many doubt they will be better off than their parents. The Spring 2025 IOP poll found that just 15 percent believe the country is heading in the right direction, and fewer than one-third approve of President Trump or either party in Congress. Patriotism can’t thrive when institutions fail to deliver on the promises of opportunity, fairness, or unity.
But economic precarity and institutional breakdown explain only part of the story. Culture—and especially education—plays a critical role. How Americans learn their history, understand their founding ideals, and see themselves in the national narrative shapes whether they feel a sense of civic belonging or alienation. And today’s educational system is failing to form citizens who believe in the American experiment.
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Once the bedrock of civic identity, too many schools and universities have become incubators of cynicism. History and civics education have atrophied—only 13 percent of eighth graders score at the NAEP’s “proficient” level in U.S. history, while 40 percent fall below “basic,” unable to identify foundational events, structures, or principles. That’s civic illiteracy, not just ignorance.
In place of rigorous chronological study or serious constitutional analysis, students often receive politicized or superficial instruction that leaves them ill-equipped to understand what’s worth preserving in our democracy.
At the university level, the shift is even more pronounced. Core requirements in American history and government have disappeared. Harvard College does not require undergraduates to take a dedicated course in American history or government. While its General Education curriculum includes broad categories like “Ethics & Civics,” students can fulfill these requirements through global or abstract themes without ever studying the U.S. Constitution, the Founding, or American political institutions. Unlike Columbia’s core curriculum or Princeton’s structured civic seminars, Harvard allows students to graduate without encountering a single course in the history or principles of American self-government.
Portland State University (PSU), once home to a general-education course titled “America and the West”—a synthesis of U.S. political, cultural, and civic history—is no longer available as a core requirement. Today, it has been replaced by a “Global Perspectives” cluster, which immerses students in regional histories and themes such as nationalism, colonialism, climate justice, and identity politics—explicitly beyond a U.S.-focused frame (pdx.edu).
The Global Perspectives requirement, according to PSU’s own description, focuses on “culture, history, geography, politics, and economy of a specific region of the world,” emphasizing global power structures and decolonial frameworks while largely omitting the American founding or constitutional tradition. In effect, a once-central curricular anchor in American civic formation has been subsumed into a broad regional or global lens—one that may enrich cosmopolitan understanding but does little to inculcate knowledge of U.S. institutions, civil norms, or citizenship.
To symbolize the shift: where once every student was guaranteed exposure to America’s constitutional story, today a West Coast public flagship offers no mandatory engagement with it. That curricular redesign reflects a deeper philosophical change in how universities define citizenship and belonging—and it is precisely the kind of structural erosion civic education reform must reverse.
Further, ethnic and area studies programs at schools like Stanford and UC Berkeley increasingly frame the United States as an irredeemably oppressive project. And at institutions like the University of Michigan, recent administrative moves underscore a broader trend: the deprioritization of civic knowledge in favor of ideology and identity politics. The university recently closed its “diversity, equity, and inclusion” office and ended its pro‑equity curricular initiatives, sparking criticism from faculty who lament the loss of open civic spaces. At the same time, diversity statements are no longer required in faculty hiring, signaling a significant retrenchment of institutional values tied to civic pluralism. Moreover, an AAC&U survey suggests that strengthening civic and democratic engagement has ranked among the lowest priorities for university administrators—an alarming baseline for America’s leading public education system.
This erosion isn’t about shielding students from America’s flaws. Quite the opposite. American history must be taught in full—including slavery, genocide, exclusion, and injustice. America is the land of opportunity, but its past is far from perfect, and that narrative should be told and dissected. But too often, critique is decoupled from context. Students are taught what to reject without ever learning what to defend. They encounter America only as an abstraction: a set of sins rather than a project of progress.
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There is a path forward.
Across the country, civic education schools and programs are demonstrating that patriotism and critique are not opposites—they are complements.
The Jack Miller Center supports hundreds of professors and postdocs who teach the American founding, constitutionalism, and the great debates of liberal democracy. The James Madison Program at Princeton fosters serious engagement with American political thought and promotes viewpoint diversity. iCivics, founded by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, brings constitutional learning into K-12 classrooms through games and lesson plans that reach over nine million students annually. The Ashbrook Center and the Center for American Civics at Arizona State provide training and resources to history and civics teachers across ideological lines. Programs like the Civic Thought Initiative at the University of Texas, Austin, and the proposed Educating for American Democracy roadmap—a bipartisan, multi-institutional effort backed by Harvard, Tufts, and the National Archives—offer ambitious frameworks for revitalizing K-12 civic instruction. Civic Spirit, an initiative that works across Jewish day schools and Catholic schools, brings rigorous, pluralistic civic learning into religious educational environments.
These institutions don’t whitewash history. Collectively and through different paths, they teach the tragedies and triumphs together. They operate on the premise that a free society requires educated citizens capable of gratitude, responsibility, and self-improvement through reform.
To rebuild civic confidence, we must refurbish civic curricula. State legislatures and school boards must reestablish civics as a serious, content-rich discipline. That means studying the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, landmark Supreme Court cases, and foundational speeches from Lincoln, Douglass, King, and Reagan. Florida’s civic literacy requirement offers one promising model. Another is the “Civic Seal” pilot programs in a handful of states, which incentivize schools to provide capstone projects and coursework rooted in civic action and constitutional learning.
We must reinvest in civic educators. Civics cannot thrive without excellent teachers. Too many instructors are underprepared and under-supported. Public-private partnerships should fund fellowships and summer institutes for teachers in American political thought. The Jack Miller Center’s summer seminars and the Ashbrook Center’s Master of Arts in American History and Government are examples worth emulating. Fellowships such as the HERTZ Teacher Fellowship and Kern’s American Civics Fellowship provide mentorship, financial support, and curricular resources to educators committed to civic excellence.
We must also build civic infrastructure. We need endowed chairs in constitutional studies, national centers for civic education, and networks of university programs that elevate civic scholarship. Organizations such as the Sutherland Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Kern Family Foundation are leading the way—but higher education must match their commitment. Utah Valley University’s Center for Civic Thought and Leadership is a model of what state-level innovation can look like.
And we must resist anti-American pedagogy. There is a crucial difference between teaching American flaws and teaching that America is fundamentally flawed. The former is honest education; the latter is ideological distortion. Teaching slavery, Jim Crow, Japanese internment, and the exclusion of women from full citizenship is not just important—it is necessary. But when those chapters are taught in isolation, stripped of the countervailing traditions of liberty, pluralism, and reform, we leave students with a flattened view of their country—one in which justice is always deferred and progress is always suspect.
Too many classrooms today cultivate this imbalance. Textbooks devote pages to American misdeeds while barely skimming over the ideas and institutions that make self-correction possible. Curricula emphasize oppression without explaining how a nation built on flawed beginnings has repeatedly reformed itself through democratic means. The result is disaffection, not engagement. Students learn to see themselves as outsiders to a civic tradition they were never taught to claim.
We must reject the notion that patriotism is naive, reactionary, or exclusionary. At its best, patriotism is not about glorifying the past. It is about inheriting a project. Frederick Douglass, in his famed 1852 speech, did not call for the destruction of America—he called the nation to live up to its founding promises. “The Constitution is a glorious liberty document,” he said, not because it was perfect, but because it offered a framework for justice.
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Civic education must follow that model. It must tell the whole story: of betrayal and redemption, of exclusion and inclusion, of setbacks and renewal. Only then can students come to see the United States not as a static entity to judge, but as an ongoing experiment in which they have a stake and a voice.
Restoring national pride is not about xenophobia, dangerous nationalism, or suppressing critique. It is about cultivating a sense of moral ownership over the American story. That story is not simple. It is fraught, imperfect, and ongoing. But it is ours, and it is deeply American.
With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaching, this is not just a civic opportunity—it is a national imperative. To sustain our Republic, we must educate not just about America, but for America. That means forming citizens who see their country not only for what it is, but for what it can still become.
As John Adams wrote, “Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.” The question now is whether we still believe that—and whether we’ll teach it before the 250th anniversary comes and goes.
The Gallup numbers are clear. The crisis is real. The question now is whether our institutions have the courage to respond—before cynicism becomes irreversible.
Image: “Arizona State University” by Kevin Dooley on Flickr
