At a moment when people seem to disagree on almost everything, there is an encouraging surprise beneath the headlines: We have not given up on one another.
As our nation approaches its 250th birthday, many are taking stock of the republic we have inherited, and they are voicing concern. A new NBC News national survey, sponsored by More Perfect and the Daniels Fund, showed that many people believe the country’s best years may be behind it. Most say the American dream is harder to attain than it was a generation ago. Confidence in institutions ranging from Congress to the national news media has fallen to historic lows.
Yet the same survey reveals something equally important: Americans still believe they share fundamental values. Despite different worldviews, they would volunteer together, go to church together, and work side by side to strengthen their communities.
That is fundamentally American.
The best news is that across our country, citizens want our nation to do more to teach and transmit these bedrock values. The NBC poll found that 8 in 10 people believe the United States places too little emphasis on civic education. That support remains strong across political parties and ideologies.
In an era of razor-thin margins, that is more than a majority. It is a national consensus.
What people are saying is that we have not lost our commonality. But they are deeply concerned that we have weakened some of the civic foundations that help citizens understand their country, its institutions, and their role within them.
They are asking to restore what has, for too long, been discarded.
For generations, civic knowledge was passed down in classrooms, around dinner tables, and through community organizations. Citizens were expected to know how government worked, how change happened, and how they could contribute.
As screens replaced many face-to-face conversations and community institutions became less central to daily life, those pathways to civic learning weakened. We gradually came to assume that civic knowledge would somehow take care of itself — or become someone else’s responsibility to pass along.
Many people now recognize the cost of that assumption. Nearly 8 in 10 say we take our freedoms for granted.
The result is a growing sense of disconnection. Too many people feel distant from the institutions that shape their lives and are uncertain that their voices matter. And when that happens, the vital fabric that is woven together to link us as Americans frays.
Fortunately, our fellow citizens see a path forward.
Civic education is one of the few reforms capable of strengthening our republic from the ground up. It provides the fundamental, indispensable knowledge of how to think and act as citizens. It equips young people with knowledge of our system of government, the skills to evaluate information, and the confidence to engage constructively in public life.
Most importantly, it cultivates agency — the belief that free citizens can help shape the future rather than simply react to it.
America’s founders understood this connection between education and liberty. They recognized a truth that remains unchanged 250 years later: Self-government depends on citizens prepared for the responsibilities of freedom.
Encouragingly, signs of renewal are emerging across the country. Educators, civic leaders, philanthropists, parents, and policymakers are investing in efforts to strengthen civic learning and engagement.
Americans understand this need instinctively. In recent polling by the American Enterprise Institute, 68% said society must actively teach young people what it means to be an American rather than assume they will absorb it on their own. And in the NBC survey, support for civic education transcended party, ideology, race, gender, and age.
This is the remedy: preparing the next generation not merely for careers or college, but for citizenship.
AMERICA TURNS 250. ARE WE STILL FORMING CITIZENS?
And in that request lies something rare in modern politics: a shared act of hope.
A nation still capable of agreeing on that, and acting on it, has its best chapters still ahead.
Hanna Skandera Grady, a former New Mexico secretary of education, is the president and CEO of the Daniels Fund, a $1.8 billion charitable foundation dedicated to improving lives through grants and scholarships.