by Sarah Michels, Carolina Public Press
August 20, 2025

When Southeast Middle School social studies teacher Eric Shock’s eighth-graders walked into class one day last semester, they noticed a piece of paper on the board. It was a bill being considered by the North Carolina General Assembly that would ban cellphones in schools. 

His students weren’t happy. 

“Of course, all the kids are like, ‘No, we need to have cellphones,’” Shock recalled. 

So, he gave them the email addresses of the representatives behind the proposed legislation. If students wanted to share their opposition to the ban, they could reach out directly. They’d get class credit for civic engagement, and just maybe, have their input considered by state leaders. 

[Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ alerts and weekend roundup newsletters]

While the students’ lobbying effort ultimately failed — Gov. Josh Stein signed the cellphone ban into law last month — Shock considered it an educational success. Now, his Rowan County eighth-graders knew how their government worked, and how they could use their voice within it. 

A few years ago in Vance County, Clarke Elementary School social studies teacher Nicole Clarke wanted to spice up what she saw as an unexciting curriculum. 

So one day, she invited Henderson’s mayor, city council and the school district superintendent to the school for Resource Day. Her third graders got the chance to talk to their local leaders, and the now-fifth graders still talk about the experience to this day, she said. 

When North Carolina Association of Educators Vice President Bryan Proffitt taught social studies, he started one class by playing a breakup song. He then asked students to write about a time when they ended some kind of relationship, why they made that choice, how the person responded and what the consequences were. 

Then, he pulled up the Declaration of Independence. After all, it’s just a breakup letter, Proffitt said. 

“What I often hear from students is that civics is interesting when it connects to their lives,” said Wake Forest University School of Medicine researcher Parissa Ballard. “Civics can feel far away, but it actually isn’t. I’ve seen many talented civics teachers who find ways to connect students’ interests and concerns to historical and modern politics.”

Shock, Clarke and Proffitt may count themselves among those teachers. But the problem is, for many of North Carolina’s students, civics class isn’t interesting. It’s not interactive, and it doesn’t effectively motivate them to be informed, engaged citizens. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. With intentional policymaker investment, school support and teacher effort, civic education can be a powerful tool for building the next generation of active citizens. 

This article is the third in Civics Unlearned, a three-part investigative series from Carolina Public Press. This article suggests ways to bolster retention of what’s learned in civics class to promote engagement, both within and beyond North Carolina’s formal education system.

The first article showed that deprioritized and inconsistent civic education in North Carolina classrooms has likely hindered it from effectively spurring civic engagement evenly across the state. The second article explored how conflicting priorities and inconsistent delivery have hamstrung quality civic education.

Looking at other states’ answer sheets for civics class

To learn civics, you have to do it. 

That’s the theory behind action civics, an approach to civics class that has students identify a community issue they care about while teachers guide them toward the information and public officials they need to devise and implement a public policy solution, Ballard said.

Ballard and her team are conducting research into action civics. They hypothesize that action civics will promote civic engagement, like students taking action in their community, having more civic discussions and feeling a greater sense of belonging. 

In Tennessee, action civics is already producing results. In 2012, the state legislature passed a law requiring students to pass a project-based civic assessment once in grades 4-8 and another time in high school. 

Cleveland Middle School eighth-grade social studies teacher Ed Fickley has been involved with the Tennessee Center for Civic Learning and Engagement for about 20 years. He’s seen the impact of action civics firsthand. 

“The more engaged they are in something, the more hands on they are with something, they’re going to learn and integrate more deeply,” he said. 

In recent years, Fickley’s district piloted a Project Citizen program, which requires students to identify a public policy issue in their community, research potential solutions, find who in government is responsible for that issue and present proposals in front of elected officials. 

The program also includes a media literacy component to teach students how to distinguish between facts and opinions. 

According to Georgetown University research, students who participated in Project Citizen not only demonstrated significantly higher civic knowledge than their peers who took a traditional civics class, but developed a stronger civic disposition — high-schoolers were more inclined to stay informed about government and politics, commit to voting, trust in government and media and feel capable of organizing people to solve a community problem. 

A curriculum used by many schools across the U.S., including Tennessee and Indiana, also resulted in stronger civic habits, according to Georgetown research. 

The We The People curriculum goes over the founding of the United States, and culminates in a simulated legislative hearing over an academic question. For example, one Indiana middle school class asked why the founding fathers thought that freedom of speech was important, and whether they believed there are times where freedom of speech can be limited, said Tim Kalgreen, director of civic education at the Indiana Bar Association. 

In addition to the We the People curriculum, Indiana passed a law in 2021 requiring a standalone middle school civics course, Kalgreen said. 

“It’s catching students younger,” he said. “It’s getting them interested younger. It’s making sure that they get the knowledge younger, which allows their teachers, as they get later into their education, to really build on stronger concepts, or more in depth concepts, more nuanced concepts.” 

When Independent High School junior and student advisory council member April Alonso of Mecklenburg County spoke to North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green a few months ago, he talked about bringing project-based civics to the state. 

It could be volunteering or public speaking or a voter registration drive — anything that gets students actually engaging in their community, Alonso said. 

Green’s recently released 2025-2030 strategic plan at least pays lip service to this goal. It states a goal of increasing the number of schools implementing “high-quality character, service-learning and civic programs that reinforce durable skills.” 

Legislation on the wrong track? 

Without state-level buy-in from the legislative and executive branches, it’s unlikely that civic education will change much. 

In 2009, North Carolina invested in civic education by passing a law requiring county boards of election to go into schools and offer pre-registration to 16- and 17-year-olds. But it didn’t last. 

In 2013, the pre-registration law was repealed, and when courts ruled that 16-year-olds could pre-register in 2016, the educational piece fell through the cracks. 

Counties with a pre-registration law had a nine percentage point higher youth voter turnout than other counties in 2020, according to a Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning report. 

And yet, there are no signs of the law making a comeback. 

Rep. Cynthia Ball, D-Wake, said no argument against pre-registration makes sense. She thinks it is political — Republican lawmakers assumed that by promoting youth voter turnout, they would be boosting Democratic numbers. 

However, a Democracy NC analysis found that of about 60,000 young voters eligible to vote in 2012 after pre-registering, a third were Democrats, a third were Republicans and a third were unaffiliated voters. 

Still, lawmakers have made similar moves this session. A proposed bill that would have added extra hoops to register voters at voter registration drives lost momentum once research found that voter registration drives actually yielded bipartisan results, Ball said. 

Rumors suggest that a recently removed provision of this session’s election omnibus bill that would ban county boards of election from “encouraging or promoting voter turnout in any election” may make a return, she added. 

That would cut off pre-registration educational efforts at the knees. 

The legislature is also considering a bill that would mandate a civics exam for all public high school students. The questions would be taken from the official naturalization test immigrants must pass to become citizens. 

Testing is a tricky topic. 

UNC Charlotte political science professor Jason Giersch’s research found a correlation between testing and youth voter turnout, but he said that tests are limited in what they can actually measure. 

“It’s not just about knowing the facts, but it’s about adopting behaviors and sort of adopting a mindset of what it means to be a citizen and how to participate in democracy, and it’s really hard to capture that in tests,” he said. 

North Carolina used to have a required end-of-grade civics test, but the legislature removed it in 2011 as part of the backlash against too much standardized testing. Instead, in 2019, the state mandated a high school civics class 

In Morganton, Burke Middle College civics teacher Timothy Barnsback is adamant that it needs to stay that way. With testing, teachers lose flexibility because they feel pressure to teach to the test, he said. 

“It would keep me from teaching my students the concepts that they need to learn in realistic ways, rather than just that rote memorization,” Barnsback said. 

Civics class is different from other tested subjects; it’s “a living entity” constantly changing with the world and the news cycle, he added. 

Instead of adding more testing, state lawmakers should invest in professional development for teachers, particularly on navigating civics in a nonpartisan, project-based, meaningful manner, Fickley said. 

In Wentworth, Rockingham Early College High School social studies teacher Valencia Abbott said professional development sessions are where she picks up ideas on how to make her class more interactive and engaging, but there’s not always enough time or money to support it.

More generally, if teachers were paid at a professional level, Abbott believes most would naturally rise to a higher level of professionalism. 

“I think that that is part of it, but that’s not going to be fixed anytime soon,” she said. 

Beyond the class

In late June, hundreds of coastal North Carolinians converged upon the state legislature for days on end. 

They spent their time trying to get the attention of lawmakers who originally supported a bill to ban shrimp trawling within a half mile of the coast; the bill would negatively impact their livelihoods, and they wanted legislators to vote against it. 

Rep. Ball received more than 1,000 emails about the issue. She met with a group of shrimpers who presented her with information supporting their side of the issue. 

“You couldn’t run away from that, no matter what side of the issue you were on,” Ball said. 

Ultimately, their effort seems to have worked. The bill died in the state House. 

Most bills don’t get the same show of opposition, Ball said. That’s partly due to legislative rules that allow legislation to move and change quickly without much public input, but also because most people just don’t understand how the legislative process works, she said. 

Ball thinks having more training videos on the process or free workshops on the legislature would be helpful. 

Several groups around the state are already trying that, on a local level. They’re called citizen academies, and they involve local governments holding annual programs that show citizens how their government operates behind the scenes, from the budget process to passing ordinances. 

Graduates of the programs act as ambassadors, in a way, said UNC School of Government professor Ricardo Morse, who wrote a citizens academy handbook with best practices. 

“People walk away from those programs with a very positive view of their local government, because they sort of get to look under the hood,” he said. 

Cary 101 is one of North Carolina’s citizen academies. It’s run once a year with about 25 residents, and many participants end up on boards or even city council, said Ryan Eades, who oversees the program. 

Cary also has a newer, weeklong public service academy for high school students to learn much of the same information and skills. Afterwards, several of the students have shown up to council meetings and reached out to their council members about community issues, director of learning and organizational development Allison Hutchins said. 

YMCA Youth & Government also tries to catch students at a younger age. The program allows students to become part of a local delegation that participates in a mock legislative process. 

2024 North Carolina Youth Governor Drew DiMeglio said he found a passion for politics within the program that set him on a path of public service. 

“Before participating in Youth and Government, I felt unequipped and unprepared to be an active and engaged citizen,” he said. “I was motivated by news cycles, and was not inclined to research and dig deep into topics. Since participating, I am a much better equipped citizen.”

Braver Angels is another organization working to fill in the gaps of uneven civic education. It brings together people from both sides of the aisle to hang out, discuss political issues in a civil manner and hopefully, build community and trust. 

Lisa Wells, the Democratic leader of the Braver Angels Alliance of the Sandhills, said she started the local group after four years of “bicker central” with her husband, who is a Republican. She attended an online national Braver Angels debate, and thought the model was balanced and respectful. 

Two years later, the Sandhills group is growing. Josh Lowery, the group’s Republican leader, said it’s improved individual relationships between Moore County residents, which ideally will build trust and unity throughout the community. 

“It’s opened up avenues of like, we can have disagreements, but we are still people,” he said. “We can work together and move things forward.” 

On a recent Tuesday evening, a central North Carolina Braver Angels group of about 20 older North Carolinians gathered in a room at Holy Infant Catholic Church in Durham to debate whether the U.S. should focus more on its domestic priorities or global leadership. 

It wasn’t your typical debate, with raised voices and gotcha moments; the moderators were going for a “different vibe” — “the kind of vibe where we listen deeply and respect everyone in the room,” Jim Paisner told participants. 

Anyone could make a speech from either side of the debate, and then the other participants could direct a question to them through the chair, Paisner. At times, it seemed like the debate might get tense; but each time, the tension dissipated with a thoughtful question or moment of shared laughter. 

At the end of two hours, nobody had won. But everyone left understanding each other, and their government, a bit better. 

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

North Carolina’s civic education faces challenges: many students find it unengaging and inconsistent. Teachers like Eric Shock and Nicole Clarke use interactive methods, such as contacting legislators or inviting local officials, to connect students with real-world politics. Research supports “action civics,” where students tackle community issues, boosting engagement and civic knowledge, as seen in Tennessee’s Project Citizen. However, North Carolina’s legislative support is limited; past initiatives like youth pre-registration were repealed, and proposed civics exams risk reducing teaching flexibility. Beyond schools, programs like citizen academies and Braver Angels foster civic understanding and respectful political dialogue, aiming to build informed, active citizens.

The post How civics class could stage a comeback in NC schools appeared first on carolinapublicpress.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This article presents a broadly progressive perspective on civic education, highlighting the importance of inclusive, participatory, and project-based learning approaches that encourage youth engagement in democracy. It voices concern about legislative moves perceived as hindering voter participation and civic education, such as the repeal of pre-registration laws and proposed restrictions on voter mobilization efforts, framing these as politically motivated barriers often associated with Republican lawmakers. At the same time, the article promotes bipartisan civic engagement through organizations like Braver Angels and includes voices from both Democratic and Republican leaders in such initiatives. The emphasis on expanding civic education, opposing barriers to youth voting, and the call for better teacher support aligns more closely with center-left values focused on expanding democratic participation and education equity, while maintaining a fairly balanced and inclusive tone.