Je Suis Charlie

The murderous terrorist attack on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo’s offices that left twelve persons dead and others injured demonstrated, again, the fragility of free expression. Observant criticism, whether sober or satirical, often provokes strong, emotional reactions. Among extremists, particularly religious and ideological radicals whose ardent fanaticism is rooted in delusional beliefs that admit no contradiction, the reaction can be far out of proportion to the perceived offense.

Most rational people shrug off criticism as insulting but not life-threatening. Criticism based on untruths is countered, sometimes with legal action claiming defamation, libel, or slander. The legal tests are rigorous, particularly in the United States because our Constitution values freedom of expression as articulated in the First Amendment. Extreme beliefs, however, can and often do lead to extreme actions. The Paris massacre is merely the latest example.

U.S. education “reform” initiatives, which have come wave after destructive wave over several decades now, have consistently neglected to emphasize civic education. Such neglect has resulted in an electorate that is ill-informed about governance matters—from what the Constitution says and means to how legislative acts actually affect people’s lives—and largely disengaged from the governance process. As witness there are the abysmally consistent low numbers of citizens who vote. Indeed, voter turnout in the 2014 U.S. general election was the lowest since World War II. Scarcely more than a third of eligible voters cast ballots.

Extremism is an assault on civitas, the idea that civil society is bound in law, which conveys both responsibilities and rights of citizenship. Whether in France, the United States, or elsewhere, fanaticism endangers not only the individual targets of extremism but also the society as a whole. The purpose of civic education, therefore, is not simply to help young people to understand how government functions but to understand how they as citizens can and must participate meaningfully in civil society.

In a free society freedom of expression is a value of considerable worth. Such freedom should not be merely tolerated but prized. But even criticism must be grounded in truth. Satire, such as the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, points up untruths and misinformation and pokes fun at lapses of judgment and delusions. In the United States the satirical Daily Show offers a complementary forum. Part of the charge of civic education is to teach critical discernment, which is the root of satire.

The far more insidious assault on freedom of expression is the promulgation of misinformation as truth or “news.” Effective civic education would help young people become discerning consumers of media, better able to distinguish news from propaganda. As it is, for example, a significant proportion of U.S. citizens takes at face value propaganda purveyed as truth—“news”—by organizations such as Fox News, despite fact-checking which shows that a majority of Fox’s “news” is misleading or blatantly false.

Facts do not change the minds of fanatics. Extremism is impervious to truth, which is why most extremist groups oppose education in favor of indoctrination. If the United States wants to improve education—to enact actual, forward-looking “reform”—then more effective civic education should be a high priority. Comprehensive civic education would help young people become informed citizens less likely in future to be radicalized by mistruths and more likely to be positively engaged in the maintenance of a free civil society.

*This essay is cross-posted on two blogs: Advancing Learning and Democracy (http://advancinglearning.blogspot.com) and Arts in View (http://artsinview.blogspot.com).