The Rostrum
By GARY D. GLENN, associate professor and assistant chairman,
Department of Political Science, Northern Illinois University

Are Illinois public colleges trying to educate citizens?

SINCE 1921, Illinois law has required Illinois public colleges and universities to instruct all students in the principles of representative government. Since 1953, each student has been required to pass an examination on that subject in order to graduate. This requirement is commonly called the "Constitution exam" or the "Senate Bill 195" requirement. Enforcement of this law, however, is lax and many students receive degrees from Illinois universities with no instruction in the system of democratic government.

State universities which ignore the law completely (except for teacher certification) are the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and at Chicago Circle, and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

Other state universities evade the law's requirement by accepting as sufficient the fact that a student successfully completed the requirement in high school. Western Illinois is apparently the only four-year institution which does that. However, since 1972 the Illinois Community College Board has permitted all Illinois community colleges to do so. Four-year institutions must accept the indication on the transcript of a community college transfer student that the requirement has been met. In this way, the legislative intention that all college students receive formal citizen education at the college level is effectively negated.

The policy of accepting successful completion of a high school constitution test as fulfillment of a university graduation requirement is wrong in two ways. First, it violates the statutory mandate that the required subjects "shall be taught" and that "a satisfactory examination" shall be passed by each student attending all "educational institutions supported or maintained in whole or in part by public funds." Secondly, no one would accept the principle that high school competence in a subject is sufficient for university graduation requirements. Accepting high school completion of the constitution requirement for university graduation must reflect a belief that the legislative requirement is not important.

There are some public four-year institutions which do not engage in the foregoing evasion of the statutory requirement. But even these institutions' compliance reflects a lack of serious commitment to citizen education.

Northern Illinois University permits students to fulfill the requirement by taking only a constitution test. Even if a student passes a course in which the mandated material is taught, that doesn't fulfill the requirement.

Several institutions permit students to fulfill the requirement either by a course or an examination. They are Eastern Illinois University, Western Illinois, Illinois State, Northeastern Illinois, Chicago State, the Chicago City Colleges and Sangamon State.

In a time when some institutions of higher education evade the statutory citizen education requirement altogether, including the most prestigious University of Illinois, one should perhaps not be too hard on those institutions which at least minimally acknowledge the law. But candor requires one to say that a constitution exam on self-taught material cannot be as instructive as a good college level course. Certainly only a course fulfills both the statutory requirements that the material be taught and that all students pass a satisfactory examination. A mere test does not constitute teaching the material. If our public universities and colleges really thought that the well being of American democracy depended on that teaching, they would not be satisfied with an examination on self-taught material.

The faculties of history and political science ought to be leading a fight to restore citizen education to a central place in public higher education. There are several reasons why they will not. One major reason may be the fear that citizen education means indoctrination in right wing patriotism. That fear apparently outweighs the fear of the consequences of failing to politically educate citizens at all.

Citizen education need not, and ought not, mean "the confusion of national patriotism with national mythology" as President Kennedy said. Surely a sound and sympathetic understanding of the political institutions and constitutional development of the United States can be done in a serious and professional way without uncritically indentifying "the American" with "the good." Especially at the college level, we can steer a path between uncritical enthusiasm for, and contempt or indifference to, free political institutions and processes. By doing so we can innoculate students against self-interested and unscrupulous men. Such men wish the "education" of citizens left to themselves so they can be "taught" what it is convenient for demagogues to have them believe.

Presidents Washington, Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, Wilson and Kennedy vigorously insisted that successful democracy requires an enlightened citizenry educated to its principles, operations, and dangers. If they were right, then one must view as tragic the foregoing catalog of arrogant refusals to acknowledge the law, fraudulent evasion of the statutory mandate, and bare minimum observance.

May 1980/Illinois Issues/35