Before it is about federal corporate tax rates, it is about families, schools, churches, clubs, and small businesses. Of course, corporate tax rates do matter on Main Street. Members of the Impact Fund tend to love meeting and speaking with scholars in our broader community who find the roots and Big Ideas of civil society in Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem and who can articulate how they play out in the religious, economic, and governmental spheres.
There is nothing theoretical, however, about our own homes, our friendships and partnerships, the love and dynamism we bring to our community’s encounter with the problems we all face. There is nothing abstract about the movement to restore a sense of common purpose in our Nation by restoring civics in education. As we’ve already seen on these pages, the Impact Fund is driving this restoration through funding and partnerships with the most effective organizations, including the Bill of Rights Institute.
Founded in 1999, the Bill of Rights Institute is a non-partisan organization whose team develops educational resources on American history and government, provides professional development opportunities to teachers, and runs student programs and scholarship contests. The Institute’s depth of knowledge is drawn from a full-time staff with more than one hundred years of combined classroom experience, as well as from partners who are experts in their fields.
The vision is one every Impact Fund member can easily take to heart: an America where we more perfectly realize the promise of liberty and equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence. This calls for civic education that helps students examine the story of our country and exercise the skills of citizenship, which means we must move beyond merely being able to identify the three branches of government or the names of Founders.
The Bill of Rights Institute excels in helping many, many more teachers and young citizens better appreciate the relationship between government and civil society. There is a theory to this, but more important is the history, which is the focus of the Bill of Rights Institute’s new Government and Politics: Civics for the American Experiment curriculum. In this course, students learn how the actions and beliefs of a people direct the government and also how they can in turn foster an understanding of civics that promotes self-government.
This represents just one of the curricula and school programs the Institute has deployed over the last quarter century. True to the Impact Fund’s principled promotion of informed citizens and a responsible civil society, BRI’s approach to civics and their comprehensive approach to curricula and extracurricular events and activities open young minds. Case in point: their U.S. history digital textbook, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, explores the themes of civil society in various ways, including a close look at the work of Alexis de Tocqueville. BRI’s Documents of Freedom resources consider the same questions in another light, exploring how citizens in a healthy society work together in their local communities to support each other through endeavors like volunteering, being a school board member, or serving in their local government.
This also means stretching the boundaries of education beyond classroom walls and encouraging entrepreneurship. BRI’s annual MyImpact Challenge draws talented young Americans to think of new ways to actively engage in service, volunteerism, or entrepreneurship in their communities for the opportunity to win cash prizes. Last year’s top prize winner, Anna Kunkel, tapped into her family history of immigration to produce an essay and launch a project focused on connecting immigrants and refugees in her local community to resources.
BRI still does what it does best in creating and improving civics curricula that highlight the genius of our founding generation. But they also see opportunities to get students to take ownership of these truths for themselves. In this intersection of tradition and innovation, Impact Fund donors are helping civics come alive for the next generation.
