Drew Perkins hosts a live conversation at the Festival of Education with Lianne Cottrell of the Jack Miller Center, Ronnie London of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and Rachel Humphries of the Bill of Rights Institute on restoring Enlightenment civics. The panel asks how much the American founding rests on Enlightenment liberalism, why free speech is the engine of pluralism and social change, how students' and teachers' First Amendment rights differ between K-12 and higher education, and what society might look like if civic education were treated as the formation of humble, reasoning citizens.
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Intro/outro voice credit: David O'Hara, Professor of Philosophy, Classics & Environmental Studies, Augustana University.
Key takeaways
- The founding rests on Enlightenment ideals, but which Enlightenment? Lianne notes that the Scottish and French Enlightenments color how we read life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Rachel argues most classrooms give the philosophy only a surface-level "this is what Locke said" gloss.
- Persuasion or force: Ronnie argues there are only two ways to get people to do what you want, convince them or coerce them. Free speech keeps us on the side of persuasion, lets us see the world as it is, and has powered every major social movement.
- Censorship is a position of weakness: Silencing someone signals you can't answer them. Students should learn early to hear others out and test their own thinking against them, as in Mill's On Liberty.
- K-12 and higher ed are different legal worlds: College students and faculty have broad First Amendment protection. K-12 students keep their rights at the schoolhouse gate within the limits of Tinker, while K-12 teachers' classroom speech is largely governed by curriculum and school authorities.
- Civic education is formation: The panel calls for teaching reasoning over feeling, building trust before hard conversations, supporting teachers to lead Socratic discussion, and aiming for citizens who are humble, connected and quick to find their own errors.
Episode highlights and timecodes
- 00:00 – Welcome & Introductions: Lianne, Ronnie and Rachel introduce themselves and their organizations.
- 01:54 – Enlightenment Liberalism and the Founding: Drew asks how far our founding ideals rest on Enlightenment liberalism, and the panel weighs Scottish vs. French Enlightenments and the "history and tradition" lens.
- 06:50 – Traditional vs. Inquiry: Each panelist reflects on their own K-12 experience of civics and history.
- 12:51 – From Sputnik to A Nation at Risk: How accountability, fear and the STEM push changed the purpose of education.
- 19:34 – Why Free Speech Matters: Persuasion vs. force, "rhetoric is lawful magic," and why censorship is a position of weakness.
- 27:37 – K-12 vs. Higher Ed: Supporting teachers, the 1619 Project question, and how First Amendment rights differ for students and teachers.
- 33:35 – Imagining the Ideal: Humility, thick bonds and a literal American exceptionalism.
- 38:20 – Book Recommendations: From On Liberty to the Nicomachean Ethics.
- 42:34 – Closing: Jonathan Rauch's fallibilist and empirical rules.
