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The Honorable Lee Hamilton represented Indiana’s 9th congressional district for over three decades. After leaving Congress, he co-chaired the Iraq Study Group and served as Vice-Chair of the 9/11 Commission.

Now president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and director of Indiana University's Center on Congress, he sits or has sat on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council, the FBI Director’s Advisory Board, the CIA Director’s Economic Intelligence Advisory Panel, and the Defense Secretary’s National Security Study Group.

A life of public service has fueled Representative Hamilton's commitment to civics education, a commitment he honors as co-chair of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools. Representative Hamilton recently sat down with us for an interview on the significance of civic education at a time of political change and economic upheaval.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: I've heard you say--or rather, write--that you have found a lot of young Americans don't necessarily know what it means to be American. They haven't really thought it over. I was wondering if you could describe the implications of what that means and what schools might be able to do about it.

HAMILTON: I think a representative democracy depends on an educated citizenry. It's very important that not only homes--parents--but also schools take on the responsibility of assuring that young people know how to become good citizens and they learn the attributes of good citizenship: Involvement in their community, listening to their friends and neighbors, trying to solve problems, reach a consensus, discuss, and to get a sense of democracy into their bones. So that they recognize that the question that Lincoln asked, whether this nation, so conceived and so dedicated, could long endure, is answered affirmatively.

I'm very concerned about what's happening today in our schools. You see so much emphasis upon math and science, and I'm certainly not opposed to that. We need that emphasis. But in many respects I think the emphasis there, in part because of the requirements of federal law, are reducing--diminishing--the amount of time that is spent on social studies. On history. On learning to participate in a democratic society. I think it's just as important that we have good citizens as it is [that we have] good mathematicians.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: On that point...Many people worry that this economic crisis could a) take money away from schools and therefore from civics education, but b) also promote a cynicism in youth regarding what it's all really good for. Anything schools can do about that?

HAMILTON: I think young people today can easily become cynical, skeptical, about their politicians and their government. There isn't any surefire cure to that, I think, but surely one of the cures is involvement. My experience is people--not just young people, but people--who are involved in their community, in trying to solve a problem...Putting in a stoplight at a dangerous intersection, or reducing the barriers for handicapped people, or improving the quality of the schools. The people who are involved in those kinds of issues tend, I think, not to be cynical.

So it's very important that our schools--as well as our homes--teach that we have a responsibility. That we have been given a marvelous country. It has preeminence in many respects. But it's not written in the stars anywhere that [this] country will always survive and prevail, and it's responsibility of each of us to do what we can to make our neighborhood better, to make our community better, [to make] our state and our nation better. If we don't, then the future for that neighborhood or that community or the country is not very good.

I look upon civic education not as an extra subject. I think it's the very core of making this country function properly. We can turn out the world's greatest scientists, engineers, mathematicians and artists, and I'm all for that, and we need to emphasize those things. But if we neglect teaching young people how to be good citizens, then we jeopardize the future of the country.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: To get back to the question you raised about this youth participation...Some people have pointed to the recent election as evidence of the fact that youth have become more invested. At least they went out and voted. They seemed at least more involved in the political process. Do you see this as a glimmer of hope for civics education?

HAMILTON: I surely see it as a glimmer of hope, but I don't think it solves the problem. It's one election. It's an important symbol. It's wonderful to see young people engaged in an election or in a community issue of some kind. But we shouldn't celebrate too quickly, because there are a lot more elections to come.

The test of citizenship is not just being a voter. That’s obviously important. But [citizenship is] much, much more than that. It's being an informed voter. It's communicating with your representatives. It's participating in groups that share your interests. It's getting involved in your local community. It's making sure that your local schools in your community are teaching students about citizenship. It's understanding the nature of this country.

This country is so big and so diverse. When I went to high school we had 130 million people in the country. I'm not sure what [the population] is now, but it's over 300 million. In other words, in my working lifetime the country has more than doubled in size. But more than that, it has become much, much more diverse.

So the question is, how do you make that kind of country work? Can that country survive and prosper? The answer is, it can't, unless people get involved in solving problems.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: President Obama had talked about a post-partisan America. Now in the media, with the wrangling over the stimulus bill, we're hearing a lot about partisanship. Does civics education in the schools have a role to play here to try to break through that?

HAMILTON: I think citizen education certainly does have a role. First, we're very ignorant of American history if we don't understand that partisanship is built into the very fabric of the country. But it makes an awful lot of difference how you act as a partisan. You have to do it in such a way that’s not mean-spirited, that recognizes in that big diverse country you're going to have a lot of different points of view, that puts a high priority on building consensus.

I think the greatest skill that's needed in the country today is consensus-building. Anybody can walk into a room where you have differences of opinion, and blow it apart. That's pretty easy to do. What's really hard is to walk into that room and bring people of varying views and attitudes, coming from a great variety of environments, and finding consensus for a solution.

So I expect partisanship in the process of our government. I don't fall out of my chair when people express themselves strongly. But we do have to recognize that at the end of the day, in order to make the country work, you've got to get an agreement. Thus you have to put the common good prior to loyalty to party or another entity.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: Amidst this debate that we're having right now about what really is best for the country, some people are reaching back into our history. There's a new debate about the New Deal. Do you think that these kinds of debates offer an opportunity for teachers not only to begin to involve their students in discussions of history, but also to build a civic conversation around that kind of a history?

HAMILTON: I do indeed. I think it's terribly important for students to understand the kind of people who came before them in the country. We're right now celebrating the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth. It's hugely important that young people have heroes, and I think we have a great number of heroes to celebrate in this country. So history can be very important.

I used to go to a lot of high schools to conduct meetings, and I was always distressed when the names of some of our great or notable presidents would come up, and the students would lump them all together. In other words, John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, George Washington--they all live back there somewhere. There was no real sense of the history of this country and how stirring it is, and how it creates in all of us, or should create in all of us, a sense of obligation. A skillful teacher can widen the world for students and bring that out. I think history is one way to do it.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: In your work in the 9/11 Commission... you had written afterwards about how that experience affected your notion of what American youth today really should be doing--what they should be learning--about their civic responsibilities. I was wondering if you could elaborate on that briefly.

HAMILTON: I think students need to learn how to get along with each other, in simplest terms. It begins, as you could appreciate, at a very early age. It begins in the kindergarten, in the preschool. Young people playing together. Developing a tolerance for other people for their points of view--trying to understand them. Listening to your friends, where they're coming from. That doesn't mean you always agree with them, obviously, but not ascribing to them false motivations or dishonesty or the like.

Then I think it involves the process of how you reach agreement. How do you reach consensus? This is a political skill, certainly needed in the world of politics and government, but it's needed everywhere. It's needed in running the church. It's needed in running the garden club, the bowling league. You've got to bring people together and get an agreement. That's what students--young people--have to learn. They have to learn it in the context of the classroom, maybe. They have to learn it at home. But they also have to carry it into organizations of which they are a part.

Fundamentally I think what you're talking about is you have to have a system based upon mutual respect. If you have that, then you're prepared to try to understand the other guy's point of view and to build a consensus.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: A final question. I know that you've been very active with the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, among other civic organizations. Is there any work on your immediate horizon that you think might be interesting to educators?

HAMILTON: I run a center on Congress at Indiana University. The whole purpose of it is to make people understand better “the Congress.” Without the Congress, you don't have a representative democracy, you have kind of a dictatorship. I'm deeply concerned that too much power is drifting towards the executive branch.

Don't misunderstand me. I don't want a weak president. But I don't want a timid Congress, either. So one of my immediate concerns is, how do we strengthen the United States Congress and the legislative branch of government, which is the branch that's closest to the people? So that's ahead of me on my agenda.

I still have commissions I'm working on. One I'll mention, and that is looking into the whole question of what should be the nuclear strategy of the United States today. That's a hugely important issue, not very much debated in the country, but you have very different points of view as to how the United States should handle its nuclear weapons and what we should do about them. All of the skills that I've been talking about, needed in the classroom or needed in running the church board, are needed in trying to resolve those kinds of big issues.

I don't personally think that you can solve these problems without talking to people. Even people you don't like, even people you may hate.

I was in the Congress during much of the Cold War period, and we dealt with the Soviet Union. We had deep, deep differences with the Soviet Union, obviously. But it's hugely important for people to remember we never stopped talking to them. Each nation could blow the other one off the face of the earth by hitting one button, so it was a very dangerous world. There were many, many times when we were discouraged, when we just thought it was useless talking to them. We certainly didn't agree with them, and we had deep, deep differences with them.

But the important point is we kept talking, and we kept talking, and we kept talking. Then the Cold War disappeared.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: Thank you very much. It's really been a pleasure.