Political division may be harder to navigate when Americans lack a shared understanding of government and civic participation.
America’s political divide is often framed as a problem of disagreement. But disagreement itself is not unusual in a democracy. A more important question is whether people have enough understanding of government, public institutions, and civic processes to know how decisions are made and where their own participation fits.
Recent research suggests there is room for improvement. A 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that 80 percent of U.S. adults believed Republican and Democratic voters could not agree on basic facts about important issues. Separately, the Annenberg Public Policy Center reported in 2026 that 35 percent of U.S. adults could not name all three branches of government.
These findings measure different things, but together they point to a broader challenge. Americans do not need to agree on every political question, but healthy disagreement becomes more difficult when people have very different understandings of how the government works or where public decisions are actually made.
Americans Struggle To Agree on Basic Facts
Civic education should not be about teaching people what to think. Its purpose should be to help them understand the systems in which political choices are made.
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Government information is often publicly available, but that does not always make it easy to understand. Bills, regulations, agency documents, court decisions, election information, and meeting records may all be accessible online. Yet finding a document is only the first step. People may still struggle to understand what it means, which institution has authority over the issue, when public input is possible, or what happens next.
That is why practical civic education should go beyond memorizing facts.
Knowing the three branches of government matters, but so does understanding how a local ordinance differs from a federal law, how legislation moves through government, what agencies do after laws are passed, and where citizens can find reliable information about decisions that affect them.
Political literacy should also help people move beyond headlines. A useful civic skill is knowing how to trace a claim back to the original source, whether that is a bill, court decision, government report, agency rule, budget document, or election authority.
That does not remove political disagreement. It can, however, make disagreement more informed.
How Schools Can Build Political Literacy
The same principle can apply in classrooms. Students can be encouraged to compare evidence, examine different arguments, identify which level of government has responsibility for an issue, and separate disagreements about facts from disagreements about values. The goal is not to guide students toward a particular political position. It is to give them the tools to understand competing positions more clearly.
Research from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement [CIRCLE] at Tufts University also suggests that meaningful civic experiences can matter. Its 2025 analysis found that young people who recalled opportunities to use their voice in school were more likely to report higher political efficacy and attitudes associated with civic engagement.
That does not mean one classroom experience determines how someone will participate in public life. It does suggest that civic education may be more meaningful when students have opportunities to engage, ask questions, examine evidence, and understand how participation works in practice.
That understanding should extend beyond presidential elections. Public decisions are also made through school boards, city councils, state legislatures, Congress, government agencies, courts, and ballot processes. Helping students understand these different institutions can make civic participation feel less distant and easier to navigate.
Education alone will not resolve political polarization. The causes of division are too broad and complex for any single solution. Civic education can, however, address a more practical problem by helping people better understand the institutions, processes, and information behind political debate.
Educators and policymakers can measure progress without asking whether students have reached the same political conclusions. Instead, they can ask whether students know which institution is responsible for an issue, whether they can interpret a primary source, distinguish between different levels of government, explain competing arguments fairly, and identify appropriate ways to participate.
A healthy democracy does not require everyone to agree. It does require people to understand enough about the system to know what they are debating, where decisions are made, and how they can take part.
Adrian Menard is the founder of Legislative Labs, which develops tools to help people understand state legislation and civic processes. The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.