Forget ‘Schoolhouse Rock.’ Learn how a bill really becomes law.

State Sen. Chris Head, R-Botetourt County, recently appeared before the Botetourt County Board of Supervisors to pass on what he called “grave concerns” about some of the books available in the county’s libraries.

“I have probably gotten more contact about this particular issue than any single other issue in the last year, and it’s one of the top things that I’ve been contacted about the entire 13 years that I’ve served in the legislature,” Head told supervisors.

Head’s appearance follows a year or more of complaints by some Botetourt residents about what they’ve considered pornographic books on the library shelves.

I could spend today writing about dirty books — or civics. Decisions, decisions. I think I’ll go with civics. 

What strikes me as noteworthy about this is not Head’s position, but that so many people have gone to a state legislator about something that’s a local issue.

This isn’t unusual. I’ve heard many officeholders say they hear from people whose concerns are really best directed to a different branch of government. We speak of “the government,” singular, when, really, it’s “the governments,” plural — local, state and federal (and, sometimes, depending on whether you live in a town or not, maybe plural local governments). I spend much of my professional life dealing with all those, so it’s hard to fault people for not understanding which branch of government does what. 

Still, this kind of confusion happens a lot, and it seems to increasingly be taking up time at the local level. Both left and right fall victim to this. A few years ago, we saw pressure for conservative localities to declare themselves “Second Amendment Sanctuaries.” More recently, we’ve seen some on the left lobby their local governments to pass resolutions condemning Israel’s military actions in Gaza. I’m sure it makes people feel good to have local government pass some words that align with their point of view on a controversial topic, but none of these resolutions change anything — not state gun laws that some on the right find objectionable, not military action in Gaza that some on the left find objectionable.

“I don’t think a meeting with a legislator goes by who doesn’t express mild frustration about getting questions about ‘What are you going to do about the war in Israel, or the war in Ukraine,’ and having to explain ‘I don’t have anything to do with that,’” says Chris Piper, executive director of the Virginia Public Access Project. 

Thomas Marshall, who was Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, famously opined that “what this country needs is a good 5-cent cigar.” 

In that same vein, I’ll suggest that what this country needs is better education about civics. 

I’m not alone. Earlier this year the American Bar Association issued a report expressing concern that too many Americans don’t know basic facts about how government works — and the number of people who don’t know is increasing. It cites a 2022 study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania that found fewer than half of American adults (47%) could name all three branches of government — and that 25% couldn’t name any. That same study also found that only 24% of adults could identify freedom of religion as one of the freedoms guaranteed under the First Amendment, only 20% could cite freedom of the press and only 16% freedom of assembly.

The bar association blames our educational system. Through the 20th century, the ABA report said, the study of civics was “a constant part of the curriculum in schools, albeit with changing approaches due to prevailing issues and public sentiment (e.g., fostering an ‘Americanized’ populace during the immigration waves of the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century and stressing the American democratic system as a bulwark against the spread of Communism during the Cold War era).”

Now, the study of civics has been elbowed aside by other educational priorities — the ABA faults the popularity of so-called STEM classes (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). It says 13 states don’t have any high school civics requirement. Virginia’s not one of those — in Virginia, the eighth-grade Standards of Learning tests include civics as part of the history and social studies SOLs, and a standard high school diploma requires three credits in history and social sciences, which includes civics.

I don’t want to fall into the old-age trap of saying “back in my day” but … back in my day, a lot of the textbooks we learned from were, well, kind of boring. From what I’ve seen, they’re more colorful these days but not necessarily more interesting. Textbooks can often get outdated pretty quickly. Just look at this summer: I feel like we’ve lived a lifetime of presidential politics in the span of just a few months.

If only there was a way to make civics education interesting … and timely … and, perhaps most important of all these days, objective. 

That’s where VPAP comes in.

Many of you know The Virginia Public Access Project already. It’s a Richmond-based nonprofit that started in the 1990s as a way to make campaign finance reports in the state accessible to all — and it still very much fulfills that function. If you want to know who’s donating to whom, that’s where you go to look up all that information. Over the years, it’s also broadened into an aggregator of state political news. One of the first things I do every morning is check the “VaNews” portion of VPAP to scan the political headlines from across the state that it’s gathered into one place. I’m always amazed when I hear from Cardinal readers from outside our official coverage area of Southwest and Southside; when I ask them how they found us, many reply, “through VPAP.” 

Now VPAP is venturing into another and, dare I say, much-needed realm: civics education.

This week VPAP launched its “Civics Navigator,” which is intended to be a resource for teachers as well as “parents and caregivers” who are looking for real-life, real-time civics lessons. The beauty of VPAP (and the reason it’s highly regarded on both sides of the aisle) is that it’s a data-driven site, and data doesn’t lie. I’ll be the first to admit that data sounds boring, but VPAP has figured out ways to make data interesting: It regularly turns that data into nifty visuals about Virginia government and politics. It’s now turned some of those into teaching tools. 

“We realized there was no organization out there that had the ability to provide real-time dynamic info that would add context to lessons being taught in the classroom or at home,” Piper says.

It also helped that VPAP received a $160,000 donation — a bequest from a deceased supporter — that VPAP’s board decided to put toward civic education. (As a nonprofit that operates without government support, VPAP welcomes donations. So do we!) Heading the project as VPAP’s inaugural civics education program director is Erin Hill, who grew up in Natural Bridge and has taught social studies at schools in Stafford County, Henrico County and, most recently, Richmond. “We hope educators will be able to come to our site and be able to find their way around Virginia politics,” she says. “Anyone who wants to teach civics, we have resources for them.”

Piper says one key goal is to “demystify” state and local government. There’s naturally a lot of interest in national politics, especially in a presidential year, but sometimes that intense focus on national politics obscures the parts of government that are much closer to us. “We can focus on state and local issues and help students and educators better understand the impact that state and local governments have on their day-to-day lives,” Piper says. “When we focus so much on national political issues and Congress, it seems so impenetrable. VPAP’s resources hopefully will make folks realize that state and local politics are not impenetrable — that they can have a real voice, beyond just going to vote, in their community and on the state level.” 

He lays out this scenario: Rather than teach the textbook version of “how a bill becomes law,” VPAP can help show students how a bill really becomes law — whether through tracking campaign contributions or sharing videos from General Assembly debates. “Students can really see how a bill makes its way through the General Assembly,” he says. 

And if they come away knowing which branch of government to complain to about which problem, so much the better.

Our updated Voter Guide is now live

This week, we launched our updated 2024 Voter Guide. You can look up each locality in Southwest and Southside to see who’s on the ballot. We’ve also sent questionnaires to candidates and will be publishing the results over the coming week. The first Q&As are already up, with candiates in Bristol, Martinsville, Radford, Roanoke and Salem, with more on the way. When new ones go up, we’ll be announcing them in our daily newsletter, which is a good reason to subscribe to that. I also write a weekly political newsletter, West of the Capital, that goes out every Friday. This week, I’ll look at some of the latest polling in Virginia. Sign up here:

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