Throughout my career studying and practicing American foreign policy, I’ve frequently been asked, What keeps you up at night? Is it China? Russia? Terrorism? Climate change? Another pandemic? While these issues all demand our attention, in recent years, I have found myself saying something else: The most urgent threat to American security and stability stems not from abroad but from within, from political divisions that jeopardize the future of American democracy and even the United States itself.

The obvious follow-up question is what to do about it. My answer draws inspiration from the holiday of Passover, when Jews celebrate their liberation from ancient Egypt. The annual retelling of the Exodus story is inspired by a command in the Bible: “And thou shalt tell thy son in that day, saying: It is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt.” Jews are instructed to make sure that every generation understands both what it means to be a Jew and what being a Jew requires. Only through recounting their history have they been able to preserve their identity, despite millennia of persecution and, until recently, not having a homeland.

This article is adapted from Haass’s forthcoming book.

Passover offers everyone, not just Jews, an important lesson: No group of people should assume that its identity will be automatically inherited by the next generation. For a people to understand and appreciate its collective identity is a matter of teaching, not biology. This is no less true for nations than for religious communities.

[From the October 2018 issue: Americans aren’t practicing democracy anymore]

One major reason that American identity is fracturing is we are failing to teach one another what it means to be American. We are not tied together by a single religion, race, or ethnicity. Instead, America is organized around a set of ideas that needs to be articulated again and again to survive. It is thus essential that every American gets a grounding in civics—the country’s political structures and traditions, along with what is owed to and expected of its citizens—starting in elementary school and continuing through college. It should be reinforced within families and communities. It should be emphasized by our political and religious leaders, by CEOs and journalists.

Alas, that is not the world we live in. There is a good deal of talk about the budget deficit, but our civics deficit may be of even greater consequence. Only eight states and the District of Columbia require a full year of high-school civics education. One state (Hawaii) requires a year and a half, 31 require half a year, and 10 require little or none.

At the college level, the situation is arguably worse. According to a 2015 study of more than 1,000 colleges and universities, less than a fifth require any civics coursework. As Ronald J. Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins University, has written, “Our curricula have abdicated responsibility for teaching the habits of democracy.”

It should come as no surprise, then, that Americans know little about the history, ideals, and practices of their own political system.

The best remedy to this problem is to require that all high schools and colleges have their students complete a course on American citizenship and democracy.

This is easier said than done. At the high-school level, educators and students have limited time and resources. Each academic subject competes for attention with every other subject, not to mention extracurriculars. And relatively few teachers are trained to teach civics well. On top of all this, the scale and decentralization of American public schools—consisting of roughly 13,000 districts, 130,000 schools, 3 million teachers, and tens of millions of students—make any kind of national commitment enormously difficult to implement.

[Ronald J. Daniels: Universities are shunning their responsibility to democracy]

In some ways, the challenge is even greater at the country’s approximately 4,000 two- and four-year colleges and universities. Resistance to a civics requirement would come from many directions. Professors tend to dislike teaching basic courses, preferring more specialized offerings that reflect their research interests. Students typically want maximum freedom to choose what they study; the priority for many, not surprisingly, is to pursue fields that promise the best professional prospects. Many students are pressured to specialize early, leaving little time for other pursuits. Administrations and boards of trustees, for their part, have failed to make civics a priority and largely shy away from introducing core curricula that in any way constrain their students.

Because of these and other challenges, establishing a national mandate for high-school and college civics courses will demand a wide array of support: from state governments that oversee high-school funding and requirements, from parents who pay for their children’s education, and from administrative bodies that certify institutions of higher education. For private schools that are less subject to public influence, requiring civics can and should be used as a selling point.

Perhaps the hardest challenge is to decide what, exactly, counts as “civics.” The battles between the “1619 Project” and the “1776 Project”—two divergent narratives about the arc of American history—and over how to teach matters relating to race demonstrate how politically charged it can be to determine what children learn. This is especially true for public high schools and publicly funded institutions of higher education.

But civics need not be all that controversial. An effective civics course would describe the foundational structures of American government: the nature of the three federal branches, and how they relate to one another and to state and local government. It would distinguish between representative and direct democracies, explain the two-party system, and cover fundamental matters such as checks and balances, judicial review, federalism, impeachment, filibusters, and gerrymandering. Teachers should emphasize both the rights and obligations of citizenship, and expose students to the basic texts of American democracy, including the Constitution, The Federalist Papers, and pivotal Supreme Court decisions.

[George Packer: Can civics save America?]

More difficult is deciding what to include in the way of history. What events to highlight? How to present them? As a rule of thumb, any single framing of American history should be avoided. Where there is disagreement, various perspectives should be presented.

Civics courses should not try to settle the most contentious contemporary or historical matters, or advocate for any particular party or policy. Instead, they should present facts, describe significant events, and lay out the major debates of our past and present.

Designing a civics curriculum that is both useful and broadly acceptable won’t be easy. But there is perhaps no more urgent task if American democracy—and identity—is to survive another two decades, much less another two and a half centuries.

This article has been adapted from Richard Haass’s new book, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

Good morning, and welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained.

Today’s special guest is staff writer John Hendrickson, who has just published a new book, Life on Delay: Making Peace With a Stutter, which you can read an excerpt of here. John has written for The Atlantic about, among other topics, President Joe Biden’s stutter and, most recently, I Didn’t See You There, an experimental documentary about living with a disability that he calls “kinetic and compelling.” John will read anything by Richard Price, bought tickets for all five of The Walkmen’s upcoming NYC reunion shows, and has probably watched The Fugitive 50 times.

But first, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

What the longest study on human happiness found is the key to a good life How Noma made fine dining far worse Stop trying to ask “smart questions.”

The Culture Survey: John Hendrickson

The upcoming event I’m most looking forward to: I spent nearly a decade waiting and praying for The Walkmen to maybe someday reunite, doubting that it would ever happen. To me, they are the unsung heroes of the turn-of-the-millennium New York rock renaissance (think: The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, Interpol—all the Meet Me in the Bathroom bands). Recently, when The Walkmen announced a five-night run in Manhattan in April, I impulsively bought tickets for all five shows. I will be screaming every word to every song.

The television show I’m most enjoying right now: After cycling through The Office, The Larry Sanders Show, Parks and Recreation, a slew of Ken Burns documentaries, and several seasons of Alone, my wife and I have started watching NewsRadio at night before we fall asleep. Again: Unsung! Every line Phil Hartman delivers is masterful. Stephen Root, of Barry and Office Space fame, does deadpan humor like no one else. And it’s a bit surreal to watch Joe Rogan in one of his early roles, playing a meathead named Joe.

An actor I would watch in anything: Bill Hader

My favorite blockbuster: The Fugitive is as close as you can get to a perfect—for lack of a better phrase—popcorn movie. Brisk pacing! Snappy dialogue! A few huge action sequences counterbalanced with grisled guys in frumpy suits working the phones! I’ve probably seen it 50 times. [Related: Hollywood doesn’t make movies like The Fugitive anymore.]

Best novel I’ve recently read: I’m currently reading Laura Zigman’s Small World, about two middle-aged sisters who move in together, bringing decades of family baggage into the house. I don’t want to give too much of it away, but I’m in awe of Zigman’s ability to weave biting humor and tenderness so closely together.

An author I will read anything by: Richard Price [Related: Two good old-fashioned young novelists]

A song I’ll always dance to: Le Tigre, “Deceptacon.” Hit play and try to keep your body still. It’s impossible!

“When the Walkmen announced a five-night run in Manhattan in April, I impulsively bought tickets for all five shows,” John says. Above: The band performing in Washington, D.C., in 2013 (Leigh Vogel / Getty for Thread)

My go-to karaoke song: Patti Smith, “Because the Night.” I’m a horrible singer, but singing is salvation for me. I like to belt this one out on a Friday or Saturday night at Montero’s, an old fisherman’s dive bar near the East River in Brooklyn. I usually throw in a kick when the pre-chorus starts. I write about this a little bit in my book, Life on Delay, but singing relies on a different part of the brain than we use for speaking, and I never stutter when I sing. It’s freeing. Scores of current or former stutterers have turned to music at some point in their lives: Elvis Presley, Kendrick Lamar, Carly Simon, Ed Sheeran, Bill Withers, Noel Gallagher—to name just a few.

My favorite sad song: Charles Bradley’s cover of Black Sabbath’s “Changes” absolutely slays me. It transcends what you think of as recorded music—it’s as if Bradley’s soul is imprinted on the track. The full backstory about Bradley and his mother around the time of the recording makes it all the more poignant.

My favorite angry song: Thee Oh Sees, “I Come From The Mountain.” Whenever I’m stressed or anxious, I crank this as loud as I possibly can and head-bang at my desk. Colson Whitehead told 60 Minutes that they’re on his writing playlist!

A favorite story I’ve read in The Atlantic: Annie Lowrey’s deeply vivid, personal account of her experience with pregnancy was the most memorable piece of journalism I read last year, full stop. It’ll stay with me forever.

A good recommendation I recently received: David Sims recently recommended to me the Apple series For All Mankind, sort of like Mad Men crossed with Apollo 13. [Related: How the space fantasy became banal]

The last thing that made me snort with laughter: Watch this clip from “The PriceMaster.” It’s one minute of your life. Trust me.

Read past editions of the Culture Survey with Gal Beckerman, Kate Lindsay, Xochitl Gonzalez, Spencer Kornhaber, Jenisha Watts, David French, Shirley Li, David Sims, Lenika Cruz, Jordan Calhoun, Hannah Giorgis, and Sophie Gilbert.

The Week Ahead

Maybe I Do, a romantic comedy starring Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Luke Bracey, William H. Macy, and Emma Roberts (in theaters Friday) Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, a posthumous book by David Graeber (Tuesday) The docuseries The 1619 Project, an expansion of the book by Nikole Hannah-Jones (first two episodes premiere Thursday on Hulu)

More in Culture

The film that accurately captures teen grief When good pain turns into bad pain This is the band that’s supposedly saving rock and roll? The calamitous lies of adulthood A slick mystery that takes place entirely on screens Skinamarink is a delightful nightmare. The line that Velma crossed

Catch Up on The Atlantic

The Supreme Court justices do not seem to be getting along. Despite everything you think you know, America is on the right track. How Joe Biden wins again

Photo Album

A snow leopard against a backdrop of the mountains of Ladakh in northern India (© Sascha Fonseca / Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

Check out some entries in this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest (and vote for your favorite).

Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.