The vast majority of Americans understand "democracy" to mean one of two things: the ability to participate in protests or the right to vote. Neither of these things is democracy; in fact, they are some of the least remarkable elements of democracy. Voting is only remarkable insofar as it allows for politicans to be held accountable both for delivering on their promises and for not ending up in some sort of scandal or corruption scheme. In practice, even this benefit of voting seems to be spurious.

The broadest misconception that the majority of people seem to have is that "democracy" means "majority rule." In this way, protests superficially indicate the will of the majority, thereby implying an imminent change in law or policy, and voting superfically indicates the fact that the representatives share the will of the people. These assumptions about democracy are then celebrated and promoted by its supporters who endeavor to "preserve" it, "defend" it, "fight for" it, etc. These assumptions are also held by its common critics, who complain that because democracy is majority rule, and the majority is ignorant, malicious, and so on, therefore democracy must be understood as a fundamentally evil form of government.

Neither of these things is true, because the assumptions on which these viewpoints lie are false. Democracy has never been significant for the fact that it represents "majority rule" or the will of the masses. The true value of democracy, that which makes it the only valid form of government, lies in the degree to which democracy gives power to individuals, as opposed to the masses or the aristocrats.

In Japan there was a semi-mythological peasant named Sakura Sōgorō, who, since his fellow villagers were struggling under heavy taxes, decided to appeal to the shogun to ease the taxes on the people. At the time, however, this was illegal, and he was executed for daring to request assistance from the government. This story is a simple and direct demonstration what the lack of democracy looks like. The tale of Sakura Sōgorō was an inspiration for the leaders of the Freedom and People's Rights movement, and they understood exactly what they were fighting for as they pushed for democracy. It is not the power of the people that makes democracy; it is the power of the persons.

It was not the will of the masses that brought about Erin's Law, which requires children from pre-kindergarten through high school to be taught about how to recognize sexual abuse so as to protect them from pedophilic family members (now enacted in 37 states). It was through the effort of a child sexual abuse survivor named Erin Merryn that this law passed, meaning that her inidividual political pursuit had profoundly transformed sex ed in America.

Furthermore, it was not simply the will of the masses that led to significant non-profit law reforms in Japan through the 1998 NPO law. Though there was widespread demand for reforming the third sector, which practically hadn't been altered since approximately a century before, it wasn't until the establishment of the political group C's (シーズ), led by Matsubara Akira, that Japanese politicians of even the Liberal Democratic Party were willing to seriously consider the reforms.

The significance of democracy is the ability to organize and lobby for issues that only certain individuals may recognize, whether due to proximity, genius, or experience. In our current, horribly flawed system of "democracy," representatives are elected as generalists, forced to support "the people" from every single angle, pressured to have an answer to every common issue that the masses complain about. They are therefore experts at nothing because it is impossible for them to specialize. What they actually represent, in practice, are the groups of lobbyists who do happen to specialize in an area of interest and call to the representatives for the passing of or opposition against a bill or set of bills. Representatives have the unique right to take part in the decision making of whether or not a bill becomes a law. In a strange manner, they act as an appendage to their constituents, with the addition of having a particular concern for budgetary impact. While it would be better to have representatives who specialize, nevertheless the lobbyists currently take the role of actually dealing with and solving political issues. The representatives and senators then pass or block the bills, and the legal bureaucrats write out the verbose laws that those bills become.

To be a productive member of society first-and-foremost means understanding the role every citizen plays: that of a specialist who realizes political change through lobbying. The fact that for most people, their understanding of politics is limited almost entirely to protest (including awareness raising and petitions) and voting, with perhaps the vague understanding of the possibility of running for office, means that our education system is utterly failing on a mass scale to provide adequate civics education.

The second obvious issue is the widespread incapacity to thoroughly evaluate political ideas or even declarative statements of apparent fact. Problem-solving is a science that requires three steps: addressing the problem, coming up with possible solutions, and demonstrating a viable pathway towards achieving those solutions. All people are naturally gifted at addressing problems. Fewer, but still plenty, are able to come up with solutions. However, it is appallingly rare for any arbitrary person to adequately come up with a plausible plan of action to realize those solutions.

There is, frankly, a straightforward methodology for political problem solving that could be just as straightforwardly be taught. It is teaching this methodology of political problem solving that is the core of civic education. Again, addressing problems is (almost) a non-issue. Finding solutions requires, in every case, not merely discovering a logical answer to the problem at an immediate scope; it entails a thorough investigation of what that answer would entail at a large scale in the long term. This is what is known as "life cycle analysis." Life cycle analysis is simply not common sense despite being a prerequisite for adequately solving complex problems, yet it very easily could be made so through public education.

The final step in political problem solving, creating a plan of action, requires two areas of knowledge: first, general civic awareness, such as how lobbying and advocacy works, what kinds of methods of organizing there are, the specific process of how bills are passed as it relates to non-officials, etc.; second, the awareness of how to research systems as well as political circumstances. This second skill is most easily explained by example. For one to get involved in education politics, it is crucial to understand the structure of education politics, including the elected and unelected officials who are directly involved in education politics (such as school boards) and their roles. It is also necessary to understand the factions involved in education politics, their motives, and where their power comes from. For example, the center-left of public education is represented by the Democratic Party, who is influenced by funding from teachers unions such as the NEA, who in turn naturally favor the interests of teachers over students. Likewise, the right wing is represented by the Republican Party as well as grassroots movements funded in part by billionaires such as the Koch brother(s), who push for the promotion of charter schools as opposed to the centralized reform of public schools and who often have heavy religious motivations for the decentralization of schools. Only when a person understands the structures of the politics that relate to their field of interest as well as who their enemies and potential allies may be can that person be prepared to advance into lobbying and advocacy with an informed plan of action.

Even the first element, finding problems, is inadequately performed by the general public. This is because the definition of "problem" depends on the subjective viewpoints of the person who uses the term. These subjective viewpoints can be, and very frequently are, built on false assumptions that are never properly challenged. Challenging unquestioned viewpoints requires a critical methodology and a curriculum that very intently includes courses that cover "uncomfortable facts" about history, politics, culture, religion, etc. This critical methodology must be based strictly on the goal of disillusionment rather than indoctrination, that is to say, rather than trying to point out what is right, the goal is to try to disprove as many common assumptions as possible. Only through a methodology based on disillusionment can the likelihood of bias and indoctrination be minimized. Civic education reform is, therefore, anti-ideology.

With that being said, there is one core value that is meant to be taken for granted in a civic education system, and that value is a sense of civic duty. Students should be instilled from the beginning with a sense that their purpose in life is to adequately play their role in a democratic state (which, again, ultimately means being an informed, specialized lobbyist). As it happens, this idea runs in direct contrast to the mainstream understanding of the meaning of life, which is built on utilitarianism and assumes that the most important goal in life is the pursuit of happiness, whether that be short- or long-term. Indeed, it is appalling to most people to suggest that they should spend the majority of their lives suffering for the sake of others, but such is the life of genuine politics. Civic education reform is, therefore, anti-utilitarian as well.