There’s a lot of handwringing about what the hell America’s young people are thinking. They’re deeply anxious about the future. They’re shockingly comfortable saying that it’s okay to use violence to stifle speech. They’re skeptical of democracy. They exhibit a disturbing affinity for socialism.

This isn’t good. And while it can be easy to slip into grumbling—“Damn kids, get off my lawn!”—every generation goes through this handwringing. As we turn into our parents, it’s easy to forget how worrisome our parents found us.

That doesn’t mean the concerns are misplaced, though. I think they do go beyond the inevitable “kids today” grumbling. But many of us who worry about the next generation are too eager to point fingers and far too reluctant to shoulder our share of the blame for where things stand.

We need to devote far more attention to our role in fomenting this malaise. This certainly includes the way so many teachers and professors have adopted a narrative of “America the Awful” and how education leaders reflexively embraced a world of one-to-one devices, in which staring at screens has become central to the school day.

Today, though, I want to look outside the classroom and focus on the real-world civic education that we’re delivering to our youth every day. A reasonable observer could conclude that America’s leaders are striving to deliver a lesson in dysfunctional democracy, irresponsible stewardship, corrupt capitalism, and disdain for the rule of law.

We’re in the midst of a government shutdown. Why? Republicans and Democrats can no longer resolve policy differences without lapsing into brinksmanship. It’s been over a quarter-century since Congress passed all its appropriations bills on time. Never in their lives have today’s college students seen a year when Congress fulfilled its primary responsibility. At this point, things only get done via executive action or by Congress stretching the budget reconciliation process to the breaking point so that a frail, temporary majority can cram big changes into law via (what was supposed to be) an accounting mechanism.

There’s a dispiriting sense that self-dealing is no longer something that’s surprising or especially shameful. The Government Accounting Office reports that over $300 billion was stolen from pandemic relief programs, and it’s met with yawns. Companies gobbled up vast sums from the Biden administration’s CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act, promising to expand their chip production or build electric car charging stations and then . . . didn’t. This has all generated astonishingly little outrage, embarrassment, or introspection. Meanwhile, President Trump is treating the White House like an all-you-can-grab buffet, even as he shakes down Intel, big tech, and big law firms by proffering favors and making threats. None of this bolsters faith in the integrity of free markets or the fairness of capitalism.

Then there’s the combination of avarice, self-interest, and inertia that have produced a staggering national debt of over $37 trillion. The debt is up by $1.8 trillion just this year and has more than doubled since 2009. We’re paying $900 billion in interest alone this year—that’s 1 out of every 8 dollars the government spends (or about $2,500 for every single American). The lion’s share of this spending funds health care and retirement for older Americans (as well as some shockingly routine fraud). Indeed, the government is closed because Republicans (who added trillions of debt this summer) and Democrats (who added trillions under Biden) are squabbling about whether to borrow even more money to extend “temporary” health care benefits adopted as an “emergency” response to the Covid pandemic. Oh, and today, very few policymakers or advocates evince consistent concern about any of this. If you’re under 25 and paying attention, you’ve got reason to be skeptical of democracy and anxious about the future.

Then there’s the spectacle of lawfare that has become shockingly routine. Remember when President Biden had great fun mocking Trump for being stuck in court as Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg pursued him in a transparently political exercise? Or when Colorado Democrats tried to use a, umm, creative reading of the 14th Amendment to keep Trump off the state’s ballot? And there was plenty more. Well, Trump promised scorched-earth payback, and he’s delivering. Attorney General Bondi shucked her way through federal prosecutors until she found a Trump loyalist willing to drag former FBI Director James Comey into court on laughable charges. Trump, who once led rallies in chants of “Lock her up!” when it came to Hillary Clinton, is now calling for the arrest of Chicago’s mayor and Illinois’s governor for opposing his plans to deploy troops in the Windy City. I could keep going, with Letitia James, the FCC commissioner imitating Tony Soprano, the Attorney General threatening the wrong kinds of speech, the president’s lawsuits against media companies . . .

All of this has fueled a toxic spiral of tit-for-tat and one-upsmanship. We have seen plenty of furious partisan condemnations of the other tribe for its transgressions, there’ve been precious few voices willing to consistently and publicly hold both sides to a standard. The folks who do deserve our praise. Instead, they wind up bitterly denounced by their former allies without winning the tribal applause that awaits whole-hearted converts to a given side.

With naked tribalism leaking into Instagram and TikTok feeds (in tightly curated dopamine snippets), there’s little evidence the younger and older generations even have a shared vision of the American project. We’re drowning them in public debt because we (their parents and grandparents) are unwilling either to curtail our benefits or to pay our own way. We’ve broken the machinery of government in no small part because too many in positions of influence treat time-tested institutions like personal platforms or opportunities to line their pockets. Restraint has broken down, and each side feels vindicated by the misdeeds of the other.

Honestly, if I were a teen or a twentysomething watching this unfold, I might have trouble mustering much faith in our institutions or values, too. I’d certainly be skeptical of educators who yammer about foundational principles when our leaders evince such blatant disrespect for those values in practice. Indeed, I might regard faith in democratic norms or free markets as a sucker’s game, best left to those ill-informed or naïve enough to ignore the evidence they can see with their own eyes.

Here’s where I come out: As you know, I do firmly believe in the American project and its time-tested values. But that’s why I’m so damn tired of hearing talk about civic education from those unwilling to acknowledge these failings and call out their own tribes’ misconduct. Those on the left failed miserably at this task over the past half decade, and those on the right are failing miserably today. And those who tried to do better—think Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Liz Cheney, or Mitt Romney—have been heckled off the stage. The need is not just for individuals of character but for funders, organizations, and allies that can support them.

Anyone committed to civic education needs to step up, ditch the aspirational happy talk, challenge those who are fueling our toxic zeitgeist, and build the institutions that can support them. Even if schools and classrooms got everything right (and I’m not holding my breath for that), it wouldn’t do much good if students continued to see civic leaders rewarded for flouting the demure norms their teachers championed.

Forget action civics. This is civic education in action.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”