(I can’t claim original authorship on the previous.)

For the high school civics question, I got a lot of exposure to the what, but none of the why really landed for me until much later.

It’s far easier to test that I can regurgitate facts about three branches, a bicameral legislature, the amendment process, the Bill of Rights, 13/14/15, 18/21, but far harder to test my grasp of balancing the will of the slim majority vs the freedom of the slim minority.

Further, middle and high schoolers don’t have fully developed brains nor the life experience of making hard decisions and needing a framework when a far-reaching decision must be made but no decision will leave everyone happy.

I may have learned more about the why of the Constitution in a college philosophy class on liberty and justice than I did in middle/high school civics.