Need a civics refresher? How about over lunch?

Eleesha Tucker is a professor of American history and civics education at Utah Valley University Center for Constitutional Studies. She also is part of the Visible Hand Project, which offers free lunchtime civics lessons for companies in Utah’s tech corridor. Tucker recently spoke with “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

David Brancaccio: Your program is nonpartisan, but I would have to give up my lunch time to attend. What would I get in return?

Eleesha Tucker: So from the perspective of the business leader, it helps to stop the polarization that happens among employees, but from an employee’s perspective that they could be motivated to learn more about some basics in civics. There’s a well-known Annenberg study from a few years ago that found that only 39% of Americans can name all three branches of government. So just kind of refreshing on civics in general, but for the most part, they’re looking for ways to understand our really confusing, divisive political landscape.

Brancaccio: But what’s the principle at work? Is it the idea that if you actually knew the rules as enshrined in, for instance, the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, there might be fewer arguments?

Tucker: The principle is that we’re promoting civic wellness to overcome divisiveness. So civics meaning understanding the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and how our system of governments works, and that’s different from politics, where it’s the jockeying for power and the negotiation around policy decisions. So the principle is that as more Americans embrace civic wellness, instead of this divisive battle that’s common in the broader political landscape, then we generally will have a healthier society and a healthier system. And I think a lot of Americans care about that.

Brancaccio: I guess if people see that, they have a role in politics, and there’s a way that you go about it, if you go down to a city council meeting, and a way perhaps not to go about it, that could also help lower the political temperature, because you know what’s expected of you.

Tucker: With this kind of shared common ground, understanding that we’re all in this together, that’s a different tenor or feeling than what polarization has produced is understanding people who disagree politically as the enemy. So there’s a lot of bad consequences for our communities, and more broadly, nationally, if we’re seeing other American citizens as the enemy because they have different opinions.

Brancaccio: Now I appreciate that I’m not talking to a professor of economics. I’m talking to a history professor, and somebody teaches civics. Econ 101, though, will usually have an Adam Smith moment, his concept that markets work things out through a metaphorical invisible hand. But yours is called the Visible Hand Project. How does that relate to civics?

Tucker: So it’s a play on the Adam Smith metaphor that we’re driven by our self-interest in the free market, but we’re inviting business leaders to be intentional and visible with their promotion of civic wellness. And actually that promotion is also in their self-interest. But what Benjamin Franklin would call enlightened self-interest, that it’s good for their bottom line, it’s good for their workforce, but it’s also good for the broader community, which, when there’s high levels of social capital in the community, more broadly, social capital, meaning trust and reciprocity, then it’s good for business. There’s more collaboration, there’s more cooperation, there’s people engaged more comfortably in the marketplace.

Brancaccio: Have you measured success of the work that you’re doing with this?

Tucker: Participation in terms of numbers, but we don’t take surveys. One company … consistently does their own surveys, and we have some survey data from them — one employee in particular saying that “I thought they were going to tell me how to think, but they really were just trying to teach me to be a good citizen.”