As Memphis voters turned out in less-than-record numbers on Election Day Thursday, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor called for better civics education in America’s schools.

O’Connor was the keynote speaker at last week’s annual meeting of the National Association of Women Judges, held at The Peabody hotel in Memphis.

“Civics education has been all but removed from our schools,” she told the audience of 250. “Too many people do not understand how our political system works. … We are currently failing in that endeavor.”

She cited surveys in which Americans could name a judge on “American Idol” but not a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court or even the three branches of government.

“They think judges are politicians in robes,” O’Connor said.

Until the 1960s, three types of civics classes were taught in most public schools and required by most state education departments.

O’Connor was careful not to “romanticize” the quality of the instruction. She said it idealized and romanticized American history and the development of the nation’s government while excluding minorities. And O’Connor faulted teaching methods for putting too much emphasis on rote memorization many students felt was irrelevant.

But today she said civics is either not taught in many states or it is under-taught.

“We must treat civics on a par with other academic subjects,” she said as she called for federal education mandates and increased federal funding to develop civics curricula. “We have to demonstrate to young people what civics is really about. It’s about empowerment. … It’s about a single spark. We’re all as powerful as we think we are.”

Without an emphasis on civics as an important subject that should be taught differently than math or science, O’Connor warned of a civics education gap in which minorities are at a political disadvantage.

O’Connor helped, along with educators, to develop an interactive civics site, www.ourcourts.org, to give civics education what she termed a “makeover.”

The Web site is aimed at middle school students and includes games in which a player is a clerk to a U.S. Supreme Court justice who advises the justice on a case coming before the court. Another game puts players in a law firm where they decide which cases to take and what constitutional issues are at stake. The more successful the law firm is the more “money” there is to hire more attorneys and improve the office.

O’Connor said she is encouraged by higher voter turnout levels among 18- to 29-year-old voters in the 2008 presidential election and cited the way celebrities promote their political causes as a way to teach children about civics.

“Democracy is a sustained conversation among our citizens about how best to govern,” O’Connor added. “Our discourse has to begin in our schools.”

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R.-Tenn., also has called for a more aggressive curriculum teaching civics and history in schools across the country.

O’Connor, who retired from the court in 2006, didn’t touch on any other topics during her Memphis appearance.