Civic Education SC

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Civic Education
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Civic Education
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Civic Education
First published Thu Dec 27, 2007; substantive revision Fri Aug 31, 2018
In its broadest definition, “civic education” means all the processes that
affect people’s beliefs, commitments, capabilities, and actions as members
or prospective members of communities. Civic education need not be
intentional or deliberate; institutions and communities transmit values and
norms without meaning to. It may not be beneficial: sometimes people are
civically educated in ways that disempower them or impart harmful values
and goals. It is certainly not limited to schooling and the education of
children and youth. Families, governments, religions, and mass media are
just some of the institutions involved in civic education, understood as a
lifelong process.[1] A rightly famous example is Tocqueville’s often
quoted observation that local political engagement is a form of civic
education: “Town meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to
science; they bring it within the people’s reach, they teach men how to use
and how to enjoy it.”
Nevertheless, most scholarship that uses the phrase “civic education”

investigates deliberate programs of instruction within schools or colleges,
in contrast to paideia (see below) and other forms of citizen preparation
that involve a whole culture and last a lifetime. There are several good
reasons for the emphasis on schools. First, empirical evidence shows that
civic habits and values are relatively easily to influence and change while
people are still young, so schooling can be effective when other efforts to
educate citizens would fail (Sherrod, Flanagan, and Youniss, 2002).
Another reason is that schools in many countries have an explicit mission
to educate students for citizenship. As Amy Gutmann points out, school-
based education is our most deliberate form of human instruction (1987,
15). Defining the purposes and methods of civic education in schools is a
worthy topic of public debate. Nevertheless, it is important not to lose
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Civic Education
sight of the fact that civic education takes place at all stages of life and in
many venues other than schools.
Whether defined narrowly or broadly, civic education raises empirical

questions: What causes people to develop durable habits, values,
knowledge, and skills relevant to their membership in communities? Are
people affected differently if they vary by age, social or cultural
background, and starting assumptions? For example, does a high school
civics course have lasting effects on various kinds of students, and what
would make it more effective?
From the 1960s until the 1980s, empirical questions concerning civic
education were relatively neglected, mainly because of a prevailing
assumption that intentional programs would not have significant and
durable effects, given the more powerful influences of social class and
ideology (Cook, 1985). Since then, many research studies and program
evaluations have found substantial effects, and most social scientists who
study the topic now believe that educational practices, such as discussion
of controversial issues, hands-on action, and reflection, can influence
students (Sherrod, Torney-Purta & Flanagan, 2010).
The philosophical questions have been less explored, but they are
essential. For example:
Who has the full rights and obligations of a citizen? This question is
especially contested with regard to children, immigrant aliens, and
individuals who have been convicted of felonies.
In what communities ought we see ourselves as citizens? The nation-

state is not the only candidate; some people see themselves as
citizens of local geographical communities, organizations,
movements, loosely-defined groups, or even the world as a whole.
2 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

What responsibilities does a citizen of each kind of community have?

Do all members of each community have the same responsibilities, or
ought there be significant differences, for example, between elders
and children, or between leaders and other members?
What is the relationship between a good regime and good

citizenship? Aristotle held that there were several acceptable types of
regimes, and each needed different kinds of citizens. That makes the
question of good citizenship relative to the regime-type. But other
theorists have argued for particular combinations of regime and
citizen competence. For example, classical liberals endorsed regimes
that would make relatively modest demands on citizens, both because
they were skeptical that people could rise to higher demands and
because they wanted to safeguard individual liberty against the state.
Civic republicans have seen a certain kind of citizenship--highly
active and deliberative--as constitutive of a good life, and therefore
recommend a republican regime because it permits good citizenship.
Who may decide what constitutes good citizenship? If we consider,

for example, students enrolled in public schools in the United States,
should the decision about what values, habits, and capabilities they
should learn belong to their parents, their teachers, the children
themselves, the local community, the local or state government, or
the nation-state? We may reach different conclusions when thinking
about 5-year-olds and adult college students. As Sheldon Wolin
warned: “…[T]he inherent danger…is that the identity given to the
collectivity by those who exercise power will reflect the needs of
power rather than the political possibilities of a complex collectivity”
(1989, 13). For some regimes—fascist or communist, for example—
this is not perceived as a danger at all but, instead, the very purpose
of their forms of civic education. In democracies, the question is
more complex because public institutions may have to teach people
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to be good democratic citizens, but they can decide to do so in ways

that reinforce the power of the state and reduce freedom.
What means of civic education are ethically appropriate? It might, for

example, be effective to punish students who fail to memorize
patriotic statements, or to pay students for community service, but the
ethics of those approaches would be controversial. An educator might
engage students in open discussions of current events because of a
commitment to treating them as autonomous agents, regardless of the
consequences. As with other topics, the proper relationship between
means and ends is contested.
These questions are rarely treated together as part of comprehensive

theories of civic education; instead, they arise in passing in works about
politics or education. Some of these questions have never been much
explored by professional philosophers, but they arise frequently in public
debates about citizenship.
1. The Good Citizen: Historical Conceptions

1.1 Ancient Greece
1.2 Classical Liberalism
1.3 Rousseau: Toward Progressive Education
1.4 Mill: Education Through Political Participation
1.5 Early Civic Education in the United States
2. The Good Democrat
2.1 The State, Parents, and Children in Liberal Democracies
2.2 Social Capital
2.3 Deliberative Democracy
2.4 Public Work
3. The Good Person
3.1 Good Persons and Good Citizens
3.2 Spectrum of Virtues

4. Modern Forms of Civic Education

4.1 Service Learning
4.2 Action Civics
4.3 Civic Education through Discussion
4.4 John Dewey: School as Community
4.5 Liberation Pedagogy
5. Cosmopolitan Education
Bibliography
Works Cited
Works to Consult
Academic Tools
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries
1. The Good Citizen: Historical Conceptions

“As far back as evidence can be found—and virtually without exception—
young adults seem to have been less attached to civic life than their
parents and grandparents.”[2] That is not evidence of decline--although it
is often read as such--but rather indicates that becoming a citizen is a
developmental process. It must be taught and learned. Most if not all
societies recognize a need to educate youth to be “civic-minded”; that is,
to think and care about the welfare of the community (the commonweal or
civitas) and not simply about their own individual well-being. Sometimes,
civic education is also intended to make all citizens, or at least prospective
leaders, effective as citizens or to reduce disparities in political power by
giving everyone the knowledge, confidence, and skills they need to
participate. This section briefly introduces several conceptions of civic
education that have been influential in the history of the West.[3]
1.1 Ancient Greece
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The ancient Greek city state or polis was thought to be an educational

community, expressed by the Greek term paideia. The purpose of political
—that is civic or city—life was the self-development of the citizens. This
meant more than just education, which is how paideia is usually
translated. Education for the Greeks involved a deeply formative and life-
long process whose goal was for each person (read: man) to be an asset to
his friends, to his family, and, most important, to the polis.
Becoming such an asset necessitated internalizing and living up to the

highest ethical ideals of the community. So paideia included education in
the arts, philosophy and rhetoric, history, science, and mathematics;
training in sports and warfare; enculturation or learning of the city’s
religious, social, political, and professional customs and training to
participate in them; and the development of one’s moral character through
the virtues. Above all, the person should have a keen sense of duty to the
city. Every aspect of Greek culture in the Classical Age—from the arts to
politics and athletics—was devoted to the development of personal powers
in public service.
Paideia was inseparable from another Greek concept: arete or excellence,

especially excellence of reputation but also goodness and excellence in all
aspects of life. Together paideia and arête form one process of self-
development, which is nothing other than civic-development. Thus one
could only develop himself in politics, through participation in the
activities of the polis; and as individuals developed the characteristics of
virtue, so would the polis itself become more virtuous and excellent.
All persons, whatever their occupations or tasks, were teachers, and the
purpose of education—which was political life itself—was to develop a
greater (a nobler, stronger, more virtuous) public community. So politics
was more than regulating or ordering the affairs of the community; it was
also a “school” for ordering the lives—internal and external—of the

citizens. Therefore, the practice of Athenian democratic politics was not

only a means of engendering good policies for the city, but it was also a
“curriculum” for the intellectual, moral, and civic education of her
citizens. “…[A]sk in general what great benefit the state derives from the
training by which it educates its citizens, and the reply will be perfectly
straightforward. The good education they have received will make them
good men…” (Plato, Laws, 641b7–10). Indeed, later in the Laws the
Athenian remarks that education should be designed to produce the desire
to become “perfect citizens” who know, preceding Aristotle, “how to rule
and be ruled” (643e4–6).
1.2 Classical Liberalism
Ancient and medieval thinkers generally assumed that good government

and good citizenship were intimately related, because a regime would
degenerate unless its people actively and virtuously supported it. Aristotle
regarded his Politics and his Ethics as part of the same subject. In his
view, a city-state could not be just and strong unless its people were
virtuous, and men could not exercise the political virtues (which were
intrinsically admirable, dignified, and satisfying) unless they lived in a just
polity. Civic virtue was especially important in a democratic or mixed
regime, but even in a monarchy or oligarchy, people were expected to
sustain the political community.
Today, the view that the best life is one of active participation in a
community that relies on and encourages active engagement is often called
“civic republicanism,” and it has been developed by authors like Wolin
(1989), Barber (1992) and Hannah Arendt.
Classical liberal thinkers, however, saw serious drawbacks to making good

government dependent on widespread civic virtue. First, any demanding
and universal system of moral education would be incompatible with
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individual freedom. If, for example the state forced people to enroll their
children in public schools in order to create good citizens, it would hamper
parents and young people’s individual freedom.
The second problem was more practical. States did not have a very good
record of producing moral virtue in rulers or subjects. Mandatory church
membership, state-subsidized education, and even public spectacles of
torture and execution did not reliably prevent corruption, sedition and
other private behavior injurious to the community.
Thomas Hobbes is sometimes described as a forerunner of liberalism

(despite his advocacy of absolute monarchy) because he held a dim view
of human nature and thought that the way to prevent political disaster was
to design the government right, not to try to improve civic virtue. He also
held that a good government was one that permitted people to live their
own lives safely. Another strong critic of the idea that a good society
depended on civic virtue was Bernard Mandeville, who wrote a famous
1705 poem entitled, “The Fable of The Bees: or, Private Vices, Public
Benefits.” Mandeville argued that a good society could arise from sheer
individual self-interest if it was organized appropriately.
Other classical liberal thinkers typically favored some degree of civic

education and civic virtue, even as they proposed limitations on the state
and a strong private sphere to reduce the dependence of the regime on
civic virtue. In other words, they steered a middle course between pure
classical liberalism and civic republicanism. For example, in his
“Instructions for the conduct of a young Gentleman, as to religion and
government,” John Locke wrote that a gentleman’s “proper calling is the
service of his country, and so is most properly concerned in moral and
political knowledge; and thus the studies which more immediately belong
to his calling are those which treat of virtues and vices, of civil society and
the arts of government, and will take in also law and history.” That was an

argument for civic education. But it appeared in a minor, unpublished

fragment. Civic education was not a significant theme in Locke’s
important treatise Some Thoughts Concerning Education, which was more
about teaching individuals to be free and responsible in their private lives.
Likewise, the emphasis of his political writing was on limiting the power
of the state and protecting private rights.
James Madison hoped for some degree of civic virtue in the people and
especially in their representatives. He endorsed “the great republican
principle, that the people will have the virtue and intelligence to select
men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we
are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks--no form of government
can render us secure” (Madison, 1788, 11:163) On the other hand,
Madison proposed a whole series of reforms that would make government
proof against the various vices that seemed to be “sown in the nature of
man” (Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, Federalist 10). These tools included
constitutional limitations on the overall power and scope of government;
independent judges with power of review; elections with relatively broad
franchise; and above all, checks and balances.
Madison explained that republics should be designed for people of

moderate virtue, such as might be found in real societies. “If men were
angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men,
neither external nor internal controuls on government would be
necessary.” Unfortunately, neither citizens nor rulers could be counted on
to act like angels; but good government was possible anyway, as long as
the constitution provided appropriate controls.
The main “external controul” in a republic was the vote, which made
powerful men accountable to those they ruled. However, voting was not
enough, especially since the voters themselves might lack virtue and
wisdom. “A dependence on the people is no doubt the primary controul on
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the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of

auxiliary precautions.” In general, Madison’s “auxiliary precautions”
involved dividing power among separate institutions and giving them the
ability to check one another.
This policy of supplying by opposite and rival interests, the defect

of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of
human affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly
displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power; where the
constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a
manner as that each may be a check on the other; that the private
interest of every individual may be a centinel over the public
rights. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the
distribution of the supreme powers of the state. (Madison,
Hamilton, and Jay, Federalist 51)
1.3 Rousseau: Toward Progressive Education
Although ancient Athens instituted democracy, her most famous

philosophers—Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—were not great champions
of it. At best they were ambiguous about democracy; at worst, they were
hostile toward it. The earliest unadulterated champion of democracy, a
“dreamer of democracy,” was undoubtedly Rousseau. Yet Rousseau had
his doubts that men could be good men and simultaneously good citizens.
A good man for Rousseau is a natural man, with the attributes of freedom,
independence, equality, happiness, sympathy, and love-of-self (amour de
soi) found prior to society in the state of nature. Thus society could do
little but corrupt such a man.
Still, Rousseau recognized that life in society is unavoidable, and so civic

education or learning to function well in society is also unavoidable. The
ideal for Rousseau is for men to act morally and yet retain as much of their

naturalness as possible. Only in this way can a man retain his freedom;
and only if a man follows those rules that he prescribes for himself—that
is, only if a man is self-ruling—can he remain free: “…[E]ach
individual…obeys no one but himself and remains as free as before
[society]” (1988, 60).
Yet prescribing those rules is not a subjective or selfish act. It is a moral

obligation because the question each citizen asks himself or should ask
himself was not “What’s best for me?” Rather, each asks, “What’s best for
all?” When all citizens ask this question and answer on the basis of what
ought to be done, then, says Rousseau, they are expressing and following
the general will. Enacting the general will is the only legitimately moral
foundation for a law and the only expression of moral freedom. Getting
men to ask this question and to answer it actively is the purpose of civic
education.
Showing how to educate men to retain naturalness and yet to function in

society and participate untouched by corruption in this direct democracy
was the purpose of his educational treatise, Emile. If it could be done,
Rousseau would show us the way. To do it would seem to require
educating a man to be in society but not of society; that is, to be “attached
to human society as little as possible” (Ibid, 105).
How could a man for Rousseau be a good man—meaning, for him a

naturally good man (1979, 93), showing his amour de soi and also his
natural compassion for others—and also have the proper frame of mind of
a good citizen to be able to transcend self-interest and prescribe the
general will? How could this be done in society when society’s influence
is nothing but corrupting?
Rousseau himself seems ambivalent on exactly whether men can

overcome social corruption. Society is based on private property; private
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property brings inequality, as some own more than others; such inequality
brings forth social comparisons with others (amour propre), which in turn
can produce envy, pride, and greed. Only when and if men can exercise
their moral and political freedom and will the general will can they be
saved from the corrupting influences of society. Willing for the general
will, which is the good for all, is the act of a moral or good person. Its
exercise in the assembly is the act of a good citizen.
Still, Rousseau comments that if “[f]orced to combat nature or the social

institutions, one must choose between making a man or a citizen, for one
cannot make both at the same time” (Ibid, 39). There seems little, if any,
ambiguity here. One cannot make both a man and a citizen at the same
time. Yet on the very next page of Emile Rousseau raises the question of
whether a man who remains true to himself, to his nature, and is always
decisive in his choices “is a man or a citizen, or how he goes about being
both at the same time” (Ibid, 40).
Perhaps the contradiction might be resolved if we emphasize that a man

cannot be made a man and a citizen at the same time, but he can be a man
and a citizen at the same time. Rousseau hints at this distinction when he
says of his educational scheme that it avoids the “two contrary ends…the
contrary routes…these different impulses…[and] these necessarily
opposed objects” (Ibid, 40, 41) when you raise a man “uniquely for
himself.” What, then, will he be for others? He will be a man and a citizen,
for the “double object we set for ourselves,” those contradictory objects,
“could be joined in a single one by removing the contradictions of man…”
(Idem). Doubtless, this will be a rare man, but raising a man to live a
natural life can be done.
One might find the fully mature, and natural, Emile an abhorrent person.
Although “good” in the sense of doing his duty and acting civilly, he
seems nevertheless without imagination or deep curiosity about people or

life itself—no interest in art or many books or intimate social

relationships. Is his independence fear of dependence and thus built on an
inability ever to be interdependent? Is he truly independent, or does he
exhibit simply the appearance of independence, while the tutor “remains
master of his person” (Ibid, 332)?
Whatever one thinks of Rousseau’s attempt to educate Emile—whether,

for example, the tutor’s utter control of Emile’s life and environment is not
in itself a betrayal of education—Rousseau is a precursor of those
progressive educators who seek to permit children to learn at their own
rate and from their own experiences, as we shall see below.
1.4 Mill: Education Through Political Participation
Mill argued that participation in representative government, or democracy,

is undertaken both for its educative effects on participants and for the
beneficial political outcomes. Even if elected or appointed officials can
perform better than citizens, Mill thought it advisable for citizens to
participate “as a means to their own mental education—a mode of
strengthening their active faculties, exercising their judgment, and giving
them a familiar knowledge of the subjects with which they are thus left to
deal. This is a principal, though not the sole, recommendation of jury trial;
of free and popular local and municipal institutions; of the conduct of
industrial and philanthropic enterprises by voluntary associations” (1972,
179). Thus, political participation is a form of civic education good for
men and for citizens.
On Liberty, the essay in which the above quotation appears, is not, writes
Mill, the occasion for developing this idea as it relates to “parts of national
education.” But in Mill’s view the development of the person can and
should be undertaken in concert with an education for citizens. The
“mental education” he describes is “in truth, the peculiar training of a

Civic Education
citizen, the practical part of the political education of a free people, taking
them out of the narrow circle of personal and family selfishness, and
accustoming them to the comprehension of joint interests, the management
of joint concerns—habituating them to act from public or semi-public
motives, and guide their conduct by aims which unite instead of isolating
them from one another” (Idem).
The occasion for discussing civic education as a method of both personal

and political development is Mill’s Considerations on Representative
Government. Mill wants to see persons “progress.” To achieve progress
requires “the preservation of all kinds and amounts of good which already
exist, and Progress as consisting in the increase of them.” Of what does
Mill’s good consist? First are “the qualities in the citizens individually
which conduce most to keep up the amount of good conduct…Everybody
will agree that those qualities are industry, integrity, justice, and prudence”
(1972, 201). Add to these “the particular attributes in human beings which
seem to have a more especial reference to Progress…They are chiefly the
qualities of mental activity, enterprise, and courage” (Ibid, 202).
So, progress is encouraged when society develops the qualities of citizens

and persons. Mill tells us that good government depends on the qualities
of the human beings that compose it. Men of virtuous character acting in
and through justly administered institutions will stabilize and perpetuate
the good society. Good persons will be good citizens, provided they have
the requisite political institutions in which they can participate. Such
participation—as on juries and parish offices—takes participants out of
themselves and away from their selfish interests. If that does not occur, if
persons regard only their “interests which are selfish,” then, concludes
Mill, good government is impossible. “…[I]f the agents, or those who
choose the agents, or those to whom the agents are responsible, or the
lookers-on whose opinion ought to influence and check all these, are mere

masses of ignorance, stupidity, and baleful prejudice, every operation of

government will go wrong” (Ibid, 207).
For Mill good government is a two-way street: Good government depends

on “the virtue and intelligence of the human beings composing the
community”; while at the same time government can further “promote the
virtue and intelligence of the people themselves” (Idem). A measure of the
quality of any political institution is how far it tends “to foster in the
members of the community the various desirable qualities…moral,
intellectual, and active” (Ibid, 208). Good persons act politically as good
citizens and are thereby maintained or extended in their goodness. “A
government is to be judged by its actions upon men…by what it makes of
the citizens, and what it does with them; its tendency to improve or
deteriorate the people themselves.” Government helps people advance,
acts for the improvement of the people, “is at once a great influence acting
on the human mind….” Government is, then, “an agency of national
education…” (Ibid, 210, 211).
Following Tocqueville, Mill saw political participation as the basis for this
national education. “It is not sufficiently considered how little there is in
most men’s ordinary life to give any largeness either to their conceptions
or to their sentiments.” Their work is routine and dull; they proceed
through life without much interest or energy. On the other hand, “if
circumstances allow the amount of public duty assigned him to be
considerable, it makes him an educated man” (Ibid, 233). In this way
participation in democratic institutions “must make [persons] very
different beings, in range of ideas and development of faculties, from
those who have done nothing in their lives but drive a quill, or sell goods
over a counter” (Idem).
There was no national public schooling in Mill’s Great Britain, and there
were clearly lots of Britons without the requisite characteristics either of

Civic Education
good citizens or of good men. Mill was certainly aware of this. He was
much influenced by Tocqueville’s writings on the tyranny of the majority.
Mill feared, as did Tocqueville, that the undereducated or uneducated
would dominate and tyrannize politics so as to undermine authority and
individuality. Being ignorant and inexperienced, the uneducated and
undereducated would be susceptible to all manner of demagoguery and
manipulation. So too much power in the hands of the inept and ignorant
could damage good citizenship and dam the course of self-development.
To remedy this Mill proposed two solutions: limit participation and
provide the competent and educated with plural votes.
In Mill’s “ideally best polity” the highest levels of policymaking would be

reserved for nationally elected representatives and for experts in the civil
service. These representatives and experts would not only carry out their
political duties, but they would also educate the public through debate and
deliberation in representative assemblies, in public forums, and through
the press. To assure that the best were elected and for the sake of rational
government, Mill provided plural votes to those with college educations
and to those of certain occupations and training. All citizens (but the
criminal and illiterate) could vote, but not all citizens would vote equally.
Some citizens, because they were educated or highly trained persons, were
“better” than others: “…[T]hough every one ought to have a voice—that
every one should have an equal voice is a totally different proposition…
No one but a fool…feels offended by the acknowledgment that there are
others whose opinion, and even whose wish, is entitled to a greater amount
of consideration than his” (Ibid, 307–8).
But education was the great leveling factor. Though not his view when he
wrote Considerations on Representative Government, Mill wrote in his
autobiography that universal education could make plural voting
unnecessary (1924, pp. 153, 183–84). Mill did acknowledge in
Representative Government that a national system of education or “a

trustworthy system of general examination” would simplify the means of

ascertaining “mental superiority” of some persons over others. In their
absence, a person’s years of schooling and nature of occupation would
suffice to determine who would receive plural votes (1972, 308–09).
Given Mill’s prescriptions for political participation and given the lessons
learned from the deliberations and debates of representatives and experts,
however, it is doubtful that civic education would have constituted much
of his national education.
1.5 Early Civic Education in the United States
As noted above the founders of the United States tried to reduce the
burdens on citizens, because they observed that republics had generally
collapsed for lack of civic virtue.[4] However, they also created a structure
that would demand more of citizens, and grant citizens more rights, than
the empire from which they had declared independence. So virtually all of
the founders advocated greater attention to civic education. When
Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 23 that the federal government
ought to be granted “an unconfined authority in respect to all those objects
which are entrusted to its management” (1987, p. 187), he underscored the
need of the newly organized central government for, in Sheldon Wolin’s
words, “a new type of citizen…one who would accept the attenuated
relationship with power implied if voting and elections were to serve as
the main link between citizens and those in power.”[5] Schools would be
entrusted to develop this new type of citizen.
It is commonplace, therefore, to find among those who examine the

interstices of democracy and education views much like Franklin Delano
Roosevelt’s: “That the schools make worthy citizens is the most important
responsibility placed on them.” In the United States public schools had the
mission of educating the young for citizenship.

Civic Education
Initially education in America was not publicly funded. It wasn’t even a

system, however inchoate. Instead it was every community for itself. Nor
was it universal education. Education was restricted to free white males
and, moreover, free white males who could afford the school fees. One of
the “founders” of the public-school system in the United States, even
though his era predated the establishment of public schools, was Noah
Webster, who saw education as the tool for developing a national identity.
As a result, he created his own speller and dictionary as a way of
advancing a common American language.
Opposed to this idea of developing a national identity was Thomas

Jefferson, who saw education as the means for safeguarding individual
rights, especially against the intrusions of the state. Central to Jefferson’s
democratic education were the “liberal arts.” These arts liberate men and
women (though Jefferson was thinking only of men) from the grip of both
tyrants and demagogues and enable those liberated to rule themselves.
Through his ward system of education, Jefferson proposed establishing
free schools to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, and from these
schools those of intellectual ability, regardless of background or economic
status, would receive a college education paid for by the state.
When widespread free or publicly funded education did come to America

in the 19th century, it came in the form of Horace Mann’s “common
school.” Such schools would educate all children together, “in common,”
regardless of their background, religion, or social standing. Underneath
such fine sentiments lurked an additional goal: to ensure that all children
could flourish in America’s democratic system. The civic education
curriculum was explicit, if not simplistic. To create good citizens and good
persons required little beyond teaching the basic mechanics of government
and imbuing students with loyalty to America and her democratic ideals.
That involved large amounts of rote memorization of information about
political and military history and about the workings of governmental

bodies at the local, state, and federal levels. It also involved conformity to
specific rules describing conduct inside and outside of school.
Through this kind of civic education, all children would be melded, if not
melted, into an American citizen. A heavy emphasis on Protestantism at
the expense of Catholicism was one example of such work. What some
supporters might have called “assimilation” of foreigners into an
American way of life, critics saw as “homogenization,” “normalization,”
and “conformity,” if not “uniformity.” With over nine million immigrants
coming to America between 1880 and the First World War, it is not
surprising that there was resistance by many immigrant communities to
what seemed insensitivity to foreign language and culture. Hence what
developed was a system of religious—namely Catholic—education
separate from the “public school” system.
While Webster and, after him, Mann wanted public education to generate
the national identity that they thought democracy required, later
educational reformers moved away from the idea of the common school
and toward a differentiation of students. The Massachusetts Commission
on Industrial and Technical Education, for example, pushed in 1906 for
industrial and vocational education in the public schools. Educating all
youth equally for participation in democracy by giving them a liberal, or
academic, education, they argued, was a waste of time and resources.
“School reformers insisted that the academic curriculum was not
appropriate for all children, because most children—especially the
children of immigrants and of African Americans—lacked the intellectual
capacity to study subjects like algebra and chemistry” (Ravitch, 2001, 21).
Acting against this view of education was John Dewey. Because Dewey
saw democracy as a way of life, he argued that all children deserved and
required a democratic education.[6] As citizens came to share in the
interests of others, which they would do in their schools, divisions of race,

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class, and ethnicity would be worn down and transcended. Dewey thought
that the actual interests and experiences of students should be the basis of
their education. I recur to a consideration of Dewey and civic education
below.
2. The Good Democrat

Civic education can occur in all kinds of regimes, but it is especially
important in democracies. In The Politics, Aristotle asks whether there is
any case “in which the excellence of the good citizen and the excellence of
the good man coincide” (1277a13–15). The answer for him is a politea or
a mixed constitution in which persons must know both how to rule and
how to obey. In such regimes, the excellence and virtues of the good man
and the good citizen coincide. Democratic societies have an interest in
preparing citizens to rule and to be ruled.
Modern democracies, however, are different from the ancient polis in

several important and pertinent respects. They are mass societies in which
most people can have little individual impact on government and policy.
They are complex, technologically-driven, highly specialized societies in
which professionals (including lawyers, civil servants, and politicians)
have much more expertise than laypeople. And they are liberal
constitutional regimes in which individual freedom is protected--to various
degrees--and government is deliberately insulated from public pressure.
For example, courts and central banks are protected from popular votes.
Once the United States had become an industrialized mass society, the
influential columnist Walter Lippmann argued that ordinary citizens had
been eclipsed and could, at most, render occasional judgments about a
government of experts (see The Phantom Public, 1925). John Dewey and
the Chicago civic leader Jane Addams (in different ways) asserted that the
lay public must and could regain its voice, but they struggled to explain
how.

2.1 The State, Parents, and Children in Liberal Democracies
Several contemporary philosophers argue that citizens have a relatively

demanding role and that they can and should be educated for it. Gutmann
(1987), for example, argues that democratic society-at-large has a
significant stake in the education of its children, for they will grow up to
be democratic citizens. At the very least, then, society has the
responsibility for educating all children for citizenship. Because
democratic societies have this responsibility, we cannot leave the
education of future citizens to the will or whim of parents. This central
insight leads Gutmann to rule out certain exclusive suzerainties of power
over educational theory and policy. Those suzerainties are of three sorts.
First is “the family state” in which all children are educated into the sole
good life identified and fortified by the state. Such education cultivates “a
level of like-mindedness and camaraderie among citizens” that most
persons find only in families (Ibid, 23). Only the state can be entrusted
with the authority to mandate and carry out an education of such
magnitude that all will learn to desire this one particular good life over all
others.
Next is “the state of families” that rests on the impulse of families to

perpetuate their values through their children. This state “places
educational authority exclusively in the hands of parents, thereby
permitting parents to predispose their children, through education, to
choose a way of life consistent with their familial heritage” (Ibid, 28).
Finally, Gutmann argues against “the state of individuals,” which is based

on a notion of liberal neutrality in which both parents and the state look to
educational experts to make certain that no way of life is neglected nor
discriminated against. The desire here is to avoid controversy, and to avoid
teaching virtues, in a climate of social pluralism. Yet, as Gutmann points
out, any educational policy is itself a choice that will shape our children’s

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character. Choosing to educate for freedom rather than for virtue is still
insinuating an influential choice.
In light of these three theories that fail to provide an adequate foundation

for educational authority, Gutmann proposes “a democratic state of
education.” This state recognizes that educational authority must be shared
among parents, citizens, and educational professionals, because each has a
legitimate interest in each child and the child’s future. Whatever our aim
of education, whatever kind of education these authorities argue for, it will
not be, it cannot be, neutral. Needed is an educational aim that is inclusive.
Gutmann settles on our inclusive commitment as democratic citizens to
conscious social reproduction, the self-conscious shaping of the structures
of society. To actuate this commitment we as a society “must educate all
educable children to be capable of participating in collectively shaping
their society” (Ibid, 14).
To shape the structures of society, to engage in conscious social

reproduction, students will need to develop the capacities for examining
and evaluating competing conceptions of the good life and the good
society, and society must avoid the inculcation “in children [of the]
uncritical acceptance of any particular way or ways of [personal and
political] life” (Ibid, 44). This is the crux of Gutmann’s democratic
education. For this reason, she argues forcefully that children must learn to
exercise critical deliberation among good lives and, presumably, good
societies. To assure that they can do so, limits must be set for when and
where parents and the state can interfere. Guidelines must be introduced
that limit the political authority of the state and the parental authority of
families. One limit is nonrepression, which assures that neither the state
nor any group within it can “restrict rational deliberation of competing
conceptions of the good life and the good society” (Idem). In this way,
adults cannot use their freedom to deliberate to prohibit the future
deliberative freedom of children. Furthermore, claims Gutmann,

nonrepression requires schools to support “the intellectual and emotional

preconditions for democratic deliberation among future generations of
citizens” (Ibid, 76.)
The second limit is nondiscrimination, which prevents the state or groups

within the state from excluding anyone or any group from an education in
deliberation. Thus, as Gutmann says, “all educable children must be
educated” (Ibid, 45).
Gutmann’s point is not that the state has a greater interest than parents in
the education of our children. Instead, her point is that all citizens of the
state have a common interest in educating future citizens. Therefore, while
parents should have a say in the education of their children, the state
should have a say as well. Yet neither should have the final, or a
monopolistic, say. Indeed, these two interested parties should also cede
some of their educational authority to educational experts. There is,
therefore, a collective interest in schooling, which is why Gutmann finds
parental “choice” and voucher programs unacceptable.
But is conscious social reproduction the only aim of education? What

about shaping one’s private concerns? Isn’t educating the young to be
good persons also important? Or are the skills that encourage citizen
participation also the skills necessary for making personal life choices and
personal decision-making? For Gutmann, educating for one is also
educating for the other: “…[M]any if not all of the capacities necessary for
choice among good lives are also necessary for choice among good
societies” (p. 40). She goes even further: “a good life and a good society
for self-reflective people require (respectively) individual and collective
freedom of choice” (Idem). Here Gutmann is stipulating that to have
conscious social reproduction citizens must have the opportunity—the
freedom and the capacities—to exercise personal or self-reflective choice.

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Because the state is interested in the education of future citizens, all

children must develop those capacities necessary for choice among good
societies; this is simply what Gutmann means by being able to participate
in conscious social reproduction. Yet such capacities also enable persons
to scrutinize the ways of life that they have inherited. Thus, Gutmann
concludes, it is illegitimate for any parent to impose a particular way of
life on anyone else, even on his/her own child, for this would deprive the
child of the capacities necessary for citizenship as well as for choosing a
good life.
Gutmann’s position is that government can and must force one to

participate in an education for citizenship. Children must be exposed to
ways of life different from their parents’ and must embrace certain values
such as mutual respect. On this last point Gutmann is insistent. She argues
that choice is not meaningful, for anyone, unless persons choosing have
“the intellectual skills necessary to evaluate ways of life different from
that of their parents.” Without the teaching of such skills as a central
component of education children will not be taught “mutual respect among
persons” (Ibid, 30–31). “Teaching mutual respect is instrumental to
assuring all children the freedom to choose in the future…[S]ocial
diversity enriches our lives by expanding our understanding of differing
ways of life. To reap the benefits of social diversity, children must be
exposed to ways of life different from their parents and—in the course of
their exposure—must embrace certain values, such as mutual respect
among persons…” (Ibid, 32–33).
Yet what Gutmann suggests seems to go beyond seeing diversity as

enrichment. She suggests that children not simply tolerate ways of life
divergent from their own, but that they actually respect them. She is
careful to say “mutual respect among persons,” which can only mean that
neo-Nazis, while advocating an execrable way of life, must be respected
as persons, though their way of life should be condemned. Perhaps this is

a subtlety that Gutmann intended, but William Galston, for one, has come
away thinking that Gutmann advocates forcing children to confront their
own ways of life as they simultaneously show respect for neo-Nazis.
In our representative system, argues Galston, citizens need to develop “the

capacity to evaluate the talents, character, and performance of public
officials” (1989, p. 93). This, he says, is what our democratic system
demands from citizens. Thus he disagrees with Gutmann, so much so that
he says, “It is at best a partial truth to characterize the United States as a
democracy in Gutmann’s sense” (Ibid, p. 94). We do not require
deliberation among our citizens, says Galston, because “representative
institutions replace direct self-government for many purposes” (Idem).
Civic education, therefore, should not be about teaching the skills and
virtues of deliberation, but, instead, about teaching “the virtues and
competences needed to select representatives wisely, to relate to them
appropriately, and to evaluate their performance in office soberly” (Idem).
Because civic education is limited in scope to what Galston outlines

above, students will not be expected, and will not be taught, to evaluate
their own ways of life. Persons must be able to lead the kinds of lives they
find valuable, without fear that they will be coerced into believing or
acting or thinking contrary to their values, including being led to question
those ways of life that they have inherited. As Galston points out, “[c]ivic
tolerance of deep differences is perfectly compatible with unswerving
belief in the correctness of one’s own way of life” (Ibid, p. 99).
Some parents, for example, are not interested in having their children
choose ways of life. Those parents believe that the way of life that they
currently follow is not simply best for them but is best simpliciter. To
introduce choice is simply to confuse the children and the issue. If you
know the true way to live, is it best to let your children wade among
diverse ways of life until they can possibly get it right? Or should you

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socialize the children into the right way of life as soon and as quickly as
possible?
Yet what about the obligations that parents, as citizens, and children as
future citizens, owe the state? How can children be prepared to participate
in collectively shaping society if they have not received an education in
how to deliberate about choices? To this some parents might respond that
they are not interested in having their children focus on participation, or
perhaps on anything secular. What these parents appreciate about liberal
democracy is that there is a clear, and firm, separation between public and
private, and they seek to focus exclusively on the private. Citizenship
offers protections of the law, and it does not require participation. Liberal
democracy certainly will not force one to participate.
Yet both Galston and Gutmann want to educate children for “democratic
character.” Both see the need in this respect for critical thinking. For
Galston children must develop “the capacity to evaluate the talents,
character, and performance of public officials”; Gutmann seeks to educate
the capacities necessary for choice among good lives and for choice
among good societies. However much critical thinking plays in democratic
character, active participation requires something more than mere skills,
even thinking skills.
Yet both Galston and Gutmann want to educate children for “democratic
character.” Both see the need in this respect for critical thinking. For
Galston children must develop “the capacity to evaluate the talents,
character, and performance of public officials”; Gutmann seeks to educate
the capacities necessary for choice among good lives and for choice
among good societies. However much critical thinking plays in democratic
character, active participation requires something more than mere skills,
even thinking skills.

2.2 Social Capital
The concept of “social capital” was introduced by the sociologist James S.

Coleman to refer to the value that is inherent in social networks (see, e.g.,
Coleman, 1988). The political scientist Robert Putnam subsequently
argued that democracies function well in proportion to the strength of their
social capital (1994) and that social capital is declining in the United
States (2000). In his book Bowling Alone, Putnam explains, “Whereas
physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to
properties of individuals [such as their own skills], social capital refers to
connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of
reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. In that sense social
capital is closely related to what some have called ‘civic virtue.’ The
difference is that ‘social capital’ calls attention to the fact that civic virtue
is most powerful when embedded in a dense network of reciprocal social
relations” (Putnam 2000, p. 19).
A related idea is “collective efficacy,” as developed by the sociologist

Robert Sampson and colleagues. It is the use--or ability to use--social
networks to address common problems, such as crime. Sampson finds that
the level of collective efficacy strongly predicts the quality of life in
communities (Sampson, 2012).
If governments and communities function much better when people have

social networks and use them for public purposes, then civic education
becomes important and it is substantially about teaching people to create,
appreciate, preserve, and use social networks. A pedagogical approach like
Service Learning (see below) might be most promising for that purpose.
Elinor Ostrom won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for her
work on how people overcome collective action problems, such as the
Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons. These problems are

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endemic and serious, sometimes leading to environmental catastrophe and

war. Ostrom, however, discovered many principles that allow people to
overcome such problems. She wrote,
At any time that individuals may gain from the costly action of
others, without themselves contributing time and effort, they face
collective action dilemmas for which there are coping methods.
When de Tocqueville discussed the ‘art and science of association,’
he was referring to the crafts learned by those who had solved
ways of engaging in collective action to achieve a joint benefit.
Some aspects of the science of association are both
counterintuitive and counterintentional, and thus must be taught to
each generation as part of the culture of a democratic citizenry.
(Ostrom 1998)
Ostrom believed that these principles could be taught explicitly and

formally, but the traditional and most effective means for teaching them
were experiential. She argued that the tendency to centralize and
professionalize management throughout the 20th century had deprived
ordinary people of opportunities to learn from experience, and thus our
capacity to address collective action problems had weakened.
Along with her husband Vincent Ostrom, Elinor Ostrom developed the
idea of polycentric governance, according to which we are citizens of
multiple, overlapping, and nested communities, from the smallest
neighborhoods to the globe. Collective action problems are best addressed
polycentrically, not reserved for national governments or parceled out
neatly among levels of government. As president of the American Political
Science Association and in other prominent roles, Ostrom advocated civic
education that would teach people to address collective action problems in
multiple settings and scales.

2.3 Deliberative Democracy
Deliberative democracy is the idea that a legitimate political decision is

one that results from discussions among citizens under reasonably
favorable conditions. Proponents debate precisely what qualifies as
deliberation, but there is a general agreement that the discussion should be
inclusive, free, equitable, and in some sense civil. In practical terms,
deliberative democracy implies various efforts to increase the amount and
the impact of public discussions. The philosophical underpinnings derive
from the work of influential theorists including Jürgen Habermas, John
Rawls, Michael Sandel, and others of varying views. See Gutmann and
Thompson (1996) for an example of a sophisticated treatment that draws
on many earlier works.
For civic education, the implication of deliberative democracy is that

people should learn to participate in discussions, which may be both face-
to-face and “mediated” by the news media and social media. Concretely,
that means that people should develop the aptitude, desire, knowledge, and
skills that lead them to read and discuss the news and current events with
diverse fellow citizens and influence the government with the views that
they develop and refine by deliberation. Practices such as discussing and
debating current events in school seem especially promising.
2.4 Public Work
Harry C. Boyte (1996, 2004) argues for the centrality of work to

citizenship. We are not only citizens when we vote, read and discuss the
news, and volunteer after school or work--which are all unpaid, voluntary
activities. We are also citizens on the job; and even when we perform
unpaid service, we should see our contributions as work-like in the sense
that they are serious business. Citizens do not merely monitor and
influence the government (per the theory of deliberative democracy) nor

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serve other people in community settings (emphasized in the idea of social

capital); they also literally build, make, and maintain public goods. They
do so whether they work in the public, private, or nonprofit sectors, for
pay or not. Of course, they can work either well or badly, and a good
citizen is one who makes valuable contributions to the public good, or
builds “the commonwealth.”
The theory of public work suggests that civic education should be highly
experiential and closely related to vocational education. Young people
should gain skills and agency by actually making things together. A good
outcome is an individual who will be able to contribute to the
commonwealth through her or his work. Albert Dzur (2008), who holds a
kindred but not identical view, emphasizes the importance of revising
professional education so that professionals learn to collaborate better with
laypeople.
3. The Good Person

The qualities of the good citizen are not simply the skills necessary to
participate in the political system. They are also the virtues that will lead
one to participate, to want to participate, to have a disposition to
participate. This is what Rousseau was referring to when he described how
citizens in his ideal polity would “fly to the assemblies” (1988, 140).
Citizens, that is, ought to display a certain kind of disposition or character.
As it turns out, and not surprisingly, given our perspective, in a democracy
the virtues or traits that constitute good citizenship are also closely
associated with being a good or moral person. We can summarize that
close association as what we mean by the phrase “good character.”
It is the absence of these virtues or traits—that is, the absence of character

—that leads some to conclude that democracy, especially in the United
States, is in crisis. The withering of our democratic system, argues Richard

Battistoni, for one, can be traced to “a crisis in civic education” and the
failure of our educators to prepare citizens for democratic participation
(1985, pp. 4–5). Missing, he argues, is a central character trait, a
disposition to participate. Crucial to the continuation of our democracy “is
the proper inculcation in the young of the character, skills, values, social
practices, and ideals that foster democratic politics” (Ibid, p. 15); in other
words, educating for democratic character.
3.1 Good Persons and Good Citizens
Two groups predominate in advocating the use of character education as a

way of improving democracy. One group comprises political theorists
such as Galston, Battistoni, Benjamin Barber, and Adrian Oldfield who
often reflect modern-day versions of civic republicanism. This group
wishes to instill or nurture[7] a willingness among our future citizens to
sacrifice their self-interests for the sake of the common good. Participation
on this view is important both to stabilize society and to enhance each
individual’s human flourishing through the promotion of our collective
welfare.
The second group does not see democratic participation as the center, but
instead sees democratic participation as one aspect of overall character
education. Central to the mission of our public schools, on this view, is the
establishing of character traits important both to individual conduct (being
a good person) and to a thriving democracy (being a good citizen). The
unannounced leader of the second group is educational practitioner
Thomas Lickona, and it includes such others as William Bennett and
Patricia White.
Neither group describes in actual terms what might be called “democratic

character.” Though their work intimates such character, they talk more
about character traits important to human growth and well-being, which

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also happen to be related to democratic participation. What traits do these

pundits discuss, and what do they mean by “character”?
It is difficult, comments British philosopher R. S. Peters, “to decide what

in general we mean when we speak of a person’s character as distinct from
his nature, his temperament, and his personality” (1966, p. 40). Many
advocates of character education are vague on just this distinction, and it
might be helpful to propose that character consists of traits that are
learned, while personality and temperament consist of traits that are
innate.[8]
What advocates are clear on, however, is that character is the essence of
what we are. The term comes from the world of engraving, from the Greek
term kharakter, an instrument used for making distinctive marks. Thus
character is what marks a person or persons as distinctive.
Character is not just one attribute or trait. It signifies the sum total of
particular traits, the “sum of mental and moral qualities” (O.E.D., p. 163).
The addition of “moral qualities” to the definition may be insignificant, for
character carries with it a connotation of “good” traits. Thus character
traits are associated, if not synonymous, with virtues. So a good person
and, in the context of liberal democracy, a good citizen will have these
virtues.
To Thomas Lickona a virtue is “a reliable inner disposition to respond to

situations in a morally good way” (p. 51); “good character,” he continues,
“consists of knowing the good, desiring the good, and doing the good”
(Idem). Who determines what the good is? In general, inculcated traits or
virtues or dispositions are used “in following rules of conduct.” These are
the rules that reinforce social conventions and social order (Peters, p. 40).
So in this view social convention determines what “good” means.

This might be problematic. What occurs when the set of virtues of the
good person clashes with the set of virtues of the good citizen? What is
thought to be good in one context, even when approved by society, is not
necessarily what is thought to be good in another. Should the only child of
a deceased farmer stay at home to care for his ailing mother, or should he,
like a good citizen, join the resistance to fight an occupying army?
What do we do when the requirements of civic education call into question

the values or beliefs of what one takes to be the values of being a good
person? In Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education just such a case
occurred. Should the Mozerts and other fundamentalist Christian parents
have the right to opt their children out of those classes that required their
children to read selections that went against or undermined their faith? On
the one hand, if they are permitted to opt out, then without those children
present the class is denied the diversity of opinion on the reading
selections that would be educative and a hallmark of democracy. On the
other hand, if the children cannot opt out, then they are denied the right to
follow their faith as they think necessary.[9]
3.2 Spectrum of Virtues
We can see, therefore, why educating for character has never been
straightforward. William Bennett pushes for the virtues of patriotism,
loyalty, and national pride; Amy Gutmann wants to see toleration of
difference and mutual respect. Can a pacifist in a time of war be a patriot?
Is the rebel a hero or simply a troublemaker?[10] Can idealized character
types speak to all of our students and to the variegated contexts in which
they will find themselves?
Should our teachers teach a prescribed morality, often closely linked to

certain religious ideas and ideals? Should they teach a content only of
secular values related to democratic character? Or should they teach a

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form of values clarification in which children’s moral positions are

identified but not criticized?
These two approaches—a prescribed moral content or values clarification

—appear to form the two ends of a character education spectrum. At one
end is the method of indoctrination of prescribed values and virtues,
regardless of sacred or secular orientation. But here some citizens will
express concern about just whose values are to be taught or, to some,
imposed.[11] At the same time, some will see the inculcation of specified
values and virtues as little more than teaching a “morality of compliance”
(Nord, 2001, 144).
At the other end of the spectrum is values clarification,[12] but this seems
to be a kind of moral relativism where everything goes because nothing
can be ruled out. In values clarification there is no right or wrong value to
hold. Indeed, teachers are supposed to be value neutral so as to avoid
imposing values on their students and to avoid damaging students’ self-
esteem. William Damon calls this approach “anything-goes
constructivism” (1996), for such a position may leave the door open for
students to approve racism, violence, and “might makes right.”
Is there a middle of the spectrum that would not impose values or simply
clarify values? There is no middle path that can cut a swath through
imposition on one side and clarification on the other. Perhaps the closest
we can get is to offer something like Gutmann’s or Galston’s teaching of
critical thinking. Here students can think about and think through what
different moral situations require of persons. With fascists looking for
hiding Jews, I lie; about my wife’s new dress, I tell the truth (well,
usually). Even critical thinking, however, requires students to be critical
about something. That is, we must presuppose the existence, if not prior
inculcation, of some values about which to be critical.

What we have, then, is not a spectrum but a sequence, a developmental

sequence. Character education, from this perspective, begins with the
inculcation in students of specific values. But at a later date character
education switches to teaching and using the skills of critical thinking on
the very values that have been inculcated.
This approach is in keeping with what William Damon, an expert on

innovative education and on intellectual and moral development, has
observed: “The capacity for constructive criticism is an essential
requirement for civic engagement in a democratic society; but in the
course of intellectual development, this capacity must build upon a prior
sympathetic understanding of that which is being criticized” (2001, 135).
The process, therefore, would consist of two phases, two developmental

phases. Phase One is the indoctrination phase. Yet which values do we
inculcate? Perhaps the easiest way to begin is to focus first on those
behaviors that all students must possess. In fact, without first insisting that
students “behave,” it seems problematic whether students could ever learn
to think critically. Every school, in order to conduct the business of
education, reinforces certain values and behaviors. Teachers demand that
students sit in their seats; raise their hands before speaking; hand
assignments in on time; display sportsmanship on the athletic field; be
punctual when coming to class; do not cheat on their tests or homework;
refrain from attacking one another on the playground, in the hallways, or
in the classroom; be respectful of and polite to their elders (e.g., teachers,
staff, administrators, parents, visitors, police); and the like. The teachers’
commands, demands, manner of interacting with the students, and own
conformity to the regulations of the classroom and school establish an
ethos of behavior—a way of conducting oneself within that institution.
From the ethos come the requisite virtues—honesty, cooperation, civility,
respect, and so on.[13]

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Another set of values to inculcate at this early stage is that associated with
democracy. Here the lessons are more didactic than behavioral. One point
of civic education in a democracy is to raise free and equal citizens who
appreciate that they have both rights and responsibilities. Students need to
learn that they have freedoms, such as those found in Bill of Rights (press,
assembly, worship, and the like) in the U. S. Constitution. But they also
need to learn that they have responsibilities to their fellow citizens and to
their country. This requires teaching students to obey the law; not to
interfere with the rights of others; and to honor their country, its principles,
and its values. Schools must teach those traits or virtues that conduce to
democratic character: cooperation, honesty, toleration, and respect.
So we inculcate in our students the values and virtues that our society
honors as those that constitute good citizenship and good character. But if
we inculcate a love of justice, say, is it the justice found in our laws or an
ideal justice that underlies all laws? Obviously, this question will not arise
in the minds of most, if any, first graders. As students mature and develop
cognitively, however, such questions will arise. So a high-school student
studying American History might well ask whether the Jim Crow laws
found in the South were just laws simply because they were the law. Or
were they only just laws until they were discovered through argument to
be unjust? Or were they always unjust because they did not live up to
some ideal conception of justice?
Then we could introduce Phase Two of character education: education in

judgment. Judgment is based on weighing and considering reasons and
evidence for and against propositions. Judgment is a virtue that relies upon
practical wisdom; it is established as a habit through practice. Judgment,
or thoughtfulness, was the master virtue for Aristotle from whose exercise
comes an appreciation for those other virtues: honesty, cooperation,
toleration, and respect.

Because young children have difficulty taking up multiple perspectives, as

developmental psychologists tell us, thinking and deliberating that require
the consideration of multiple perspectives would seem unsuitable for
elementary-school children. Additionally, young children are far more
reliant on the teacher’s involvement in presenting problem situations in
which the children’s knowledge and skills can be applied and developed.
R. S. Peters offers an important consideration in this regard:
The cardinal function of the teacher, in the early stages, is to get

the pupil on the inside of the form of thought or awareness with
which he is concerned. At a later stage, when the pupil has built
into his mind both the concepts and the mode of exploration
involved, the difference between teacher and taught is obviously
only one of degree. For both are participating in the shared
experience of exploring a common world (1966, 53).
The distinction between those moving into “the inside” of reflective

thinking and those already there may seem so vast as to be a difference of
kind, not degree. But the difference is always one of degree. Elementary-
school students have yet to develop the skills and knowledge, or have yet
to gain the experience, to participate in phase- two procedures that require
perspectivism.
In this two-phased civic education teachers inculcate specific virtues such

as patriotism. But at a later stage this orientation toward solidifying a
conventional perspective gives way to one of critical thinking. The virtue
of patriotism shifts from an indoctrinated feeling of exaltation for the
nation, whatever its actions and motives, to a need to examine the nation’s
principles and practices to see whether those practices are in harmony with
those principles. The first requires loyalty; the second, judgment. We teach
the first through pledges, salutes, and oaths; we teach the second through
critical inquiry.

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Have we introduced a significant problem when we teach students to judge

values, standards, and beliefs critically? Could this approach lead to
students’ contempt for authority and tradition? Students need to see and
hear that disagreement does not necessarily entail disrespect. Thoughtful,
decent people can disagree. To teach students that those who disagree with
us in a complicated situation like abortion or affirmative action are wrong
or irresponsible or weak is to treat them unfairly. It also conveys the
message that we think that we are infallible and have nothing to learn from
what others have to say. Such positions undercut democracy.
Would all parents approve of such a two-phased civic education? Would

they abide their children’s possible questioning of their families’ values
and religious views? Yet the response to such parental concerns must be
the same as that to any authority figure: Why do you think that you are
always right? Aren’t there times when parents can see that it is better to
lie, maybe even to their children, than to tell the truth? This, however,
presupposes that parents, or authority figures, are themselves willing to
exercise critical judgment on their own positions, values, and behaviors.
This point underscores the need to involve other social institutions and
persons in character education.
4. Modern Forms of Civic Education

In the United States, most students are required to take courses on
government or civics, and the main content is essentially political science
for high school students. In other words, they use textbooks and other
written materials to learn about the formal structure and behavior of
political institutions, from local government to the United Nations
(Godsay et al., 2012). The philosophical justifications for this kind of
curriculum are rarely developed fully, but probably an underlying idea is
that citizens ought to play certain concrete roles--voting, monitoring the
news, serving on juries, petitioning the government--and to do so

effectively requires a baseline understanding of the political system.

Another implicit goal may be to increase young people’s appreciation of
the existing constitutional system so that they will be motivated to
preserve it.
Michael Rebell (2018) argues that both the United States Constitution and
most states’ constitutional provisions regarding public education provide
support for a right to adequate civic education. Specific policies should
result from a deliberative process to define the educational opportunities
that all students must receive and to select appropriate outcomes for civic
education – all overseen by a court concerned with assessing whether civic
education is constitutionally "adequate."
State standards are regulatory documents that affect the curriculum in

public schools. All 50 states and the District of Columbia have adopted
standards for civics as part of social studies (Godsay et al, 2012). The
College, Career, and Civic Life ("C3") Framework for Social Studies State
Standards (National Council for the Social Studies, 2013) provides a
general framework for states to use as they design or revise these
standards. It organizes civics – along with history, geography and
economics – into one "Inquiry Arc" that extends from "Developing
Questions and Planning Inquiries," to "Applying Disciplinary Concepts
and Tools," to "Evaluating Sources and Evidence," to "Communicating
Conclusions and Taking Informed Action." The Arc is presented as
applicable from kindergarten through high school, but with increasingly
demanding content. The logic of moving from question-generation to
(ultimately) action suggests an implicit theory of civic engagement.
In the subsequent sections, we examine some proposals for alternative

forms of civic education that are also philosophically interesting.
4.1 Service Learning

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Putting students into the community-at-large is today called “service-

learning.” It is a common form of civic education that integrates classroom
instruction with work within the community. Ideally, the students take
their experience and observations from service into their academic work,
and use their academic research and discussions to inform their service.
Jerome Bruner, the renowned educator and psychologist, proposed that

some classroom learning ought to be devoted to students creating political-
action plans addressing significant social and political issues such as
poverty or race. He also urged educators to get their students out into the
local communities to explore the occupations, ways of life, and habits of
residence. Bruner is here following Dewey, who criticized traditional
education for its failure to get teachers and students out into the
community to become intimately familiar with the physical, historical,
occupational, and economic conditions that could then be used as
educational resources (Dewey 1938, 40). Dewey warned of the “standing
danger that the material of formal instruction will be merely the subject
matter of the schools, isolated from the subject matter of life experience.”
This could be countered by immersing students in “the spirit of service,”
especially by learning about the various occupations within their
communities (1916, 10–11, 49).[14]
Empirical evidence suggests that experiential education may be most

effective for civic learning. “The reason, again, is that students respond to
experiences that touch their emotions and senses of self in a firsthand
way” (Damon, 2001, 141). Also, as Conover and Searing point out, “while
most students identify themselves as citizens, their grasp of what it means
to act as citizens is rudimentary and dominated by a focus on rights, thus
creating a privately oriented, passive understanding” (2000, 108). To bring
them out of this private and passive understanding, nothing is better, as
Tocqueville noted, than political participation. The kind of participation
here is political action, not simply voting or giving money. William

Damon concludes that the most effective moral education programs “are
those that engage students directly in action, with subsequent opportunities
for reflection” (2001, 144).
Another influence on service-learning is the theory of social capital,

described above. If a democracy depends on people serving one another
and developing habits and networks of reciprocal concern--and if that kind
of interaction is declining in a country like the United States--then it is
natural to encourage or require students to serve as part of their learning.
4.2 Action Civics
Some critics (e.g., Boyte and Kari, 1996) worry that the “service” in
“service-learning” reflects a narrow conception of citizenship that
overlooks power and agency and that encourages an undemocratic
distinction between the server and the served.
We can think of civic action as participation that involves far more than
serving, voting, working or writing a letter to the editor. It can take many
other forms: attending and participating in political meetings; organizing
and running meetings, rallies, protests, fund drives; gathering signatures
for bills, ballots, initiatives, recalls; serving on local elected and appointed
boards; starting or participating in political clubs; deliberating with fellow
citizens about social and political issues central to their lives; and pursuing
careers that have public value.
The National Action Civics Collaborative (NACC) unites organizations

that engage students in civic action as a form of civic learning. Service is
usually only one form of “action.” Some NACC members work in
schools, but similar practices are perhaps more common and easier to
achieve in independent, community-based organizations. Youth
Organizing is a widespread practice that engages adolescents in civic or
political activities. Levinson (2012) offers a philosophically sophisticated

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defense of a pedagogy that she calls “guided experiential civic education”

and argues for its place in public schools.
4.3 Civic Education through Discussion
Especially if one’s theory of democracy is deliberative (see section 2.4,

above), the core of civic education may be learning to talk and listen with
other people about public problems. That is a cognitively and ethically
demanding activity that can be learned from experience. The most
promising pedagogy is to discuss current events with a moderator--usually
the teacher--and some requirement to prepare in advance.
Debates are competitive discussions. Simulations (such as mock trials or

the Model UN) involve discussing issues from the perspective of fictional
or historical characters. And deliberations usually involve students
speaking in their own real voice and trying to find common ground.
Considerable evidence shows that moderated discussions of current,

controversial issues increase students’ knowledge of civic processes, their
skills at engaging with other people, and their interest in politics. See, e.g.,
Kawashima-Ginsberg and Levine (2014).
Hess (2009) and Hess & McAvoy (2014) argue for discussing current
controversies and explore some of the ethical dilemmas that arise for
teachers who do so. For instance, should a teacher disclose her or his own
views or attempt to conceal them to be a neutral moderator? What
questions should be presented as genuinely controversial? (Most people
would insist that slavery is no longer a controversy and should not be
treated as such. But what about the reality of climate change?)
4.4 John Dewey: School as Community
John Dewey argued that, from the 18th century onward, states came to see

John Dewey argued that, from the 18th century onward, states came to see
education as the best means of perpetuating and recovering their political
power. But “the maintenance of a particular national sovereignty required
subordination of individuals to the superior interests of the state both in
military defense and in struggles for international supremacy in
commerce…To form the citizen, not the ‘man,’ became the aim of
education” (1916, 90).
In a democracy, however, because of its combination of “numerous and

more varied points of shared common interest” and its requirement of
“continuous readjustment through meeting the new situations produced by
varied intercourse,” which Dewey called “progress,” education could
address personal development and “full and free interplay” among social
groups (Ibid, 83, 79). In other words, it is in democratic states that we
want to look for the preparation of good persons as well as good citizens;
that is, for democratic education, which in this context, to repeat for
emphasis, is what is meant by civic education.
Nowhere is there a better site for political or democratic action than the
school itself, the students’ own community. This is Dewey’s insight
(1916). Creating a democratic culture within the schools not only
facilitates preparing students for democratic participation in the political
system, but it also fosters a democratic environment that shapes the
relationships with adults and among peers that the students already engage
in. “Students learn much more from the way a school is run,” comments
Theodore Sizer, “and the best way to teach values is when the school is a
living example of the values to be taught” (1984, 120, 122).
Real problems, and not hypotheticals or academic exercises, are, Dewey

argued, always of real concern to students. So in addition to activities of
writing and classroom discussion, typical of today’s public schools,
students should engage in “active inquiry and careful deliberation in the

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significant and vital problems” that confront their communities, however

defined but especially their schools (1910, 55). Book lessons and
classroom discussions rarely connect with decision-making on issues that
affect that community. In fact, Dewey comments that traditional methods
of instruction are often “foreign to the existing capacities of the young…
beyond the reach of [their] experience…[T]he very situation forbids much
active participation by pupils” (1938, 19).
As a core of learning Dewey wanted “an experiential continuum” (1938,

28, 33). The experiences that he wanted to promote were those that
underscored healthy growth; those, in other words, that generated a greater
desire to learn and to keep on learning and that built upon prior
experiences. “[D]emocratic social experiences” were superior in providing
“a better quality of human experience” than any other form of social or
political organization (Ibid, 34).
One logical, and practical, possibility was to make the operations of the
school part of the curriculum. Let the students use their in-school
experiences to make, or help make, decisions that directly affect some of
the day-to-day operations of the school—student discipline, maintenance
of the grounds and buildings, problems with cliques, issues of sexism and
racism, incidents of ostracism, and the like—as well as topics and issues
inside the classrooms.
Dewey thought of schools as “embryo communities” (1915, 174),

“institution[s] in which the child is, for the time…to be a member of a
community life in which he feels that he participates, and to which he
contributes” (1916, 88). We need not become sidetracked in questioning
just what Dewey means by, or what we should mean by, “community” to
grasp the sense that he is after. It is not surprising that Dewey wanted to
give students experience in making decisions that affect their lives in
schools. What is surprising is that so little democracy takes place in

schools and that those who spend the most time in schools have the least
opportunity to experience it.
The significance of democratic decision-making within the schools and

about the wider community—the making of actual decisions through
democratic means—cannot be overstated. As a propaedeutic to democratic
participation, political action of this sort is invaluable. Melissa S. Williams
comments: “…[L]earning cooperation as a practice is the only way to
develop individuals’ sense of agency to reshape the world they share with
others. It teaches moderation in promoting one’s own vision, and the
capacity of individuals to see themselves as part of a project of collective
self-rule” (2005, 238; emphasis in original).
Of course, not everything in school should be decided democratically.

There are some areas in which decisions require expertise—a combination
of experience and knowledge—that rules out students as decision-makers.
Chief among such areas is pedagogy. Because the teachers and
administrators know more about the processes of education and about their
subjects, because they have firsthand and often intimate knowledge of the
range and nature of abilities and problems of their students—a point
emphasized by Dewey (1938, 56)—as well as the particular circumstances
in which the learning takes place, they and not the students should make
pedagogical decisions.
At the same time, because many students are still children, the decisions
that they are to make should be age-appropriate. Not all democratic
procedures or school issues are suitable for all ages. Differences in
cognitive, social, and emotional development, especially at the
elementary-school level, complicate democratic action. While all students
may have the same capacity as potentiality, activating those capacities
requires development, as noted in the discussion of a two-phased form of
civic education.

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Deweyan ideas about the school as a community live on in several kinds

of practice. First, in some experimental schools, students, teachers, and
parents actually govern democratically. In a Sudbury School (of which the
first was founded in Sudbury, Massachusetts in 1968), the whole
community governs the institution through weekly town meetings.
Much more common is to give students some degree of voice in the

governance of a school through an elected student government, student-
run media, and policies that encourage students to express their opinions.
Another very prevalent approach is to support and encourage students to

manage their own voluntary associations within a school: clubs, teams,
etc. Thomas & McFarland (2010) and others have found positive affects of
extracurricular participation on voting, and a plausible explanation is that
adolescents become active citizens by managing their own mini-
communities.
4.5 Liberation Pedagogy
In his critique of traditional pedagogy, Paulo Freire refers to teacher-

centered education as the “banking concept of education” (1970, 72). This
for Freire is unacceptable as civic education. Too often, observes Freire,
students are asked to memorize and repeat ideas, stanzas, phrases, and
formulas without understanding the meaning of or meaning behind them.
This process “turns [students] into ‘containers,’ into ‘receptacles’ to be
‘filled’ by the teacher” (Idem). As a result, students are nothing but
objects, nothing but receptacles to receive, file, and store deposits—that is,
containers for what the teacher has deposited in their “banks.”
Like Dewey, Freire thinks that knowledge comes only from invention and
reinvention and the perpetual inquiry in the world that is a mark of all free
human beings. Students thereby educate the teachers as well. In sharp
contrast, then, to the banking concept is “‘problem-posing’ education”

(Ibid, 79), which is an experiential education that empowers students by

educing the power that they already possess.
That power is to be used to liberate themselves from oppression. This

pedagogy to end oppression, as Freire writes, “must be forged with, not
for, the oppressed” (1970, 48; emphases in original), irrespective of
whether they are children or adults. Freire worked primarily with illiterate
adult peasants in South America, but his work has applications as well to
schools and school-aged children. It is to be a pedagogy for all, and Freire
includes oppressors and the oppressed.
To overcome oppression people must first critically recognize its causes.

One cause is people’s own internalization of the oppressor consciousness
[or “image,” as Freire says at one point (Ibid, 61)]. Until the oppressed
seek to remove this internalized oppressor, they cannot be free. They will
continue to live in the duality of both oppressed and oppressor. It is no
wonder, then, as Freire tells us, that peasants once promoted to overseers
become more tyrannical toward their former workmates than the owners
themselves (Ibid, 46). The banking concept of education precludes the
perspective that students need to recognize their oppression: “The more
students [or adults] work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less
they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their
intervention in the world as transformers of that world” (Ibid, 73).
Having confronted the reality of the dual nature of her consciousness,

having discovered her own internal oppressor and realized her actual
situation, the person now must act on her realization. She must act, in
other words, in and on the world so as to lessen oppression. Freire wanted
his students, whether adult peasants or a country’s youth, to value their
cultures as they simultaneously questioned some of those cultures’
practices and ethos. This Freire referred to as “reading the word”—as in
ending illiteracy—and “reading the world”—the ability to analyze social

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and political situations that influenced and especially limited people’s life
chances. For Freire, to question was not enough; people must act as well.
Liberation, therefore, is a “praxis,” but it cannot consist of action alone,

which Freire calls “activism.” It must be, instead, action combined with
“serious reflection” (Ibid, 79, 65). This reflection or “reflective
participation” takes place in dialogue with others who are in the same
position of realization and action.
This “critical and liberating dialogue,” also known as “culture circles,” is

the heart of Freire’s pedagogy. The circles consist of somewhere between
12 and 25 students and some teachers, all involved in dialogic exchange.
The role of the “teachers” in this civic education is to participate with the
people/students in these dialogues. “The correct method for a
revolutionary leadership…is, therefore, not ‘libertarian propaganda.’ Nor
can the leadership merely ‘implant’ in the oppressed a belief in freedom…
The correct method lies in dialogue” (Ibid, 67).
The oppressed thereby use their own experiences and language to explain
and surmount their oppression. They do not rely upon others, even
teachers, to explain their oppressed circumstances. “Through dialogue, the
teacher-of-the-students and the students-of the-teacher cease to exist and a
new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers” (Ibid, 80). The
reciprocity of roles means that students teach teachers as teachers teach
students. Dialogue encourages everyone to teach and everyone to create
together.
Because Freire worked with illiterate adult peasants, he insisted that the
circles use the ways of speaking and the shared understandings of the
peasants themselves. In the circles the learners identify their own
problems and concerns and seek answers to them in the group dialogue.
Dialogue focuses on what Freire called “codifications,” which are

representations of the learner’s day-to-day circumstances (Ibid, 114 and

passim). Codifications may be photographs, drawings, poems, even a
single word. As representations, codifications abstract the daily
circumstances. For example, a photograph of workers in a sugar cane field
permits workers to talk about the realities of their work and working
conditions without identifying them as the actual workers in the
photograph. This permits the dialogue to steer toward understanding the
nature of the participants’ specific circumstances but from a more abstract
position. Teachers and learners worked together to understand the
problems identified by the peasants, a process that Freire calls “decoding,”
and to propose actions to be taken to rectify or overturn those problems.
The circles therefore have four basic elements: 1) problem posing, 2)

critical dialogue, 3) solution posing, and 4) plan of action. The goal, of
course, is to overcome the problems, but it is also to raise the awareness,
the critical consciousness (conscientization), of the learners so as to end
oppression in their individual and collective lives. The increased critical
awareness enables learners to appropriate language without being
colonized by it.[15] Decoding allows participants “to perceive reality
differently…by broadening the horizon of perception…[It] stimulates the
appearance of a new perception” that allows for the transformation of the
participants’ concrete reality (Ibid 115).
“Finally,” comments Freire, “true dialogue cannot exist unless the

dialoguers engage in critical thinking…thinking which perceives reality as
process, as transformation, rather than as a static activity” (Ibid, 92).
True dialogue is for Freire what civic education must be about. If civic
education does not include it, then there is little hope that the future will
be anything for the oppressed but a continuation of the present. “Authentic
education is not carried on by ‘A’ for ‘B’ or by ‘A’ about ‘B,’ but by ‘A’
with ‘B’…” (Ibid, 93; emphases in original). Essential to such education

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are the experiences of the students, whatever their ages or situations.

Naively conceived humanism, part and parcel of so much traditional
education, tries “to create an ideal model of the ‘good man,’” but does so
by leaving out “the concrete, existential, present situation of real people”
(Idem). Therefore, traditional civic education, non-experiential civic
education that overlooks the importance of Freire’s praxis, fails for Freire
to raise either good persons or good citizens.
The Brazilian government has recognized Freire’s culture circles as a form

of civic education and has underwritten their use for combating illiteracy
among youth and adults (Souto-Manning, 2007).
5. Cosmopolitan Education
Cosmopolitanism is an emerging and, because of globalization, an
increasingly important topic for civic educators. In an earlier iteration,
cosmopolitan education was multicultural education. According to both,
good persons need to be aware of the perspectives of others and the effects
their decisions have on others. While multicultural good citizens needed to
think about the perspectives and plight of those living on the margins of
their societies and about those whose good lives deviated from their own,
good citizens in cosmopolitanism need to think, or begin to think, of
themselves as “global citizens” with obligations that extend across
national boundaries. Should and must civic education incorporate a global
awareness and foster a cosmopolitan sensibility?
Martha Nussbaum, for one, thinks so. Nussbaum argues that our first
obligation must be to all persons, regardless of race, creed, class, or
border. She does not mean that we ought to forsake our commitments to
our family, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens. She means that we
ought to do nothing in our other communities or in our lives that we know
to be immoral from the perspective of Kant’s community of all humanity

(1996, 7). We should “work to make all human beings part of our
community of dialogue and concern” (Ibid, 9). Civic education should
reflect that (Ibid, 11).
Philosopher Eamonn Callan, however, thinks otherwise. Callan wants to

avoid a civic education, and the pursuit of justice that underlies it, “that
gives pride of place to a cosmopolitan sensibility at the cost of
particularistic affiliations” (1999, p. 197). In Callan’s view our civic
education should be constructed ideally around the concept of “liberal
patriotism.” Although liberal patriotism is an “identification with a
particular, historically located project of political self-rule”—that is,
American liberal democracy—it nevertheless also “entails a sense of
responsibility to outsiders and insiders alike….” (Ibid, 198).
Of course, the danger here is that a liberal patriot may well feel a sense of
obligation or responsibility only when her country is committing the
injustice. Callan points out that it is “precisely the thought that ‘we
Americans’ have done these terrible things that gave impetus [during the
Vietnam war] to their horror and rage” (Idem). This thought is to be
contrasted with our feelings and sense of responsibility when, as Callan
suggests, Soviet tanks rolled through Prague. Because, according to
Callan, our politico-moral identity was not implicated in the Soviet action,
we somehow do not have to have a similar sense of horror and rage.
Perhaps we do not have to, but should we? Nussbaum’s point is that we
certainly should.
What, therefore, should civic education look like? Callan provides two
examples: Should we “cultivate a civic identity in which patriotic affinities
are muted or disappear altogether and a cosmopolitan ideal of ‘world
citizenship’ is brought” to the forefront? Or should we cultivate a kind of
patriotism “in which identification with a particular project of democratic
self-rule is yet attuned to the claims of justice that both civic outsiders and

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insiders” will make (1999, 198). It appears that Nussbaum would favor the
first, while Callan favors the second.
Perhaps these two are not the only options. In her metaphor of concentric
identity circles Nussbaum argues that we ought to try to bring the outer
circles of our relationships, the circle of all humanity, closer to the center,
to our selves and to our loved ones (1996, 9). By doing so, we do not push
out of our identities those particular relationships of significance to us.
Instead, we need to take into consideration the effects that our moral and
political decisions have on all of humanity. If our civic education helps us
extend our sympathies, as Hume proposed, and if we could do so without
paying the price of muting or eliminating our local and national affinities,
then would Nussbaum and Callan agree on such a civic education?
Additionally, we need to consider that patriotism itself seems to have its

own version of concentric circles. For example, Theodore Roosevelt
warned against “that overexaltation of the little community at the expense
of the great nation.” Here is a nod toward Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism”
as opposed to what he called “the patriotism of the village.”[16] If we
move from the village to the nation, then can’t we move from the nation to
the world? As Alexander Pope wrote in “An Essay on Man”: “God loves
from Whole to Parts; but human soul/Must rise from Individual to the
Whole/…Friend, parent, neighbor first it will embrace/His country next,
and next all human race.”
Is it ever too early to begin educating children about the cultures, customs,
values, ideas, and beliefs of people from around the world? Will this
undercut our commitment and even devotion to our own family,
neighborhood, region, and nation? No civic education must consist
exclusively either of love of one’s community and a patriotic affiliation
with one’s country or of preparation for world citizenship—a term that

implies, at the least, a world state. There ought to be a composite that will
work here.
If the purpose of civic education is to generate in the young those values

that underscore successful participation in our liberal democracies, then
the task facing educators, whether in elementary school, secondary school,
or post-secondary school, might be far easier than we imagine. There
seems to be a direct correlation between years in school and an increase in
tolerance of difference (Nie et al., 1996). An increase of tolerance can lead
to an increase of respect for those holding divergent views. Such increases
could certainly help engender a cosmopolitan sensibility. But does the
number of years in school correlate with a willingness to participate in the
first place? For example, the number of Americans going to college has
increased dramatically over the past 50 years, yet voting in elections and
political participation in general are still woefully low.
Perhaps public schools should not teach any virtue that is unrelated to the
attainment of academic skills, which to some is the paramount, if not the
sole, purpose of schooling. But shouldn’t all students learn not just the
skills but also the predispositions required to participate in the “conscious
social reproduction” of our democracies, as Gutmann argues? If our
democracies are important and robust, then do our citizens need such
predispositions to see the value of participation? And if we say that our
democracies are not robust enough, then shouldn’t our students be striving
to reinvigorate, or invigorate, our democratic systems? Will they need
infusions of patriotism to do that? If tolerance and respect are democratic
virtues, then do we fail our students when we do not tolerate or respect
their desires as good persons to eschew civic participation even though
this violates what we think of as the duties of good citizens?
As stated earlier, civic education in a democracy must prepare citizens to

participate in and thereby perpetuate the system; at the same time, it must

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prepare them to challenge what they see as inequities and injustices within
that system. Yet a civic education that encourages students to challenge
the nature and scope of our democracies runs the risk of turning off our
students and turning them away from participation. But if that civic
education has offered more than simply critique, if its basis is critical
thinking, which involves developing a tolerance of, if not an appreciation
for, difference and divergence, as well as a willingness and even eagerness
for political action, then galvanized citizens can make our systems more
robust. Greater demands on our citizens, like higher expectations of our
students, often lead to stronger performances. As Mill reminds us, “if
circumstances allow the amount of public duty assigned him to be
considerable, it makes him an educated man” (Ibid, 233).
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Other Internet Resources

Center for Civic Education, home of the educational programs “We
the People” and “Project Citizen.” Traditionally funded by the federal
government and thus interesting as an expression of official policies

Civic Education
toward civic education

Center for Democracy and Citizenship, affiliated with the University
of Minnesota and engaged in activist democracy through projects
involving public work.
CIRCLE or the Center for Information and Research on Civic
Learning and Engagement, based in Tufts University’s Jonathan M.
Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, this center promotes
research and projects on civic and political engagement of the young.
Close Up Foundation, which runs a Washington DC experiential
learning program for middle-school and high-school students.
Constitutional Rights Foundation, which focuses on educating
America’s youth about the importance of democratic participation.
Public Achievement, a civic engagement initiative that seeks to
involve the young in learning lessons of democracy by doing public
work.
Related Entries
character, moral | citizenship | cosmopolitanism | democracy | Dewey, John
| ethics: virtue | Mill, John Stuart | Rousseau, Jean Jacques
Notes to Civic Education

1. Civic education can also include any type of systematic process that
seeks to mobilize people politically, say through public interest or reform
groups or through trade or professional associations. As one example of
the efficacy of such civic education, see Steven E. Finkel’s “Civic
Education and the Mobilization of Political Participation in Developing
Democracies,” Journal of Politics 64, no. 4, 2002, 994–1020.
2. William Galston, “Civic Education and Political Participation,”

Community Matters: Challenges to Civic Engagement in the 21st Century,

Verna V. Gehring (Ed.), Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,

2005, p. 23. In 2001 William Damon observed: “Young people across the
world have been disengaging from civic and political activities to a degree
unimaginable a mere generation ago. The lack of interest is greatest in
mature democracies, but it is evident even in many emerging and troubled
ones. Today there are no leaders, no causes, no legacy of past trials or
accomplishments that inspire much more than apathy or cynicism from the
young.” “To Not Fade Away: Restoring Civil Identity Among the Young,”
in Ravitch and Viteritti 2001, p. 123.
3. In this section we refer to philosophers who discussed the education and

political participation of men and not of women. This is true of the works
of John Stuart Mill that we cite, but not, of course, of his The Subjection of
Women. In the sections dealing with modern and contemporary
philosophers we have changed the term “good men” to “good person” or
“good persons.”
4. In examining civic education in democracies, it is useful to focus on the

educational system of the longest continuous constitutional democracy—
the United States. Another advantage of this focus is that the educational
system in the United States developed alongside the growth of the republic
without having had to overthrow, as Tocqueville pointed out, a hereditary
and hierarchical system, including that system’s educational prejudices.
5. 1989, p. 189. Ironically, as Wolin points out, the power implied—which

is “remote, abstract, and virtually unseen”—“bore certain unfortunate
resemblances to the kind of power which the colonists had rejected less
than two decades earlier when they had rebelled against the authority of
the British Crown…” (Idem).
6. We take Dewey to mean by “democracy as a way of life” that

democracy creates and needs a democratic culture in which the values that

Civic Education
underlie democracy and the uses to which democratic processes can be put
are both pervasive. For perhaps the best exposition on democratic culture,
its nature and its limits, see Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in
America.
7. The terms used in describing teaching or education are significant. Both

the terms “instill” and “nurture” connote teaching of some kind. But each
also connotes a different concept of how that teaching begins. To instill or
to inculcate a desire suggests some outside force planting or impressing
that desire. Once planted, the desire is then nurtured or nourished. If we
begin, however, with the idea of nurturing that desire, then we might think
of the literal definition of education: to bring or lead forth or out of
(educare). In other words, nurture suggests a desire that is innate but that
needs to be developed and nourished; whereas a desire that is instilled is
put in from the outside. Most advocates of character education seem to
follow the “inculcation” model. Ultimately, however, where the teaching
begins is perhaps not as significant as how the teaching proceeds. That
process appears to be the same for character education. Whether the
condign desires or traits are instilled or nurtured, they need to be
developed.
8. For our purposes, and we speak here for the advocates of character
education as well as their critics, this distinction will suffice. It may be
problematic, however, because definitions of character often refer to
temperament or personality. The Oxford Etymological Dictionary, for
example, defines character as a “natural tendency or bent of mind,
especially in relation to moral or social qualities.” Its editors list
“temperament” as a synonym (p. 493).
9. For an extensive treatment of civic education and the Mozert case, see
Macedo, 2000, especially chapters six and seven.

10. Even the devil might be said to have some virtues, as Peters (op. cit.,
p. 43) wryly notes: “A Quaker lady was once told that she would find
something good to say even about the devil. To which she replied, ‘Well,
he is persistent.’” To this virtue we might add, on the devil’s behalf, the
virtues of consistency, industry, and imagination, all of which Peters
describes as character traits.
11. What’s the difference between character education and character

indoctrination? Indoctrination is a form of socializing persons into proper
behavior or socializing them to hold the “right” values. Education, on the
other hand, implies some critical distance from the topics so that persons
can reflect on different aspects of and on alternatives to what’s presented.
Indoctrination, which often carries a negative connotation, is not without
an important place in character education, or so I shall argue. Young
children need to be socialized before they can be critics.
12. In the mid-1970’s public-school teachers rated values clarification as

the most widely approved approach to teaching morals. See Macedo 2000,
122–25.
13. This is not to suggest that an ethos of this sort will not itself be
controversial. Pierre Bourdieu, for one, argues that when teachers demand
“good behavior” from their students, they are perpetuating a system of
domination by coercing students to take up pre-determined social and
political roles. At the same time, through such demands teachers reinforce
their authority and subordinate the students. See Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-
Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture, trans.
Richard Nice, (London: Sage Publications, 1990), 10.
14. Dewey, 1916/2004, 10–11, 49. See also Harry Boyte, 2004.
15. See Mariana Souto-Manning (2007). Souto-Manning cites L.

Chouliaraki and N. Fairclough, Discourse in Late Modernity, Edinburgh:

Civic Education
Edinburgh University Press, 1999 and N. Fairclough, Analysing

Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research, London: Routledge,
2004 for evidence of the distinction between appropriating language and
being colonized by it.
16. Theodore Roosevelt, “Religion and the Public Schools,” Collected

Works, 15; quoted in Macedo (2000), p. 93.
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pdf version of the entry

Edward N. Zalta Uri Nodelman Colin Allen R. Lanier Anderson

Library of Congress Catalog Data

Notice: This PDF version was distributed by request to mem-

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Nevertheless, most scholarship that uses the phrase “civic education”

Whether defined narrowly or broadly, civic education raises empirical

In what communities ought we see ourselves as citizens? The nation-

2 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

What responsibilities does a citizen of each kind of community have?

What is the relationship between a good regime and good

Who may decide what constitutes good citizenship? If we consider,

Fall 2018 Edition 3

to be good democratic citizens, but they can decide to do so in ways

What means of civic education are ethically appropriate? It might, for

These questions are rarely treated together as part of comprehensive

1. The Good Citizen: Historical Conceptions

4 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

4. Modern Forms of Civic Education

1. The Good Citizen: Historical Conceptions

1.1 Ancient Greece

Fall 2018 Edition 5

The ancient Greek city state or polis was thought to be an educational

Becoming such an asset necessitated internalizing and living up to the

Paideia was inseparable from another Greek concept: arete or excellence,

6 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

citizens. Therefore, the practice of Athenian democratic politics was not

1.2 Classical Liberalism

Ancient and medieval thinkers generally assumed that good government

Classical liberal thinkers, however, saw serious drawbacks to making good

Fall 2018 Edition 7

Thomas Hobbes is sometimes described as a forerunner of liberalism

Other classical liberal thinkers typically favored some degree of civic

8 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

argument for civic education. But it appeared in a minor, unpublished

Madison explained that republics should be designed for people of

Fall 2018 Edition 9

the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of

This policy of supplying by opposite and rival interests, the defect

1.3 Rousseau: Toward Progressive Education

Although ancient Athens instituted democracy, her most famous

Still, Rousseau recognized that life in society is unavoidable, and so civic

10 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Yet prescribing those rules is not a subjective or selfish act. It is a moral

Showing how to educate men to retain naturalness and yet to function in

How could a man for Rousseau be a good man—meaning, for him a

Rousseau himself seems ambivalent on exactly whether men can

Fall 2018 Edition 11

Still, Rousseau comments that if “[f]orced to combat nature or the social

Perhaps the contradiction might be resolved if we emphasize that a man

12 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

life itself—no interest in art or many books or intimate social

Whatever one thinks of Rousseau’s attempt to educate Emile—whether,

1.4 Mill: Education Through Political Participation

Mill argued that participation in representative government, or democracy,

Fall 2018 Edition 13

The occasion for discussing civic education as a method of both personal