importance of values to the society in civic education

April 26, 2024

Breaking News

Ignite athletic potential, grow with joy.

Ball-o-mania, Endless Fun

Understanding the Importance of Values Education in Modern Society

Values education is an essential aspect of a person’s growth and development. It refers to the process of teaching and learning about the principles and beliefs that guide an individual’s behavior and decision-making. In today’s modern society, values education has become more important than ever. With the rapid pace of change and the increasing complexity of social issues, it is crucial for individuals to have a strong foundation of values to guide them through life.

Values education is not just about teaching young people what is right and wrong. It is about helping them develop a deep understanding of their own beliefs and values, and how these can influence their actions and decisions. Through values education, individuals learn to respect the diversity of perspectives and beliefs, and to appreciate the importance of empathy and compassion in building strong relationships with others.

In this article, we will explore the importance of values education in modern society. We will discuss how values education can help individuals navigate the complexities of modern life, and how it can contribute to the development of a more just and equitable society. We will also examine some of the challenges and opportunities in implementing values education in different contexts, and highlight some best practices that can help ensure its success.

What is Values Education?

Definition and meaning.

Values education is the process of inculcating moral principles and ethical values in individuals. It is a holistic approach to education that aims to develop the whole person – the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. It involves the cultivation of virtues, character traits, and moral reasoning that will guide individuals in their interactions with others and their environment.

It is important to understand values education because it is a vital component of personal and social development. It shapes an individual’s worldview, attitudes, and behaviors, and influences their decision-making processes. In today’s complex and rapidly changing world, values education plays a crucial role in preparing individuals to navigate the challenges they will face and to contribute positively to society.

Values education is not limited to formal educational settings. It can occur in various contexts, such as family, community, and religious institutions. It is an ongoing process that continues throughout an individual’s life, as they encounter new experiences and form new relationships.

Different Approaches to Values Education

There are various approaches to values education that are employed in modern society. These approaches include religious and moral, secular and humanistic, and cultural and societal approaches.

Religious and Moral Approaches

Religious and moral approaches to values education emphasize the importance of religious teachings and moral values in shaping an individual’s character and behavior. These approaches often rely on religious texts and teachings to guide the development of values and ethics.

Secular and Humanistic Approaches

Secular and humanistic approaches to values education focus on the development of ethical and moral values without the influence of religious beliefs. These approaches often emphasize the importance of individual autonomy, critical thinking, and personal responsibility in shaping one’s values and beliefs.

Cultural and Societal Approaches

Cultural and societal approaches to values education recognize the influence of cultural and societal factors on the development of values and ethics. These approaches emphasize the importance of understanding and respecting cultural differences and social norms in shaping an individual’s values and beliefs. They also highlight the role of social institutions, such as family, education, and media, in shaping societal values.

The Benefits of Values Education

Personal development, self-awareness and self-esteem.

Values education plays a crucial role in promoting self-awareness and self-esteem among individuals. By exploring and understanding their own values, students develop a deeper understanding of themselves and their place in the world. This increased self-awareness helps them to recognize their strengths and weaknesses, which in turn fosters a sense of self-esteem and confidence. As a result, they are better equipped to navigate the challenges and opportunities that they encounter in their daily lives.

Responsibility and self-discipline

Values education also fosters a sense of responsibility and self-discipline in individuals. Through the exploration of ethical dilemmas and moral decision-making, students learn to take ownership of their actions and their impact on others. They develop a strong sense of personal accountability and learn to make choices that reflect their values. This sense of responsibility and self-discipline is essential for success in both personal and professional life.

Emotional intelligence and empathy

Finally, values education helps to develop emotional intelligence and empathy in individuals. By exploring the values of others and the impact of their own actions on others, students learn to understand and appreciate different perspectives. This develops their ability to empathize with others and to navigate interpersonal relationships with sensitivity and compassion. Emotional intelligence and empathy are essential skills for building positive relationships and for leading fulfilling and meaningful lives.

Social Development

Values education plays a crucial role in promoting social development by instilling essential life skills and promoting positive behaviors in individuals. The following are some of the benefits of values education in promoting social development:

Cooperation and Collaboration

Values education encourages individuals to work together and collaborate towards a common goal. It promotes teamwork and helps individuals to understand the importance of collective efforts in achieving success. Through values education, individuals learn to appreciate the contributions of others and to work towards a common objective.

Tolerance and Respect for Diversity

Values education also promotes tolerance and respect for diversity . In today’s society, people come from diverse backgrounds, and it is essential to understand and appreciate different cultures, beliefs, and values. Values education teaches individuals to respect and appreciate diversity, which is crucial for promoting social harmony and peace.

Civic Engagement and Social Responsibility

Values education also promotes civic engagement and social responsibility. It encourages individuals to take an active role in their communities and to be responsible citizens. Through values education, individuals learn about their rights and responsibilities as citizens and the importance of participating in the democratic process.

In conclusion, values education is essential in promoting social development by instilling essential life skills, promoting positive behaviors, and fostering cooperation, collaboration, tolerance, and respect for diversity. By promoting these values, individuals can contribute positively to their communities and society as a whole.

Educational Development

Values education plays a crucial role in the overall development of a student. It is important to understand the various benefits that values education can bring to the educational development of a student.

Academic Achievement and Critical Thinking

Values education can improve academic achievement by instilling a love for learning and a desire to seek knowledge. By developing critical thinking skills, students can analyze situations, make informed decisions, and solve problems effectively.

Creativity and Innovation

Values education encourages creativity and innovation by promoting self-expression, imagination, and creative thinking. This can lead to the development of new ideas and solutions to problems, which can benefit society as a whole.

Life Skills and Career Readiness

Values education also helps students develop essential life skills such as communication, collaboration, and empathy. These skills are essential for success in the workplace and can help students navigate their careers with confidence and success.

Challenges in Implementing Values Education

Integration into curriculum.

Integrating values education into the curriculum of modern society poses a significant challenge. The main issue lies in balancing values education with academic subjects. It is essential to strike a balance between the two, as students require a comprehensive education that encompasses both knowledge and values.

Moreover, overcoming resistance from parents and educators is another hurdle. Parents may argue that their children’s time is better spent on academic subjects rather than values education. Educators may also resist integrating values education into the curriculum due to a lack of resources or training.

However, despite these challenges, it is crucial to integrate values education into the curriculum . Values education can provide students with a strong foundation for their future success and help them become responsible citizens. Therefore, it is essential to find ways to balance values education with academic subjects and overcome resistance from parents and educators.

Ensuring Quality and Consistency

Ensuring quality and consistency in values education is a critical challenge that needs to be addressed. This is because the effectiveness of values education depends on the quality of the curriculum, the training of teachers and educators, and the assessment tools used. Here are some ways to ensure quality and consistency in values education:

Training Teachers and Educators in Values Education

Teachers and educators play a vital role in implementing values education. They are the ones who deliver the curriculum and help students develop values. Therefore, it is essential to train teachers and educators in values education to ensure that they have the necessary knowledge and skills to teach values effectively.

Training should focus on the following areas:

• Understanding the principles and concepts of values education
• Developing lesson plans and activities that promote values development
• Using appropriate teaching methods and strategies to engage students in values learning
• Creating a supportive classroom environment that encourages values development

Developing Standards and Assessment Tools

Developing standards and assessment tools is crucial to ensure that values education is of high quality and consistent across different schools and educational institutions. Standards provide a framework for designing and implementing values education programs. They help ensure that the curriculum is comprehensive, relevant, and effective in promoting values development.

Assessment tools, on the other hand, help measure the effectiveness of values education programs. They provide feedback on student learning and enable educators to adjust their teaching strategies to better promote values development. Assessment tools should be developed based on the standards and should measure the specific values and competencies that are being targeted in the curriculum.

In conclusion, ensuring quality and consistency in values education is essential to achieve its goals. By training teachers and educators in values education, developing standards and assessment tools, and providing appropriate resources and support, we can ensure that values education is effective in promoting the development of responsible and ethical individuals who can contribute positively to society.

Strategies for Effective Values Education

Holistic approach.

Incorporating values into all aspects of education is a crucial component of effective values education. This approach ensures that students are exposed to values in a comprehensive manner, which helps them to develop a holistic understanding of the importance of values in their lives. The following are some of the ways in which a holistic approach to values education can be implemented:

• Integrating values into the curriculum: One way to integrate values into all aspects of education is by incorporating them into the curriculum. This can be done by including lessons or activities that focus on specific values, such as honesty, respect, or responsibility. By incorporating values into the curriculum, students are exposed to them in a structured and intentional way, which helps to reinforce their importance.
• Incorporating values into extracurricular activities: Another way to integrate values into all aspects of education is by incorporating them into extracurricular activities. This can include sports teams, clubs, or other organizations that students can participate in. By incorporating values into these activities, students are exposed to them in a more informal setting, which can help to reinforce the importance of values in their lives.
• Emphasizing the connection between values and academic success: A holistic approach to values education also involves emphasizing the connection between values and academic success. By demonstrating how values such as responsibility, integrity, and perseverance can help students to achieve academic success, students are more likely to see the value in incorporating these values into their lives.

Overall, a holistic approach to values education is essential for ensuring that students are exposed to values in a comprehensive manner. By incorporating values into all aspects of education, students are more likely to develop a strong foundation of values that will serve them well throughout their lives.

Collaboration and Partnerships

Working with parents.

Parents play a crucial role in shaping their children’s values and beliefs. Therefore, it is essential to involve them in the values education process. This can be achieved by providing them with resources and tools to help them facilitate discussions on values with their children. Workshops and seminars can also be organized to educate parents on the importance of values education and how they can incorporate it into their daily lives.

Community Organizations

Community organizations, such as religious institutions, schools, and youth organizations, can also play a vital role in promoting values education. These organizations can provide a platform for children to learn about values and engage in discussions with their peers. Collaborating with these organizations can help create a comprehensive values education program that reaches a wider audience.

Government Agencies

Government agencies can also support values education by providing funding and resources for programs that promote values education. They can also work with schools and other organizations to develop curricula that incorporate values education. Collaborating with government agencies can help ensure that values education becomes a priority in the education system and that it is given the recognition it deserves.

Fostering Dialogue and Engagement

To ensure that values education is effective, it is important to foster dialogue and engagement among stakeholders. This can be achieved by organizing forums and discussions where parents, community organizations, government agencies, and educators can come together to share their ideas and perspectives on values education. By encouraging open dialogue, it is possible to create a shared understanding of the importance of values education and how it can be incorporated into various aspects of society.

Continuous Improvement and Evaluation

• Regularly reviewing and updating values education programs : To ensure that values education remains relevant and effective, it is essential to regularly review and update the programs and curriculum. This may involve assessing the needs of the students, the changing social and cultural context, and advances in research and best practices. By regularly updating the values education programs, educators can ensure that they are delivering the most relevant and impactful content to their students.
• Gathering feedback from students, parents, and educators : Effective values education requires ongoing evaluation and feedback from all stakeholders involved. This may involve soliciting feedback from students, parents, and educators to gauge the effectiveness of the program and identify areas for improvement. This feedback can be used to refine the curriculum, adapt teaching methods, and address any challenges or concerns that may arise. By actively seeking feedback from all stakeholders, educators can ensure that the values education program is responsive to the needs of the students and the community.

1. What is values education?

Values education is the process of inculcating and nurturing moral values, ethical principles, and social norms in individuals. It is a holistic approach to education that focuses on developing the character and personality of a person, rather than just imparting knowledge. Values education helps individuals understand the importance of moral values and ethical behavior in their personal and professional lives.

2. Why is values education important in modern society?

In today’s world, values education is more important than ever. The rapid pace of change and the increasing complexity of social issues require individuals who are equipped with strong moral values and ethical principles. Values education helps individuals develop a strong sense of social responsibility, empathy, and respect for others, which are essential for building a just and harmonious society. It also helps individuals make informed decisions and take appropriate actions in their personal and professional lives.

3. What are some of the key values that should be taught in values education?

Values education should include a broad range of moral values and ethical principles, such as honesty, integrity, respect, compassion, empathy, responsibility, and social justice. These values are essential for building a just and harmonious society, and they provide a framework for individuals to make informed decisions and take appropriate actions in their personal and professional lives.

4. How can values education be incorporated into the education system?

Values education can be incorporated into the education system in various ways, such as through curriculum development, teacher training, and extracurricular activities. It can be integrated into subjects such as history, literature, and science, and it can be taught through interactive activities, role-playing, and real-life examples. Schools and educational institutions can also collaborate with community organizations and local leaders to promote values education and create a supportive environment for students to learn and grow.

5. What is the role of parents and families in values education?

Parents and families play a crucial role in values education. They are the primary educators of their children and have a significant impact on their moral development. Parents can promote values education by setting a good example, providing guidance and support, and creating a positive family environment that encourages the development of moral values and ethical principles. They can also engage in family activities that promote values education, such as volunteering, community service, and discussions on social issues.

What is Values? What Is Values Education And Its Importance | Values Definition | Module 4 Lesson 1

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Civics Duty

• Posted November 8, 2023
• By Andrew Bauld
• K-12 School Leadership
• K-12 System Leadership
• Moral, Civic, and Ethical Education
• Teachers and Teaching

There’s a sign in Rebecca Park’s classroom that reads, “History is part of you, and you are part of history.” 

For some teachers, that message might be nothing more than an inspirational quote for students, quickly read and just as quickly forgotten. But for Park, Ed.M.’17, a 12th-grade humanities teacher, it speaks to her deeper philosophy when it comes to teaching social studies, one that was instilled in her as a member of the founding cohort of the Harvard Teacher Fellows Program. 

“For me, my job is to prepare students to be civically engaged, to be motivated to be engaged with both community activism and more traditional things like voting,” Park says. “But also, to deeply believe we can’t move forward without understanding the past. You can’t understand yourself if you don’t understand the past.” 

Park is lucky. For the last six years she’s taught at Leaders, a small Outward Bound high school in Brooklyn, New York, that emphasizes community- based and project-based learning, and so she’s been able to bring history and civics to life for her students beyond just dates and facts in a textbook.

Students have interviewed political candidates. They’ve written policy papers on issues that directly impact them. They’ve read classic novels to learn about the past and make connections to current events. 

But what’s happening is Park’s classroom is far from the norm in most American schools, where time for social studies has steadily been shrinking for years, pushed aside to focus on math and English language arts. In some states, new laws are making it illegal to even teach certain subjects related to history and civics. 

Coupled with COVID-related learning loss, it’s no wonder that the latest report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) had a bleak assessment: American students are failing in social studies. naep, often referred to as the Nation’s Report Card, saw eighth-grade civics and history scores sink to new lows, with just 13% of students demonstrating proficiency in history, and 22% in civics. 

“I think right now, many Americans rightly worry about the future of our democracy and our ability to work together as a nation to solve collective problems,” says Professor Martin West , who is also a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the Nation’s Report Card. “Ensuring that students have a solid foundation in history and civics is not the only thing we need to address those concerns, but it strikes me as an essential prerequisite for strengthening American democracy.” 

In an opinion piece for the Boston Globe , West wrote that the “ongoing erosion of student’s history and civics knowledge should sound alarm bells across the country.” 

But at a time when civic engagement has become increasingly polarized and toxic, and many educators are faced with restrictions on what they can even teach, will schools be able to heed that warning? 

Not Just COVID’s Fault 

In 2022, the average NAEP eighth-grade U.S. history score decreased by five points compared to 2018 and by nine points compared to 2014. Average scores also dropped across racial and ethnic groups, compared to four years before. And while scores dropped, the percentage of students who fell below the naep’s “basic” achievement level increased, rising from 34% in 2018 to 40% in 2022. 

Even in high-performing districts, the gaps in student knowledge when it comes to history are shocking, educators say. Spike Sommers, Ed.M.’22, found that out firsthand this past year, his first teaching eighth-grade social studies in Brookline Public Schools, a high-achieving district less than four miles from Harvard. 

During a discussion about the Thirteenth Amendment, Sommers asked his students to imagine what life was like at the time for Black Americans in the 19th century. He quickly realized that was too advanced a question for many students, who he said, “had no idea what the Civil War was, or they conflated it with the American Revolution, or thought Martin Luther King Jr., was involved with it. I realized I couldn’t assume students had a historical basis for the things we were talking about.” 

It’s not just scores and knowledge that have slipped. Compared to 2018, this year also marked a decline in the percentage of eighth-grade students who reported taking a class mainly focused on U.S. history, while elementary teachers report they lack the support to teach social studies well. 

To understand how we got to this point, it helps to know the history of social studies education in this country. 

There’s no doubt that the pandemic had an adverse effect on student performance in history and civics scores in 2022, but, West says, “it would be a mistake to reduce the issue to the pandemic alone." While civic scores fell for the first time since the naep test began in 1998, history scores have been falling for nearly a decade and fell by a similar amount between 2014 and 2018. 

“Over a much longer period, we know that there have been pretty substantial declines in instructional time elementary school teachers report devoting to history, social studies, [and] civic content, and that’s a consequence in part to an accountability system that focuses almost entirely on students’ math and reading achievement,” West says. 

Researchers began to observe what they call the “social studies squeeze” in 2007, a result of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which required, by law, that states test students in reading and math, but not in other content areas. Without the pressure of high-stakes testing, schools slowly began reducing their emphasis on instructional time for other subjects, including social studies. 

“I think right now, many Americans rightly worry about the future of our democracy and our ability to work together as a nation to solve collective problems. Ensuring that students have a solid foundation in history and civics … strikes me as an essential prerequisite for strengthening American democracy.” Professor Martin West

“We know when you don’t test, the time investment shrinks,” says Professor Danielle Allen , director of the Democratic Knowledge Project (DKP), an initiative of Harvard’s Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics. But, she adds, this de-emphasis goes back even further than NCLB. 

“We have a 70-year story of disinvestment” in civics and history, she says, a trend that began during World War II with an increased investment in stem research, and has continued to today, with the federal government spending a little more than $50 per student for stem versus five cents for civics, according to research from the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools. 

Those sidelining actions now echo across the latest naep scores, where students are unable to answer some of the most basic questions related to the foundations of the American political system or the historic events that have gotten us to where we are today. But, even if these low naep scores do serve as a wakeup call, that warning is coming at possibly the worst time. 

“When we need more robust civic education with young people to help foster the democratic attitudes to safeguard democracy is at the very time when teachers feel under threat if they attempt to do so,” says Professor Meira Levinson , whose forthcoming book, Civic Contestation in Global Education , will be out in 2024. 

Since 2021, 18 states have imposed bans on certain classroom discussion topics, including race and gender. Some have gone even farther. In 2021, Texas passed legislation to not only block teaching lessons about racism or sexism, but also included a provision that outlawed assignments involving communication between students and federal, state, or local officials. 

These limitations are restricting what teachers can teach, especially when it comes to social studies. A recent report by the rand Corporation, Walking on Eggshells, found that one in four teachers changed their curriculum or instruction because of state and district restrictions. In July of this year, the Florida State Board of Education approved new social studies standards that included language about how “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Not only are students receiving a censored version of history, but they are also losing out on the chance to discuss controversial topics, a critical component in the development of their civic skills. 

“Whatever we are doing in our schools, it is insufficient to meet the very real and high stakes demands of the current moment where we need more informed, more engaged, more skillful citizens with the right kinds of dispositions, not toward violence but toward using non-violent tools, to try and collectively identify real problems together,” Levinson says. 

Experts have some solutions. End-of-year history and civics tests might improve results, as “research shows teachers spend more time on social studies in states that include the subject in their testing programs,” according to West. Infrastructure — meaning the policies that support teachers' instructional practices and student learning — for social studies is also severely lacking in most states and at the district level, according to another rand report. Creating more consistent frameworks and providing more support, including teacher evaluation and professional development, could go a long way in holding schools more accountable for student achievement in social studies. 

But in addition to these more traditional interventions, educators and experts are also beginning to rethink what civics and history education can look like in 21st-century classrooms, and some promising changes are taking place right here in Massachusetts. 

Leading the Change 

It’s fitting that the birthplace of the American Revolution might serve as a model for turning the tide of failing social studies instruction. 

In 2018, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education revised its history and social science standards, placing a greater emphasis on civics and introducing a new yearlong eighth-grade civics course. The legislation also passed a law that requires all students in eighth grade and high school to lead a schoolbased civics project. 

West believes the state can be an example for the rest of the country in how to prepare students to better understand history and become active civic participants. It’s a good start to reversing decades of neglect when it comes to teaching history and civics, but, unfortunately, it’s targeted primarily at improving grades. There’s still a deep disillusionment amongst young people and how they feel about American democracy that extends beyond the classroom. 

According to the Democratic Knowledge Project, fewer than 30% of people under 40 believe it is essential to live in a democracy, while 1 in 4 young people believe choosing leaders through free elections is unimportant. 

But Allen and the project’s staff are trying to change that attitude. One of the group’s many initiatives includes an eighth-grade civics curriculum called “Civic Engagement in Our Democracy.” Co-created by the DKP along with eighth-grade educators in Cambridge Public Schools in 2019, the curriculum has since been piloted by dozens of educators around Massachusetts. In 2021, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education recognized the curriculum as one of just four year-long civics curriculum that met state standards.

“To have that civic identity is to figure out what you value, and connect that to the many roles in being part of a civic society, like voting, holding elected office, and working on local committees, and also with those outside civic institutions, like protests,” says Allen. “Our hope is to help young people reclaim one of those civic roles for themselves and reclaim an ownership stake in our democracy.” 

Through project-based activities and projects, students learn about history while also developing their civic identity by reflecting on their own personal values to better understand the potential civic roles available to them. 

Audrey Koble teaches eighth-grade English and civics at Brooke Roslindale Charter School in Boston. She piloted the DKP curriculum last year and says the work around student identity was powerful. 

“It made it clear that you have to understand yourself to understand how a government can work for you,” Koble says. 

That initial work laid the foundation for students to create impactful civic-minded projects at the end of the school year. Students attended local government board meetings and spoke with local political and business leaders, including Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. And their projects reflected ideas for real problems facing students, like one in which students proposed a new mbta subway route to address a lack of service between the Orange Line and the Green Line. 

Koble says thanks to the curriculum and their final projects, she feels confident her students are headed to high school with a stronger understanding of themselves and their place in their democracy. “They know some politicians are out there with their best interests in mind, and that they have the ability to reach out to them,” Koble says. “I didn’t understand that until well into my 20s, and for them to understand that at 13 and 14 years old is incredible.” 

Spike Sommers also piloted the  DKP curriculum at his school in Brookline, and despite needing to fill in some gaps for students, he found the curriculum very powerful, especially in the way that it “used the social studies to make the civics understandable and contextualized, while the social studies really came alive because you see how relevant it is today.” 

One unit, in particular, highlighted that relationship, where students learned about Prince Hall, a Black abolitionist leader in Boston who began a petition campaign to end slavery in 1773. Using his writings as primary sources, students went on to write their own petitions, from adding more gender-neutral bathrooms at their school to changing the school start time. 

That’s not to say the curriculum or the new framework are perfect. Sommers found the end-of-year civics project particularly challenging. Even with supports built into the DKP curriculum, Sommers says students often felt overwhelmed with leading a project on their own, and even he felt buried at times trying to keep track of more than 80 unique projects, the quality of which varied widely from student to student. 

Civics Education That Works 

Lecturer Eric Soto-Shed recognizes the challenges of bringing impactful civics learning into classrooms. Although he’s encouraged by the work at both the state level and by organizations like the DKP, he’s working to help make it easier for teachers to assess civics skills and competencies and make sure students across classrooms can have consistent, meaningful experiences. 

Along with Jack Schneider, an education professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Soto-Shed is working on a research project to identify what exactly it looks like to be an engaged citizen and to codify those skills into resources to support students and teachers . 

“If we want to put curriculum into the classroom, we first need to identify the civic thinking actions we want students to do,” Soto-Shed says. “There’s a lot of good curriculum out there and research informed by philosophy and theory, but Jack and I were interested in the cognitive moves that engaged citizens do when they are participating in some kind of civic action.” 

“When we need more robust civic education with young people to help foster the democratic attitudes to safeguard democracy is at the very time when teachers feel under threat if they attempt to do so.” Professor Meira Levinson

Taking inspiration from the Reading Like a Historian curriculum developed by the Stanford History Education Group, which taught students how to approach history through the same skills as professional historians, Soto-Shed is planning to do the same for civics. 

In a recent research paper called Teaching Students to be Skilled Citizens , Soto-Shed and his co-authors surveyed 100 experts, including professors, elected officials, and nonprofit civic leaders, along with 500 regular citizens to come up with some main areas of civic involvement, including politically engaged activities like voting and activism, and a broader category called neighborliness, which covers interpersonal tasks like volunteering, helping others, and communicating across differences. 

Soto-Shed says by identifying how people engage in these tasks, he hopes it will be easier for schools to integrate civics learning. “What we’re hoping to do with our research is help schools and states and districts be intentional about the civic skills we really need to care about, what the tasks are for students to demonstrate those skills, and how they can be taught,” he says. 

And by identifying the tasks, he also thinks it will allow districts to build those civic competencies into many different parts of the curriculum through interdisciplinary lessons and activities. 

“Look at volunteering, or neighborliness, those are things that can cut across curriculum,” Soto-Shed says. “I think part of the challenge is that civics is broadly defined and can live in many different parts of the curriculum, so having concrete tasks for where and how and when they are taught will help districts be more systematic about it.” 

West also believes that getting creative about how to fit in civics during the school day can be another solution to improving civics learning. 

“I think it’s a mistake to think about instructional time in schools as a zero-sum game where different subjects need to compete for time,” West says. One of the most obvious ways is by incorporating history and civics content into English language arts classes. 

Rebecca Park does that with her students in Brooklyn. During a unit on New York City, Park had her students read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn . At the same time, they researched the historical setting of the novel to learn more about political corruption, poverty, and women’s rights, and how those issues impacted the literary characters. For another project, students read Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and connected past moral panics with today’s controversies over issues like critical race theory. 

Interdisciplinary projects like these don’t just benefit history learning, either. Studies, including one conducted recently by Professor James Kim called Models of Reading Engagement, show that increasing background knowledge in social studies and science also improves student reading comprehension. 

Another way teachers can make civics more exciting for students is by making it more accessible. While learning about the Constitution and the presidency are important, they can also feel very distant for students, especially eighth-graders. But learning about local government and the impact it has on their lives can feel much more relevant to students. Plus, it’s a lot easier to get a local politician to speak with students than say the president of the United States. 

During the 2021 New York City Council election, Park took advantage of online learning to virtually invite nearly a dozen candidates to speak with her class. In preparation, students created rubrics about the qualities that would make the best council member and used them to interview each candidate. 

“We have to balance the fundamentals they need to know with giving them an access point to make them curious to access more information rather than just starting with Article 1 of the Constitution,” says Park. “I think it’s important that civic curriculum starts with local government or local activism to give kids the motivations to get through the drier stuff.” 

But teaching for student engagement doesn’t mean sacrificing learning the fundamentals of history or civics. Soto-Shed says even when teachers give students the freedom to choose any action project they want, they can still learn about and show their understanding of policies and systems of democracy by justifying their project choices. 

“If a student wants to organize a protest, have them talk about why a referendum might not work, or if they want to do a social media campaign, who in the government do they think really needs to hear it,” Soto-Shed says. “Justify the action and really draw on the knowledge of the issue and of the system. That can be a powerful way to make sure students are learning the nuts and bolts while also being engaged in passionate work.”

Andrew Bauld, Ed.M.’16, is a writer based in New York City. His last piece for Ed. was on what’s lost when colleges compete .

How to Help Kids Become Skilled Citizens

An exploration of ways in which educators can instill civic identity in students

• Families and Community
• Informal and Out-of-School Learning
• Learning Design and Instruction

Ed. Magazine

The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Related Articles

Active citizenship requires a broad set of skills, new study finds

Navigating Tensions Over Teaching Race and Racism

14 Reasons Why Teaching Civics is Important Right Now

February 14, 2022

Teaching civics prepares students to be informed and engaged members of society. Students who experience high-quality civic education are more likely to complete college and develop employable skills (including communications and public speaking skills), vote and discuss policy issues at home, and volunteer and work on community issues. 

However, prioritizing civics in the classroom can be difficult. According to research from The Brookings Institution , schools have reallocated instructional time from social studies toward key tested subjects, often prioritizing reading and math . This has become even more pronounced as class time has been disrupted by the ongoing pandemic. Teachers spend what time they do have in the classroom trying to catch students up and prepare them to meet grade-level requirements by the end of the year.

But teaching civics remains at least as important as ever, in preparing students to take their place in shaping our government and society now and long into the future.

Why make teaching civics a priority? We posed this question to iCivics Educator Network teachers and our staff members, and they responded with the following:

• As we approach 250 years of America’s independence, there is no better time to teach civics. Instilling the principles and virtues of our democratic society will prepare future generations to lead us through the rest of the 21st century. -Michael Reyes, Youth Fellowship Community Lead, iCivics  
• The reason for teaching civics has always been about helping to inspire the next generation to be active and productive citizens. -Janet Wills, iCivics Educator Network Teacher  
• Teaching civics helps students connect past and present in order to be informed voters. It helps students make meaning of current events and reassures them that nationally and internationally, there is precedent for solving modern issues. Civics also helps students engage in critical thinking and writing, which engages those 21st century skills that will be essential in their future. In examining civics, we cultivate empathy. -Amanda Setters, Curriculum Associate, iCivics  
• Civics is the language of the citizenry. It’s how we communicate and plan and execute the change we desire. When people aren’t prepared to find this voice, ask these questions, and learn their role in the community and the democracy, they miss out on a major opportunity to be part of something meaningful—and they resign that power, those decisions, to someone else. The returns on civic education, or lack of it, are cumulative and transformative. -Christian Swagger, Educator Network Teacher  
• Civics is a shared reality. Regardless of where people fall on the current divide du jour, we are all a part of something bigger than ourselves. Civic skills have to endure, and they have to be taught. -Carrie Ray-Hill, Senior Director of Digital Learning, iCivics  
• No matter what plans students have for life after high school—whatever their career plans, however they may continue their education—all students will be members of communities where they will need agency to raise their voices and make an impact. Civics teaches skills, knowledge, and disposition that will be needed by all. -Shannon Salter, iCivics Educator Network Teacher  
• Civic education is important because it is the passport to the future. The future belongs to those who prepare and educate themselves today. -Angela Clay, Educating for American Democracy Curriculum Associate, iCivics  
• Understanding civics empowers change. The founders intentionally created a system that could endure by allowing citizens to make changes that could benefit society as a whole. -Beth Doman Doughty, iCivics Educator Network Teacher  
• In a digital age, it is easy to have knowledge of all of the wrong things. Teaching civics allows students to learn valuable skills that are conducive to critical thinking. It helps students understand how important decisions have molded the country and continue to set precedents as time goes on. I think the statement of "history repeats itself," applies beautifully here in a sense that knowledge allows for personal action to prevent further repetition. -Niko Garcia, Curriculum Intern, iCivics  
• I like to think of teaching civics as giving students the opportunity to practice civic skills they are going to need when it becomes their turn to play in the real game. -Tia Costello, iCivics Educator Network Teacher  
• At its root, civics is about how we all live together, as different as we all are from each other. To do civics well, everybody needs practice, just as we all do in learning to read, write, do math, and cook a decent meal. -David Buchanan, Director of Massachusetts Programs, iCivics  
• Everyone needs civics. It is the fabric of civilization. Contributing to the advancement of one’s community and society and understanding how to navigate through the perils and roadblocks is of the utmost importance if we want to continue to govern ourselves in a productive manner. -Kymberli April, iCivics Educator Network Teacher  
• A government "of the people" can only exist if the people understand how their government works, and are willing to participate in it. Teaching civics is the pathway for meeting both of those goals. -Lora DeSalvo, Curriculum Associate, iCivics  
• Civic education has massive cross-partisan appeal as a solution to what ails our democracy. The public overwhelmingly agrees that our country needs K-12 civic education! -Abbie Kaplan, Federal Policy Associate, iCivics

On the iCivics blog, multiple perspectives contribute to the public conversation about civic education in the United States. Each contributor represents their own opinion. We welcome this diversity of perspectives. Responses in this blog post have been edited for brevity and clarity.

• Carsey Stories: Local Community Development
• Carsey Stories: From Ukraine to Durham
• Carsey Stories: Community Capstone Project
• Carsey Stories: Expanding Horizons
• Carsey Stories: A Degree for Working Professionals
• Carsey Stories: Careers in Nonprofit Management
• Carsey Stories: Different Perspectives
• Master of Global Conflict and Human Security (Online)
• Carsey Stories: A Flexible Degree Program
• Carsey Stories: A Calling to Civic Leadership
• Carsey Stories: Earning Your Degree Your Way
• Carsey Stories: Leveraging Education for a Late-Career Move
• Carsey Stories: Serving Others Through Affordable Housing
• Carsey Stories: Building Skills
• Carsey Stories: It's All Worth It!
• Carsey Stories: Communicating Policy
• Carsey Stories: Say "Yes!" to Opportunity
• Carsey Stories: Sustainable Solutions
• Carsey Stories: Just Do It!
• Carsey Stories: Representing
• Carsey Stories: Intern Working Against Internment in Washington, D.C.
• Carsey Stories: Dreams Fulfilled
• Master in Public Policy and Juris Doctor Dual Degree MPP/JD
• Accelerated Masters
• Executive Education
• Continuing Education
• Grad Certificate Programs
• Changemaker Collaborative
• The Judge William W. Treat Fellowship
• Governor John G. Winant Fellowship
• Master in Public Policy Fellowships
• S. Melvin Rines Fellowship (MCD Students)
• Meet Our Alumni
• Meet Our Students
• Meet Our Faculty
• 2023 Washington, D.C., Colloquium Highlights
• Master in Community Development Capstone Projects
• Master of Public Administration Capstone Projects
• Recorded Information Sessions
• Upcoming Information Sessions
• Online Experience
• Application Checklist: How to Apply
• City of Concord Employee Award
• Coverdell Fellowship Award
• First Responders Education Award
• Inclusiv Education Award
• LISC Employee Award
• NALCAB Education Award
• National Development Council Award
• NeighborWorks Award
• OFN Employee Award
• Segal AmeriCorps Match Award
• City Year Award
• Semester in the City Award
• The Washington Center Award
• Schedule a Campus Visit
• Center for Impact Finance
• Center for Demography
• New Hampshire Preschool Development Grant Project
• New Hampshire Listens
• Local Civic Health Guide
• School Funding Study
• FedGovSpend Explorer
• Tracking Changes in the North Country
• What is New Hampshire?
• New Hampshire Civic Health Index
• Research Webinars
• Publications
• Carsey Policy Hour
• Carsey Blog
• Newsletters
• Social Media
• For the Media
• Getting to Carsey
• Collaborating with Carsey

Like us on Facebook         Follow us on Twitter   Follow us on Twitter  

P: 603-862-2821 E: [email protected]

What Is Civic Education and Why Is It Important?

In the United States, civic education is often focused on knowledge of government. Students are taught the many structures of government and the procedures within those structures. Their understanding of civics is evaluated based on whether they can name the three branches of government, their representatives in Congress, and their state governor. By these measurements, the current state of civic education is lacking.

Only 56% of Americans can name all three branches of government, according to the 2021 Annenberg Civics Knowledge Survey , and that’s up from a mere 26% in 2016. A 2018 Johns Hopkins survey found that a third of Americans couldn’t name their governor and that 80% couldn’t name their state legislator, among other information about state government.

It’s tempting to say the meaning of civic education is to teach information about government. Students must be informed about the structures of their government to understand it. If they don’t know who their leaders are, it seems natural that they also don’t know what those leaders are doing.

Yet knowledge of government structures, while important, doesn’t really tell the whole story. One should empathize with the student – the federal government alone is built from countless structures and procedures, each one more complicated than the last. Factor in state and local governments and that’s a lot to remember. Knowing the three branches is basic stuff, but it makes some sense why people who don’t use that information daily wouldn’t have it offhand. Besides – most information can be found through a search engine. It’s trivially easy for anyone to look up the three branches of government if they can’t remember. They can just do that when they need it. So the important question isn’t “Why don’t they know?”

It’s “Why don’t they need it?”

The Gap Between Policy and Government

Ask Americans to name the three branches of government and 20% won’t be able to name a single one . Ask them if they approve or disapprove of Congress and only 3% won’t have an opinion . How can you disapprove of Congress without being aware of the legislative branch?

The answer is that Americans still care about policy. Ask them what they think is the most important problem facing their country, and only 3% say they have no opinion . 97% of Americans do have an opinion, but somehow that doesn’t always translate into learning procedure. There’s a disconnect somewhere between caring about policy and understanding the government that decides it.

Therein lies the importance of civic education. A civically minded person must be able to relate their opinions about policy with the actual procedures by which policy is decided. They should know the three branches of government not because they have them memorized, but because they understand that any policy that becomes law needs to be written, executed, and evaluated separately. Bridging the gap between individual policy preference and the government that enacts policy is a critical first step towards quality civic engagement, and the first step towards that is to recognize what civic engagement is – participating as a member of a collective.

Government structures exist because they allow for collective decision-making. The reason to work within those structures, especially in a democracy, is as an effective method of elevating one’s own voice while respecting the voices of others. When those structures no longer feel connected to participating in the national conversation, when policymaking begins to feel out of reach for everyday citizens and trust in government sinks close to all-time lows , that’s when people stop caring to remember the three branches. Why bother?

Teaching Civic Engagement

For civic education to have meaning, one must teach students to feel empowered to make a difference in their government. That means demonstrating respect. Good civic programs work to teach students that they are valued by the social structures they live in, and that if they aren’t being valued then something needs to change. Working outside the structure of government through civil disobedience is still a form of civic engagement.

Coffee & Conversations: Policy Education for Civic Engagement – Feb. 16, 2022

For our February 2022 Coffee & Conversations , we were joined by educator Stephen Pimpare , founder and director of the Public Service & Nonprofit Leadership Program at UNH, who spoke about the role of policy education in helping people – especially young people – to become more engaged in their communities and in civic life.

For young people that respect is lacking. Young people often are raised without a say in the structures of their lives, starting with public schooling systems that, from the student’s perspective, can be near authoritarian. For them to be told that they can participate in the federal government while also not being trusted to use the bathroom without a permission slip is a contradiction. It breaks the connection between their social structure and their own interests. If they don’t feel empowered in the classroom where they are learning civics, how can they possibly feel empowered in their greater society and government?

That cycle of disempowerment can continue throughout life. If those youth never start feeling respected by their social structures, they stay civically disengaged into adulthood.

Civic education must break that cycle. New Hampshire Listens , a civic engagement initiative by the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire, works to engage citizens by demonstrating that respect and relating citizen’s policy concerns to their local governments. It’s challenging work – often involving working past many years of perceived neglect by communities. But the results are rewarding. As more members of the community begin to feel valued by the system they live in, they become engaged citizens.

CBS News Reports: NH Listens brings diverse voters together

More About the Carsey School

Bridging the gap between Americans and their government is one of the key focuses of the Carsey School. Carsey's research educates community members about how policy impacts them, while also learning from those communities to ground that research in reality. The school offers civic awareness graduate degrees in Community Development , Public Administration , and Public Policy , all of which take a focus on training graduates to act as that bridge between their communities and the governments that represent them. Graduates reach an in-depth level of understanding of American policymaking, preparing them to relate each individual policy action to real-life consequences. They learn in an environment of respect for themselves and their communities.

Carsey School Webinar: The MPA for Working Professionals with Alumni Sarah Dorner '14G – Jan. 30, 2020

Dan Bromberg, the Carsey School of Public Policy’s Director of Academic Programs, joined Master of Public Administration (MPA) graduate Sarah Dorner ‘14G for a discussion on the MPA program and enrolling in school after a time away.

• Contact the Carsey School's Academic team to learn more about our degree programs and how to apply!

Civic Education

Civic education, whenever and however undertaken, prepares people of a country, especially the young, to carry out their roles as citizens. Civic education is, therefore, political education or, as Amy Gutmann describes it, “the cultivation of the virtues, knowledge, and skills necessary for political participation” (1987, 287). Of course, in some regimes political participation and therefore civic education can be limited or even negligible.

Though commonly associated with schooling, civic education is not the exclusive domain of schools. A rightly famous rendition of this idea is Tocqueville's often quoted view: “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.” Therefore, understanding civic education, especially democratic education, can, and should, involve both formal settings (schools) and informal settings (families, communities, libraries, houses of worship, workplaces, civic organizations, unions, sports teams, campaigns and elections, mass media, and so on). [ 1 ] Indeed, it seems reasonable to suggest that, following the Athenians of the Classical Age, a sound and effective civic education will coordinate if not integrate these formal and informal settings.

The informal settings and methods are most often associated with political socialization. This entry, however, focuses largely on schooling, which, as Amy Gutmann also points out, is our most deliberate form of human instruction (1987, 15). That is, formal civic education is a term reserved for the organized system of schooling (predominantly public) that aims, as one of its primary purposes, to prepare future citizens for participation in public life. Thus civic education as currently understood is to be contrasted, for example, with paideia (See below.) and other forms of citizen preparation that are informal cultural productions.

Of course, in many significant ways, informal institutions of civic education do help prepare citizens for public participation. Yet today, as Gutmann suggests, the educative effects are often not the deliberate design or intention of those informal institutions. If one were to try to cover all those social and political institutions that had educative effects, the project would become unmanageable. Besides, if we considered civic education to be part of what goes on in any institution even remotely related to civil society, then we are no longer defining and discussing civic education, but are defining and discussing politics itself.

1.1 Ancient Greece

1.2 rousseau: toward progressive education, 1.3 mill: education through political participation.

• 1.4 Early Civic Education in the United States

2.1 Amy Gutmann: Conscious Social Reproduction

• 2.2 William Galston: Civic Education in a Representative System

3.1 Good Persons and Good Citizens

3.2 spectrum of virtues, 4.1 service learning, 4.2 john dewey: school as community, 4.3 paulo freire: liberation pedagogy, 5. cosmopolitan education, works cited, works to consult, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the good citizen [ 2 ].

At the same time that civic educators seek to impart skills, knowledge, and participatory virtues, they also seek to engrain in society's youth a felt connection to, if not an identity with, that country or society. This is no small or minor undertaking. “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.” [ 3 ] Hence there is 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. Here lies a danger, however, for many forms of civic education: Those in charge of it may wish to indoctrinate students rather than educate them, thereby abandoning the very mission that they initially undertook. As Sheldon Wolin phrased it: “…[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 a danger at all but, instead, the very purpose of their forms of civic education. Nowhere, however, is this danger more insidious than in democracy and, therefore, in democratic education.

Democratic education is a subset of civic education. For philosophers it is the most important—indeed, the predominant—subset. This entry, therefore, focuses exclusively on the subset of democratic education.

There are, of course, more propitious reasons for examining civic education in the context of democracies. One significant reason, for example, can be traced to Aristotle. 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 politea or the mixed constitution in which persons must know both how to rule and how to obey. Herein coincide the excellence, the virtues, of the good man and the good citizen. Thus in modern democracies society has a vested interest in preparing citizens to rule and to be ruled, as Aristotle pointed out. In democracies, therefore, and especially in civic education the virtues of the citizen are an important, and even a vital, aspect of the virtues of a good person.

In this view, a good or virtuous citizen is nothing other than a good or virtuous person acting morally in the public or political sphere. As we shall consider later, just what the virtues are that constitute, at least in part, that person is not easy to ascertain.

The pursuit of this combination or matching of virtues can be considered a central and perpetual theme of civic educators. We see, for example, John Dewey picking up this theme in the 20 th century. From the 18 th century onward, commented Dewey, 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.

We have already encountered Aristotle's view that politea or the mixed constitution provides the excellence of both good citizens and good men. Because that requires men to have the virtues both to rule and be ruled, we should not be surprised that ancient Greece, and especially ancient Athens, is the home of democracy. One of the requirements of any democracy is having the rule of law, because it demands, or should demand, that no one is above the law and that all are equal before the law. Thus, before they could have democracy, the Greeks had to have not only laws but also written laws. Otherwise, those in power could declare the law to be whatever they wanted it to be. So the Greeks wrote down their laws, their statutes, on wood or marble tablets and placed them for all to see in the public squares. Of course, citizens and residents of the cities had to be able to read them, and so the rule of law called for public education to teach the people to read. Thus the ancient Greeks provide one of the earliest forms of civic education.

The polis itself 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).

But how far should that “curriculum” go? Citizens are taught to obey the laws; should they also be taught to challenge the laws and customs of the city? Was that not one accusation against Socrates? Civic education in a democracy, though not in every kind of regime, must prepare citizens to participate in and thereby perpetuate the system and at the same time prepare them to challenge what they see as inequities and injustice within that system.

What we observe, therefore, in civic education for democracy—that is, in democratic education—is a tension between the need and desire to perpetuate the roles, rules, standards, values, and institutions of the democratic system and the opposite; that is, the need and desire to challenge those very same roles, rules, standards, values, and institutions. So democratic education is be both conservative, as in “conserving” the stability and continuity of the system, and radical, as in calling into question “the roots” or the foundations of that system. The possible solution to this tension is to suggest that no democratic system that cannot withstand scrutiny of its central values, institutions, and principles deserves to be perpetuated or perpetuated in its current form.

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 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.

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 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 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.

1.4 Early Civic Education in the United States [ 4 ]

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.

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 19 th 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, 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

If voting and campaigns alone are the principal activities of citizenship, as Sheldon Wolin suggests, then what kind of civic education is warranted for creating worthy citizens?

Future citizens might be required only to know how, for example, a democratic system works—the functions of the different branches, the purpose and procedures of elections, the history of the country's systems of governance and governmental institutions—and to know the rights and obligations of citizenship. This is, of course, the content of much civic education today.

Along this line of thinking, one could make an argument that today's sound-bite candidates, their stump-speech “debates,” and their perpetual money-driven campaigns require little in the way of civic education for our citizens. Of course, someone else could argue that our democratic elections demand the opposite: a civic education in critical thinking, if not in resistance, to expose the nature of campaigns and elections. But if you arm citizens with a civic education that teaches them to step back reflectively and critically from our democratic systems, then, so one version could go, you should expect a critique of that system since it fails to exercise the very critical-thinking skills that they were taught.

If, therefore, we wish to educate future citizens for a different sort of participation, if we want them to challenge officials and the nature and scope of the democratic system itself—that is, if we want civic education and not civic indoctrination—then we also need to educate them to think critically about our democratic systems. Both political knowledge and critical thinking are required if citizens are to participate and share in what Amy Gutmann describes as the collective re-creation of our society or “conscious social reproduction” (1987, 14 and passim). Gutmann's arguments on how to justify democratic education are some of the best currently on offer.

Democratic society-at-large, argues Gutmann, 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 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.

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).

2.2 William Galston: Civic Education in Representative Democracy

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 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.

3. The Good Person

The qualities of the good citizen are not, then, 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.

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 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 ]

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 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 ]

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.

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. Civic Education as Political Action

Civic education as political action is to be contrasted with the more traditional form or teacher-centered education. This is not to suggest that those teaching political action will shirk or short-change knowledge and instruction in favor of exercises, simulations, and projects. Instead, knowledge and instruction arise out of the students' own experiences and interests. That is the point of student-centered in place of teacher-centered education.

Putting students into the community-at-large is today called “service learning,” which is a form of civic education that integrates classroom instruction with work within the community. This is not a combination of classroom and community, as if students undertake two different kinds of work side-by-side. Rather, the work done in the community has a learning objective related directly to what the students are studying in the classroom.

Service learning is in keeping with Dewey's emphasis on students' linking learning with real-world experiences found in their communities. 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 ]

A variation of service learning, highly popular in the U.S. during the 1970's, is experiential learning, which was thought of as a species of civic education. 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).

We live in an age of high-density electronic technology—for example, television, DVD players, cell phones that serve as cameras and computers, computer and video games. In this climate face-to-face interaction seems in decline as people isolate themselves in their homes and offices and disconnect themselves more and more from public, and thus political, interaction. As a result, the need for experiential education, service-learning, and activist civic education may never have been greater.

Activism in this sense is nothing other than students taking an active role in their own learning and doing so in contexts within and outside the classroom. It is experiential and cooperative learning. 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). Community service is touted, almost universally, as one such avenue of reflection. But that is really just the beginning.

We can think of political action as participation that can involve far more than voting, working on a campaign, 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 without pay 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 the like. If we include service-learning as part of civic education, then we can broaden the concept of civic education even further to include various kinds of voluntarism and community work. Action here could include participation in the sphere of civil society, the network of non-governmental and private organizations differentiated from the family, the market, and the state. Students could be encouraged to volunteer in a soup kitchen, take part in a walkathon, clean up a neighborhood, or organize a basketball tournament to benefit homeless children. Such action exercises the skills that can be associated with political action.

Thus, one argument for activist civic education is that it meets the criteria of cultivating both good persons and good citizens. When students take responsibility for their own learning, when they work together cooperatively, when they deliberate about how to proceed on a project in the community or in their classrooms, and when they actually work in the community, they exercise the skills and values that we associate with democracy and effective, moral social interaction. They exhibit the values, or virtues, of toleration of differences, mutual respect, listening, reasoning, criticizing, empathy, and acceptance of responsibility.

Why does action work so well as a form of moral or character education? “The reason, again, is that students respond to experiences that touch their emotions and senses of self in a firsthand way” (Damon, 2001, 141). There is also a “negative” reason, which is really a compensatory reason: 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.

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 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. Make the school itself part of the curriculum.

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.

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 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 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).

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 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 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).

Bibliography

• Aristotle. 1988. The Politics . Everson, Stephen (Ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Battistoni, Richard M.. 1985. Public Schooling and the Education of Democratic Citizens . Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
• –––. 1993. The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Moral Stories . New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Boyte, Harry C. 2004. Everyday Politics . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Bruner, Jerome. 1961. The Process of Education . New York: Vintage Books/Random House.
• –––. 1917. “The Process of Education Revisited.” Phi Delta Kappan 52 (1), 18-21.
• Callan, Eamonn. 1999. “A Note on Patriotism and Utopianism.” Studies in Philosophy and Education 18: 197-201.
• Conover, P.J. and Searing, D. D. 2000. “A Political Socialization Perspective.” In McDonnell, Lorraine M., Timpane, P. Michael, and Benjamin, Roger (Eds.), Rediscovering the Democratic Purposes of Education . Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 91-124.
• Delli Carpini, M. X. and Keeter, S. 1996. Citizen Competence and Democratic Institutions . University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania University Press.
• Damon, William. 2001. “To Not Fade Away: Restoring Civic Identity Among the Young.” In Diane Ravitch and Joseph P. Viteritti (eds.), Making Good Citizens. New Haven: Yale University Press, 122-141.
• –––. 1996. Greater Expectations . New York: Free Press.
• Dewey, John. 2004 [1916]. Democracy and Education , Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.
• –––. 1991/[1910]. How We Think . New York: Prometheus Books.
• –––. 1976/[1938]. Experience and Education . New York: Collier/Macmillan.
• Dewey, John and Dewey, Evelyn. 1915 . Schools of Tomorrow . New York: E. P. Dutton.
• Freire, Paulo. 2006/[1970]. Pedagogy of the Oppressed . New York: Continuum.
• Galston, William. 2001. “Political Knowledge, Political Engagement, and Civic Education.” Annual Review of Political Science , 4, 217-234.
• –––. 1989. “Civic Education in the Liberal State.” In Nancy Rosenblum (Ed.), Liberalism and the Moral Life . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 89-102.
• Kant, Immanuel. 1970. Kant's Political Writings . Reiss, Hans (ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Lickona, Thomas. 1991. Educating for Character . New York: Bantam.
• Macedo, Stephen. 2000. Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Society . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Madison, James, Hamilton, Alexander, and Jay, John. 1987/[1788]. The Federalist Papers . Kramnick, Isaac (Ed.). New York: Penguin Books.
• Mill, John Stuart. 1924. Autobiography . New York: Columbia University Press.
• –––. 1972. Utilitarianism, On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government . London: Everyman's Library/Dent.
• Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education . 1987. 827 F. 2 nd 1062 (6 th Circuit).
• Nie, Norman et al. 1996. Education and Democratic Citizenship in America . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Niemi, Richard G. and Junn, Jane. 1998. Civic Education: What Makes Students Learn . New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Nord, Warren A. 2001. “Moral Disagreement, Moral Education, and Common Ground.” In Ravitch, Diane and Viteritti, Joseph P. (Eds.) (2001). Making Good Citizens: Education and Civil Society . New Haven: Yale University Press, 142-167.
• Nussbaum, Martha C. 1996. “Cosmopolitanism and Patriotism.” In Cohen, J. (Ed.) For Love of Country . Boston: Beacon Press, 3-17.
• Oldfield, Adrian. 1990. Citizenship and Community . New York: Routledge.
• Peters, R. S. 1966. Ethics and Education . London: Allen & Unwin.
• Plato. 1997. “The Laws.” The Complete Works of Plato . Saunders, Trevor J. (Trans.); Cooper, John M. (Ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co.
• Ravitch, Diane. 2001. “Education and Democracy.” In Making Good Citizens, Diane Ravitch and Joseph P. Viteritti (Eds ). New Haven: Yale University Press, 15-29.
• Ravitch, Diane and Viteritti, Joseph P. (Eds.). 2001. Making Good Citizens: Education and Civil Society . New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1988. The Social Contract . Cranston, Maurice (Trans.). New York: Viking Penguin.
• –––. 1979. Emile or On Education . Bloom, Allan (Trans.). New York: Basic Books.
• Souto-Manning, Mariana. 2006. “Education for Democracy.” In E. Doyle Stevick and Bradley A. U. Levinson. Reimagining Civic Education . Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 121-146.
• Williams, Melissa S. 2005. “Citizenship and Functions of Multicultural Education.” In McDonough, Kevin and Feinberg, Walter (Eds.). Citizenship and Education in Liberal-Democratic States: Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities . New York: Oxford University Press, 208-47.
• Wolin, Sheldon. 1989. The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution , Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Avery, P.G. 1994. “The Future of Political Participation in Civic Education.” In The Future of the Social Studies. Social Science Education Consortium, 47-52.
• Barber, Benjamin. 1992. An Aristocracy of Everyone: the Politics of Education and the Future of America . New York: Ballantine Books.
• Battistich, V., Solomon, D., Watson, M., & Schaps, E. 1997. “Caring School Communities.” Educational Psychologist , 32, 137-151.
• Battistoni, R. M. 2002. Civic Engagement Across the Curriculum . Providence, RI: Campus Compact.
• Bennett, William. The Book of Virtues . N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 1993.
• Benninga, Jacques. 1991. Moral, Character, and Civic Education in the Elementary School . New York: Teacher College Press.
• Butts, R. Freeman. 1989. The Civic Mission in Educational Reform . Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.
• Callan, Eamonn. 1997. Creating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy . Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Camino, L., & Zeldin, S. 2002. “From Periphery to Center: Pathways for Youth Civic Engagement in the Day-to-Day Life of Communities.” Applied Developmental Science , 6 (4), 213-220.
• Dudley, R.L., & Gitelson, A.R. 2002. “Political Literacy, Civic Education, and Civic Engagement: A Return to Political Socialization?” Applied Developmental Science, , 6 (4), 175-182.
• Eyre, Linda and Richard. 1993. Teaching Your Children Values . New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Galston, W.A. 2001. “Political Knowledge, Political Engagement, and Civic Education.” Annual Review of Political Science , 4, 217-234.
• Issacs, David. 1984. Character Building: A Guide for Parents and Teachers Dublin: Four Courts Press.
• Coby, Barbara. 2003. Building Partnerships for Service Learning . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Jaeger, Werner. 1945. Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture . Three Volumes. Highet, Gilbert (Trans.). New York: Oxford University Press.
• Kilpatrick, William. 1992. Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong . N.Y.: Simon & Schuster.
• Lickona, Thomas. 1983. Raising Good Children . New York: Bantam Books.
• Lisman, C. D. 1998. Toward a Civil Society: Civic Literacy and Service Learning . Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
• McDonnell, L.M., Timpane, P.M., and Benjamin, R. (Eds.). 2000. Rediscovering the Democratic Purposes of Education . Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
• Nucci, Larry. 1989. Moral Development and Character Education: A Dialogue . Berkeley: McCuthan.
• Putnam, R. 1995. “Bowling Alone.” Journal of Democracy , 6, 65-78.
• Rahn, W.M., & Transue, J.E. 1998. “Social Trust and Value Change: The Decline of Social Capital in American Youth, 1976-1995.” Political Psychology , 19, 545-565.
• Torney-Purta, J. 2002. “The School's Role in Developing Civic Engagement: A Study of Adolescents in Twenty-eight Countries.” Applied Developmental Science , 6 (4), 203-212.
• Walker, T. 2002. “Service and Political Participation: What Research Tells Us.” Applied Developmental Science , 6 (4), 183-188.
• White, Patricia. 1996. Civic Virtues and Public Schooling: Educating Citizens for a Democratic Society . New York: Teachers College Press.
• Wynne, Edward and Kevin Ryan. 1993. Reclaiming Our Schools: A Handbook on Teaching Character, Academics and Discipline . New York: Macmillan.
• Youniss, J., & Yates, M. 1999. “Youth Service and Moral-Civic Identity: A Case for Everyday Morality.” Educational Psychology Review , 11 (4). 363 – 378.
• Zukin, Cliff, Keeter, Scott, Andolina, Molly, Jenkins, Krista, Delli Carpini, Michael X. 2006. A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen . New York: Oxford University Press.
• Center for Civic Education , home of the educational programs “We the People” and “Project Citizen.”
• 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 , funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and 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.
• Civic Mission of Schools , dedicated to reviving and enhancing civic education in the public schools.
• Civic Practices Network , a collaborative and nonpartisan group that brings together different organizations and perspectives to explore ways to revitalize civic participation.
• 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.
• National Alliance for Civic Education , an alliance of over 200 groups and individuals committed to advancing civic knowledge and engagement and to helping citizens better understand the role and value of civic education.
• Public Achievement , a civic engagement initiative that seeks to involve the young in learning lessons of democracy by doing public work.

character, moral | citizenship | cosmopolitanism | democracy | -->Dewey, John --> | ethics: virtue | Mill, John Stuart | -->Rousseau, Jean Jacques -->

Table of Contents

About the center for civic education.

What Are Values In Civic Education, Types And Importance

There are different definitions of values and because of this I will discuss values in light of civic education, types, and its importance in the society

What are Values

I will give five (5) definitions of values in civic education

• Values are the ideas, things or principles cherished by people in a society.
• Values signify norms and behavioral traits which are generally accepted as being of great worth in society.
• Values are precepts, moral principles, ideas, and beliefs that people hold dearly and cherish, e.g. honesty , contentment, faithfulness, justice, tolerance, fair play, etc.
• Values are standard criteria that determine how the people of a society, nation or state think and relate with one another.
• Values refer to the worth attached to things that may not be quantifiable, e.g. integrity, hard work, perseverance, etc.

Read: Attributes of contentment

Types of Values

There are three (3) types of values:

Positive Values : This has everything to do with those qualities that are good for oneself and the society at large. Examples of positive values are honesty, integrity, perseverance, hard work, diligence, discipline, patience, respect, etc.

Negative Values : They are qualities that are not good for oneself and the society at large. A person with negative values will only end up destroying his/her life. Negative values are bad and worthless qualities that can only bring about one’s destruction. This could be in the form of prioritizing the unhealthy habit in order to gratify oneself.

Intrinsic Values : A value that belongs naturally to somebody or something. It can also be seen as the property of anything that is valuable on its own. For instance, in some tribes in Nigeria, younger ones are expected to kneel or prostrate for the older ones as a sign of respect. The value of respect (in the above instance) is attributed to the older ones because of their age and status. In this case, his age and status are considered as intrinsic values because that’s his personality and nature.

15 Importance of Values

• Values help to determine and control the behavior of individuals in the society.
• They act as criteria or measures for the judgment of the actions of individuals in the society.
• They give focus and direction to individuals in the family and society at large.
• They help us in decision-making.
• They modify our attitudes and feelings toward other people through tolerance of different opinions and behavior.
• Values act as standards of conduct for people in a society
• They guide people toward the achievement of declared objectives e.g. individual, family, communal, corporate and national objectives among others.
• They promote unity, harmony and cooperation in the society.
• They encourage sense of responsibility and hard work among Nigerian citizens.
• They help youths to resist negative peer pressure in the society.
• Values help us to develop respect for other people’s ways of life e.g. different ethnic and religious groups and so on.
• They encourage tolerance and friendship among people in the society.
• Values promote self-reliance in the society, thus creating employment opportunities for citizens.
• They ultimately promote development in the society.
• Values lead to actions which promote happiness and contentment in society.

Related posts:

• Popular Participation And Types In Civic Education
• What Is Farm Record, Types, And Importance [Explained]
• What Is Cultism In Civic Education And Its Effects
• Problems Of Civil Society In Civic Education
• 6 Importance Of Technology In Education

Bolarinwa Olajire

Leave a reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Typologies of Citizenship and Civic Education: From Ideal Types to a Reflective Tool

• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 12 December 2018
• Cite this living reference work entry

• Aviv Cohen 4  

1177 Accesses

5 Citations

The field of democratic civic education continues to dominate theoretical and empirical studies, influencing practitioners in countries across the globe. This abundance of available, and at times competing, discourses creates a convoluted reality in which the assumptions, goals, and practices of democratic civic education are highly debated. One methodological approach that has been adopted to deal with this convoluted reality is the use of ideal types, which has led to the construction of numerous typologies of civic education. The goal of this review is to examine these typologies by offering a critical methodological discussion of their merits. The main argument to be presented is that such typologies should not be seen as external goals, guiding this process based on fixed desired ideals, but rather as an internal heuristic tool, offering a starting point for the process of self-reflection.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Abowitz, K. K., & Harnish, J. (2006). Contemporary discourses of citizenship. Review of Educational Research, 76 (4), 653–690. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543076004653 .

Article   Google Scholar  

Almond, G. A., & Verba, S. (1963). The civic culture: Political attitudes and democracy in five nations . Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400874569 .

Book   Google Scholar  

Alridge, D. (2006). The limits of master narratives in history textbooks: An analysis of representations of Martin Luther King, Jr. Teachers College Record, 108 (4), 662–686.

Apple, M. W. (1993). Constructing the ‘other’: Rightist reconstructions of common sense. In C. McCarthy & W. Crichlow (Eds.), Race, identity, and representation in education (pp. 24–39). New York: Routledge.

Google Scholar  

Banks, J. A. (1993a). Multicultural education: Historical development, dimensions, and practice. Review of Research in Education, 19 , 3–49. https://doi.org/10.2307/1167339 .

Banks, J. A. (1993b). The canon debate, knowledge construction, and multicultural education. Educational Researcher, 22 (5), 4–14. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X022005004 .

Barr, R. D., Barth, J. L., & Shermis, S. S. (1977). Defining the social studies . Arlington: National Council for the Social Studies.

Bottery, M. (2000). Values education. In R. Bailey (Ed.), Teaching values and citizenship across the curriculum: Educating children for the world (pp. 3–13). London: Kogan Page.

Brown, A., & Brown, K. (2010). Strange fruit indeed: Interrogating contemporary textbook representations of racial violence toward African Americans. Teachers College Record, 112 , 31–67.

Castro, A. J. (2013). What makes a citizen? Critical and multicultural citizenship and preservice teachers’ understanding of citizenship skills. Theory & Research in Social Education, 41 (2), 219–246. https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2013.783522 .

Castro, A. J., & Knowles, R. T. (2017). Democratic citizenship education: Research across multiple landscapes and contexts. In M. M. Manfra & C. M. Bolick (Eds.), The Wiley handbook of social studies research (pp. 287–318). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Cohen, A. (2010). A theoretical model of four conceptions of civic education. Canadian Social Studies, 43 (1), 17–28.

Cohen, A. (2017). Between teachers’ perceptions and civic conceptions: Lessons from three Israeli civics teachers. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 49 (4), 542–560. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2016.1263896 .

Cotton, K. (2001). Educating for citizenship (Close-Up #19) (pp. 1–35). Retrieved from School Improvement Research Series website. http://intranet.nwrel.org/sirs/10/c019.html

Crick, B. (1998). Education for citizenship and the teaching of democracy in schools: Final report of the advisory group on citizenship . London: Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.

Dahlgren, P. (2000). The Internet and the democratization of civic culture. Political Communication, 17 (4), 335–340.

Dewey, J. (1927). The public and its problems . New York: H. Holt and Company.

Fischman, G. E., & Haas, E. (2012). Beyond idealized citizenship education: Embodied cognition, metaphors, and democracy. Review of Research in Education, 36 (1), 169–196. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X11420927 .

Flew, T. (2009). The citizen’s voice: Albert Hirschman’s exit, voice and loyalty and its contribution to media citizenship debates. Media, Culture & Society, 31 (6), 977–994.

Gay, G., & Kirkland, K. (2003). Developing cultural critical consciousness and self-reflection in preservice teacher education. Theory Into Practice, 42 (3), 181–187. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4203_3 .

Gibson, C., & Levine, P. (2003). The civic mission of schools . New York/College Park: Carnegie Corporation and CIRCLE: The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

Hahn, C. (2010). Comparative civic education research: What we know and what we need to know. Citizenship Teaching and Learning, 6 (1), 5–23. https://doi.org/10.1386/ctl.6.1.5_1 .

Hahn, C., & Alviar-Martin, T. (2008). International political socialization research. In L. S. Levstik & C. A. Tyson (Eds.), Handbook of research in social studies education (pp. 81–108). New York: Routledge.

Hartigan, J. A. (1996). Introduction. In P. Arabie, L. J. Hubert, & G. De Soete (Eds.), Clustering and classification (pp. 1–4). Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1142/9789812832153_0001 .

Hatton, N., & Smith, D. (1995). Reflection in teacher education: Towards definition and implementation. Teaching and Teacher Education, 11 (1), 33–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/0742-051X(94)00012-U .

Hayhoe, R. (2007). The use of ideal types in comparative education: A personal reflection. Comparative Education, 43 (2), 189–205. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050060701362342 .

Hess, D. (2005). Moving beyond celebration: Challenging curricular orthodoxy in the teaching of brown and its legacies. Teachers College Record, 107 (9), 2046–2067.

Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, voice, and loyalty: Responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states . Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Holmes, B. (1981). Comparative education: Some considerations of method . London: Allen & Unwin.

Kerr, D. (1999). Citizenship education: An international comparison . London: Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.

Kymlicka, W. (1995). Multicultural citizenship: A liberal theory of minority rights . Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Lamm, Z. (2000). Chinuch politi ve-chinuch ideologi: Havchanot [Political education and ideological education: Distinctions]. In Y. Harpaz (Ed.), Lachatz ve-hitnagdut be-chinuch [Pressure and resistance in education] (pp. 344–359). Tel Aviv: Poalim Library. [Hebrew].

Lee, W. O., & Fouts, J. T. (2005). Education for social citizenship: perceptions of teachers in USA, Australia, England, Russia and China . Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Leung, Y. W., Wai Wa Yuen, T., Ngai, K., & Siu, G. (2014). Personal responsible, participatory or justice-oriented citizen: The case of Hong Kong. Citizenship Teaching & Learning, 9 (3), 279–295. https://doi.org/10.1386/ctl.9.3.279_1 .

Levstik, L. S., & Tyson, C. A. (2008). Introduction. In L. S. Levstik & C. A. Tyson (Eds.), Handbook of research in social studies education (pp. 1–12). New York: Routledge.

Lister, R., & Campling, J. (2017). Citizenship: Feminist perspectives . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Marcos, J. J. M., & Tillema, H. (2006). Studying studies on teacher reflection and action: An appraisal of research contributions. Educational Research Review, 1 (2), 112–132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2006.08.003 .

Marri, A. R., Michael-Luna, S., Cormier, M. S., & Keegan, P. (2014). Urban pre-service K-6 teachers’ conceptions of citizenship and civic education: Weighing the risks and rewards. The Urban Review, 46 (1), 63–85. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-013-0248-3 .

Marshal, T. H. (1950). Citizenship and social class and other essays . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. (2010). Designing qualitative research . Thousand Oaks: Sage.

McLaughlin, T. H. (1992). Citizenship, diversity and education: A philosophical perspective. Journal of Moral Education, 21 (3), 235–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305724920210307 .

Milner, H. (2002). Civic literacy: How informed citizens make democracy work . Hanover: University Press of New England.

Nie, N., Junn, J., & Stehlik-Barry, K. (1996). Education and democratic citizenship in America . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Patterson, N., Doppen, F., & Misco, T. (2012). Beyond personally responsible: A study of teacher conceptualizations of citizenship education. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 7 (2), 191–206. https://doi.org/10.1177/1746197912440856 .

Popper, K. R. (1965). Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge . New York: Basic Books.

Rubin, B. (2007). “There’s still not justice”: Youth civic identity development amid distinct school and community contexts. Teachers College Record, 109 (2), 449–481.

Sears, A. M., & Hughes, A. S. (1996). Citizenship education and current educational reform. Canadian Journal of Education, 21 (2), 123–142. https://doi.org/10.2307/1495085 .

Sim, J. B. Y., & Print, M. (2009). Citizenship education in Singapore: Controlling or empowering teacher understanding and practice? Oxford Review of Education, 35 (6), 705–723. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054980903141549 .

Sim, J. B. Y., Chua, S., & Krishnasamy, M. (2017). “Riding the citizenship wagon”: Citizenship conceptions of social studies teachers in Singapore. Teaching and Teacher Education, 63 , 92–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.12.002 .

Torney-Purta, J., Lehmann, R., Oswald, H., & Schulz, W. (2001). Citizenship and education in twenty-eight countries: Civic knowledge and engagement at age fourteen . Amsterdam: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement.

Weber, M. (1949). The methodology of the social sciences . Glencoe: Free Press.

Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41 (2), 237–269. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312041002237 .

Zeichner, K. (2012). The turn once again toward practice-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 63 (5), 376–382. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487112445789 .

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

The Seymour Fox School of Education, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aviv Cohen .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Faculty of Education, Canterbury Christ Church University , Canterbury, UK

Andrew Peterson

School of Education, University of South Australia , Mawson Lakes, SA, Australia

Garth Stahl

School of Education, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, SA, Australia

Hannah Soong

Document Analysis Protocol

Identifying Information:

Resource Name

Year of Publication

Description (Book/Book Chapter/Article)

General Questions:

What are the goals and main arguments of this document?

What topics does it relate to?

How is it organized?

Conceptions of Citizenship and Civic Education:

Which conceptions of citizenship and civic education appear in the document? In what manner?

How else does the text refer to conceptions of citizenship and civic education?

What is the excerpt that best represents the manifestation of conceptions of citizenship and civic education in the text?

Are conceptions of citizenship and civic education represented in a theoretical manner? What is the best excerpt that represents this?

Are conceptions of citizenship and civic education represented empirically? What is the best excerpt that represents this?

How can this text be summarized?

Any additional observations?

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Cite this entry.

Cohen, A. (2019). Typologies of Citizenship and Civic Education: From Ideal Types to a Reflective Tool. In: Peterson, A., Stahl, G., Soong, H. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Citizenship and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67905-1_43-1

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67905-1_43-1

Received : 10 October 2018

Accepted : 20 November 2018

Published : 12 December 2018

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-319-67905-1

Online ISBN : 978-3-319-67905-1

eBook Packages : Springer Reference Education Reference Module Humanities and Social Sciences Reference Module Education

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Civic Education

Welcome to the Civic Education keypoint page. Use the titles below to browse around.

MEANING OF CIVIC EDUCATION

Need/reasons for civic education, importance of civic education, meaning of values, importance of values, classification of values, factors that promote good value system, justice as a type of value, selflessness as a type of value, opportunity to defend oneself (self defense), community services, community service projects, importance of community service, benefits for involving oneself in community services, human immune virus (hiv), brief history of hiv/aids, how hiv/aids is contracted, symptoms/signs of hiv/aids, prevention of hiv/aids, consequential effects of hiv/aids, how hiv is not contracted, meaning of youth empowerment, various ways of empowering people, youth empowerment schemes, objectives for establishing yes, youth empowerment skills, importance and benefits of empowerment skills, impediments/hindrances to youth empowerment skills, meaning of citizenship, definition of citizenship education, types of citizenship, process of becoming a citizen of a country, how a naturalized citizen could forfeit his acquired citizenship, qualities of a good citizen, goals of citizenship education, identification of laws and rights of individuals, types of laws, right of individuals, civil rights of individuals, economic rights of individuals, political rights of individuals, main functions of government, main structures of government, the legislature, the executive, the judiciary, meaning of nationalism, growth of nationalism in nigeria, objectives of nationalist movement, factors that led to nationalism in nigeria, effects/achievements of nationalism in nigeria, major local civic problems, major world civic problems, nationalistic roles of individuals and groups, african nationalists, introduction/evolution of democracy, types of democracy, characteristics of representative democracy, merits of representative democracy, demerits of representative democracy, factors that promote representative government, rule of law, proponent of the doctrine of the rule of law, characteristics/features of rule of law, problems/limitations to the application of rule of law, benefits of rule of law, conditions necessary for rule of law to thrive, punishment for breaking the law, criminal offences, civil offences, equality of all citizens before the law, rule of law and the state, institutions that formulate and enforce the rule of law, enforcement agencies, the nigerian police force (npf), the national drug law enforcement agency (ndlea), national agency for food, drug administration and control (nafdac), economic and financial crimes commission (efcc), the independent corrupt practices (and other related offences) commission (icpc), the nigeria security and civil defense corps (nscdc), standard organization of nigeria (son), consumer protection council (cpc), nigerian prisons service (nps), nigerian copyright commission (ncc):, maximum liberty for citizens, ways in which liberty can be safeguarded in a modern state, meaning and explanation of pillars of democracy, constitution and its meaning, characteristics of a constitution, importance/ functions of a constitution, the processes of constitutional development, types of constitution, written constitution, unwritten constitution:, flexible constitution, rigid constitution, unitary constitution, federal constitution, definition and explanation of federalism, power sharing in a federation, benefits of a federal system of government, characteristics features of a federation, citizens’ responsibilities, economic/financial obligations of citizens, civil and political obligations of citizens, social obligations of citizens, consequences of failure in carrying out one’s responsibilities, political parties, characteristic features of political patties, functions/advantages of political parties, disadvantages of political parties, types of political parties, party structure, party system, one party system, features of one party system, advantages of one party system, disadvantages/of one party system, two party system:, features of two-party system, advantages of two party system, disadvantages of two-party system, multi-party system, features of multi-party system, advantages of multi-party system, disadvantages of multi-party system, party manifesto, relevance/importance of a party manifesto, factors that determine the success of political party in a country, functions/roles of the press/mass media, problems/impediments of the mass media/press, meaning of universal declaration of human rights(udhr), the seven core freedoms of udhr, importance of udhr, roles of individuals, groups and government in upholding the udhr, civil society organizations, trade unions, students unions, ethnic associations, government responsibility in upholding udhr, legal aid council of nigeria, characteristic features of human rights, types of human rights, civic rights, economic rights, political rights, human rights abuses, effects of human rights abuses on individuals and the society, ways of preventing human rights abuses, how to protect the rights and liberty of citizens, why human rights are entrenched in the constitution, meaning of cultism, different cult groups in nigerian campuses, historical origin of cultism in nigerian higher schools, reasons why students join cults, consequences of cultism, preventive measures against cultism, meaning of orderliness, examples of orderliness, importance/roles of orderliness in our society, meaning of constituted authority, respect for constituted authority, types of constituted authority, government constituted authority, organizational constituted authority, traditional constituted authority, coercive constituted authority, religious constituted authority, delegated constituted authority, institutional constituted authority, importance of constituted authority, meaning of citizenship education, identification of citizens’ obligations to their communities, ways to promote our tradition, ways of promoting national consciousness, integrity and unity, definition of capitalist democracy, characteristics of capitalist democracy, how political. parties compete for power through elections, meaning of employment, ways by which employment can alleviate poverty, factors that promote guaranteed employment, meaning of political apathy, various forms of political apathy, danger/disadvantages of political apathy, how to participate in politics and discourage political apathy, meaning of political participation, ways of participating in politics or forms of political participation, reasons or purpose of political participation, benefits/merits of political participation, reasons why people do not participate in politics, ways of fighting political apathy, why leaders fail to protect the interest of their followers, meaning of human rights, limitations of human rights, what happens during emergency periods, drug use and abuse, drug types and how they can be abused, soft or prescription drugs, stimulant drugs, performance enhancement drugs, symptoms of drug abuse, effects of drug abuse, prevention of drug abuse, why people use drugs, government agencies established to fight and prevent drug abuse, drug law enforcement and administration, duties/functions of the drug law enforcement agencies, drug trafficking, meaning of responsible parenthood, roles of responsible parents, the importance of responsible parenthood to national development, traffic rules and regulations, general traffic rules and regulations, importance of traffic rules and regulations, meaning of road signs, types of road signs, traffic lights, hand signals, terms/signs associated with road usage, causes of road accidents, consequences of disobeying traffic rules an regulations, meaning of interpersonal relationship, characteristic features of interpersonal relationship, relationship between man and woman, relationship between individuals and government, relationship between peer groups, other types of interpersonal relationship, factors that affect interpersonal relationship, basic skills that promote interpersonal relationship, meaning of inter-communal relationship, importance of inter-communal relationship, skills for resolving inter-communal conflicts, fundamental human rights, checks / control / limitations of human rights, meaning of public service, benefits of public services projects, reasons for the shortcomings in the public service, ways of improving the public service in nigeria, meaning of civil society, types of civil society, roles/functions of civil society, qualities of civil society organisations, problems of civil society, meaning of democracy, features of democracy, merits/demerits of democracy, place of popular participation in democracy, benefits of place of political participation, characteristics of modern democratic systems, meaning of rule of law, importance/benefits of rule of law, meaning of constitutional democracy, types of constitutional democracy, features of constitutional democracy, advantages of constitutional democracy, disadvantages of constitutional democracy, explanation of key concepts in constitutional democracy, meaning of human trafficking, consequences of human trafficking, government efforts at combating human trafficking, meaning of subsidy, meaning of fuel subsidy removal, reasons/benefits of fuel subsidy removal.

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

• Publications
• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

Most Americans say it’s very important to vote to be a good member of society

Around seven-in-ten U.S. adults (69%) say it’s very important to vote in elections to be a good member of society – more than say the same about any of the other activities included in a Pew Research Center survey conducted earlier this year.

By comparison, fewer than half of Americans say it’s very important to get a COVID-19 vaccine (44%), to make choices that help reduce the effects of global climate change (42%), or to follow what’s happening in politics in their own country (37%) to be a good member of society. Fewer – around two-in-ten – say it’s very important to follow current events in other countries (22%) or attend religious services frequently (22%). And only 13% say it’s very important to join demonstrations about issues they think are important to be a good member of society.

This Pew Research Center analysis focuses on U.S. public opinion about what it means to be a good member of society. It is based on a survey of 3,581 U.S. adults conducted from March 21 to 27, 2022. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology . Here is the question used in this analysis, along with responses.

The comparison of responses by 2020 voter turnout relies on a measure of validated turnout among citizens who are currently at least 20 years old. Validated voters are citizens who told us that they voted in the 2020 general election and have a record for voting in that election in a commercial voter file. In an effort to accurately locate official voting records, up to three commercial voter files were searched for each panelist. The number of commercial files consulted varies by when a panelist was recruited to the ATP. Three files were used for panelists recruited in 2020 or before, while two were used for panelists recruited in 2021. Here are additional details about the voter validation process .  

Although Republicans and Democrats differ in some views of election rules and procedures , there are no partisan differences in the perceived importance of voting. Around seven-in-ten Democrats and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party (73%) and a similar share of Republicans and GOP leaners (70%) say voting is very important to being a good member of society. Past Pew Research Center surveys have found a similar pattern .

Republicans and Democrats also don’t differ when it comes to the importance of following what is happening in U.S. politics. Around four-in-ten in each party (37% of Republicans and 40% of Democrats) say it’s very important to follow politics to be a good member of society.

When it comes to the importance of following current events in other countries, Democrats are somewhat more likely than Republicans (26% vs. 18%) to say it’s very important. Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to say joining demonstrations is very important (17% vs. 8%), while Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say attending religious services regularly is very important (30% vs. 15%).  

Partisan divides are widest when it comes to the perceived importance of getting a COVID-19 vaccine and making choices to reduce the effects of climate change. In both cases, Democrats are more than 40 percentage points more likely than Republicans to see it as very important to being a good member of society. As Pew Research Center has previously found , the partisan gap in the perceived importance of getting a COVID-19 vaccine is the largest in the United States out of 19 countries surveyed this year. Climate change is also a key dividing line, with Democrats far more likely than Republicans to see it as a major threat .

Older and younger Americans diverge over what they see as very important for being a good member of society. Generally speaking, older people are more likely than younger people to find nearly all of the activities asked about to be very important. When it comes to voting, for example, 86% of those ages 65 and older say it’s very important, compared with around half (47%) of those under 30. On only two activities – making choices that help reduce the effects of climate change and joining demonstrations about issues people think are important – are older and younger people about equally likely to say it’s crucial for being a good member of society.

Americans with at least a college degree or more education are more likely than those without a college degree to see voting and getting a COVID-19 vaccine as very important. The opposite is true when it comes to attending religious services regularly, and there are no educational differences when it comes to the perceived importance of the other activities asked about in the survey.

2020 voter turnout was highest among those who see voting as very important

Do Americans who see voting as very important to being a good member of society actually follow through and vote? A separate analysis of 2020 turnout data suggests that the answer is yes.

Among those who say it’s very important to vote in order to be a good member of society, the vast majority (79%) cast a ballot in the 2020 election. Among those who say it’s somewhat important to vote to be a good member of society, far fewer (43%) cast a ballot in 2020. And around three-in-ten of those who see voting as either not too important (33%) or not important at all (30%) opted to vote in 2020.

Of course, there are many reasons why some Americans may not have cast a ballot in 2020, even if they generally see voting as an important civic duty.

• Political & Civic Engagement
• Political Ideals & Systems
• Voter Participation

Laura Silver is an associate director focusing on global attitudes at Pew Research Center

Tuning Out: Americans on the Edge of Politics

Attitudes on an interconnected world, turnout in 2022 house midterms declined from 2018 high, final official returns show, what makes someone a good member of society, turnout in u.s. has soared in recent elections but by some measures still trails that of many other countries, most popular.

1615 L St. NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Age & Generations
• Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• Economy & Work
• Family & Relationships
• Gender & LGBTQ
• Immigration & Migration
• International Affairs
• Internet & Technology
• Methodological Research
• News Habits & Media
• Non-U.S. Governments
• Other Topics
• Politics & Policy
• Race & Ethnicity
• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Copyright 2024 Pew Research Center

Terms & Conditions

Privacy Policy

Cookie Settings

Reprints, Permissions & Use Policy