The Education of Citizens

Abstract

In light of Martin Rochester's questioning of his earlier article, Mr. Parker clarifies his positions and reiterates his belief in essential connection between public education and viability of democracy. LET ME thank Martin Rochester for his interest in Against Idiocy. And I do wish to address three of his concerns, in particular, content, big government, and values education. First, however, I should clarify that unit of analysis in my argument was not but school. Nor was it social studies curriculum but whole school curriculum in both its social and academic aspects. The phrase the K-12 social studies classroom in his opening paragraph and similar phrase the social studies field in his closing paragraph suggest that he might have missed this basic point. As I wrote, schools are ideal sites for democratic citizenship education. Why? They are public congregations of multiple languages, races, religions, ideologies, social classes, and so forth. This pluralism can't be found at home, or in church or temple, or routinely anywhere else. Indeed, public schools have two essential elements for helping young people grow into social consciousness of puberty: a diverse student body and collective The trick is to cultivate situation, and I suggested three keys for doing just that: * Increase variety and frequency of interaction among students who occupy different social positions. * Orchestrate these contacts to foster deliberation (discussion with an eye toward decision making) on shared * Aim for competent deliberation, not blather, and for inclusive deliberation that gives voice to those typically excluded. Keeping diverse students apart by various systems of segregation, hard and soft, keeps schools from turning even first key. Now to Rochester's first concern about content -- that is, academic learning and time that may be taken from it by civic education. Here he is preaching to a member of choir. As I wrote, need disciplinary knowledge just as much as they need deliberative experience and skill. My suggestion to engage students in dialogues on shared problems of school life and on controversies that are at heart of academic subjects is in no way an argument for process without content. Plainly, need is for both. Citizens must know and do. Action without intelligence is no victory, and intelligence without action is, well, idle. A seamless combination of democratic knowing and doing is curricular goal. (I discuss this as enlightened political engagement in my book Teaching Democracy: Unity and Diversity in Public Life, Teachers College Press, 2003). Second, Rochester imagines that I believe in big as solution to problems. Here he misses mark. To confuse citizen's work with big government is to mistake civil society -- bowling leagues, museums, hospitals, schools, parks, block watches -- for White House, No Child Left Behind, and U.S. Department of Defense. Jane Addams is worth quoting again: It is necessary that woman shall extend her sense of responsibility to many things outside of her own home if she would continue to preserve home in its entirety. Addams wasn't concerned with big government but with civic intelligence. She advocated a mind that looks outward as well as inward, outward to public nest in which familial nest, and therein individual nest, are themselves nested. …