Political Education in the Early Years: The place of civic virtues

Citizenship education needs to start from the values and associated institutional practices and civic virtues of liberal democracy. Citizens need political knowledge and skills but they also need to be certain sorts of people, to exercise civic virtues. The view that civic virtues are unnecessary in a democracy is considered and rejected, as is the view that civic education should not begin in the first school. It is argued that the fostering of civic virtues can and should begin in the first school, primarily through its organisation and ethos. For it to do so, however, attention needs to be devoted to it in teacher education.