Against Civic Education in Public Schools

Abstract

Both liberals and conservatives agree that civic education must go beyond civic knowledge and civic skills to include proper civic motives and dispositions; that is, they all properly agree that civic education must aim at civic virtue, even if they disagree about which precise virtues ought to be learned. Unfortunately, both liberals and conservatives also agree that such an education in civic virtue is the responsibility of public schools. But just because civic virtues must be learned does not mean that they can be taught—let alone that they can be taught in school. By assessing the best empirical studies of the effectiveness of civic education in schools, I show that civic schooling aimed at civic virtue is at best ineffective and is, indeed, often counterproductive. Moreover, advocates of civic schooling argue that schools need a compelling moral purpose and that civic education is the most appropriate moral purpose in a diverse democratic society. These normative arguments fail to grasp that academic schooling already has a compelling moral purpose, namely, to impart the intellectual virtues, that is, those dispositions making us conscientious in the pursuit of truth. Civic schooling is either irrelevant to the intrinsic moral purpose of schooling or positively subversive of it. I show that the history of civic schooling is a history of the subordination of truth-seeking to some civic agenda, leading to the whitewashing and distortion of academic knowledge. Finally, I argue that civic schooling aimed at civic virtue is inherently partisan and thereby violates the civic trust that underpins vibrant public schools.

Keywords:

• civic education
• civics
• intellectual virtues
• philosophy of education
• schooling

Notes

1. This article draws freely upon my article Good Students and Good Citizens. The New York Times 2002, Sep. 15, (Op-Ed) and my manuscript, Against Civic Schooling, forthcoming in Social Philosophy and Policy 2004, 21 (February). I am indebted to comments on that manuscript by Mark Stein, Lucas Swaine, Shelley Burtt, and the participants in the conference Morality and Politics at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green University, Bowling Green OH, Sept. 19–22, 2002. I also wish to thank my indefatigable research assistant and copy editor, Karen Liot.

8. Rogers Smith says of the Jeffersonians: “Education came to be so identified with preparation for citizenship that noncitizens were often denied it.” See his Civic Ideals; Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, 1997, p. 189.

9. For the origins of public schooling, see Glenn, C. L. The Myth of the Common School; University of Massachusetts Press: Amherst, MA, 1988, pp. 4–7. For France see Nique, C. Comment l'Ecole devint une affaire d'Etat; Nathan: Paris, 1990.

10. See the critique of liberal and conservative moralism in Gutmann, A. Democratic Education; Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1999, pp. 56–64.

11. Amy Gutmann, for example, wonders “why so much taxpayer money should go to schooling that gives up on the central aims of civic education.” See her Civic Education and Social Diversity. Ethics 1995, 105(3), 557–579.

12. I refer to Amy Gutmann, Stephen Macedo, and Eamonn Callan. For evidence see my Against Civic Schooling. Social Philosophy and Policy 2004, 21, forthcoming.

13. Almond, G.; Verba, S. The Civic Culture; Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1963, pp. 304, 355, 363–366, 381, 387. Almond, G.; Verba, S, Eds. The Civic Culture Revisited; Little Brown: Boston, 1980, p. 29.

15. Verba, S.; Schlozman, K. L.; Brady, H. E. Voice and Equality; Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1995, pp. 376, 425. The authors find that American high schools provide civic education “not by teaching about democracy but by providing hands-on training for future participation.”

17. Langton, K.; Jennings, M. K. Political Socialization and the High School Civics Curriculum in the United States. American Political Science Review 1968, 62, 852–867. They examined the effects of these courses on: political knowledge, political interest, spectator interest in politics, political discourse, political efficacy, political cynicism, civic tolerance, and participative orientation.

18. Black students were a partial exception to this rule: “The civics curriculum is an important source of political knowledge for Negroes…” Langton and Jennings, 1968, pp. 865, 860.

19. Langton, K. P.; Jennings, M. K; Niemi, R. G. Effects of the High School Civics Curriculum. In The Political Character of Adolescence; Jennings, M. K; Niemi, R. G., Eds.; Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1974, p. 191. “…in the very short run the curriculum exerts what little effect it has on those under current exposure.” (p. 192).

20. Beck, P. A.; Jennings, M. K. Pathways to Participation. American Political Science Review 1982, 76, 94–108. “…those who engage in extracurricular activities are more likely to become politically active later on…” (p. 105).

21. See the discussion of the scholarly consensus in Niemi, R.; Junn, J. Civic Education: What Makes Students Learn; Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, 1998, pp. 13–20. They comment: “…the presumption that academic knowledge is gained entirely or even primarily in the classroom may be a truism for some subjects but not for civics” (p. 61).

22. Niemi and Junn, 1998, p. 81.

23. Niemi and Junn, 1998, pp. 123–124.

24. Niemi and Junn, 1998, p. 140.

25. Greene, J. P. Review of Civic Education. Social Science Quarterly 2000, 81, 696–697. Greene performed a reanalysis of the Niemi and Junn data set and found that the variable of how recently the civics course was taken collapsed into whether a student is enrolled in a civics class at the time the civics test is taken: “If knowledge fades so rapidly that the only benefit of a civics class occurs while one is in it, then schools may not be able to do much to improve civics knowledge in the longer run.” Greene found defects in other independent variables as well.

26. Plato, The Republic, 539E.

27. Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1984. 1095a 3, 1103a 15.

28. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1103b 4, 1103b 21, 1180a 32.

29. Tocqueville, A. Democracy in America, trans. and ed. Harvey Manfield and Delba Winthrope Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. I, 1, 5 (p. 57).

30. True, Aristotle does recommend public or common schooling over private schooling (Politics, p. 1337a 3; Ethics, p. 1180a 14); but there is no evidence that he thinks these schools should aim at civic education; in fact, he prefers a liberal education for leisure over a civic education (Politics, pp. 1338a 21–32).

31. Gutmann, 1999, pp. 106–107. MacEdo, Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy; Harvard University Press; Cambridge, MA, 2000, p. 235.

32. For evidence, see my “Against Civic Schooling.”

33. Kant, Pädagogik 9, p. 449; Cf. Grundlegung 4, p. 423; Metaphysik der Sitten 6, pp. 392, 444–445.

34. Gardner, H. The Disciplined Mind; Penguin: New York, 1999. Hirsch, E. D., Jr. The Schools We Need; Doubleday: New York, 1996.

36. Dewey, Democracy and Education, pp. 356–357; Cf. pp. 173–179.

37. Among many histories of American civic education, see Smith, R. M. Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History; Yale University Press: New Haven, 1997; Pierce, B. L. Civic Attitudes in American School Textbooks; University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1930; Elson, R. M. Guardians of Tradition: American Schoolbooks of the Nineteenth Century; University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, NE, 1964.

39. See Elson, Guardians of Tradition, pp. 47–48, 53.

40. See Pierce, Civic Attitudes in American School Textbooks, pp. 229–239.

44. See Elson, p. 226.

45. William Galston rightly observes about the purpose of civic education: “It is unlikely, to say the least, that the truth will be fully consistent with this purpose.” But he goes on to defend the imperative to falsify history in order to produce good citizens: “For example, rigorous historical research will almost certainly vindicate complex ‘revisionist’ accounts of key figures in American history. Civic education, however, requires a more noble, moralizing history: a pantheon of heroes, who confer legitimacy on central institutions and constitute worth objects of emulation.” See Galston, W. Civic Education in the Liberal State, In Liberalism and the Moral Life; Rosenblum, Nancy, Ed.; Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1989, pp. 90–91.

46. Robert Mozert sued his school board for using English lessons to teach liberal morality; see Mozert v. Hawkins County School Board 857 F. 2d. 1058 (6th Cir. 1987).

48. Amy Gutmann defends progressive pedagogy even when it is not academically warranted, in Democratic Education, p. 287.

51. “Certainly no one applies the word ‘indoctrinate’ when the schools try to teach most facts and accepted bodies of knowledge. That is regarded not as any unwarranted ‘imposition’ but as a duty.” Hyman, H. H.; Wright, C. R. Education's Lasting Influence on Values; University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1979, p. 66.