Civic Education for Diverse Citizens in Global Times

Rethinking Theory and Practice

Beth C. Rubin, James M. Giarelli, Beth C. Rubin, James M. Giarelli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136797583
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

This book explores four interrelated themes: rethinking civic education in light of the diversity of U.S. society; re-examining these notions in an increasingly interconnected global context; re-considering the ways that civic education is researched and practiced; and taking stock of where we are currently through use of an historical understanding of civic education.There is a gap between theory and practice in social studies education: while social studies researchers call for teachers to nurture skills of analysis, decision-making, and participatory citizenship, students in social studies classrooms are often found participating in passive tasks (e.g., quiz and test-taking, worksheet completion, listening to lectures) rather than engaging critically with the curriculum. Civic Education for Diverse Citizens in Global Times, directed at students, researchers and practitioners of social studies education, seeks to engage this divide by offering a collection of work that puts practice at the center of research and theory.

Chapter 1
Civic Education for Diverse Citizens in Global Times: Rethinking the Theory and Practice

Beth C. Rubin and James M. Giarelli
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

During a classroom discussion in an urban middle school, students engaged in a lively discussion of the Pledge of Allegiance:

Amber:	We [loudly] are the one nation, under God. One nation.
Jessica:	When the Pledge of Allegiance says “under God,” it can’t actually say that and expect people to pledge allegiance to the flag. Because there’s other races that really don’t BELIEVE in God. So if you don’t believe in God why would you pledge allegiance to the flag that states “under God?” You won’t… it’s …
Angelica:	Well, me and her [referring to another student, LaShawn] were discussing. She said that it’s not one nation because of segre…, like we had segregation, all this stuff, all this hate. But you’re not pledging to the people IN America, you’re pledging to AMERICA itself.

One brief snippet of classroom conversation displays a wealth of grounded complexity around key civic issues. Who is the “one nation” invoked in the Pledge? Does our nation’s history of segregation and “all this hate” provide a challenge to this notion? Can all Americans be expected to agree to a pledge that invokes belief in a deity? What about those “other races” who don’t believe in God; can they be expected to make the same pledge? Amber, Jessica, Angelica, and LaShawn, African American and Latina eighth-grade students at a middle school in a low-income urban area, energetically pursued such questions, pondering the implications of the Pledge in a diverse society amidst a global context.

Civic education research and practice can no longer focus on the civic workings of the United States in isolation; nor can it continue to assume a unified, monolithic citizenry. In today’s diverse society and interconnected world, the whole notion of civic knowledge and engagement must be reworked to include global dimensions and multiple perspectives. Fortunately, there is a growing body of work that does just that. This collection provides a sampling of such work, aiming to move in the direction of an approach to civic research and practice that is situated more firmly in the diverse and interconnected reality of life in the 21st century. The chapters herein foreshadow the possibility of a civic education that is more relevant, engaging, motivating, and, ultimately, broadly enfranchising than that provided before.

This collection is divided into four thematic parts, but there are additional themes that run through many of the chapters: the tension between empowering students and giving them realistic expectations so they aren’t disappointed, the struggle to integrate civic education into a social studies curriculum dominated by transmission of historical facts, the limitations of current research on civic education and attempts to rectify this. Each of the first three parts includes at least one empirical chapter that tests new ideas in the field. The work of K-12 practitioners is highlighted in the collection as well. The following describes each section and its chapters.

Part I: Rethinking Civics and Citizenship in a Diverse Democracy

Part I brings issues of race, class, gender, and sexual diversity to the foreground (other chapters that incorporate these issues are Davis, chap. 7; Kahne and Westheimer, chap. 9; and Rubin, chap. 10). In “Reimagining Citizenship Education: Gender, Sexuality and the Social Studies,” Crocco writes (chap. 2) about ascriptive characteristics that define shifting notions of citizenship in America and draws our special attention to silences about gender and sexuality in the discourse of citizenship in the social studies literature. Based in part on interviews with beginning social studies teachers, Crocco argues that the constraints and obstacles that inhibit the kind of teaching that promotes civic competence present an urgent challenge to social studies educators. “Social studies educators,” she holds, “can make a difference” in this area, and the nature of our democracy is at stake.

In “Service Learning as a Strategy to Promote Citizenship Education and Civic Engagement in an Urban Elementary Grammar School” (chap. 3), Chi and Howeth, founders of and teachers at the East Bay Conservation Corps Charter School in northern California, describe a diverse urban elementary school in which service learning and youth civic engagement are central to its mission. The authors describe how service-learning projects both within and beyond the classroom were employed to create a “culture of civic engagement” in the school. Other practices, including schoolwide meetings, peer mediation, and a new discipline policy, spread this culture of civic engagement throughout the school. The authors conclude that students, predominantly students of color from low-income families, reaped both personal and academic gains through this approach, and are involved in an educational experience quite different from that experienced by their peers in other urban schools.

In Chapter 4, “Gender and Civic Education,” Hahn asks how we might better prepare all young people to be “engaged citizens in a multicultural democracy in an integrated global society”, the core question of this volume, and turns her attention to gender, a variable that she points out is often overlooked in discussions of civic education. Reviewing studies using nationally representative samples of students, she finds that boys and girls differ in their civic and political attitudes, and argues that qualitative research is needed to better understand the source and nature of these differences. She also notes that there appear to be differences in students’ political knowledge, attitude, and experiences by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic background, and stresses the importance of including this dimension in any exploration of student civic engagement.

Part II: Rethinking Civics and Citizenship in a Global Context

Part II offers views on civic education and practice in light of an increasingly interconnected world. In chapter 5, “Connections Between Concepts of Democracy, Citizen Engagement and Schooling for 14-Year Olds Across Countries,” Richardson and Torney-Purta compare concepts of democracy and civic engagement among students from six different countries. They take up the question of the connection between students’ understandings of democracy, political engagement, civic knowledge, and trust and their intention to participate actively as adults. Based on IEA Civic Education Study data from Chile, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Switzerland, and the United States, the authors suggest that students’ understandings of democratic concepts are less connected to their intent to participate than their understandings of good citizenship. This chapter decenters the United States in its consideration of students’ civic knowledge and engagement; we are part of a larger democratic world struggling with similar issues of connecting young people to the processes that make our political systems work.

The rhetoric of globalization had become the hegemonic vocabulary in educational policy discourse by framing a way of thinking about the connections among persons, institutions, and knowledge. Chapter 6, “A Primer on Democracy and Education in the Era of Globalization” is written by Cahill, a high school English teacher and historian of education. Cahill worries about the constraints this rhetoric has—with its emphasis on economic competitiveness, the commodification of knowledge, and persons as human capital—on the theory and practice of civic, democratic education. The author first traces the long history of attention to internationalism in American education, beginning at least as early as the Centennial, up through the 1960s and 1970s. Against this background, Cahill explores more contemporary approaches to democratic educational theory, which he calls “utopian” or “liberal democratic,” as alternatives to the dominant human capital approach.

Davis (chap. 7), a political scientist, raises critical questions about global citizenship in a post-September 11, 2001, world, and asks “What types of pedagogy need to be developed to make global citizenship a salient concept to the current generation of American citizens?” His chapter, “Global Citizenship: Theoretical and Pedagogical Perspectives,” describes Global Citizen 2000, an exemplary effort at extending “global citizenship” education to K-12 classrooms. Global Citizen 2000, and its offshoot, Citizens Across Borders: The Student Initiative in Global Citizenship in the Wake of September 11, 2001, involve students in hands-on projects in which they generate their own understandings of their roles in a global society and exhibit their creative representations of these roles. This project also creates connections between U.S. students and students in eight foreign countries through e-mail and videoconferencing. These creative, interdisciplinary, and active approaches to incorporating global issues into K-12 classrooms are unique and promising.

Part III: New Approaches to Civic Research and Practice

Part III highlights ways of thinking about civic education research and action distinct from how these topics have traditionally been approached. Political scientists Hibbing and Rosenthal begin “Teaching Democracy Appreciation” (chap. 8), with a dramatic claim: Civic education in the United States is failing. According to the authors, media, political campaigns, reform efforts, issue campaigns, and the complexities of the legislative process all contribute to these misconceptions. Civic education, however, bears the brunt of the blame for not correcting these misconceptions, and the authors take schools to task for not providing a civic education that is relevant to current democratic practices or that is taught in an engaging manner. They propose an approach to civic education in which experiential exercises and contact with local legislators are used to enhance students’ understandings of the workings of the legislative process at state and national levels, and how the different values, interests, and priorities of our diverse citizenry are represented within this process.

In chapter 9, “The Limits of Efficacy: Educating Citizens for a Democratic Society,” Kahne and Westheimer analyze two programs, one in a suburban and the other in an urban school, designed to involve students in civic experiences. In the former setting, the program was structured to ensure that students’ encounters with government agencies were efficacious, and students reported that they felt they had “made a difference,” and would engage in civic activities in the future. In the latter setting, students had frustrating experiences with local agencies, and experienced a decline in confidence as civic change agents and in their commitment to future civic involvement. Echoing concerns raised by Hibbing and Rosenthal, the authors note that opportunities for young people to experience civic and political efficacy must be mixed with opportunities for students to “learn about and experience the barriers and constraints they and other civic actors face.”

In chapter 10, “Civics and Citizenship in Students’ Daily Lives: Towards a Sociocultural Understanding of Civic Knowledge and Engagement,” Rubin considers the possibility of enriching the current civic education literature through a broader conceptualization of civic learning and engagement. In particular, she suggests that sociocultural, interpretive investigation of how civic identities take shape might shed light on troubling findings within the current literature, such as race and class-linked patterns of civic knowledge and engagement. Traditional research approaches are unable to illuminate the nature and source of these disparities. An understanding of civic identity as shaped by context and experience might allow the development of a fuller understanding of how diverse students become citizens and civic beings.

Part IV: Civic Education in a Changing World

Part IV, the final section of the book, features two chapters that look more broadly at the issues at hand, taking stock of both the current moment and the historical trajectory that preceded it. In “Public Time Versus Emergency Time After September 11th: Democracy, Schooling, and the Culture of Fear” (chap. 11), Giroux questions the notion that after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the country has experienced a resurgence in “patriotism, community, and public spiritedness”. He argues that, on the contrary, the notion of “emergency time” invoked by the presidential administration after the attacks effectively impinges on the public deliberation and critical civic engagement fundamental to a thriving democracy. Giroux holds that to counter the dangers of living in emergency time, “educators and others need to reclaim a notion of politics and pedagogy that embraces a notion of public time, one that fosters civic engagement and public intelligence”.

In chapter 12, “Looking Back to See Ahead: Some Thoughts on the History of Civic Education in the United States”, Justice reminds us that there have been other moments in the history of American education defined by efforts to “re-envision civic education”. Although the present is never the past writ large or small, Justice defines three themes (tradition vs. truth, conflict vs. compromise, rhetoric vs. reality) that have coursed through American educational history from the colonial to contemporary eras and have structured debates around civic education.

Conclusion

Justice concludes the volume by noting that it is a healthy sign of our democracy that there are so many alternative ways to understand citizenship and civic education. According to Justice, “the lack of consensus over the meaning of civic education is a good thing”. We agree and offer this collection as another contribution to the continuing conversation of democratic public education. When this project started, our aim was to bring together a diverse set of scholars around a common set of questions for conversations about theory, research, and practice in civic and social studies education and, especially, new directions for the future. In addition, we aimed to assemble a collection that would honor the perspectives and possibilities of each particular view, while situating them in tension with alternative approaches. Our aim was coherence without consensus, balance without boundaries. John Dewey once wrote that the intellectual function of trouble is to make us think. We agree and offer this collection as a prod and occasion for thinking about the civic and social aims of public education. In a diverse, yet interconnected world, there is no more important item on the public agenda.

Part I
Rethinking Civics and Citizenship in a Diverse Democracy

Chapter 2
Reimagining Citizenship Education: Gender, Sexuality, and the Social Studies

Margaret Smith Crocco
Columbia University

We may continue to permit undirected social changes to dictate what takes place in the educational system, or we must think and act upon the assumption that public education has a positive responsibility to shape those habits of thought and action which in turn shape organized conditions of social action. The latter course cannot be undertaken without profound and courageous will to consider the real meaning of the American experiment and of American life; the obstacles that stand in the way of realizing this meaning; and the means by which the basic ideals can be continuously promoted. I see no other way of rendering education in fact, and not just in name, the foundation of social organization.—Dewey (cited in Boydsten, 1987, p. 23)

In “Education for Democratic Citizenship,” Mitchell (2001) states that allegiance to the concept of multiculturalism has, over the last 50 years, become firmly established as a “cornerstone of mid-twentieth century liberalism and a fundamental and ongoing national narrative in both Canada and the United States” (p. 55). Educators, no less than politicians, are abundantly aware of this fact. One of the most tangible examples of the acceptance of multiculturalism within education can be found in the textbooks so pervasively used in social studies courses.

Beginning in the mid-1990s, a teacher or teacher educator attending a professional conference and visiting the exhibit area could scarcely ignore the widespread promotional...