Everyday Civic Education: From Civic Virtues to Habits of Democracy

• In Event: 16.044 - Deweyan Discourses on Democracy in a Neoliberal Era: Toward Liberating Education

Abstract

Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in civic education, accompanied by a holistic aspiration to cultivate youth’s civic virtues. In this paper, I contend that the Deweyan alternative to the virtue-framework, which conceives of civic education as the development of habits of democracy, is a more productive conceptualization of the civic role of schools. First, it sets a more realistic aim – developing habits of conduct in public settings rather than ingrained personal traits. Second, it allows better formulating the methods of civic education, highlighting the importance of schools’ structural characteristics instead of explicit civic lessons. Finally, it stresses the pivotal challenge facing civic education in liberal democracies – the transference of in-school behaviors to civic contexts.

Author

• Gideon Dishon, University of Pennsylvania