Democratic Education? How Schooling Shapes Civic Engagement and Social Capital

Session Submission Type: Created Panel

Session Description

Theorists like John Dewey and Amy Gutmann have argued that public education serves an invaluable role in a democratic society by educating future democratic citizens. In effect, schools are where democracy reproduces itself via children. This can occur through explicit civic education, but it can also occur through the teaching of critical thinking, tolerance, and exposure to diversity. While they were writing about the United States, both Dewey and Gutmann’s arguments apply to democracies broadly. But were they right? Does schooling generate civic engagement among citizens in democracies?

This panel answers this question by examining how education shapes the civic engagement of students and parents within and across democracies. Using the World Values Survey and looking across countries, the paper by Cinar, Cinar, and Kose asks whether education strengthens or erodes political trust, and whether these effects are mediated by political institutions and societal norms, like corruption. The paper by Davies leverages the expansion of the primary school system in India to test whether increased education impacts political trust. He finds, surprisingly, a negative effect of education on political engagement, raising doubts about Dewey and Gutmann’s hypothesis.

The democratic potential of education, however, is not exclusive to students. We might expect schools to lead to civic engagement among other actors, like parents and employees, as well. Destler, for example, looks to parents, asking whether the fact of choosing a school strengthens their civic engagement. She finds that, surprisingly, being invested in a single, local school rather than choosing leads to more engagement. Addressing higher education, Dahan asks whether college service learning programs generate civic engagement in the communities they serve, finding that they do. Altogether, these four papers provide a complicated picture of the relationship between education and civic engagement, and show that this is an important, fertile area of study.

Sub Unit

• Related Groups / Education Politics and Policy

Cosponsors

• DIVISION 24: Public Administration

• Related Groups / Education Politics and Policy

Individual Presentations

• Conditional Effects of Education on Political Trust - Kursat Cinar, Middle East Technical University; Meral Ugur Cinar, Bilkent University; Tekin Kose, TED University

• Did Federal Service-Learning Policy Influence Community Social Capital? - Thomas Alexander Dahan, Rutgers University–Camden

• Exit, Voice and Difference: Privilege, Choice and Parent Engagement in Schools - Katharine Elizabeth Neem Destler, Western Washington University

• Skeptical Democrats? The Effects of Education on Political Attitudes in India - Emmerich Davies, Harvard University

Chair

• Vladimir Kogan Ohio State University

Discussants

• Archon Fung Harvard University

• David E. Campbell University of Notre Dame