Feeling American: Virtuous Dispositions for National Citizenship in Social Studies Education

• In Event: 31.083 - Critical and Innovative Approaches to Democracy and Civic Practices in Social Studies Education

Abstract

This paper locates the contingent contexts in which social studies exists in schools as a technology of national citizen-building through what Raymond Williams has termed “structures of feeling,” framing what does (and does not) count in the process of students learning to become particular kinds of citizens. The paper explores how distinct social studies curricula operate as assemblages of distinct virtues from ethnographic accounts of four social studies classrooms. These structures of feeling manifest as four distinct virtues social studies teachers use to give form to an ideal national citizenship: compassion, sentimentality, entrepreneurialism, and pride. These four modes of citizenship provide the conditions teachers considered necessary for students to become particular types of citizens realized by teachers’ different curricular visions.

Author

• Mark Helmsing, George Mason University