Patriotic Education in a Global Age

• In Event: Patriotic Education in the Age of Trump

Abstract

The primary purpose of this presentation is to present the results of a seven-year joint investigation of the methods and rationales for patriotic education throughout the history of schooling in the US. A secondary purpose is to illustrate the value of history for policy- and practice-focused investigations in philosophy of education. A pair of contrasting approaches from the World War II era will be used to illustrate major lines of contemporary debate. A form of patriotism that is appropriately responsive to what is genuinely valuable in a country will then be defended as virtuous, though not a virtue in its own right. It is presented as an expansive form of constitutional patriotism, or patriotism focused on the value of a democratic constitutional tradition. Civic virtue is presented as the proper object of civic education, and the specific proper foci of civic education for local, national, and global citizenship are identified as civic intelligence, civic friendship, and civic competence. The presentation relies on original archival research, scholarship in contemporary political sociology, moral and political theory, virtue studies, collaborative daily diary study research on the motivational basis of civic responsibility, and the philosophical study of educational aims and ethics.

Authors

• Randall R. Curren, University of Rochester

• Charles Dorn, Bowdoin College