If students are to fulfill their obligations and rights as U.S. citizens they must develop the ability to make careful judgements, based on a reasoned historical perspective and a meaningful conception of the basic democratic values underlying citizenship in our constitutional order. To this end, an agenda of 12 core civic values that are…

This paper describes the importance of the CIVITAS@Prague meeting in June 1995. The conference provided a much-needed look at the role of education in the future of world peace. This international conference of educators is likely to affect world history in the obvious ways that international meetings of diplomatic, military, or financial leaders…

Maintains that the world is nearing the end of a great age of democratic revolutions. Asserts that civic or citizenship education is in danger of being sidetracked by the national educational reform movement. Argues that "CIVITAS," a civic education curriculum framework, provides a model for effective citizenship education. (CFR)

A set of ten value concepts for a democratic political community that schools should seek to exemplify are divided into those that primarily promote desirable cohesive and unifying elements and those that primarily promote desirable pluralistic and individualistic elements. (Author/MLF)

This essay explores the various definitions of "civitas" and how those definitions have valuable lessons for people. "Civitas" means both a political community or government, especially as found in a republic, and the kind of citizenship a republic requires. Specifically the paper examines the role of government in education…

The choice that a voucher proposition offers is between weakening the public schools still further by encouraging flight from them and strengthening the public schools by recalling them to their historic purpose of promoting the ideals of the democratic civic community. (Author)

To revitalize the civic mission of education, schools must teach the morality of citizenship. Civic morality must be the first priority in the liberal and professional education of teachers and administrators. The core of all curriculum must stress the obligations and rights of democratic citizenship. (VM)

Identifies seven historical purposes of American education (academic discipline, social efficiency, individual development, vocational competence, freedom, equality, and community) contending that the seventh, education for community, should now receive highest priority because of its importance for the future and our neglect of it in the past,…

Presents three reasons to be concerned about citizenship education: the argument from history, the need to counteract the mood of pessimism and alienation concerning government and schooling and to redirect educational priorities, and the signs which indicate that the present is the time for a revival of civic learning. (Author/KC)

The point is made that the highest priority for improvement on all levels of education for the next quarter of a century lies in an intensified search for education's role in achieving freedom, equality, and community, and that the very highest priority should be given to the search for a viable, inclusive, and just political community. (JD)

This essay chronicles the move toward national standards in the content areas and examines the civics lessons to be learned from the debates. The paper notes the contradiction found in historically advocating local control and support of schools, moving toward the setting of national education goals and standards with little attention paid to…

Examines how the section on values in the 1981 "California History/Social Science Framework" points the way and direction for educating students to become good citizens. The author discusses 10 basic ideas or value-oriented claims that he thinks could be used as an intellectual framework to guide the designing of civic education…

The ideal of good citizenship is examined in light of current social and political unrest brought about, at least in part, by the agitation of special interest groups. Emphasis is placed on the role of citizenship education in the schools. The monograph is intended particularly for educators who want to improve citizenship education programs. The…

This paper discusses the current status of civic education in the United States and the place of civic education in the current movement to establish national goals and standards for education. Most current reform efforts (e.g., America 2000) approach civic education by means of increasing the role of history and geography in the curriculum.…

In order to understand the context of the role that human rights should play in civic education in the United States, the era in which those rights were first debated (1789-1790's) must be examined, as well as contemporary political and education trends in the United States and the world. Human rights were at the heart of the democratic…