This article argues that in divided societies, civic education fails to fulfill one of its most important social role: creating a more inclusive society that allows a democratic dialogue to flow across different ideological, religious, and cultural communities. This failure is grounded in two main reasons. First, civics teachers are socially and…

Gratitude is one of the most fundamental and complex of the virtues, overlapping with and undergirding many of the others. Is gratitude today a diminishing virtue, less evident than it was in the past? And if so, how much of this decline is due to government or political action and how much to general trends that are operating in the culture at…

The purpose of this study is to compare the social studies teaching curricula of Turkey and the United States in terms of values education. The study is a model case study that relies upon one of the qualitative research methods. The data come from the elementary social studies curricula of both countries through the documents analysis method. The…

This study explores pre-service teachers' beliefs about citizenship across two nations, the United States and Singapore; the nature of their conversation about those beliefs; and the impact of their cross-cultural dialog on their reflections about the citizenship goal of social studies. Data is based on a Black Board-based threaded dialog, over…

The goal of this project was to produce a set of civic measures with sound psychometric properties appropriate for use with young people ages 12-18. Measures selected tap aspects of adolescent civic behaviors, opinions, knowledge, and dispositions. The measures are easy to administer and can be used by educators, staff of community-based…

More than 15 years have passed since publication of "Education for Democracy: A Statement of Principles", in which perspective and encouragement were offered to teachers and schools to instill in students an attachment to democratic values and institutions. In the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, this call is being renewed.…

Designed to help secondary students recognize that a country's music both reflects and reinforces cultural values, this unit involves students in comparing the music of the United States, China, and Japan. The unit could be used as part of an Asian history or Western history course. The approximate time required for the unit is 12 class periods.…

Asserts that the juvenile justice system was created to minimize the adult criminal system's harsh penalties. Discusses the juvenile classification procedure, treatment and punishment, and criteria for judges in the United States, Canada, France, and Japan. Concludes that the U.S. system would be more effective if it incorporated aspects of other…

Two government documents, "Goals for Americans" and "Toward Balanced Growth: Quantity with Quality" (ED 055 009), together with previous documents, serve as the information source and basis of this guide. The "Goals for Americans" report, initiated by President Eisenhower's Commission in 1960, identified social…