Innumerable foundations, commissions, state initiatives, and federal programs are now seeking to renew civic education in American schools. But solutions run headlong into a series of barriers. Four of these seem especially troublesome: (1) Efforts to develop a civics curriculum are snagged by a basic truth about America: beyond a narrow core of…

Americans are rightly concerned that schools are not providing students with the knowledge and habits necessary to be good citizens. With the notable exception of volunteer activity, every form of civic engagement among the young has declined. As a response, increasing attention is being paid to civic education in the schools. But strangely, at a…

It is an odd mark of this time that the first question people ask about character education is whether public schools should be doing it at all. The question is odd because it invites everyone to imagine that schooling, which occupies about a third of a child's waking time, somehow could be arranged to play no role in the formation of a child's…

Traditional civil disobedience has usually combined deep spiritual beliefs with intense political ones. And while appreciating the differences in the two worlds--render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's--practitioners respected both. While sometimes willful and defiant and sometimes passive to the point of self-extinction, the…