To enact democracy, which is to live in communication with difference, requires a formative process that involves an education of the whole person for and through civic life. Drawing on Charles Mills's theory of "Herrenvolk" ethics and Jonathan Lear's analysis of psychosocial lapses that ail us, Sheron Fraser-Burgess and Chris Higgins…

Populists employ truth as a tool for aligning the people against the elite. Citizenship education rarely takes up critiques of liberal democracy, discussions of populism, or conversations about what truth is. This paper provides an alternative pragmatist vision of truth that builds on the populist call for democracy to better reflect the will of…

In this paper, Sarah Stitzlein considers the consequences of honesty on our democracy, especially for citizens' ability to engage in civic inquiry together as they face shared problems. Honesty is a key component of a well-functioning democracy; it develops trust and fosters the sorts of relationships among citizens that enable civic dialogue and…

Inspired by Orwell's chilling account of brainwashing, propaganda, and the obliteration of the lines between fiction and truth, Mordechai Gordon attempts to make sense of the phenomenon of lying in politics as a challenge to deliberative civics education. His analysis begins with a detailed consideration of the distinctions Hannah Arendt draws…

In response to a fractured and vitriolic public culture, many civic educators hope to cultivate students' ability to learn from people who are different from themselves. In this article Rachel Wahl illuminates how college students' conceptions of moral order shape their willingness to learn during deliberative dialogue from people whose political…

Educators, not to mention philosophers of education, find themselves in a difficult position nowadays. They are confronted with problems such as which kind of values one would want citizens to embrace, or to what extent social practices of a particular group may differ from what is generally held. In this essay, Paul Smeyers and Yusef Waghid focus…

This essay focuses on what happens to the individual's attitude toward community when events that pass into the category of uncanny become seemingly commonplace and are experienced as direct assaults on the logic of community and cooperation. It refers to Nietzsche's views on the negative, and Dewey's views on the positive doctrine of motivation.…

In this paper, I first examine the three justifications most often provided for differentiating, discounting, or even disclaiming the present generation's moral responsibility to future generations. I then discuss ideological critiques of, and educational solutions to, the complicity of formal educational institutions in propagating these…