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 democratic values. This U.S. movement is paralleled by the former communist nations, historically bent on central control of schools with the ideological goal of national unity, embarking on decentralized educational reforms to help prepare their students to move from a command society to political democracy. The paper suggests a need for reexamination of the core values of democracy and questions what civics lessons are being omitted in the present debate. (EH)