I'm disappointed by the limited vision of this post. You link to Danielle Allen's detailed description of requirements for democratic education (https://www.democracyrenovator.com/p/250-years-in-the-civic-education/comments), but that description is a far cry from congressionally mandated textbooks and civics standars. What Dr. Allen describes is a whole texture of experiences, encounters, and demands, most of which can't be had or faced in a civics classroom. For example, "Education," she writes, "must prepare people to navigate the dual demands of private and public life. This does not mean turning every classroom into a civics seminar. It means helping young people develop a sense of their own purposes—what they care about, what kind of life they want to build—and then helping them see that those private purposes are never fully separable from the public conditions that make them possible." This "helping them see" can only happen through making room for young people to build what they care about. That room currently exists only for the wealthiest castes. In fact, the kind of civic education that Dr. Allen describes and that I'm sure you desperately desire, too, cannot be had in schools as they are. Schools as they are rely on layer after layer of undemocratic or even anti-democratic practice. Young people's roles as citizens in a democracy are treated at best as pretend ("mock" political activites only) and at worst as a threat to the stability of schools. For a civics curriculum to be not just taught but also learned, we must re-found public education on caste-free, democratic principles that recognize the political authority of adolescents in a serious way. As Dr. Allen articulates so well, we must create space for young people to relate to each other and to their communities in authentic contexts where their political and economic roles make a tangible difference to real lives. When they are operating in those spaces, a civics textbook can make some sense. Without those spaces, no textbook will command young people's attention for long. We can indeed create public education on democratic principles, but it will take some serious re-conceptualizing of the pedagogical problem.
I'm disappointed by the limited vision of this post. You link to Danielle Allen's detailed description of requirements for democratic education (https://www.democracyrenovator.com/p/250-years-in-the-civic-education/comments), but that description is a far cry from congressionally mandated textbooks and civics standars. What Dr. Allen describes is a whole texture of experiences, encounters, and demands, most of which can't be had or faced in a civics classroom. For example, "Education," she writes, "must prepare people to navigate the dual demands of private and public life. This does not mean turning every classroom into a civics seminar. It means helping young people develop a sense of their own purposes—what they care about, what kind of life they want to build—and then helping them see that those private purposes are never fully separable from the public conditions that make them possible." This "helping them see" can only happen through making room for young people to build what they care about. That room currently exists only for the wealthiest castes. In fact, the kind of civic education that Dr. Allen describes and that I'm sure you desperately desire, too, cannot be had in schools as they are. Schools as they are rely on layer after layer of undemocratic or even anti-democratic practice. Young people's roles as citizens in a democracy are treated at best as pretend ("mock" political activites only) and at worst as a threat to the stability of schools. For a civics curriculum to be not just taught but also learned, we must re-found public education on caste-free, democratic principles that recognize the political authority of adolescents in a serious way. As Dr. Allen articulates so well, we must create space for young people to relate to each other and to their communities in authentic contexts where their political and economic roles make a tangible difference to real lives. When they are operating in those spaces, a civics textbook can make some sense. Without those spaces, no textbook will command young people's attention for long. We can indeed create public education on democratic principles, but it will take some serious re-conceptualizing of the pedagogical problem.