09 September 2008

Educating a Democracy

Democracy depends on foundation of educated citizens

Responsible citizens learn about “Democracy in Action” at Philadelphia’s Constitution High School.

(The following text is excerpted from the U.S. Department of State publication USA Education in Brief.)

In the words of Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.”

Teaching Democracy

A democracy depends on the foundation of educated citizens who recognize the value of their hard-won individual freedoms and civic responsibilities. In contrast to the passive acceptance of authoritarian societies, the object of democratic education is to produce citizens who are independent and questioning yet deeply familiar with the precepts and practices of democracy.

Journalism school graduates at New York’s Columbia University.

As education scholar Chester Finn has said, “People may be born with an appetite for personal freedom, but they are not born with knowledge about the social and political arrangements that make freedom possible over time for themselves and their children. ... Such things must be acquired. They must be learned.”

National Identity

America’s schools may teach democratic values, but they also teach their students how to be Americans.

Ever since the nation’s founding, Americans have recognized that, lacking a common ethnic identity or ancient culture, their national identity would have to rest upon other foundations: shared ideas about democracy and freedom and the common experience of working to build a society with equal opportunity for all.

For most Americans, the institution that most closely embodies those shared ideas and common experiences has been the nation’s schools.

Over time, education in America has come to represent universal free public education for all, regardless of race, social background, or gender. Education, moreover, is seen as the primary means to succeed in a society that seeks to replace the claims of inherited privilege for those of individual freedom and equal opportunity.

The American classroom of the 21st century scarcely resembles that of a few decades ago, much less the one-room schoolhouse of a past century. Yet the role of American education in binding together a growing and diverse nation endures, transmitting the lasting values of freedom and human dignity from one generation to the next.