World english education

The Good Citizen: Historical Conceptions
Education through Political Participation
Early Civic Education
The Good Democrat
Civic Education in a Representative System
Deliberative Democracy
The Good Person
Good Persons and Good Citizens
Modern Forms of Civic Education
Civic Education through Discussion
Education through Political Participation
Participation in representative government, or democracy, is undertaken both for its educative effects on participants and for the beneficial political outcomes. Even if elected or appointed officials can perform better than citizens, it is advisable for citizens to participate “as a means to their own mental education—a mode of strengthening their active faculties, exercising their judgment, and giving them a familiar knowledge of the subjects with which they are thus left to deal. Give students opportunities to contribute their considered opinions about the governance of the school—not just through student governments, but in forums that engage the whole student body.Help students to understand how their own schools and school systems are run, who makes the policies that affect them, and what issues are being debated by local educational leaders and the community.Collaborate with the community and local institutions including colleges and universities to provide civic learning opportunities. Provide teachers with access to professional development in civics, foster collaboration and networking, and recognize teachers who are doing good work in this area.Infuse a civic mission throughout the curriculum; offer an array of extracurricular activities; and structure the school environment and climate so that students are able to “live what they learn” about civics and democracy.In addition to contributing to our knowledge of effective practices, recent research emphasizes the importance of the timing of civic education.
Developmental psychologists and political scientists have confirmed what many of us long have suspected: education for democratic citizenship is both too little and too late. Respected researchers such as Amy Gutmann, Norman Nie, Richard Niemi, and Judith Torney-Purta all tell us that to be most effective, civic education must begin in primary schools. They also agree that adolescence—and early adolescence in particular—appears to be the prime time for learning civic content and skills and for crystallizing democratic dispositions.
Przeworski, A.(1995). Sustainable Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Good democrat. Civic education can occur in all kinds of regimes, but it is especially important in democracies. In The Politics, Aristotle asks whether there is any case “in which the excellence of the good citizen and the excellence of the good man coincide” (1277a13–15). The answer for him is a polite or a mixed constitution in which persons must know both how to rule and how to obey. In such regimes, the excellence and virtues of the good man and the good citizen coincide. Democratic societies have an interest in preparing citizens to rule and to be ruled. Modern democracies, however, are different from the ancient polis in several important and pertinent respects. They are mass societies in which most people can have little individual impact on government and policy. They are complex, technologically-driven, highly specialized societies in which professionals (including lawyers, civil servants, and politicians) have much more expertise than laypeople.
The Good Person. The qualities of the good citizen are not simply the skills necessary to participate in the political system. They are also the virtues that will lead one to participate, to want to participate, to have a disposition to participate. Citizens, that is, ought to display a certain kind of disposition or character. As it turns out, and not surprisingly, given our perspective, in a democracy the virtues or traits that constitute good citizenship are also closely associated with being a good or moral person. We can summarize that close association as what we mean by the phrase “good character.”It is the absence of these virtues or traits—that is, the absence of character—that leads some to conclude that democracy, especially in the United States, is in crisis. The withering of our democratic system, argues Richard Battistoni, for one, can be traced to “a crisis in civic education” and the failure of our educators to prepare citizens for democratic participation (1985, pp. 4–5). Missing, he argues, is a central character trait, a disposition to participate. Crucial to the continuation of our democracy “is the proper inculcation in the young of the character, skills, values, social practices, and ideals that foster democratic politics” (Ibid, p. 15); in other words, educating for democratic character. Good Persons and Good Citizens. Character is not just one attribute or trait. It signifies the sum total of particular traits, the “sum of mental and moral qualities”. The addition of “moral qualities” to the definition may be insignificant, for character carries with it a connotation of “good” traits. Thus character traits are associated, if not synonymous, with virtues. So a good person and, in the context of liberal democracy, a good citizen will have these virtues.
Modern Forms of Civic Education. In the United Kingdom and United States, most students are required to take courses on government or civics, and the main content is essentially political science for high school students. In other words, they use textbooks and other written materials to learn about the formal structure and behavior of political institutions, from local government to the United Nations. Another goal may be to increase young people's appreciation of the existing constitutional system so that they will be motivated to preserve it.