In February 1990, the President and state governors proclaimed a set of six national education goals to prompt profound improvements in schools and student achievement by the year 2000. These six goals reflect widely held concerns that most Americans have not been receiving the kind of education they need to meet the challenges of twenty-first…

This digest discusses "Lessons From History," the report of the National Center for History in the Schools at the University of California, Los Angeles. The report provides a rationale for the study of history throughout the K-12 curriculum and specifies core ideas, themes, and topics that undergird both content and performance standards…

In recent years, social studies educators have given serious attention to the apparent crisis of citizenship and the improvement of civic education in the United States. Insufficient attention, however, has been given to the place of leadership in civic education. Yet, youth leadership is big business in the United States. Each year, over half a…

Education for citizenship in a constitutional democracy has been a long-standing goal of schools in the United States. To achieve this goal, students must learn their civil rights and responsibilities in a free society. This ERIC Digest discusses: (1) the importance of teaching about the responsibilities of citizenship; (2) deficiencies in…

Through its approach to knowledge and issues, geography education makes a significant contribution to the development of citizenship and citizenship competencies. The ways that geography education has contributed to citizenship education as the two have developed during this century are examined. It is argued that students who study geography…

Civic education "means explicit and continuing study of the basic concepts and values underlying our democratic political community and constitutional order" (Butts 1988, 184). It draws its content chiefly from four disciplines: political science, jurisprudence, history, and economics. Political science and jurisprudence provide an…

"CIVITAS" is a curriculum framework that specifies core ideas for civic education in the U.S. constitutional democracy. It reviews what adults should know and be able to do to as effective citizens. CIVITAS was developed by the Center for Civic Education in cooperation with the Council for the Advancement of Citizenship and with support…

The essence of a healthy democracy is open dialogue about issues of public concern. An integral part of the training of young citizens, therefore, includes the discussion of controversial social, political, and economic policies. The use of classroom discussions as a pedagogical technique to examine controversial issues is explored by considering:…

As part of the formulation of a new multidisciplinary civics curriculum for students in grades 8 and 9, a major national conference on the future of civic education was conceived, on the premise that early adolescence is an especially appropriate time to introduce the fundamental ideas of a democratic society. This volume contains the…

Many cooperative civic education projects among U.S. and Central/Eastern European educators have emerged since the end of Communist Party Rule in the former Czechoslovakia. This digest describes a collaborative curriculum development project, Civic Education for the Czech Republic (CECR). The objective of CECR is to revise the existing social…