Currently in the United Kingdom, citizenship provision is meagre and, where it appears in schools, it is heavily biased towards the theoretical. This article acknowledges that citizenship education needs a theoretical aspect but argues that the new public school should complement this with more dynamic, experiential learning. The proposal focuses on a democratic way of managing political conflict, the complex practice of compromise. It considers three essential features of a good compromise: mutual respect; coping with seemingly second-best choices; and recognising sacrifice. Drawing on these elements, it argues, the new public school can offer a dynamic citizenship education through its organisation, structure and ethos. In a supportive learning environment, school students can learn attitudes of respect, empathy towards others and ways of dealing with conflict by non-violent means, develop social imagination in exploring creative and ingenious solutions to conflict and learn to cope, collegially, with disappointed hopes.