Educators and policymakers increasingly pursue programs that aim to strengthen democracy through civic education, service learning, and other pedagogies. Their underlying beliefs, however, differ. This article calls attention to the spectrum of ideas about what good citizenship is and what good citizens do that are embodied in democratic education programs. It offers analyses of a 2-year study of educational programs in the United States that aimed to promote democracy. Drawing on democratic theory and on findings from their study, the authors detail three conceptions of the “good” citizen—personally responsible, participatory, and justice oriented—that underscore political implications of education for democracy. The article demonstrates that the narrow and often ideologically conservative conception of citizenship embedded in many current efforts at teaching for democracy reflects not arbitrary choices but, rather, political choices with political consequences.

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What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Educating for Democracy

Preface Glossary Introduction PART 1: THE PROBLEM THAT IS THE PRESENT 1. School Deform I. The Race to Nowhere II. The Less You Know III. Untimely Concepts IV. Too Little Intellect in Matters of Soul V. The School as a Business VI. The Figure of the Schoolteacher 2: From Autobiography to Allegory I. To Run the Course II. Allegories-of-the-Present III. Allegory as Montage IV. Why Weimar? PART 2: THE REGRESSIVE MOMENT: THE PAST IN THE PRESENT 3. The Defeat of Democracy I. The Terrible Question II. States of Emergency III. The Highly Fissured Republic IV. The Regimented Mass V. Art as Allegory VI. Economic Crisis VII. The Great Age of Educational Reform VIII. Correctional Education 4. Mortal Educational Combat I. Gracious Submission II. The Racial Politics of Curriculum Reform III. Students and the Civil Rights Movement IV. Freedom Schools V. The Gender Politics of Curriculum Reform PART III: THE PROGRESSIVE MOMENT: THE FUTURE IN THE PRESENT 5. The Dissolution of Subjectivity in Cyberculture I. Dream, Thought, Fantasy II. Let Them Eat Data III. The Death of the Subject IV. Avatars V. Breaking News VI. Intimacy and Abjection 6. The Future in the Past I. The Technology of Cultural Crisis II. The Degradation of the Present III. A Philosophy of Technology IV. Technology and Soul PART IV: THE ANALYTIC MOMENT: UNDERSTANDING THE PRESENT 7. Anti-Intellectualism and Complicated Conversation I. Anti-Intellectualism II. An Unrehearsed Intellectual Adventure III. Curriculum as Complicated Conversation is Not (Only)Classroom Discourse IV. Is It Too Late? PART V: THE SYNTHETICAL MOMENT: REACTIVATING THE PAST, UNDERSTANDING THE PRESENT, FINDING THE FUTURE 8. Subjective and Social Reconstruction I. A Struggle Within Each Person II. Reactivating the Past III. Understanding the Present IV. Finding the Future References Index

What Is Curriculum Theory

Charter schools elevate choice and competition to foster educational innovations. Indeed, these market-style mechanisms are intended to challenge standardized practices associated with district administration of schools. However, a comprehensive review of practices in charter schools indicates that, although some organizational innovations are evident, classroom strategies tend toward the familiar. Drawing on organizational and economic theory, this article considers the forces shaping educational innovation in market-oriented reforms. Although reformers assume that competition and choice necessarily lead to innovations within schools, a more complex examination of competitive institutional environments suggests that mechanisms employed by reformers may actually undercut their intended purposes. The discussion highlights the potential for choice and competition to constrain opportunities for educational innovation and to impose pedagogical and curricular conformity.

Innovation in Education Markets: Theory and Evidence on the Impact of Competition and Choice in Charter Schools

Given recent trends, middle-class families may become an increasing presence in urban districts. Such parents could help secure badly needed resources and raise expectations. This study of parental involvement in two urban schools suggests that middle-class parental involvement may be more complex than often assumed. The authors find that middle-class parents bring myriad resources to urban schools and can be catalysts for change. However, the relationship between parental involvement and widespread benefit was mediated by parents’ own goals and perspectives as well as by the larger social context. Furthermore, compared to a more individualistic approach to parental involvement, a collective orientation is more sustainable and has greater potential for benefiting all children in the school, without regard to their social class.

Perils and Promises: Middle-Class Parental Involvement in Urban Schools:

Major policy debates have arisen around the subject of educational vouchers as an alternative for financing and organizing elementary and secondary education. To a large degree, comparisons between...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3594163.pdf

A Comprehensive Framework for Evaluating Educational Vouchers

Foreword Patricia Albjerg Graham Introduction Larry Cuban and Dorothy Shipps Part I Ways of Seeing the Common Good in Public Education: The Past Informing the Present: 1 Public schools and the elusive search for the common good William J Reese 2 Turning points: reconstruction and the growth of national influence in education Ted Mitchell 3 'The is no escape  from the ogre of indoctrination': George Counts and the civic dilemmas of democratic educators Daniel Perlstein 4 'No one here to put us down': hispano education in a Southern Colorado community, 1920-1963 Ruben Donato 5 Echoes of corporate influence: managing away urban school troubles Dorothy Shipps Part II Ways of Seeing the Common Good in Public Education: Social and Political Implications: 6 No exit: public education as an inescapably public good David F Labaree 7 Bureaucracy left and right: thinking about the one best system Harvey Kantor and Robert Lowe 8 Why is it so hard to get 'good' schools? Larry Cuban Part III Uncommon Ways of Seeing the Common Good: 9 Civic friendship: an aristotelian perspective Elisabeth Hansot 10 Devotion and ambiguity in the struggles of a poor mother and her family: New York City, 1918-1919 Michael B Katz 11 Reflections on education as transcendence John Mayer Afterword Dorothy Shipps and Larry Cuban Notes References Index

Larry Cuban

Papers

Reconstructing the Common Good in Education: Coping with Intractable American Dilemmas.