Politics by Other Means: Civic Education in a Time of Controversy

• Published date: 01 January 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00027162231189037
• Author: Peter Levine
• Date: 01 January 2023
• Subject Matter: Finding Common Ground among Progressive and Conservative Visions of Civic Education

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FIGURE 1

The Seven Themes of the Educating for American Democracy Initiative

THEME

Overarching Thematic Questions

HISTORY CIVICS

1Civic Participation

This theme explores the relationship between self-government

and civic participation, drawing on the discipline of history to

explore how citizens’ active engagement has mattered for

American society and on the discipline of civics to explore the

principles, values, habits, and skills that support productive

engagement in a healthy, resilient constitutional democracy.

This theme focuses attention on the overarching goal of engaging

young people as civic participants and preparing them to assume

that role successfully.

How have Americans come together in groups,

made decisions, and affected their communities,

the country, and the world?

How can that history inform our civic participa-

tion today?

What are the responsibilities and opportu-

nities of citizenship and civic agency in

America’s constitutional democracy?

How can I participate?

2Our Changing Landscapes

This theme begins from the recognition that American civic expe-

rience is tied to a particular place and explores the history of how

the United States has come to develop the physical and geographi-

cal shape it has, the complex experiences of harm and benefit

which that history has delivered to different portions of the

American population, and the civics questions of how political

communities form in the first place, become connected to specific

places, and develop membership rules.

The theme also takes up the question of our contemporary

responsibility to the natural world.

How has our geographic, social, economic, and

political landscape changed over time?

How has the land we inhabit—from our local

community to states and territories to the

American republic—changed over time, and how

have we shaped it?

What different perspectives are there on

those changes (see History Thematic

Question), and on the benefits and costs of

those changes?

What principles and values do Americans

invoke in our debates about these issues?

(continued)

Special Editors’ Note:

We invited Peter Levine and Paul Carrese—principal investigators for the bipartisan Educating for American Democracy initiative—to give us their (sometimes contrasting and some-

times complementary) perspectives on the project. The Initiative is a case study of finding bipartisan consensus on approaches to civic education, and Levine and Carrese share their

respective liberal and conservative vantage points on the work that they have done to negotiate a shared roadmap of civics and history content and pedagogical principles with more

than three hundred contributors. Some of that consensus is laid out in the Figure on the following pages.

G.W., D.D., D.C. & C.L.

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3We, the People

This theme explores the idea of “the people” as a political con-

cept—not just a group of people who share a landscape but a

group of people who share political ideals and institutions. The

theme explores the history of how the contemporary American

people have taken shape as a political body and builds civic under-

standing about how political institutions and shared ideals can

work to connect a diverse population to shared processes of soci-

etal decision-making.

The theme also explores the challenge of e pluribus unum: forging

one political people out of diverse experiences.

Who are “We, the People of the United States”

and how has the nation’s population changed over

time?

What does our history reveal about the aspira-

tions and tensions captured by the mottoe pluri-

bus unum?

Why does constitutional democracy

depend on the idea of “the people”?

What values, virtues, and principles can

knit together “We, the People” of the

United States of America?

4A New Government & Constitution

This theme explores the institutional history of the United States

as well as the theoretical underpinnings of constitutional design.

How did the U.S. government form and how

have civic participants changed its shape over

time?

What is a constitution and what is its pur-

pose? What is power?

What are rights (natural rights, human

rights, civil rights, etc.)?

What is law? What is constitutional democ-

racy?

5Institutional & Social Transformation—A Series of

Refoundings?

This theme explores how social arrangements and conflicts have

combined with political institutions to shape American life from

the earliest colonial period to the present, investigates which

moments of change have most defined the country, and builds

understanding of how American political institutions and society

changes.

Is the American Revolution ongoing?

How and why has the United States transformed

its basic political, legal, economic, and social

arrangements over time?

How do you evaluate when changes are signifi-

cant enough to count as a refounding?

What is a just society?

How do laws and social structures change?

How can the Constitution be changed for-

mally and informally? (And how can your

state constitution or other charter be

changed?)

What political and economic ideas have

contributed to these changes?

FIGURE 1 (CONTINUED)

(continued)