Product Description: American Civics and Government provides the framework students need for a strong understanding of the government of the United States. Each of the three branches of government are explored in depth, as are civil liberties and civil rights, public policy, state and local government, participatory government, and comparative political and economic systems...read more

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Product Description: The Founders of this nation believed that the government they were creating required a civically educated populace. Such an education aimed to cultivate enlightened, informed, and vigilant citizens who could perpetuate and improve the nation...read more

Product Description: This book explores four interrelated themes: rethinking civic education in light of the diversity of U.S. society; re-examining these notions in an increasingly interconnected global context; re-considering the ways that civic education is researched and practiced; and taking stock of where we are currently through use of an historical understanding of civic education...read more

Product Description: Imagine an America where politicians, governmental institutions, schools, new technologies, and interest groups work together to promote informed, engaged citizens. Civic Education in the Twenty-First Century brings together scholars from various disciplines to show how such a United States is possible today...read more

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Product Description: Civic education plays an essential role in strengthening our democratic society, preparing informed citizens, and promoting their participation in the civic life of their communities. Lack of civic engagement and civic literacy among American youth is widespread, however...read more

Product Description: "the founders favored the teaching religion"

Product Description: Obsessed with answers, we have lost sight of the power and value of questions. Debates over globalization, climate change, health care, and poverty will not be “solved” with simple answers, but that’s what Americans are being trained to expect...read more

In the first edition of this book published in 1988, Shirley Engle and I offered a broader and more democratic curriculum as an alternative to the persistent back-to-the-basics rhetoric of the '70s and '80s. This curriculum urged attention to democratic practices and curricula in the school if we wanted to improve the quality of citizen participation and strengthen this democracy. School practices during that period reflected a much lower priority for social studies. Fewer social studies offerings, fewer credits required for graduation and in many cases, the job descriptions of social studies curriculum coordinators were transformed by changing their roles to general curriculum consultants. The mentality that prevailed in the nation's schools was "back to the basics" and the basics never included or even considered the importance of heightening the education of citizens. We certainly agree that citizens must be able to read, write and calculate but these abilities are not sufficient for effective citizenship in a democracy. This version of the original work appears at a time when young citizens, teachers and schools find themselves deluged by a proliferation of curriculum standards and concomitant mandatory testing. In the '90s, virtually all subject areas including United States history, geography, economic and civics developed curriculum standards, many funded by the federal government. Subsequently, the National Council for the Social Studies issued the Social Studies Curriculum Standards that received no federal support. Accountability, captured in the No Child Left Behind Act passed by Congress, has become a powerful, political imperative that has a substantial and disturbing influence on the curriculum, teaching and learning in the first decade of the 21st century.

Product Description: What will it take for the American people to enact a more democratic version of themselves? How to better educate democratic minds and democratic hearts? In response to these crucial predicaments, this innovative book proposes that instead of ignoring or repressing the conflicted nature of American identity, these conflicts should be recognized as sites of pedagogical opportunity...read more

Product Description: Make responsible digital citizenship part of your school’s culture! Use this book’s community-based approach to building digital citizenship to teach, learn, and thrive in today’s digital environment.  Expertly navigate the pitfalls of the digital world, take hold of the plethora of opportunities available to you, and confidently engage in online connections without fear!  Educators, parents, and students will discover how to: Protect privacy and leave positive online footprints Understand creative credits and copyright freedoms Foster responsible digital behaviors through safe and secure practices Enlist all stakeholders to help ingrain digital citizenship into the school culture ...read more

Product Description: How can scholars reconnect themselves—and their students—to higher education’s historic but much diluted mission to work for the public good?Through the lenses of personal reflection and auto-ethnography—and drawing on such rich philosophical foundations as the Spanish tradition of higher learning, the holistic Aztec concept of education, the Hispanic notion of bien educado, and the activist principles of the Chicano movement–these writers explore the intersections of private and public good, and how the tension between them has played out in their own lives and the commitments they have made to their intellectual community, and to their cultural and family communities...read more

Product Description: Do strong leaders inevitably undermine democracies? Drawing upon the insights of Alexis de Tocqueville, Brian Danoff offers a compelling, revisionist analysis of the role of leadership in democratic societies. Rather than focusing on effectiveness or character to assess the quality of leaders in democracies, Tocqueville suggests that great democratic leaders are those who educate, elevate, and empower their fellow citizens; certain types of leadership enhance rather than diminish self-rule...read more

Product Description: There can be no democracy without democrats, and democrats are made, not born. This volume features sixteen provocative essays, old and new, on the concern to educate young people for that loosely-defined genre of political and social life called democracy...read more

Product Description: The authors discuss the dilemmas that face those who would educate tomorrow's valuable citizens and describe the day-to-day commitment needed to maintain a community. Important questions are asked: How do our public schools educate children to become members of our particular "public?" What problems face citizens of a democracy committed to both pluralism and equity? How has the meaning of citizenship changed as our society has evolved? In a world made interdependent through technology, how can one best define citizenship? The book's various perspectives provide guidelines for action through examples of current programs, and the reader is invited to join new forums to discuss questions raised--forums that allow for heated, but civil, disagreement...read more

Product Description: This collection of carefully argued essays examines what American students should know about world affairs in the post-cold war era. The issues which are examined are those that will continue to be debated as our schools prepare for the next century...read more

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Product Description: For those who believe that the humanities in America are in trouble, suffering from over-specialization and never-ending intramural conflicts, this collection of addresses and essays provides much needed hope.Since the early 1970s, state humanities councils, working under a Congressional mandate, have developed important models of how the study of history, literature, and culture can be infused into the public life of the nation...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This volume presents three monographs by R. Freeman Butts, an eminent scholar in the social foundations of education, discussing the development of that field at Teachers College, Columbia University, the branching out into international education, and the more recent focus on civic education...read more