Civic education reconsidered

Public Interest, Fall, 1998 by James W. Ceaser, Patrick J. McGuinn

These perspectives date from the American colonial experience and have been developed and maintained by different kinds of schools, including the schools of various Protestant denominations, Catholic schools, military academies, Friends schools, as well as the different secular and government systems. The Protestant tradition in America grew out of the same European Enlightenment ideas as the nation itself. From the beginning, Protestants have emphasized education so that individuals could learn to read the Bible for themselves and to reason independently about God. This tradition espouses individualism, self-reliance and hard work, public service, and respect for legitimate authority. Writing in the early nineteenth century, Noah Webster captured the Protestant belief that good Christians make good citizens:

The scriptures ... furnish the best principles of civil liberty, and the most effectual support of republican government. They teach the true principles of that equality of rights which belongs to every one of the human family but only in consistency with a strict subordination to the magistrate and the law.

The Catholic contribution to the American civic tradition has also been longstanding and significant. Catholic educators have consistently held that religious teachings are not only compatible with civic education but complement it in important ways. They have challenged what John Courtney Murray has called the "contrived dilemma wherein one is confronted with the stark choice of flag or cross, fatherland or faith, Caesar, or God." Catholics' more communitarian view of the citizen's role in society - derived from Aquinas and the tradition of natural-right philosophy - has served as a valuable counterweight to modern liberalism's emphasis on the individual. Catholic education encourages discipline, egalitarianism, concern for the less fortunate, and community service. As Pope John Paul II has said, "Catholic education serves the future of all Americans, by teaching and communicating the very virtues on which American democracy rests."

Military schools, meanwhile, stress the inculcation of duty, loyalty, respect for authority, patriotism, discipline, honor, and leadership. These "private" schools are at their very core dedicated to the idea of service in defense of public principles and the state. Preparing the individual for the ultimate sacrifice, they encourage the ultimate sense of civic duty. Quaker schools have as their guiding principles social responsibility, consensus building, tolerance, equality, and simplicity. They emphasize the importance of individual conscience and the peaceful resolution of disputes. The small number of Quaker schools ensures that their pacifism - which like militarism could pose difficulties if it dominated society at large - remains but one voice among many.

Pluralism describes an arrangement or a process, and there is nothing in a pluralist view per se that assures the reasonable content of the different positions, much less a satisfactory outcome to any dialogue. If each of the positions is foolish and inadequate, it is hard to see how much is gained by having many of them. Thus pluralism must not come to mean a blind trust in the process; debates about better and worse plans must continue. Nor, from a different angle, is pluralism a guarantee that disagreements will not become overheated, leading to efforts by some to suppress their rivals. Such in fact has often been the case with American history; during most periods, pluralism better describes the reality of disagreement than an ideal accepted by the different parties. A defense of pluralism acknowledges these shortcomings and flaws, but it maintains nonetheless that, as a general way of structuring matters, far more is to be gained than lost in the ongoing existence of, and even the competition among, different views.