Civic education reconsidered

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

Why then has the campaign for renewed civic education embraced a unitary, rather than a plural, conception of the civic idea? Political causes often define themselves - or allow themselves to be defined - by what they oppose, which today means chiefly multiculturalism and its goal of "diversity" (a term that reminds one of pluralism). Diversity, it is argued, produces disunity and opens America to the prospect of feuding tribes lacking any common bond. Having defined the problem in this way, the natural tendency is to place a premium on unity and to favor measures that promote a common experience. In this climate, pluralism sounds like the problem, not the solution.

Closer examination, however, makes clear that it is a mistake to equate "diversity" with "pluralism." Diversity proclaims that an individual's social identity is to be located not in the nation's guiding principles but in one or another of its so-called cultural groups; this way of thinking denies a distinctive American civic idea. Pluralism, by contrast, refers to the different expressions and understandings of the American civic idea. It is true that pluralism, in some instances, produces separateness. For example, it is mostly Catholics who attend Catholic schools and mostly Protestants who go to the different Protestant schools. But the nation has survived this separateness with the commitment of its various groups to the country intact and with their patriotism undiminished. A common sentiment need not always be produced by going through the very same experience. Moreover, the intolerance that existed among the different religious groups has largely given way today to their common effort to protect religious faith from the secularism of modern society. If there is a culture war in America today it is less one among the different believers in different faiths than between believers and nonbelievers.

The conflating of "diversity" and "pluralism" may have started out as an innocent mistake - one of those unfortunate confusions that the imprecise instrument of language sometimes produces when dealing with intellectual constructs and general ideas. But perpetuating this confusion is now, for some, a deliberate policy. It serves the aims of those anxious to promote a unitary vision of civic education and to undermine some of the attributes of pluralism, especially its openness to religious traditions. One should not forget that the most influential defender of a unitary vision in this century, John Dewey, was no friend of religious education and saw the progressive school teacher as the "prophet" of a new secular order. Dewey's heirs are hardly less enthusiastic in their ardor against religious faith. Defenders of pluralism thus have much to fear from the turn that modern discourse has taken. It would be the cruelest of ironies if the well-intentioned campaign against multiculturalism ended up claiming civic pluralism as one of its victims.

There is a further confusion in the meaning of "diversity" as it relates to educational policy. The word may make one think that multiculturalism favors pluralism in civic education - an impression strengthened by its critics' claim that it encourages each group to go its own way. But proponents of multicultural education do not in fact want black Americans to have one education in political matters, women another, and white Americans yet another. Instead, they have been pressing relentlessly for one version of the national narrative in which all students are instructed in the same painful story of Anglo-American hegemony and exploitation. Only after all receive this common foundation should each group repair to its particular concerns. Despite what the label suggests then, multiculturalism ultimately embraces a unitary, though anticivic, view of education - not a pluralistic one.