Radically Changed by the Revolution: The Meaning of Citizenship and Civic Education

The civic thought movement has produced many fine proposals for facilitating a more robust citizen education in multiple legal contexts, but these proposals have mostly taken for granted what it means to be a citizen of the United States in our time. However, if the movement seeks to bring about a true revival in civic education—legally, politically, and culturally—it must have a clear picture of what it is aiming at and what is possible in our current circumstances. To help clarify that picture, this paper asks civics educators to consider citizenship and civics education in light of their intimate relation to the regime and its legal underpinning, and to political theory. We illustrate these relationships by comparing the American Founding and 20th century Progressivism. We find that in the Founding citizenship was understood as an exclusive legal and moral privilege that came with a robust set of rights and duties. Conversely, while the Progressives similarly emphasized the importance of civic education, their understanding of citizenship differed from that of the Founding on account of their rejection of the Founders’ natural and civil law principles. We conclude with the suggestion that the civic thought movement must adopt a more robust political and legal theory to achieve its aims.