PEABODY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION

2019, VOL. 94, NO. 1, 4–16

https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2019.1553581

Civic Education and the Rise of Populist Nationalism

Joel Westheimer
University of Ottawa

ABSTRACT
Belief in the fundamental importance of civic education for democracy has
been long-standing. But if educators can agree that schools have an essen-
tial role to play in preparing students for informed engagement in civic and
political life, they cannot seem to agree on what that means. The very same
efforts that are applauded by some are viewed as misguided by others. The
result for schoolchildren has been a mostly watered-down notion of civics
that emphasizes good character and patriotism over critical thinking and
engaging with multiple perspectives. At the same time, the number of
young people worldwide now willing to entertain nondemocratic forms of
government is on the rise. For example, nearly a quarter of U.S. youth aged
16 to 24 believe that democracy is a “bad” or “very bad” way of governing.
About 70% of millennials do not think it is essential to live in a country
governed by democratic rule of law. This article examines the ideological
tensions that underlie civic education policies and practice in a time of
rising populist support for anti-democratic forms of governance.

“The only title in our democracy superior to that of President is the title of citizen.”
—Justice Louis Brandeis

Belief in the fundamental importance of civic education for democracy has been long-standing.
Across more than a century of U.S. school reform, and through ideological pendulum swings from
a focus on equity to a preoccupation with excellence and back again, the idea that young people must
learn to be good citizens has concerned scholars and policy makers alike (Apple, 2018; Dewey, 1916;
Educational Policies Commission, 1940; Gutmann, 1987; Noddings, 2015; Parker, 2003; Soder, 1996;
Walling, 2004). But if educators can agree that schools have an essential role to play in preparing
students for informed engagement in civic and political life, they cannot seem to agree on what that
requires. The very same efforts that are applauded by some are viewed as misguided by others. The
result for schoolchildren has been a mostly watered-down notion of civics that emphasizes good
character and blind patriotism over critical thinking and engaging with multiple perspectives. At the
same time, the number of young people worldwide now willing to entertain nondemocratic forms of
government is on the rise. For example, nearly a quarter of U.S. youth aged 16 to 24 believe that
democracy is a “bad” or “very bad” way of governing and that “choosing leaders through free
elections is unimportant” (Foa & Mounk, 2016). About 70% of U.S. millennials do not think it is
essential to live in a country governed by democratic rule of law (Foa & Mounk, 2017).
This article examines the ideological tensions (in the United States but also worldwide) that
underlie civic education policies and practice in a time of rising populist support for anti-democratic
forms of governance. I begin with a personal story to illustrate my own orientation to the importance
of a robust form of democratic civic education. I then divide my analysis and discussion into five
parts. In the first, I review a framework for surfacing the ideological underpinnings of different
visions of the good citizen; second, I discuss the rise of nationalism and its threat to democratic

CONTACT Joel Westheimer joelw@uottawa.ca www.joelwestheimer.org, @joelwestheimer University

Research Chair in Democracy and Education, University of Ottawa, 145 Jean-Jacques Lussier, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5, Canada.
© 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
 PEABODY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 5

governance; third, I place the topic of civic education in the context of current school reform; fourth,
I explore essential practices for robust and democratic civic education; and I conclude with a brief
word on the influential British report from the Advisory Group on the Teaching of Citizenship and
Democracy in schools. Often referred to as “The Crick Report” (political scientist Bernard Crick was
chair of the advisory group), it laid out an ambitious agenda for citizenship education that still holds
relevance today.

What do I think about when I think about citizenship education?

Both of my parents were born in Germany—my father in Karlsruhe in 1927 and my mother in
Frankfurt in 1928. Although my father was displaced by World War II (he moved to Lisbon with his
parents and then to Louisville, Kentucky, where he finished high school), my mother was less
fortunate. Like my father, she was 10 years old when she left Germany. Unlike my father, she left
alone on a kindertransport to Heiden, Switzerland (kindertransports were organized missions to
rescue Jewish children—but not their parents—from Germany and German-occupied territories). It
was the last time my mother would see her family.
One of the only times I remember my mother speaking directly, and with great sadness, about
this experience was when I was back in Frankfurt with her 40 years later. I was 20 years old. We were
waiting for a train together in the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (central station). She looked at a platform
adjacent to the one where we were standing and said, “That’s where I waved goodbye to my mother
and grandmother. It looks exactly the same.” And, indeed, it did. From both photographs and
history books, I knew that although the Allied bombing of Frankfurt destroyed much of the city, the
central train station suffered only minor damage. Only the advertising looked different. My mother
remembers smiling while she waved goodbye so that her mother would not cry. She also remembers
giving her favorite doll to the girl seated opposite her, who was disconsolate. They were 2 of the 100
children on the train headed to relative safety in Switzerland.
Although my parents—both German Jewish refugees—spoke little about their experiences during
World War II, I suspect that the profound injustices that informed their childhoods have had an
indelible impact on my views about education and citizenship in democratic societies. What went
wrong in German society that led to such unthinkable events as those that define the Holocaust?
How could such a highly educated, mature democracy descend into such unimaginable cruelty and
darkness? Historians have suggested a great number of causes, including Germany’s punishing defeat
in World War I, the suffering German economy after the worldwide Great Depression, and the
populist appeal of a leader who promised to fix it all. As an educator, however, I cannot help but
wonder what German schools might have done differently. What can we learn from what schools did
or did not do in Weimar, Germany (which was a democracy too)? What, if anything, should schools
today teach children about civic participation, courage, and dissent? How can schools help young
people acquire the essential knowledge, dispositions, and skills for effective democratic citizenship to
flourish?
I think about schools not only as vehicles for the transmission of knowledge but also as places
where children learn about the society in which they are growing up, how they might engage
productively, how they can fight for change when change is warranted, and how to know when
that change is warranted. Schools have always taught lessons in citizenship, moral values, good
behavior, and “character” (Dewey, 1909; Draper, 1858; Fahey, 1916; Mosier, 1965; Tyack & Hansot,
1982). Even before there was formal schooling, informal education was replete with such goals
(Heater, 2015; Spring, 2018). Today’s schools inevitably teach these lessons as well. For example,
schools teach children to follow rules, to wait their turn, and (ideally) to cooperate with others.
Schools (again, ideally) teach children how to acquire and process information and how to articulate
their ideas to others—all necessary skills for democratic civic participation. Some schools also help
students consider whether being a “good” citizen ever requires questioning rules, or what might be
the proper balance between rule-following and thinking about the origins and purpose of rules.
6 J. WESTHEIMER

History demonstrates that just because schools teach children about citizenship and character does
not necessarily mean they do it well or even toward admirable aims. In fact, schools and other youth
organizations have sometimes engaged in some of the worst forms of citizenship indoctrination
(Noddings, 2002). Counted among the many examples of organized “citizenship” education are the
hateful lessons learned by members of the Hitler Youth brigades, who were the same age my mother
was when she boarded the train to Switzerland.
There is little need for convincing others that schools should teach citizenship—that schools teach
lessons in citizenship is a given regardless of whether the school follows a citizenship education
curriculum. How classrooms are set up, who gets to talk when, how adults conduct themselves, how
decisions are made, how lessons are enacted—all these inevitably serve as lessons in citizenship.
Whether teachers explicitly “teach” lessons in citizenship or not, students learn about community
organization, the distribution of power and resources, rights, responsibilities, and of course, justice
and injustice (Dewey, 1909; Jackson, Boostrom, & Hansen 1993; Meier & Gasoi, 2018).
Knowing that schools are always instruments of citizenship education, however, does not elim-
inate educators’ responsibility to interrogate both the implicit and explicit lessons taught. Dewey
described schools as miniature communities and noted that the school is not only a preparation for
something that comes later but also the place where teachers and students spend most of their
waking hours—a community with values and norms embedded in daily experiences (Dewey, 1938).
Therefore, when we explore the underlying politics, ideological commitments, and goals of civic
education, we are journeying not only into the civics and social studies classroom but into all
classrooms, all subjects, the hallways, and the relationships of the entire school experience. In her
influential book, The Way We Argue Now (2006), literary theorist Amanda Anderson argues that
questions about how we should live should be central to literary criticism. I find the same to be true
for education. Citizenship education—indeed education of all sorts—is, ultimately, a proxy for the
kind of society we seek to create.
When I think about citizenship education, I think about whether we teach children to
unquestioningly preserve our social, political, and economic norms and behaviors or to imagine
and pursue new and better ones. Do we teach them only the importance of following the rules or
also to question when the rules are not worth following? Do we teach students to mobilize in
support of policies that promote only their own self-interest or to think more broadly about our
ethical obligations to others? I wonder what might have been different in 1941, the year my
mother received her last letter from her parents, had children been taught not only compliance
but also doubt and the obligation to imagine a better society for all. I think about what civic
educators can do now to convey to students the power of community as well as the pitfalls of
blind allegiance to it.

What kind of citizens?

A significant body of civic education scholarship is less concerned with whether students should
learn citizenship or even how, but rather with the range of goals and ideological assumptions
represented (Banks, 2008; Parker, 2003; Ross, 2017; Stitzlein, 2017). It was in that vein of inquiry
that colleagues and I began studying programs and policy to better understand “what kind of
citizens” practitioners and policy makers were imagining schools might produce and the political
implications of resulting program and policy choices (for example, Kahne & Westheimer, 2006;
Westheimer, 2004; Westheimer & Kahne, 2004). In study after study, we came to similar conclu-
sions: The kinds of goals and practices commonly represented in curricula that hope to foster
democratic citizenship usually have more to do with voluntarism, charity, and obedience than with
democracy. In other words, “good citizenship” to many educators means listening to authority
figures, dressing neatly, being nice to neighbors, and helping out at a soup kitchen—not grappling
with the kinds of social policy decisions that every citizen in a democratic society needs to
understand.
 PEABODY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 7

In our article “What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Education for Democracy,” Joseph Kahne
and I identify three visions of “good” citizens that help capture the lay of the land when it comes to
civic education: the personally responsible citizen, the participatory citizen, and the social justice–
oriented citizen (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004; see Table 1). Personally responsible citizens contribute
to food or clothing drives when asked and volunteer to help those less fortunate whether in a soup
kitchen or a senior center. They might contribute time, money, or both to charitable causes. Both
those in the character education movement and those who advocate community service emphasize
this vision of good citizenship. They seek to build character and personal responsibility by empha-
sizing honesty, integrity, self-discipline, and hard work. Or they nurture compassion by engaging
students in volunteer community service.
Participatory citizens participate in the civic affairs and social life of the community at local, state/
provincial, and national levels. Educational programs designed to support the development of
participatory citizens focus on teaching students about how government and other institutions
(e.g., community-based organizations, churches) work and about the importance of planning and
participating in organized efforts. For example, students may learn to care for those in need or guide
school policies. While the personally responsible citizen would contribute cans of food for the
homeless, the participatory citizen might organize the food drive.
The social justice–oriented citizen is an individual who knows how to critically assess multiple
perspectives; examine social, political, and economic structures; and explore strategies for change
that address root causes of problems. These are critical thinkers, and this vision of citizenship is the
least commonly pursued. Programs that encourage this form of citizenship emphasize the ability to
think about issues of fairness, equality of opportunity, and democratic engagement. They share with
the participatory citizen an emphasis on collective work related to the life and issues of the
community. However, they make critical engagement a priority and encourage students to look
for ways to improve society and become informed about a variety of complex social issues. These
programs are less likely to emphasize the need for charity and volunteerism as ends in themselves
and more likely to teach about ways to effect systemic change. If participatory citizens are organizing
the food drive and personally responsible citizens are donating food, social justice–oriented citizens
are asking why people are hungry and acting on what they discover to address root causes of hunger
(e.g., poverty, inequality, or structural impediments to self-sufficiency). Through an examination of
inequities—both historical and extant—programs that emphasize participatory and social justice–
oriented visions of the “good” citizen also enable reflection on the ways overlapping and intersecting
categories such as race, class, gender, and sexuality can constrain and enable social action for the
collective benefit of all.
Currently, the vast majority of school programs that take the time to teach citizenship emphasize
good character, including the importance of volunteering, helping those in need, and following the law.
Character traits such as honesty, integrity, and responsibility for one’s actions are certainly valuable for
becoming good neighbors and citizens. But, on their own, they have little to do with the unique
requirements of citizenship in a democracy. Some programs promote voluntarism and charity as an
alternative to social policy and organized government action. Former U.S. President George Bush
Sr. famously promoted community service activities for youth by imagining a “thousand points of
light” representing charitable efforts to respond to those in need. But if young people understand these
actions as a kind of noblesse oblige—a private act of kindness performed by the privileged—and fail to
examine the deeper structural causes of social ills, then the thousand points of light risk becoming
a thousand points of the status quo. Citizenship in a democratic community requires kindness and
decency, but it also requires significantly more. An overemphasis on kindness might even discourage
challenges to the status quo so as not to ruffle feathers.
Citizenship education that teaches students to follow the rules, listen to their teachers, be honest,
help others in need, clean up after themselves, try their best, and be team players is rarely
controversial since few would find these goals inherently wrong. But those lessons would be just
as welcome in North Korea, Uzbekistan, and Belarus—countries the organization Freedom House
 8
J. WESTHEIMER

Table 1. What kind of citizen?

Three Kinds of Citizens
Personally Responsible Citizen Participatory Citizen Social Justice–Oriented Citizen
Description Acts responsibly in the community Works and Active member of community organizations Critically assesses social, political, and economic
pays taxes and/or improvement efforts structures
Picks up litter, recycles, and gives blood Organizes community efforts to care for those Explores strategies for change that address root causes
in need, promote economic development, or of problems
clean up environment
Helps those in need, lends a hand during Knows how government agencies work Knows about social movements and how to effect
times of crisis systemic change
Obeys laws Knows strategies for accomplishing collective Seeks out and addresses areas of injustice
tasks
Sample action Contributes food to a food drive Helps to organize a food drive Explores why people are hungry and acts to solve root
causes
Core assumptions To solve social problems and improve society, To solve social problems and improve society, To solve social problems and improve society, citizens
citizens must have good character; they must citizens must actively participate and take must question and change established systems and
be honest, responsible, and law-abiding leadership positions within established structures when they reproduce patterns of injustice
members of the community systems and community structures over time
Westheimer, What Kind of Citizen? Educating Our Children for the Common Good (Teachers College Press, 2015b).
 PEABODY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 9

(2017) identifies as among the least democratic and free in the world. Respect for teachers and
government leaders, loyalty, kindness, and diligence may all be important. But they are important
under any organized system of government—totalitarian dictatorships, military dictatorships, mon-
archies, religious theocracies, and oligarchies. Think of even the most benevolent dictator, one who
makes decisions only with the best interests of the people in mind. That leader would still not desire
citizens to consider perspectives other than the one that he or she has decided is the best way
forward. Democracies, however, make special demands on their citizens. Government of the people,
by the people, and for the people requires the people to participate in decisions about laws and
policies that affect us all. It follows, then, that schools in democratic nations have special require-
ments as well.

Diminishing democracy and the rise of nationalism

The kind of robust civic education that asks students to imagine a more just society offers students
multiple perspectives on controversial issues and teaches them that critical engagement has always
been a desirable goal for any democratic nation (see also Gadsden et al. in this issue). But the current
toxic mix of ideological polarization, waning trust in government, and a breakdown in the traditions
and institutions that enable democratic governance make these goals seem even more critical. In
a widely circulated 2017 report, the Pew Research Center raised considerable alarm among those
who have generally assumed that Western democracies enjoy relative stability amidst an entrenched
culture of democratic governance (Wike, Simmons, Stokes, & Fetterolf, 2017). Although the report
was titled “Globally, Broad Support for Representative and Direct Democracy,” commentators, civic
educators, and political scientists highlighted a number of findings that challenged the rosier title. In
the United States, for example, 22% of respondents thought that a political system in which a strong
leader could make decisions without interference from congress or the courts would be a good way
of governing. Close to one in three respondents who identified as Republican and almost half of
U.S. millennials thought the same (globally, that figure was 26%).
In another study released a few months earlier, Harvard lecturer Yascha Mounk and Australian
political scientist Roberto Stefan Foa examined longitudinal data from the World Values Survey and
found considerable cause for concern. Between 1995 and 2014, the number of citizens who reported
a preference for a government leader who was “strong” and who did not need to bother with
elections increased in almost every developed and developing democracy and, again, the growth was
greatest among youth and young adults (Foa & Mounk, 2016). Democracy, it seems, is not self-
winding.
The 2016 election of Donald Trump as president of the United States and the Brexit vote of the
same year served to deepen fears that populist nationalism—the rallying in the service of right-wing
nationalism of “the people” against the common enemy of both “foreigners” and a constructed
“elite”—is gaining ground in the United States and globally. Since taking office, President Trump has
openly expressed disdain for hallmarks of democratic society, including the free press, civil liberties,
and the courts. He has also encouraged discourse, policy, and legislation that seeks to severely
restrict both immigration (Vidal, 2018) and global trade (Lester & Manak, 2018) while fostering
resentment against ethnic “others” among his base (Bonikowski, 2017). These anti-democratic
rhetoric and policies can drive individuals and groups to withdraw from the broader civil society
altogether, preferring subgroup identity over attachments to the broader civil society—what James
Banks (2017) aptly calls “failed citizenship.”
Moreover, a rise in xenophobia and a global revival of jingoistic nationalism has resulted in
incidents of hate speech, antagonism, and assaults on both newly arrived immigrants and native-
born visible minorities in a growing number of Western democracies (United Nations, 2016). In the
United States, the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented a precipitous rise in hatred, fear,
and alienation among students (Costello, 2016). Teachers have similarly reported a dramatic increase
in hate speech (Au, 2017; Rogers et al., 2017; Vara-Orta, 2018). Social media echo chambers further
10 J. WESTHEIMER

entrench anti-democratic tendencies and pollute genuine social and political discourse (Kahne &
Bowyer, 2017; Middaugh, this issue). Yoichi Funabashi, chairman of the Rebuild Japan Initiative,
which is dedicated to strengthening democratic ideals in Japan, summarizes the risks of these
divisions succinctly: “If society becomes characterized by intolerant divisions, in which people
immediately select their allies and dismiss others as foes based on such criteria as race, ethnicity,
religion or lifestyle, then democracy’s foundational principles, rooted in careful deliberation and
compromise, will be rendered inoperable” (Funabashi, 2017). Ultimately, as witnessed most recently
in the murder of 32-year-old Heather Heyer during a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, the Pittsburgh
synagogue shooting that killed 11 people, the attempted pipe bomb murders of prominent political
and philanthropic leaders throughout the United States, and dozens of other incidents, the result is
a threat not only to democracy but also to life and liberty (see Hasan, 2018 for a disturbing review of
recent deaths directly linked to political hate speech).
Against this sociopolitical backdrop, I would like to think that education policy makers across the
globe would respond with urgency and clarity of purpose. But if being a good democratic citizen
requires thinking critically about important social assumptions, then that foundation of citizenship is
at odds with recent trends in education policy.

The school reform context

The challenges to social cohesion and democratic community highlight the need for a robust form of
civic education. In what could be considered initially reassuring, almost every school mission
statement boasts broad goals related to critical thinking, global citizenship, environmental steward-
ship, and moral character. Yet mission statements and school policy and practice do not always
align. In many school districts, ever more narrow curriculum frameworks emphasize preparing
students for standardized assessments in math and literacy at the same time that they shortchange
the social studies, history, and even the most basic citizenship education (Au, 2007; Koretz, 2017).
Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg calls the kind of school reform that elevates testing and standardiza-
tion above all other educational considerations GERM (for Global Education Reform Movement).
He describes GERM as follows:
It is like an epidemic that spreads and infects education systems through a virus. It travels with pundits, media
[,] and politicians. Education systems borrow policies from others and get infected. As a consequence, schools
get ill, teachers don’t feel well, and kids learn less. (Sahlberg, 2012)

Not only do kids learn less, but what they learn tends to follow prescriptive formulas that match
the standardized tests. In the process, more complex and difficult-to-measure learning outcomes get
left behind. These include creativity and emotional and social development but also the kinds of
thinking skills associated with robust civic engagement. Teachers’ ability to teach critical thinking
and students’ ability to think and act critically are diminished.
The arguably more well-intentioned but still problematic Common Core State Standards
Initiative, while aimed at increasing critical thinking, has nonetheless continued the myopic focus
on testing (Karp, 2013/2014). Developed in 2009 and 2010 under the auspices of the National
Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Common Core State
Standards have been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia (the widespread participation
is due, in part, to the stipulation that in order to be eligible for Race to the Top funding, states must
first adopt the new standards). Although many educators agree that the content of the newer
standards has more depth than previous attempts at standardized rubrics, the uniformity they
demand continues to inhibit the possibilities of using localized knowledge (Blankstein & Noguera,
2016; Meier & Gasoi, 2018). Moreover, the new standards, much like the old ones, are inextricably
linked to the larger political project to remake (some would say destroy) public education—a
package of reforms that include high-stakes testing, teacher evaluations, “value-added” measures,
and privatization. As David Greene argued in U.S. News and World Report (2014), we must always
 PEABODY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 11

evaluate standards in the context of a larger policy context that stifles teachers. Uniformity, Greene
notes, means that teachers’ practical wisdom and spontaneity are devalued. Curricular approaches
that spoon-feed students to succeed on narrow academic tests teach students that broader critical
thinking is optional (see Brezicha & Mitra in this issue).
It is worth noting that, although the overall reform context may limit in-depth, critical analysis,
a significant number of teachers continue to teach those skills. As the important work of Kahne and
Middaugh (2008) has demonstrated, however, it tends to be higher-achieving students, often from
wealthier neighborhoods, who are receiving a disproportionate share of the kinds of citizenship
education that sharpen students’ thinking about issues of public debate and concern. This demo-
graphic divide or “civic opportunity gap” results in unequal distribution of opportunities to practice
democratic engagement. Since economic inequality (and inequitable school funding) has also
increased dramatically over the past decade, these effects are likely to get worse before they get
better unless civic educators directly address the disparity (Barshay, 2015; Saez, 2016).
The increasingly narrow curriculum goals, accountability measures, and standardized testing
I describe above (and detailed in Wilson et al. in this issue) have reduced too many classroom
lessons to the cold, stark pursuit of information and facts without context and social meaning. It is
not that facts are bad or that they should be ignored. But democratic societies require more than
citizens who are fact-full. They require citizens who can think and act in ethically thoughtful ways.
A well-functioning democracy benefits from classroom practices that teach students to recognize
ambiguity and conflict in factual content, to see human conditions and aspirations as complex and
contested, and to embrace debate and deliberation as a cornerstone of democratic societies.

Democratic civic education

Public schooling in America has always been implicated in nurturing civic capacities and habits
consistent with democratic life. Research on extant democratic civic education practices read along-
side theoretical contributions on the prerequisites for robust democratic engagement offer a wealth
of material on which to build (for example, Banks, 2008; Journell, 2017; Noddings, 2015; Parker,
2003, 2014). In the remaining space, I would like to highlight three characteristics of the highest-
quality democratic civic education programs that I find essential for teaching democratic habits of
heart and mind: Teach students how to ask questions, expose students to multiple perspectives, and
root instruction in local contexts.

Teach students to question

One hallmark of a totalitarian society is the notion of one single “truth” handed down from a leader
or small group of leaders to everyone else. Questioning that truth is not only discouraged but also
often illegal. By contrast, schools in democratic societies must teach students how to ask challenging
questions—the kind of uncomfortable queries that challenge tradition (Giroux, 2017). Although
most of us would agree that traditions are important, without questioning there can be no progress.
Dissent—feared and suppressed in nondemocratic societies—is the engine of progress in free ones.
Education reformers, school leaders, and parents should do everything possible to ensure that
teachers and students have opportunities to ask these kinds of questions.
For example, Bob Peterson, a one-time Wisconsin Elementary Teacher of the Year, worked with
his students at La Escuela Fratney in Madison to examine the full spectrum of ideological positions
that emerged following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Instead of avoiding his fifth-grade
students’ challenging questions, Peterson encouraged them. He placed a notebook prominently at
the front of the classroom labeled “Questions That We Have.” As the students discussed their
questions and the unfolding current events, Peterson repeatedly asked students to consider their
responsibilities to one another, to their communities, and to the world (Westheimer, 2015a).
12 J. WESTHEIMER

Expose students to multiple perspectives

Much as Darwin’s theory of natural selection depends on genetic variation, any theory of teaching in
a democratic society depends on encouraging a multiplicity of ideas, perspectives, and approaches to
exploring solutions to issues of widespread concern. Students need practice in entertaining multiple
viewpoints on issues that affect their lives (Bruen et al., 2016; Campbell, 2008; Lin, Lawrence, &
Snow, 2015). These issues might be controversial. But improving society requires embracing that
kind of controversy so citizens can engage in democratic dialog and work together toward under-
standing and enacting sensible policies.
Why would we expect adults, even senators or members of Congress, to be able to intelligently
and compassionately discuss different viewpoints in the best interests of their constituents if school-
children never or rarely get that opportunity? In schools that further democratic aims, teachers
engage young people in deep historical, political, social, economic, and even scientific analysis. They
also challenge children to imagine how their lived experiences are not universal and how issues that
may seem trivial to them could matter deeply to others. They have students examine multiple
perspectives not only to know that their (or their parents’) views may not be shared by everyone but
also to engender a kind of critical empathy for those with competing needs. This is the kind of
teaching that encourages future citizens to leverage their civic skills for the greater social good, rather
than their own particular interests, thus working to challenge social inequities.
How should we do this? For example, teachers might present newspaper articles from around the
world (easily accessed through the Internet) that examine the same event. Which facts and narratives
are consistent? Which are different? Why? Textbooks from several different countries could provide
another trove of lessons on multiple viewpoints and the role of argument and evidence in democratic
deliberation. If such textbooks are not available in English, there is plenty of variation in perspectives
across English-language textbooks; for instance, schools in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the
United States present strikingly different perspectives on the War of 1812.
Why not ask students to research who wrote their textbook? Was it one person or a committee?
Why were those people chosen? What kind of author was not invited to participate? The idea that
a person or group actually wrote a textbook reminds us that the words are not sacrosanct but
represent the views of a particular time, place, and group of authors. These approaches help
demonstrate to students that “facts” are less stable than is often thought.

Focus on the here and now

Schools should encourage students to consider their specific surroundings and circumstances. It is
not possible to teach democratic forms of thinking without providing an environment to think
about. For that reason, among many others, nationally standardized tests are difficult to reconcile
with in-depth critical thinking about issues that matter to students in a particular time and place. For
example, students are frequently exposed to past historical controversies—such as slavery, Nazism,
or laws denying voting rights to women—that are already settled in the minds of all but a small
fringe minority. But those same students are too often shielded from matters that require thoughtful
engagement with today’s competing ideas (e.g., abortion rights; universal daycare; maintaining,
changing, or removing monuments to controversial historical figures). Yet that kind of engagement
is exactly what democratic participation requires.
One way to provide experiences with democratic participation in civic and political life is to engage
students in contemporary and community-based projects that encourage the development of personal
responsibility, participation, and critical analysis. Service-learning programs (Evans, 2015; Kahne &
Westheimer, 2001), when they embrace the full set of those outcomes, can foster the knowledge, skills,
and dispositions of the democratically engaged citizen. Similarly, recent work on action civics is
a particularly powerful and thoughtful way to foster civic participation that transcends community
service to also include a focus on government, policy, and dissent (Blevins, LeCompte, & Wells, 2016;
 PEABODY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 13

Levinson, 2014). We saw this with the students of Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida,
who, in responding to a local event—a shooting in their school and the death of their friends—became
key figures in a national dialog on gun culture in the Unites States, while also mobilizing both locally
and nationally to agitate for gun control legislation, organize demonstrations, support electoral candi-
dates, and register voters. Their ability to connect a very personal experience with the ways in which
government, policy, and the gun lobby shape their lives has allowed them to make real change on
a national scale and no doubt prepared them for a life of effective civic engagement. When students
have the opportunity to engage with civics education through direct action in their own local context,
the impacts of their work are integrated with their lived experience and can teach fundamental lessons
about the power of citizen engagement (Facing History and Ourselves, 2018; Obama, 2018).
Of course, choosing to be explicitly political in the classroom can cause friction for teachers—with
students, parents, and administrators. Teachers have been disciplined, suspended, and fired for
engaging students in discussions on controversial issues (Journell, 2017; Stitzlein, 2013;
Westheimer, 2007). Even when teachers avoid expressing their own political views, encouraging
discussion, controversy, and action in the classroom can be daunting (see also Gibbs in this issue).
Students may express views that make classmates uncomfortable, they may engage in political acts
that concern their parents, or they may choose to challenge their own school’s policies. Democracy
can be messy. Rather than let fear of sanction and censorship dictate pedagogical choices, however,
teachers should feel supported and protected, encouraged to use debates and controversy as “teach-
able moments” in civic discourse.

Conclusion
Two decades ago, the British government commissioned a report by a citizenship advisory group led
by political theorist Bernard Crick. This document laid out goals that continue to serve as a valuable
blueprint for schools today:
We aim … for people to think of themselves as active citizens, willing, able, and equipped to have an influence
in public life and with the critical capacities to weigh evidence before speaking and acting; to build on and
extend radically to young people the best in existing traditions of community involvement and public service,
and to make them individually confident in finding new forms of involvement and action among themselves.
(Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, 1998)

In 2018, when some of the world’s oldest democracies are threatened by vast economic inequality,
fear, xenophobia, attacks on a free press, and a potentially dangerous form of populism, teaching and
learning that helps young people understand and respond to these phenomena are essential. It is
incumbent on teachers and school leaders to reassert a role in fostering schools that reclaim the
importance of democratic values and the common good and that strengthen the bonds between us.
The good news is that while some policy makers have been myopically preoccupied with standardized
testing in only two subject areas (math and literacy) and others have passed laws effectively outlawing
critical thinking (see Strauss, 2012; Westheimer, 2015a), teachers and students have often created their
own lessons in civic engagement. In every school district there are examples of individual teachers and
schools that work creatively and diligently to engage their students in thinking about the ways their
education connects to broader democratic goals. Curriculum that teaches critical analysis of multiple
perspectives on a huge variety of topics is available from a variety of organizations (e.g., Rethinking
Schools, Teaching for Change, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching for Tolerance, and the Zinn
Education Project) and a significant number of teachers are using these resources with their students.
Some lessons also derive from spontaneous grassroots engagement. For example, in 2014 more
than 1,000 Jefferson County, Colorado, high school students and hundreds of teachers walked out of
classes to protest changes in the Advanced Placement (AP) history curriculum that sought to
downplay the legacy of civil disobedience and protest in American history while promoting patri-
otism, respect for authority, and the benefits of the free enterprise system. One high school senior,
14 J. WESTHEIMER

noting that students were protesting a curriculum that discourages protesting, quipped, “If they
don’t teach us [about] civil disobedience, we will teach ourselves” (Jacobs, 2014).
If today’s youth are to participate in political decision making, schools must ensure that they are
sufficiently well-informed to do so effectively. Basic skills like literacy and numeracy are, perhaps, the
first important step toward that goal—but they are not enough. Education that fosters the kind of
engagement a well-functioning democracy requires will also ensure that students gain the knowl-
edge, capacities, and dispositions associated with a robust democratic life.

Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Karen Suurtamm for invaluable assistance with research for this article; Barbara Leckie for
her thoughtful and critical suggestions; and Lora Cohen-Vogel, Jerry Wilson, James Sadler, Michele Thompson, Francisco
Santelli, and two anonymous reviewers for their generous feedback and for raising especially helpful questions.

Author bio
Joel Westheimer is University Research Chair in Democracy and Education at the University of Ottawa and education
columnist for CBC Radio. His newest critically acclaimed book is What Kind of Citizen: Educating Our Children for the
Common Good. He is principal investigator (with John Rogers, UCLA) of The Inequality Project, investigating what
schools in North America are teaching about economic inequality (www.theinequalityproject.org). In addition to
researching the role of schools in democratic societies, Westheimer also studies, writes, and speaks widely on global
school reform, the standards and accountability onslaught, and the politics of education and education research. You can
follow him on Twitter @joelwestheimer, visit his website at www.joelwestheimer.org, or email him at joelw@uottawa.ca.

ORCID
Joel Westheimer http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1111-1956

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