PSOnline www.apsanet.org 1 by Joel Westheimer, University of Ottawa Joseph Kahne, Mills College Educating the “Good” Citizen: Political Choices and Pedagogical Goals At the level of rhetoric, most educators, policymakers, and citizens agree that devel- oping students’ capacities and commitments for effective and democratic citizenship is important. When we get specific about what democracy requires and about what kind of school curricula will best promote it, how- ever, much of that consensus falls away. For some, a commitment to democracy is a promise to protect liberal notions of freedom, while for others democracy is primarily about equality or equality of opportunity. For some, civil society is the key, while for others, free markets are the great hope for a democratic society. For some, good citizens in a democ- racy volunteer, while for others they take active parts in political processes by voting, protesting, and working on political cam- paigns. It is not surprising, then, that the growing number of educational programs that seek to further democracy by nurturing “good” citizens embody a similarly broad variety of goals and practices. We title this article “Educat- ing the ‘Good’ Citizen” to call attention to the spectrum of ideas about what good citizenship is and what good citizens do that are embodied by democratic education programs nationwide. We add the subtitle “Political Choices and Pedagogical Goals” to reflect our belief that the narrow and often ideologically conservative conception of citizenship embedded in many current efforts at teaching for democracy reflects neither arbitrary choices nor pedagogical limitations but rather political choices with political consequences. Consider, for example, the following perspectives. In 1985, Bill Bennett, then secretary of education under Ronald Reagan, wrote: “A democracy depends on schools that help to foster a kind of character which respects the law and . . . respects the value of the individual” (1985). That same year, in his book The Politics of Education: Culture, Power and Liberation, Paulo Freire stated that, “Democracy requires oppressed groups to develop political determination, that is, to organize and mobilize in order to achieve their own objectives. Education can make possible such a democracy” (1985). The next year, Albert Shanker, then president of the American Federation of Teachers, had this to say in a speech entitled “Education and Democratic Citizenship”: “How can we fail to build a world in which the rights due to every human being from birth are respected? In order to build this world . . . we must [have schools] teach democracy (1986). Finally, President George W. Bush recently established the National Veterans Awareness week and launched a new school program aimed at rekindling our democratic spirit. He called the program “Lessons of Liberty” in which, in the words of the president: “Veterans will visit elementary and high school classrooms to teach the ideals of democracy and freedom that American servicemen have defended for over two centuries” (2001). Each of these quotations takes seriously the idea that schools are essential for democ- racy. Yet Bennett, Freire, Shanker, and Bush each provide their own sense of what democ- racy requires and how schools can help us strengthen their respective—and often competing—visions of a democratic society. When educators, policymakers, politicians, and community activists pursue democracy, they do so in many different ways and towards many different ends. Students are no more in agreement on what good citizenship means than are teachers, policy makers, or politicians. We asked students in focus groups what it means to be a good citizen. One in an urban California school said: “Someone who’s active and stands up for what they believe in. If they know that something’s going on that is wrong, they go out and change it.” But a student from a different urban California school told us that to be a good citizen, you need to “follow the rules, I guess, as hard as you can, even though you want to break them sometimes. Like cattle” (Kahne et al. 2003). For many educators, making the case for democracy and the important role schools have in pursuing it is not difficult. Political scientists and civic educators alike are familiar with statistics documenting a precipitous decline in voting rates, with the biggest declines among young people. Political participation, such as working for a political party, for example, is at a 40-year low (Saguaro Seminar 2000). And targeting what people do not know about civics remains a favorite pastime of not only Jay Leno, but also of educators and politicians: one study, by the National Constitution