How To Educate A Citizen

“Profound, vital and correct. Hirsch highlights the essence of our American being and the radical changes in education necessary to sustain that essence. Concerned citizens, teachers, and parents take note! We ignore this book at our peril."— Joel Klein, former Chancellor of New York City Public Schools In this powerful manifesto, the bestselling author of Cultural Literacy addresses the failures of America’s early education system and its impact on our current national malaise, advocating for a shared knowledge curriculum students everywhere can be taught—an educational foundation that can help improve and strengthen America’s unity, identity, and democracy. In How to Educate a Citizen, E.D. Hirsch continues the conversation he began thirty years ago with his classic bestseller Cultural Literacy, urging America’s public schools, particularly at the elementary level, to educate our children more effectively to help heal and preserve the nation. Since the 1960s, our schools have been relying on “child-centered learning.” History, geography, science, civics, and other essential knowledge have been dumbed down by vacuous learning “techniques” and “values-based” curricula; indoctrinated by graduate schools of education, administrators and educators have believed they are teaching reading and critical thinking skills. Yet these cannot be taught in the absence of strong content, Hirsch argues. The consequence is a loss of shared knowledge that would enable us to work together, understand one another, and make coherent, informed decisions. A broken approach to school not only leaves our children under-prepared and erodes the American dream but also loosens the spiritual bonds and unity that hold the nation together. Drawing on early schoolmasters and educational reformers such as Noah Webster and Horace Mann, Hirsch charts the rise and fall of the American early education system and provides a blueprint for closing the national gap in knowledge, communications, and allegiance. Critical and compelling, How to Educate a Citizen galvanizes our schools to equip children with the power of shared knowledge.

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Cultural competence in education promotes civic engagement among students. Providing students with educational opportunities to understand various cultural and political perspectives allows for higher cultural competence and a greater understanding of civic engagement for those students. The Handbook of Research on Citizenship and Heritage Education is a critical scholarly book that provides relevant and current research on citizenship and heritage education aimed at promoting active participation and the transformation of society. Readers will come to understand the role of heritage as a symbolic identity source that facilitates the understanding of the present and the past, highlighting the value of teaching. Additionally, it offers a source for the design of didactic proposals that promote active participation and the critical conservation of heritage. Featuring a range of topics such as educational policy, curriculum design, and political science, this book is ideal for educators, academicians, administrators, political scientists, policymakers, researchers, and students.

This edited collection brings together researchers from education, human geography, sociology, social policy and political theory in order to consider the idea of the ‘pedagogical state’ as a means of understanding the strategies employed to re-educate citizens. The book aims to critically interrogate the cultural practices of governing citizens in contemporary liberal societies. Governing through pedagogy can be identified as an emerging tactic by which both state agencies and other non-state actors manage, administer, discipline, shape, care for and enable liberal citizens. Hence, discourses of ‘active citizenship’, ‘participatory democracy’, ‘community empowerment’, ‘personalised responsibility’, ‘behaviour change’ and ‘community cohesion’ are productively viewed through the conceptual lens of the pedagogical state. Chapters consider the spaces of schools, universities, the voluntary sector, civil society organisations, parenting initiatives, the media, government departments and state agencies as fruitful empirical sites through which pedagogy is worked and re-worked. This book was originally published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.

The authors discuss the dilemmas that face those who would educate tomorrow's valuable citizens and describe the day-to-day commitment needed to maintain a community. Important questions are asked: How do our public schools educate children to become members of our particular "public?" What problems face citizens of a democracy committed to both pluralism and equity? How has the meaning of citizenship changed as our society has evolved? In a world made interdependent through technology, how can one best define citizenship? The book's various perspectives provide guidelines for action through examples of current programs, and the reader is invited to join new forums to discuss questions raised--forums that allow for heated, but civil, disagreement. Only by engaging in such discussions can a public consensus be reached on the best ways to educate for tomorrow. Contributors include John Covaleskie, Ellen Giarelli, James Giarelli, Jerilyn Fay Kelle, Thomas Mauhs-Pugh, Barbara McEwan, Mary B. Stanley, Donald Warren, and Zeus Yiamouyiannis.

Make responsible digital citizenship part of your school’s culture! Use this book’s community-based approach to building digital citizenship to teach, learn, and thrive in today’s digital environment. Expertly navigate the pitfalls of the digital world, take hold of the plethora of opportunities available to you, and confidently engage in online connections without fear! Educators, parents, and students will discover how to: Protect privacy and leave positive online footprints Understand creative credits and copyright freedoms Foster responsible digital behaviors through safe and secure practices Enlist all stakeholders to help ingrain digital citizenship into the school culture

Being online, well-being online, and rights online: information, tools and good practice Digital citizenship competences define how we act and interact online. They comprise the values, attitudes, skills and knowledge and critical understanding necessary to responsibly navigate the constantly evolving digital world, and to shape technology to meet our own needs rather than to be shaped by it. The Digital citizenship education handbook offers information, tools and good practice to support the development of these competences in keeping with the Council of Europe’s vocation to empower and protect children, enabling them to live together as equals in today’s culturally diverse democratic societies, both on- and offline. The Digital citizenship education handbook is intended for teachers and parents, education decision makers and platform providers alike. It describes in depth the multiple dimensions that make up each of ten digital citizenship domains, and includes a fact sheet on each domain providing ideas, good practice and further references to support educators in building the competences that will stand children in good stead when they are confronted with the challenges of tomorrow’s digital world. The Digital citizenship education handbook is consistent with the Council of Europe’s Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture and compatible for use with the Internet literacy handbook.

Our children have the energy, capacity, and passion to create and nurture a global culture in which inclusion, acceptance, respect, and participation are the core values that underpin a human being's every interaction. As parents and carers, our job is to help our children take their first steps along that path. Raising truly globally minded, and socially conscious children happens at home and in the community. Children can be inspired, equipped, and mobilized to make a difference in the world. By encouraging values such as responsible and kind use of social media, respect, open mindedness, empathy, a sense of community, parents can help to shape a new generation of emotionally intelligent, outward-looking, politically ethical world citizens. Relevant to parents of children of all ages - from toddlers to teens - the book gives practical advice on how to talk to your children, the vocabulary to use, and activities and projects you can undertake with your children, from planting a tree to keeping a gratitude diary to cooking themed cuisines. And you'll find out how to model global citizenship through your own day-to-day actions.