Educating
Citizens :
Preparing America's Undergraduates
for Lives of Moral and Civic Responsibility
Anne
Colby, Thomas Ehrlich,
Elizabeth Beaumont, and Jason Stephens
San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 2003
This
book recently published by the Carnegie Foundation contains
the core text for the American Democracy Project. The book's
list price on Amazon.com
is $28.00.
Educating Citizens reports on how some American colleges
and universities are preparing thoughtful, committed, and
socially responsible graduates. Many institutions assert
these ambitions, but too few act on them. The authors demonstrate
the fundamental importance of moral and civic education,
describe how the historical and contemporary landscapes
of higher education have shaped it, and explain the educational
and developmental goals and processes involved in educating
citizens. They examine the challenges colleges and universities
face when they dedicate themselves to this vital task and
present concrete ways to overcome those challenges.
The
Strange Disappearance of Civic America
Robert D. Putnam
The American Prospect
For the last year or so, I have been wrestling with a difficult
mystery. It is a classic brainteaser, with a corpus delicti,
a crime scene strewn with clues, and many potential suspects.
As in all good detective stories, however, some plausible
miscreants turn out to have impeccable alibis, and some
important clues hint at portentous developments that occurred
before the curtain rose.
The mystery concerns the strange disappearance of social
capital and civic engagement in America. By "social
capital," I mean features of social life--networks,
norms, and trust--that enable participants to act together
more effectively to pursue shared objectives. (Whether or
not their shared goals are praiseworthy is, of course, entirely
another matter.) I use the term "civic engagement"
to refer to people's connections with the life of their
communities, not only with politics.
see
column >>
Suspicious
Minds
Jedemiah Purdy
The Atlantic Monthly
Wthout trust, social life is all but impossible. We walk
down the street unarmed, invest our money with strangers,
and pay taxes—all because we trust that nobody will
mug us, take the cash to Cancún, or use government
revenue to enrich a family company. The only other way to
coordinate complex activity is coercion—which, as
the Soviets learned, is neither efficient nor pleasant.
Today, when your credit-card number makes regular trips
to Bangalore and Ghana, start-ups get their money from millions
of pensioners and private investors, and you put your life
in the hands of several federal bureaucracies whenever you
fly or take a train, trust is holding up the world. We had
all better hope this Atlas does not shrug.
see
column >>
A
Living Text of Liberty
David S. Broder
Washington Post
What we don't usually see is that the manifesto we celebrate
each July 4 was a collaborative product, hammered out in
the same way that Congress has been producing the Medicare
prescription drug bill. And we don't recall that it was
the press -- yes, that much-scorned institution -- that
made the Declaration the rallying point for this noble experiment
in self-government.
see
column >>
See
the full list of recommended readings.
