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Making Civics Count

Friday, August 17th, 2012

Last October, we hosted a day-long conference to discuss “Civics 2.0: Citizenship Education for a New Generation.” Leading scholars in the civic education field such as Peter Levine (CIRCLE), Meira Levinson (Harvard Graduate School of Education), David E. Campbell (Notre Dame University), and Joseph Kahne (Mills College), among others, came together to discuss research they had conducted on the issues of citizenship and schooling.

This research, commissioned by the Program on American Citizenship, has now been published in a new book by Harvard Education Press: Making Civics Count: Citizenship Education for a New Generation (October 2012). The book, edited by David Campbell, Meira Levinson, and AEI’s Rick Hess, argues that the current period of “creative destruction”–when schools are closing and opening in response to mandates–is an ideal time to take an in-depth look at how successful strategies and programs promote civic education and good citizenship. Over at his blog yesterday, Peter Levine–who has a chapter in the book on youth civic participation–calls the collection “the most current book on ‘civics’ and, in my judgment, the most comprehensive and sophisticated.”

You can buy the book here.