- There is widespread, bipartisan concern that American universities are not adequately preparing students for citizenship. The most ambitious efforts to attend to this problem to date have been undertaken by Republican-led state legislatures, which have mandated that state universities create new academic units for civic education.
- While this innovation has been undertaken to meet political needs, its success or failure will be determined by academic standards. To meet those standards, these new academic units will need to define and execute a distinctive intellectual mission.
- An intellectual mission in the fullest sense requires a coherent program of teaching and research in a specific and demanding discipline. This report sketches the outlines of such a program, which we call “Civic Thought.” As its core elements are derived from a consideration of the intellectual demands of citizenship, it may be useful to all those working toward the renewal of university-level civic education.
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A Civic Thought curriculum should therefore include courses in which students study and practice the modes of speech and writing especially relevant to citizens, who make decisions through common deliberation and can lead only insofar as they are able to persuade. The conversations of Socrates and Catherine of Siena and the speeches of Cicero and Frederick Douglass should be analyzed and imitated as models of how to seek truth in common with others. One might learn from them how to persuade people of things those people do not wish to see, yield before the more comprehensive views others may present, and gather diverse human beings for the sake of action. Seminar-style classes that embody the conversational pursuit of truth; occasions for rhetorical presentation in which students must strive to master the logical, ethical, and emotional aspects of persuasion; and oral defenses of one’s academic work should be major elements of the Civic Thought curriculum.
