CMEI Colloquium
Longfellow Hall, Harvard Graduate School of Education
September 19, 2016
The words “And Crown thy Good with Brotherhood from Sea to Shining Sea” marked the beginning of the end of the Indian wars, and provides the backdrop for a discussion of the tension between the goals of citizenship education—to train the sentiments—and the goals of civic education—to pay homage to the truth. In contrast to civic education, defined as the transfer information and skills about the country and its government, citizenship education constructs a national narrative that promotes a shared loyalty and a common commitment to the nation state. i.e. “brotherhood from sea to shining sea.” In this paper, Dr. Feinberg addressed some of the elements involved in the construction of a national narrative and raised the question whether citizenship education can survive where real civic education is practiced. Or, to put it differently, can a narrative designed to promote national cohesion by centering individual loyalty and identity around a narrative about national uniqueness and goodness survive counter narratives that tell different stories? Can citizenship education allow for civic education? He suggested that, under the right conditions, it can.
Speaker Biography:
Walter Feinberg is the Charles Dunn Hardie Professor, Emeritus of philosophy of education at the University of Illinois in Urbana. His work addresses the role of public education in liberal, pluralistic democratic societies. Feinberg received the John Dewey Society Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. He has served as The University of Chicago Benton Scholar and as a Resident Spencer Foundation Faculty Fellow.
