Moses Chikwe Civic ED [1]


 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

1 

 
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 
 
 

Civic Education and Global Citizenship: A Deweyan Perspective 
 

Moses Chikwe 
University of California at Los Angeles 

mchikwe@ucla.edu 
 
 
Introduction 
 

The idea of citizenship, according to the “The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology”, can be 
traced back to the classical period of Greece and Rome through the renaissance. In modern times 
citizenship is the product of revolutions, especially the French Revolution. “Citizenship is a 
politico-juridical status that confers an identity, and determines the distribution of resources 
within society”.1 It involves some notion of contribution to the common good of the nation state. 
Webster’s dictionary defines citizenship as “the state of being vested with the rights, privileges, 
and duties of a citizen”.2 Whereas it refers to a citizen as one who inhabits a city and is entitled 
to its privileges or franchises. Lacking in these definitions of citizenship is the interesting 
conceptualization and understanding of citizenship in the global and multicultural context.3 This 
lack is also evident in the current understanding of civic education, which is framed around the 
formation of the democratic ideals and values of a particular nation state in the individual 
members of the society. Nevertheless, civic education does hold the promise of expanding the 
narrow goal of traditional citizenship to the global perspective, due to the organized capacity of 
civic education and schooling in general in communicating the civic ideals.  

                                                
1 The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2006).  
2 Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (USA: Barnes and Nobles Publishing Inc., 2003). 
3 Martha C. Nussbaum, Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism. In Cohen, J., ed. For love of country: Debating the limits of patriotism 
(Boston: Beacon, 1996); James A. Banks, Diversity and Citizenship Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004). 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

2 

The transmission from one generation to another of public knowledge, values, attitudes, 
and group identification which are perceived as necessary for public life and the stability of 
society falls within the purview of public education.4 Public schools were established to preserve 
the ideals of democracy and civic identity. Thus, Benjamin R. Barber, states: “Public schools are 
not merely schools for the public, but school of publicness: institutions where we learn what it 
means to be a public and start down the road toward common national and civic identity. They 
are the forges of our citizenship and the bedrock of our democracy”.5  

 
Undoubtedly, through public schools the civic culture and unity can be handed down 

from generation to generation. But this formation of responsible citizens and promotion of 
national identity seem to be framed around the narrow and nationalistic understanding of civic 
education and couched in the traditional definition of citizenship. It is narrow and nationalistic 
because it makes us feel a sense of connection and responsibility, for instance, to only fellow 
Americans as opposed to the rest of the world. The rest of the world becomes faceless and less of 
value to us due to our patriotism and strong attachment to national interest. But with the 
shrinking of the world into a global village as a consequence of technological advancement and 
improved transportation, it seems necessary to adjust our understanding of civic education to 
include the entire human community. The question then is: How can we expand the traditional 
notion and understanding of civic education which is nationalistic in orientation to the more 
globalized understanding? This is the central question that this paper will be addressing. Using 
the framework provided by Dewey in his articulation of the public this article seeks to challenge 
the understanding of civic education held by the “Civic Mission of Schools”, which is framed 
around the traditional notion of citizenship. It will demonstrate the need to both reconceptualize 
and restructure this traditional notion of civic education to encompass the global idea of 
citizenship. This will be done both by drawing on the meaning of education and the phenomenon 
of globalization. Let us explore the meaning of education in general and civic education in 
particular. 
 
What is Education? 
 

The etymology of the word ‘education’ is from two Latin words: ‘ex’ and ‘ducere’ 
meaning ‘out’ and ‘lead’. Therefore, the word education means ‘leading out’ or ‘bringing out.’ 
McMannon6 perceives education as embracing all of those experiences of the individual through 
which knowledge is gained, the intellect is enlightened, and the will is strengthened. It is the 
process of adjustment to one’s environment and assimilation of one’s cultural heritage. 
Education is not only an intellectual, physical and moral activity, but also a process of 
transmitting customs, laws, traditions and standards of living. It is a process of cultivation of the 
mind through which a person learns the best way to live with others in a civil society. For 
Bourdieu education becomes a process of forming our habitus (our predisposition) the lens by 
                                                
4 James A. Banks, Diversity and Citizenship Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004). 
5 Benjamin R. Barber, “Public Schooling: Education for Democracy,” in The Public Purpose of Education and Schooling, eds. 
John I. Goodlad and Timothy J. McMannon (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997). 
6 Timothy J. McMannon, “Introduction: The Changing Purpose of Education,” in The Public Purpose of Education and 
Schooling.  



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

3 

which we see the world or reality. The voir (the capacity to see) he said is only a function of the 
savoir (concept or knowledge).7  

 
Education is considered to be a lifelong experience by ancient cultures. People are taught 

the best way to live with others by institutions like the community, the family and the church. 
But according to Dewey this domesticated view of education changed because the needs of the 
society became more complex and sophisticated. Public schools were established to better fulfill 
this charge of training every member of the society. He argues that like parents schools should 
give the very best to the whole students. 

 
What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want 
for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted 
upon, it destroys our democracy. All that society has accomplished for itself is put, 
through the agency of the school, at the disposal of its future members.8  

This was what Dewey saw as the rationale for establishing schools, to well educate every 
member of the society for the success of democracy. One of the key functions of education is to 
form productive citizens who can function well in a democratic society. Throughout history, this 
concept of education has been strongly supported by different schools of thought. The ancient 
Greek Philosopher, Plato, emphasized the need for this form of education in society. For Plato, 
the continuity and strength of any society depends on an education that can help shape future 
members to its ideal purposes. Later philosophers also acknowledged the importance of 
education to form an enlightened citizenry that will contribute meaningfully to the growth of the 
society. In the U.S, this ideal coheres with the vision behind the founding of public schools, held 
by many scholars and politicians. Horace Mann considered as the “patron saint” of public 
education also shares this understanding and sees public schools as “balance wheel”, the great 
equalizer between the rich and the poor.   

 
Equally, Horace Mann, Thomas Jefferson, and others emphasized the need for public 

education for the survival of democracy. Through education, people are taught the best way to 
live in harmony with other human beings. It breaks one out of his/her micro-world to gain a 
broader understanding that he/she is simply a mitsein (being-with-others). The individuals in the 
society become able to engage and inquire together for the common good, sharing ideas and 
influencing each other’s thinking in this act of intellectual intercourse.  Schools are therefore, 
places of social settlements where individuals gather to not only share ideas but ideas that are 
incarnated in human form.9 The human interaction among students helps to build up future 
community among them, a society where each will learn to be both responsible for 
himself/herself and responsive to others. Dewey placed a permanent stress on this formation of 
community among students and teachers in the process of education or inquiry. 

                                                
7 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984). 
8 John Dewey, School and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). 
9 John Dewey, The school as a social center (Elementary School Teacher, 1902). 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

4 

This harmonious living with others, or rather mutual regard, makes democracy 
successful. In such a community, people learn to give mutual respect and regard to one another 
in order to maintain a relationship that is free of domination and subservience. This is the 
purification of the person and the education of character. According to Martin Buber, “Education 
worthy of the name is essentially education of character.”10 Little surprise then why every nation 
has attached great importance to education, for it is an essential means of forming and 
maintaining responsible citizenship. Civic education plays a critical role in building and 
supporting responsible citizenship in any nation. However, the formation and maintenance of 
responsible citizenship is accomplished not only through civic education per se but through the 
entire educational process. This is because one cannot claim to be educated if he/she does not 
possess the basic civic ideals of knowing his rights and duties, respect for others as possessing 
equal human value and dignity. As Barber points out, “Lawyers and doctors are no more likely to 
make good citizens than dropouts if their training is limited to the narrrow and self-interested 
world defined by vocational preparation and professional instruction.”11 Education should inform 
and form the very being of its students, to mold their identity and agency – who they are and how 
they live. It is not just interested in what the students know and are able to do but also who that 
knowledge makes them to become. 

 
Unfortunately, much of modern education has fallen prey to the epistemological 

reductionism that separates “people’s knowing from their being and reduces knowledge to just 
technical rationality, a ‘know how’ for productivity.”12 This split stretches back to the French 
rationalist, Rene Descartes. The pervading assumption is that knowledge is objective and value-
free, as if it is not supposed to engage persons as persons or influence their ethic. But the ancient 
philosophers both Plato and Aristotle would argue that to know the good is to become good, and 
that knowledge shapes ones being in the world. Within the institution of schooling, 
policymakers, teachers, parents, and students often emphasize the intellectual development of 
students as the principal (or only) function of education and thus depict learning as an 
instrumental means to an end, for instance, good grades, educational certificates, full-time 
employment opportunities, and access to higher incomes.13 

 
However, education is not limited to the development of knowledge, academic or 

otherwise. It will have to engage the entire being of the student and make him/her a well-rounded 
person who is able to live in society with others. Education for social change requires students 
and teachers to actively transform social injustice and not just study them, it should be the tool 
for liberation from oppression.14 This is why many social justice theorists argue that reducing the 

                                                
10 Martin Buber, “The Education of Character” in Between Man and Man (New York: Macmillan, 1965).  
11 ibid., 6 
12 Thomas Groome, “What makes a School Catholic,” in The Contemporary Catholic School: Context, Identity, and Diversity, 
eds. McLaughlin, T; O’Keefe, J & O’Keefe, B. (London: The Falmer Press, 1996). 
13 Kathleen Lynch & John Baker, “Equality in Education: The importance of Equality of Condition,” Theory and Research in 
Education 3, no. 2 (2005):131-164. 
14 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc. 1970); Colleen 
Larson & Khaula Murtadha, “Leadership for Social Justice,” in The Educational Leadership Challenge: Redefining Leadership 
for the 21st Century, ed. Joseph Murphy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

5 

curriculum of students from low socioeconomic homes to basic reading and math is highly 
problematic. Those who are experiencing numerous injustices on a daily basis also need more 
from education than test preparation or access to “progressive” curricula and teaching techniques 
if they are to develop the skills, knowledge, and commitment required to tackle those 
injustices.15 Therefore, educators are challenged to provide an education that is more holistic and 
empowering to their students.  
 
Differential Education in the U.S. 
 

The U.S. is used as a focus here because it is the leading nation of the world and 
whatever happens here in some ways may be reflected in greater or lesser degree in the rest of 
the world. Additionally, the US seems to be the ‘boiling point of the world’ due partly to its 
founding spirit as the land of immigrants where people from all cultures, races, and nationalities 
are welcome. But to narrow the focus even more in order to capture a clear and distinct picture, I 
shall look at a state in the U.S. that seems in my estimation the most reflective of this global 
trend. Let’s turn our gaze to California; the golden state, known to host a diverse population. The 
state of California holds a strategic spot in the global community because of its bourgeoning 
economy and its growing and diverse population. It is the most populated state in the U.S. and 
bigger than many countries in the world. But it ranks among the lowest performing and 
underfunded state per pupil expenses in K-12 education16 and there are many reasons for this, 
which include but not limited to opportunity gap among the different racial groups. 

  
There is a steadily widening gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. today 

especially in California. According to Manuel Pastor there are multiple Californians, with the 
state increasingly divided by race, class, and residential location. The demographic divergence 
has been matched by increasing inequality. While White households share of ethnic composition 
income, during the period 2002-2004, maintained a steadily rising higher deciles, peaking at 71 
percent of households in the top decile; “African Americans have a very high representation in 
the lowest decile, the Asian American community is bifurcated with significant representation at 
the lowest and highest deciles, and Latino households peak in the second, third and fourth 
deciles.”17 The rising margin between the rich and poor has created racialized and concentrated 
poverty in California. Moreover, it has also widened the geographic segregation of the racial and 
ethnic groups encouraging localization of spending both for education and social amenities. This 
chasm is also conspicuous in the schools in poor and working-class neighborhoods. In such 
schools there are overflowing sense of dilapidation and shortage of quality teachers. The 
instructional materials and textbooks are severely lacking. This lack of resources and qualified 

                                                
15 Jean Anyon, Radical Possibilities: Public policy, Urban Eduaction, and a New Social Movement (New York: Routledge, 
2005); Lisa Delpit, Other People’s Children: Cultural conflict in the Classroom (New York: The New Press, 1995); Gloria 
Ladson-Billings, The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teacher of African-American Children (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994); 
Linda McNeil, Contradictions of School Reform (New York: Routledge, 2000); FairTest, K-12 Testing. Retrieved May 15, 2006, 
from http://www.fairtest.org/k-12.htm.  
16 School Funding (US Census Bureau, 2011). 
17 Manuel Pastor, “A State United or a State Divided: Can Multiple Pathways Bring Together Multiple Californians? in Multiple 
Perspectives on Multiple Pathways (UCLA IDEA, 2007). 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

6 

faculty have been to blame for the underachievement of Black and Latino students who populate 
those schools.18 The evidence is clear and shocking that a subgroup of US public school 
population experience negative and inequitable schooling on daily basis.19 According to the 
research by Michelle Fine, et al. under-education and dropout rates of the poor and working class 
students are growing and far more severe today than in the past. It seems instead of improvement 
and progress we are regressing and dipping down into the mud of discrimination.20  

 
African American and Latino students seem to be overrepresented in least successful 

groups on standard tests e.g., Measures of Literacy and Numeracy.21 By these measures it seems 
that these students do not have the same academic achievement as the White and Asian students. 
Both the state and national standardized test scores indicate overall low performance, and many 
of the students do not make it to college or dropout of high school. Approximately 1.23 million 
of public high school class of 2008 in the U.S. failed to graduate with a diploma.22 For at least 
five years now, one in four high school students in the U.S. drop out and more than one in three 
minority students drop out.23  These most often are students of color in urban areas. The dropout 
rate looks even gloomier for minorities in California where approximately 80% and 92% of 
Whites and Asians respectively graduate as compared to about 59% and 60% of African 
American and Latino students in 2006-07 school year.24 Therefore, there seems to be a fairly 
well described differential patterns of achievement, with African American and Latino students, 
significantly falling behind the other ethnic groups.25  

 
While we hear daily about test scores and achievement gap of this underrepresented 

population, it seems those scores are not connected to the challenging conditions that these 
students had to grapple with on daily basis. Environmental and social conditions have been 
identified as influencing and shaping the academic achievement of African American and Latino 
students. Myron Orfield describes the problems mostly associated with inner cities and at-risk 
suburbs as concentrated poverty, racial segregation, crime, and community disinvestment.26 
Susan Easton paints a similar picture of the type of neighborhoods that exist in inner cities. She 
talks of Jeremy, a Puerto Rican boy who was exceptionally bright but lived in the ghetto of 
                                                
18 Jeannie Oakes, Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). 
19 Gloria Ladson-Billings, The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teacher of African-American Children (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 
1994); Jim Scheurich & Julie Laible, “The Buck Stops Here,” Educational Administration Quarterly 31, no.2 (1999): 313-322; 
Angela Valenzuela, Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring (Albany: State University of New 
York Press, 1999). 
20 Michelle Fine et al., “Civic Lessons: The Color and Class of Betrayal,” Teachers College Record 106, no.11 (2004): 2193-
2223.  
21 California Department of Education 2004. Retrieved Oct. 7, 2010 from http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us. 
22 Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, School to College: Can State P-16 Councils Ease the Transition? 
(Washington, DC: U.S Department of Education, 2008). 
23 Anna Habash, Counting on Graduation (Washington, DC: The Educational Trust, 2008). 
24 Russell W. Rumberger & Susan Rotermund, “Ethnic and Gender Differences in California High School Graduation Rates,” in 
California Dropout Research Project (UC Santa Barbara, 2009). 
25 National Center for Education Statistics, The Condition of Education 2008 (Washington DC: U.S Department of Education, 
2008).  
26 Myron Orfield, American Metropolitics (Massachusetts: The Brookings Institution, 2002). 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

7 

Harford Connecticut: “Jeremy lived with frequent gunshots and street slayings. He could watch 
daily drug dealing out his window.”27 This type of environmental conditions seems characteristic 
of many Black and Latino neighborhoods. Peter Dreier names the symptoms of American 
decaying cities, which include; “growing poverty, homelessness, violent crime, and infant 
mortality; widening racial and economic segregation; crumbling infrastructure, and deepening 
fiscal traumas.”28 African American and Latino students daily traverse a geography of danger in 
order to get to school. There is severe spatial limitation, whereby children are more and more 
restricted from using some of the neighborhood spaces because they are dangerous zones.  
According to Massey and Denton, more than half of all blacks in the United States, and 60% of 
black urban dwellers, live in the thirty metropolitan areas described as dangerous and 
ghettoized.29 Brilliant as these students are their environment seems to stymie their academic 
progress and promise.  

 
The high dropout rate and achievement gap are perpetuated and reinforced by myriads of 

interrelated and overlapping factors. The three key factors: poverty, segregated neighborhoods, 
and school quality, are linked and a vicious cycle is created by their confluence.30 The United 
States has the incredible distinction of having the highest poverty in the industrialized world 
despite having one of the highest average incomes.31 From 2001 – 2003 the number of people in 
poverty rose from 32.9 million to 35.9 million and 37 million in 2004.32 With the current global 
economic crises these figures will be considerably higher. Evidence shows many of those living 
in poverty are Blacks and Latinos who are working poor.33 Poverty entails daily significant 
compromises of the basic necessities of living and developing one’s potentials. The lack of a 
proper diet, shelter, and education compromises individual development, with negative effects on 
children’s cognitive development, verbal ability, early school achievement, and mental health.34 
When this is combined with poor neighborhoods and less stimulating home environment the 
odds for dropping out and underachievement increase. This is a socially unjust condition that has 
been created by unjust economic and social structures. 

 
Almost always the poor are those who live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, and 

Blacks and Latinos are in the majority.  Residential location determines your chances and future. 
                                                
27 Susan Eaton, The Children in Room E4 (North Carolina: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2006). 
28 Peter Dreier, “America’s Urban Crisis: Symptoms, Causes, Solutions,” North Carolina Law Review 71, (1993): 1351-1401. 
29 Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Massachusetts: 
Harvard University Press, 1993). 
30 Gary Orfield & Nancy McArdle, The Vicious Cycle: Segregated Housing, Schools and Intergenerational Inequality. Report 
prepared by Harvard Civil Rights Project in 2006.  
31 David Berliner, “Our Impoverished View of Educational Research,” Teachers College Record 108, no.6 (2006): 949-995; 
Timothy Smeeding, Lee Rainwater & Gary Burtless, “U.S. Poverty in a Cross-national Comparison,” in Understanding Poverty, 
eds. Sheldon Danziger & Robert Haveman (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001). 
32 Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Economic Recovery Failed to Benefit Much of the Population in 2004 (Washington, 
DC: Matrix Group International, Inc., 2005). 
33 ibid., 15(i)  
34 Joel F. Handler & Yeheskel Hasenfeld, Blame Welfare, Ignore Poverty and Inequality (New York: Cambridge University 
Press, 2007); Kim Nauer, Andrew White & Rajeev Yerneni, Strengthening Schools by Strengthening Families (New York: The 
New School, 2008). 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

8 

If you live in concentrated poverty then things happen in relation to teaching, school funding and 
opportunities including networking. Research shows that concentrated poverty is strongly 
associated with both school opportunities and achievement levels.35 Schools in low-income areas 
tend to have high turnover of teachers and students, untreated health problems, lower 
involvement by parents, less experienced teachers, less challenging curriculum, relative 
availability or absence of AP classes, lower per student expenditures, high dropout rates and 
lower test scores.36 There is severe lack of resources in schools in low-income areas.  Students 
attending these schools tend to have weaker networks to college and jobs. On the contrary, 
suburban schools tend to provide a more college-oriented curriculum, have experienced teachers, 
and offer competitive curriculum.37 Highly discriminated neighborhoods produce highly 
deprived schools and high dropout rates. This lack of resources leads to low academic 
achievement, which has been consistently associated with high dropout rate.38 There seems to be 
an unbreakable social mechanism that has perpetuated and reproduced this system of neglect and 
corresponding poor performance of students of color. Vincent Roscigno argues that race and 
class shape school attendance patterns and contribute to highly segregated school contexts. 
Family background shapes residential options. Where one resides in turn, has large impact on the 
school one attends and consequently achievement. Social class and race are important in 
patterning the schools children attend.39 Gary Orfield and Nancy McArdle agree that the most 
profound form of inequality is location-based inequality of educational opportunity. Residential 
location structures and shapes educational opportunity and success.40 

 
Added to this structural inequality that students of color live through on daily basis in 

school are the curriculum instructional practices. The school curriculum is a serious factor in the 
students’ academic achievement. It has been based historically on the European American 
perspective. As Christine Sleeter and Carl Grant noted, minority cultures have been represented 
in fragmented ways, such as the celebration of Black History Month or Cinco de Mayo. 
Textbooks, an important component of the school curriculum, also represent minority cultures 
                                                
35 ibid., 31(i); ibid., 33; ibid., 20. 
36 Jean Anyon, Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Urban Educational Reform (New York: Teachers College Record, 
1997); Linda Darling-Hammond, “The Flat Earth and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity will Determine our 
Future,” Education Researcher 36, no.6 (2007): 318-334; Marvin P. Dawkins & Henry J. Braddock, “The Continuing 
Significance of Desegregation: School Racial Composition and African American Inclusion in American Society,” Journal of 
Negro Education 63, no.3 (1994); Susan Eaton, The Other Boston Busing Story: What’s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line 
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001); Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee, & Gary Orfield, A Multiracial Society with 
Segregated Schools: Are we Losing the Dream? Report prepared by Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, 2003; ibid., 30; 
ibid., 18; Gary Orfield & Chungmei Lee, Why Segregation Matters: Poverty and Educational Inequality. Report prepared by 
Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, 2005; Gary Orfield, et al., Losing Our Future: How Minority Youth are being Left 
Behind by the Graduation Rate Crisis. Report prepared by Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, 2004; Janet Schofield, 
“Review of Research on School Desegregation’s Impact on Elementary and Secondary School Students,” in Handbook of 
Research on Multicultural Education, eds. James A. Banks & Michael C. Banks (New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 
1995); Stuart A. Wells & Robert L. Crain, “Perpetuation Theory and the Long-term Effects of School Desegregation,” Review of 
Educational Research 64 (1994).  
37 ibid., 30. 
38 Ruth B. Ekstrom, et al., “Who Drops out of High School and Why? Findings from a National Study,” Teachers College 
Record 87, no.3 (1986): 356-373. 
39 Vincent J. Roscigno, “Family/School Inequality and African-American/Hispanic Achievement,” Social Problems 47, no. 2 (2000): 266-290. 

40 ibid., 37. 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

9 

and people in a limited fashion. These textbooks, they also pointed out, often limit descriptions 
of diverse people’s contributions and perpetuate stereotypes. The limited and fragmented 
representations of minority cultures may have a negative impact on minority students’ 
opportunities to acquire the skills needed to succeed in mainstream society.41 Arguably, moving 
communities towards a situation where all cultures are recognized and respected may be one way 
of removing barriers to equality and social justice.42 

 
The lack of connection of the school curriculum to the cultural background of the 

minority students has been identified as responsible for the low school performance and high 
dropout rates of Black Americans and Hispanics.43 Teachers have the responsibility to critically 
evaluate and improve the curriculum for all students. This can be achieved by their knowledge of 
the students’ cultural/ethnic backgrounds. Shirley Heath typified this in her landmark 
ethnographic study of African American working-class students in the Trackton community. She 
revealed that teachers who understood their students’ cultural/ethnic backgrounds were able to 
engage the students by asking questions that followed the form and function of questions asked 
in the students’ homes and communities. And this, according to the teachers who participated in 
Heath’s research, enhanced their students’ academic performance.44 

This idea of making the curriculum responsive to the needs of all students from different 
cultural backgrounds was also central to Tiedt and Tiedt.45 Apart from enhancing students’ 
academic achievement, this will help every student to understand who he/she is, thereby building 
a self-esteem and identity. From this knowledge base he/she will extend learning to include other 
cultures, hence remove the fear of others, which is the product of ignorance. Cultural diversity is 
recognized today as an asset rather than a liability. The various groups contribute to the national 
culture while maintaining their distinct identity. As a result, individuals can be proud of their 
cultural identity and heritage instead of being ashamed of their difference. This will challenge 
the students to acquire a multicultural and global perspective on life. There is need to have 
highly qualified teachers, who will be both culturally sensitive and proficient, to teach students 
from various cultural groups.  

 
However, having these highly qualified teachers who are culturally proficient sometimes 

appears to be a tough sale for schools in poor neighborhoods due to the lack of sufficient 
funding. There is a general agreement among scholars that access to high quality teachers is one 

                                                
41 Christine Sleeter & Carl Grant, Empowerment through Multicultural Education (Albany: State University of New York Press, 
1991). 
42 Alison Taysum & Helen Gunter, “A Critical Approach to Researching Social Justice and School Leadership in England,” 
Education, Citizenship and Social Justice 3, no.183 (2008). 
43 Pamela L Tiedt & Iris M. Tiedt, Multicultural Teaching: A Handbook of Activities, Information and Resources 
(Massachusetts: Simon & Schuster, 1990).  
44 Shirley B. Heath, Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms (New York: Cambridge 
University Press, 1983). 
45 ibid., 43. 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

10 

of the key factors at the school level that influences student achievement.46 Research reveals that 
students of color and students from low socioeconomic status have access to teachers with less 
experience, less education, less training and without content area certification.47 In such schools 
also there are serious shortage of resources including poor quality instructional materials and 
textbooks. This lack of resources and qualified faculty has been blamed for the 
underachievement of students of color who populate those schools.48 It is socially unjust to have 
these students go through this important level of schooling under such conditions.  

  
But with this differential and disproportionate educational opportunity for our children, 

what then is the meaning of civic education for students in the underprivileged schools? Do these 
students feel themselves belonging to the same nation as their white counterparts? Does this 
unequal social conditions generate love and patriotism for the nation they perceive as having 
betrayed them or fill them with anger and resentment? These are some of the questions that 
simmer in my mind as I examine the emphasis that Dewey and other scholars placed on the 
education of every citizen as a pathway to stable democracy and citizenship. 

 
Examples from the research by Fine, et al., for Williams v California case were quite 

revealing on how the students in the plaintiff schools score their values and worth by the poor 
and decrepit facilities. The study explored the social, psychological and academic impact of 
structurally deficient facilities, high rates of teacher turnover, and uncredentialed/unqualified 
faculty and, inadequate instructional materials. They studied one elementary, one middle and 
nine high schools in San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles areas. The social and 
psychological influence that the conditions at the school make on the students was phenomenal. 
One of the students interviewed had this to say regarding the squalid condition at her school.  

 
It makes me, you know what, in all honesty, I’m going to break something down to you. 
It make you feel less about yourself, you know, like you sitting here in a class where you 
have to stand up because there’s not enough chairs and you see rats in the buildings, the 
bathrooms is nasty, you got to pay. And then you, like I said, I visited Mann Academy, 
and these students, if they want to sit on the floor, that’s because they choose to. And that 
just makes me feel real less about myself because it’s like the State don’t care about 
public schools. If I have to sit there and stand in the class, they can’t care about me. It’s 
impossible. So in all honesty, it really makes me feel bad about myself.49 
 

It seems that the students are analyzing and understanding their perceived value in the social 
hierarchy. They understand and see the level of discrimination, which intentionally or 

                                                
46 ibid., 36 (ii); 37; 18. 
47 Richard M. Ingersoll, “The Problem of Underqualified Teachers in American Secondary Schools,” Educational Researcher 
28, no.2 (1999): 26-37; Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, & James Wyckoff, “Teacher Sorting and the Plight of Urban Schools:  
A Descriptive Analysis,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 24, no.1 (2002): 37-62; Linda Skrla, Kathryn B. McKenzie 
& James J. Scheurich, Using Equity Audits to Create Equitable and Excellent Schools (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 
2009). 
48 ibid., 18; 36 (ii); 20 
49 ibid., 20 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

11 

unintentionally, the society puts them through and this makes a very powerful and lasting 
impression on them. Though, as a society we may not have intended to teach them what they 
learn from their situation (hidden curriculum), and this might even be the only and most 
important lesson that students learn that they are stratified and disenfranchised in the society. 
They understand the message implied in what we have failed to provide them, in the 
differentiated treatment and school conditions that we as a society place them. They know and 
understand how the society values them.  
 

The students see and feel the pulverizing weight of race, class and ethnic discriminations 
and they live through these social relations. They learn very quickly and at a very early age their 
social ‘disposability’. In other words they read different political and civic texts, which we as a 
society have supplied them.50 Dewey would see this as a mis-education, and all of us as negative 
educators who supply the ‘killer toxin’ to our future citizens. “The belief that all genuine 
education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or 
equally educative. Experience and education cannot be directly equated to each other. For some 
experiences are mis-educative.”51 Hence, in the U.S, the common national and civic identity of 
liberty, equality, fairness and justice have not always been taught by our public schools. Rather 
students learn differential civic education due to the privileges or lack of privileges they 
experience in their educational process. Because of this poor and unequal educational 
opportunity some students from such neighborhood schools disengage from school, which 
supposed to be citizenship formation ground, and dropout. 

 
The consequences of this neglect to educate all our children are immense. Those who 

dropout may end up becoming ‘nuisance’ to society and are railroaded to the prison industry, 
which receives more funding than schools. For instance, in New York State the budget for public 
universities within a 10-year period (1988-1998) fell by 29% while state spending on prisons 
rose by 76% during the same period.52 Henry Giroux, talking about the immediate past 
administration’s hype on war and domestic militarization, observes with contempt this prison 
expansion pointing out the irony of Bush government who made claims of war in order to make 
the world safe for “our children’s future” only to turn around and build more prisons where our 
children are incarcerated. “What is so troubling about the current historical moment is that youth 
no longer symbolize the future. And yet, any discourse about the future has to begin with the 
issue of youth because, more than any other group, youth embody the projected dreams, desires, 
and commitment of a society’s obligations to the future.”53  

 
If we take seriously what Giroux and others have said, what hope then has a nation that 

ignores the education of some of its youth? Dewey always maintained that education should not 
                                                
50 ibid., 49. 
51 John Dewey, Experience & Education (New York: Touchtsone Books, 1938). 
52 Robert Gangi, Vincent Schiraldi, & Jason Ziedenberg, “New York State of Mind?: Higher Education vs. Prison Funding in the 
Empire State, 1988-1998,” Justice Policy Institute (Washington DC, October 1998). 
53 Henry Giroux, “War Talk and the Shredding of the Social Contract: Youth and the Politics of Domestic Militarization,” in 
Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Global Conflicts, eds. Gustavo E. Fischman, Peter McLaren, Heinz Sunker, & Colin 
Lankshear (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005). 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

12 

be limited to certain members of the society. Because it is the way of forming new members into 
the citizenship of any nation, therefore, no one should be excluded from being educated. It pays 
the nation more than anything else to have its citizens well educated in order to participate 
responsibly in the affairs of the country and the world. With this in mind, I would like to 
juxtapose Dewey’s concept of civic education with that of the report produced by the Center for 
Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) and Carnegie 
Corporation of New York, in consultation with the Corporation for National and Community 
Service which was titled: “Civic Mission of Schools.” I would like to draw some parallels 
between the two to better understand how civic education can help in forming both national and 
global responsible citizens.   

 
Dewey’s Civic Education vis-à-vis Civic Mission of Schools 
 
The following quote is from the report by a group of experts from wide variety of disciplines 
(education, developmental psychology, political science, history and others) who were convened 
in late 2002 by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement 
(CIRCLE) and Carnegie Corporation of New York, in consultation with the Corporation for 
National and Community Service. The group was convened to examine the problem of civic 
disengagement by our present youth and how schools could be used as center for dissemination 
of civic knowledge and skills. The report was titled: Civic Mission of Schools. 
	
  

We, the scholars and practitioners who have jointly produced this report, believe that the 
overall goal of civic education should be to help young people acquire and learn to use 
the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that will prepare them to be competent and 
responsible citizens throughout their lives….We recognize that being a competent and 
responsible citizen is not easy. It can take courage, sacrifice, and passion to be civically 
and politically engaged. Engagement is especially difficult for disadvantaged young 
people, who lack resources and are often discouraged from participating. Thus, an 
essential goal of civic education is to provide skills, knowledge, and encouragement for 
all students, including those who may otherwise be excluded from civic and political 
life.54  
 
According to the above report, civic education should help young people acquire and 

learn to use the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that will prepare them to be competent and 
responsible citizens throughout their lives. For Dewey, civic education is the primary business of 
education; it is what education is about, that of forming citizens who are able to engage critically 
with others in a common inquiry for the common good and survival of democracy. The Civic 
Mission of Schools has a sprinkling of Dewey’s concept of civic education by way of forming 
competent and responsible citizens who are able to engage critically in the democratic process 
with others. Yet it seems too broadly stated and does not address the issues of civic life and the 
power relations in the society. If we are to take seriously the question of how society is 
                                                
54 The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement, “The Civic Mission of Schools,” (New York: 
Carnegie Corporation of New York, 2003). Full report can be accessed through: 
http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/CivicMissionofSchools.pdf.  



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

13 

structured to enable some and undermine the ability of other members then we have to address 
some issues of civic life and how students should participate in that life in order to bring change. 
Equally, Civic Mission of Schools definition of civic education seems to be narrow and 
nationalistic. It does not address the issues of students being participants in the global politics 
and economy. How the students will be able to engage in and with the rest of the world to build 
up the human society. It does not point the students beyond the boundaries of the U.S, every 
thought and engagement seems to be limited within the American society. Dewey rather invites 
us to look beyond the frontiers. I shall now discuss at some length Dewey’s views on civic 
education.  
 
Dewey’s view on Civic Education 
 

The educated citizen is one who is able both to “read the word and the world.”55 In this 
way this citizen is able to participate responsibly in the affairs of the nation and the entire globe. 
Otherwise such an education ended up in rote memorization that does not empower the person to 
live critically and responsibly outside of the classroom. As Benjamin Barber observed, education 
without the proper skills to live with others in a civil society will not be education at all.56 Civic 
education should train students to be able to read in between the lines and ask pertinent 
questions, examining critically why things are the way they are today and to seek reform or 
engage in political action. 

 
Dewey in “Education as Politics” states clearly what the gain of education is: “…the 

ability it gives to discriminate, to make distinctions that penetrate below the surface.”57 Here he 
talks of the importance of being educated. It saves one from being manipulated and controlled by 
others, and helps him/her to be responsible in the choices and actions one takes. Education would 
serve no good for the one who is unable to discriminate facts from fancy, who is not able to 
subject what he sees as real under the regime of reason and inquiry. That one is educated who is 
able to engage critically in social life and not be controlled by the opinion of others. “Control 
opinion” Dewey asserts, “and you control, for the time being at least, the direction of social 
action.”58 With the political gerrymandering and the hype on fear and other unguarded human 
emotions, which we saw in our recent past administration, an educated citizenry can never be 
more important in our world. 

 
Civic education should do the work of engaging the students on how to navigate the 

political terrain, empowering them to probe into the power relations, the social and structural 
inequalities and how these hegemonies are perpetuated. It should train them to be media literate 
as those in power and corporations increasingly are using the media propaganda to control the 
public. We live in the society of the spectacle (to use Chomsky) where the media create and 
                                                
55 ibid., 14 (i) 
56 ibid., 11. 
57 John Dewey, “Education as Politics” [Essay, first published in New Republic 32 (1922): 139-41. Republished in Characters 
and Events, ed. Joseph Ratner (New York: Henry Hold and Co., 1929), and in Education Today, ed. Joseph Ratner (New York: 
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940), pp.157-63.] 
58 ibid., 57. 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

14 

dictate what is real. We suck them in without proper inquiry. Dewey advocates seriously for an 
educated citizenry who can discriminate the real from the media creation, who are able to read 
both the word and the world. “Doubtless the regime of propaganda brought on by the war has 
had much to do with forcing upon us recognition of the dominant role in social control of 
material put in circulation by the press.”59 This is the hegemonic control of the public by the 
ruling class through dominant ideologies, which Antonio Gramsci sees as a powerful mechanism 
of dominance.60     

 
Dewey suggests ways of how schools can avoid making students the dupe of others when 

they come out to take up their roles as responsible citizens in the wider society. “Clearly they 
will have to cultivate the habit of suspended judgment, of skepticism, of desire for evidence, of 
appeal to observation rather than sentiment, discussion rather than bias, inquiry rather than 
conventional idealizations. When this happens schools will be the dangerous outposts of humane 
civilization.”61 This is well stated, education must have to challenge and empower the students to 
be critically conscious, be shrewd in a world that is constantly changing and more sophisticated 
than ever before. It must have to arouse critical consciousness of students, what Freire calls 
epistemological curiosity.62 This will enable them to participate in common inquiry for the good 
of the society and survival of democracy.  

 
Yes, communal inquiry, very important Deweyan concept. Dewey always emphasized 

and encouraged community search for knowledge as a way to improve both the individual and 
society at large. By this type of communal search the students will realize their interdependency 
and their need for one another for no one is a scit omnia (knows everything). Dewey recognizes 
the power of participatory inquiry, by which students develop character, skill and intelligence 
necessary for democratic society. One of the major purposes of civic education is to enhance 
cooperation and collaboration among students. Through the schools we build communities and 
bonds among students who will later become responsible citizens. “Classes for study may be 
numerous, but all are regarded as modes of bringing people together, of doing away with barriers 
of caste, or class, or race, or type of experience that keep people from real communion with each 
other.”63 In this way students learn how to respect and tolerate each other in a participatory 
democracy. Education should enlighten the students to the basic humanity and equality that we 
all share.64 

 
But the regret of Dewey is that schools have not always been able to achieve this basic 

human equality among students, just as I demonstrated above in the inferior education offered to 
                                                
59 ibid., 58. 
60 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith 
(London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971). 
61 ibid., 59. 
62 ibid., 55. 
63 John Dewey, “The School as Social Centre” [An address delivered before the National council of Education, Minneapolis, 
Minn., July, 1902. First published in Elementary School Teacher 3 (1902): 73-86, and in Proceedings and Addresses of the 
National Educational Association, 1902, pp. 373-83.] 
64 Martha C. Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” (Essay published in Boston Review, October/November 1994). 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

15 

most of the American youth. Rather schools have become sites of competition that the sense of 
community is lost. The only measure for success in many schools is a competitive one, in the bad 
sense of the term – a comparison of results in the recitation or in the examination to see which 
child has succeeded in getting ahead of others in storing up, in accumulating, the maximum of 
information. This, for Dewey, has become the prevailing atmosphere in most of our schools. He 
discountenances the idea of rugged individualism (Horatio) that spirals into capitalism which 
perniciously stands in the way of democracy. Where an individual continuously acquires and 
accumulates both knowledge and wealth for oneself and never thinks of others. “Acquiring has 
replaced inquiring”, Dewey laments.65 The notion of acquiring depicts individualism while that 
of inquiring connotes community. “Dewey was looking for average citizens who could recognize 
their common interests and organize themselves into publics capable of “forming and directing” 
public policies.”66 And this public is not only a nationalized and localized public but the public 
that will include the global public, the entire human family. How do we then educate our 
students to look beyond the national frontiers?  
 
Civic Education in the Global Sense 
 
 Globalization, according to Martin Albrow, “refers to all those processes by which the 
peoples of the world are incorporated into a single world society, global society.”67 Hence, as Jan 
Nederveen Pieterse notes, in social science there are many conceptualizations of globalization as 
there are disciplines. In economics, globalization refers to economic internationalization and the 
spread of capitalist market relations. In international relations, the focus is on developing a 
global politics.68 In cultural studies as Durham & Kellner noted, the concern is with global 
communications and worldwide cultural standardization as in McDonaldization, and on 
postcolonial culture. In many noted conceptualizations, globalization is the corollary of 
modernity.69 
    

Globalization has been one of the most hotly debated phenomena for more than two 
decades. For defenders of globalization it marks the triumph of capitalism and its market 
economy, it is the continuation of modernization and a force of progress, increased wealth, 
freedom, democracy, and happiness. While for critics it is the emergence of a new transnational 
ruling of the elite, domination and control by the wealthier overdeveloped nations over the poor 
underdeveloped countries and thus increases the hegemony of the haves over the have-nots. It 
engenders the undermining of democracy, a cultural homogenization and increased destruction 

                                                
65 John Dewey, The School and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1897). 
66 Jeannie Oakes & John Rogers, Learning Power (New York: Teachers College University Press, 2006). 
67 Martin Albrow, “Introduction,” in Globalization, Knowledge and Society, eds. Martin Albrow & Elizabeth King (London: 
Sage, 1990). 
68 Jan Nederveen Pieterse, “Globalization as Hybridization,” in Media and Cultural Studies: Key Works, eds. Meenakshi G. 
Durham & Douglas M. Kellner (Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2006). 
69 Meenakshi G. Durham & Douglas M. Kellner, eds. Media and Cultural Studies: Key Works (Massachusetts: Blackwell 
Publishing Ltd, 2006). 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

16 

of natural environment.70 There are many forces playing a role in the opposing conceptualization 
and understanding of globalization. Living through these contradictions is there a way we can 
use education to empower our children to overcome the negative forces of globalization and 
build human community and become global citizens? This question is critical because certain 
things, which I will point out in the following paragraph, have made this need necessary in our 
global present. 

 
The world as we see it is become a global village where what happens in one part affects 

the other. “Globalization thus poses new challenges for citizenship, both in established Western 
democracies and in the emerging nation-states of Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America, and 
Africa.”71 Citizenship is no longer circumscribed within one’s national boundaries as many 
people today possess flexible citizenship. For instance some children born in the U.S are sent to 
their parents’ native countries to learn their culture and language. Many of them end up 
becoming citizens of those countries as well and they go back and forth the two or three nations. 
Some from Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa come over to the U.S to study and they go 
back and forth the two nations and consider themselves citizens of both. To this phenomenon 
Paul Ong raises a very interesting question, “When foreign subjects leverage money and brains 
to take advantage of American education in transnational circuits, when many American citizens 
still experience exclusionary pressures from attending college, what does that do to our notions 
of democratic citizenship?”72 Certainly, it does challenge the traditional idea of citizenship and 
civic education that is focused on building national identity and patriotism in the citizens. 
Because these foreign subjects do not consider themselves entirely U.S citizens, building 
national identity and patriotism may be very weak. Even the children born and raised here who 
live in those squalid conditions and neglect, mentioned above, not only have negative 
educational experience but are filled with anger and resentment loosely directed at the 
government, the nation and themselves. Thus, the schools in poor and working class 
neighborhoods end up not just reproducing race and class inequality but also civic alienation. 
This can also result in driving a wedge between two oppressed communities: immigrant students 
and native born students, which may further result in xenophobia and nativism. These classes of 
citizens who are disenfranchised by the oppressive conditions may disindentify from the U.S. 
and seek other ways to describe themselves.    

 
Additional reasons why the traditional civic education should be reconceptualized have 

been supplied by Martha Nussbaum: The first reason is because of self-knowledge. When we 
come to know and understand other people we know and understand ourselves even better. 
Otherwise we feel that our way is the only way, the justified way. Second is that when we 
understand ourselves better through the other, we become better equipped to solve international 

                                                
70 Peter McLaren & Ramin Farahmandpur, Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism (New York: Rowman 
& Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005); ibid., 69; Leslie Sklair, The Transnational Capitalist Class (Massachusetts: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2001); Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996); Kevin Robins & 
Frank Webster, Times of the Technoculture: From the Information Society to the Virtual Life (New York: Routledge, 1999).  
71 James A. Banks, ed. Diversity and Citizenship Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004). 
72 Paul Ong, Edna Bonacich, & Lucie Cheng, eds., The new Asian Immigration in Los Angeles and Global Restructuring 
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994)  



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

17 

problems. Third reason is that we come to assume our moral responsibility to the entire humanity 
by having a cosmopolitan ideal. We enjoy a special privilege of high standard of living here in 
the U.S and we owe the rest of humanity for this privilege and we cannot discharge this global 
responsibility without global ideal. The fourth reason is that global identification with humans 
across the world is more real and morally binding than national identification that compels us to 
feel closer to fellow Americans.73 Thus there is need to rethink the meaning of citizenship 
through civic education.  
  

Education for Dewey was central for the forming and shaping of a democratic nation by 
forming in the citizen-subject the moral responsibility of living with others and contributing to 
the upkeep of the nation. He already signaled to the role of education in forming in everyone the 
idea of global citizenship by inviting us to look beyond the frontier of the nation.74 Hence in 
educating the young we are not just to be concerned with the national spirit but the entire human 
community (global village). “On the other hand, education has a major role in forming social and 
political identity and giving young people the tools they need to become active citizens.”75 
  

This tool will help the students to understand and live the new reality today, the reality of 
globalization and concern for every human being. For such is become a sine qua non in our new 
world. The tragedy of 9/11 has remained a constant reminder of this need. We live today in a 
world where the economic decisions and policies of our nation and corporations affect other 
nations at different spots of the globe. The current global economic crisis which started in Wall 
Street is spread throughout the world with very wrenching consequences for even poorer nations. 
Therefore, as James A. Banks puts it:  

 
Citizenship education should have as major goals helping students to develop 
understandings of the interdependence among nations in the modern world, 
clarified attitudes toward other nations and peoples, and reflective identifications 
with the world community. It should also help students to develop a reflective 
commitment to justice and equality throughout the world.76 
 
Furthermore, the global power of technology has made it easy for people to form 

transnational communities and be able to connect with their homeland. Nestor Canclini refers to 
this as teleparticipation. He referenced Roger Rouse who studied the inhabitants of Aguililla, a 
rural town in southwestern Michoacan in Mexico, apparently only accessible by a dirt road. Its 
two main activities continue to be agriculture and raising livestock for subsistence, but the 
emigration that began in the forties was such an incentive that almost all families there now have 
members who live or have lived abroad. The declining local economy is sustained by the flow of 
dollars sent from California, especially from Redwood City, that nucleus of microelectronics and 

                                                
73 Martha Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” in For love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, ed. Joshua 
Cohen (Boston: Beacon, 1996) 
74 John Dewey, The Public and its Problems (New York: Holt & Company, 1927). 
75 ibid., 71. 
76 ibid., 75. 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

18 

post-industrial North American culture in Silicon Valley, where the Michoacanos work as 
laborers and in services. There are so many outside of Aguililla, and so frequent are their 
connections with those who remain there, that one can no longer conceive of the two wholes as 
separate communities, they are better understood as forming only one community dispersed in a 
variety of places.77 

 
We have advanced from traditional societies made up of peasant communities that are 

separated from each other with traditional, local, and homogeneous cultures to a largely urban 
scheme with heterogeneous symbolic offering renewed by the constant interaction of the local 
with national and transnational networks of communication. Equally, the asymmetry relationship 
between First and Third world is made complex by the decentralization of corporations, the 
planetary simultaneity of information, and the adaptation of certain international forms of 
knowledge and images to the knowledge and habits of each community. It seems then that 
culture has lost natural geographical and social territories. The multidirectional migrations are 
the other factor that relativizes the binary and polar paradigm in national relations. The Latin 
American internationalization was accentuated in the last few decades by migrations which 
included persons from all social layers. The migrants carry with them the movement of cultures. 
As the Mexican popular culture interacts with modern and postmodern symbolism, it is 
incorporated into the North American mainstream culture.  

 
With these cross-cultural intersections engendered by migrations Nestor Canclini notes 

the collapse of two conventional notions. One is the notion of community. It was assumed that 
the links between the members of those communities would be more intense inside than outside 
of their space, and that the members treat the community as the principal medium to which they 
adjust their actions. This is no longer the case today. This is because members of the same 
community living outside of the community still maintain strong ties with each other and their 
community by means of modern technology (e.g., telephone, internet, etc). The second notion is 
that of concentric distribution of power and wealth, meaning that the closer you are to the center 
the more power and wealth you have. This too is no longer valid today. People have power and 
control from far away countries. Most of the buildings in many capitals and centers of commerce 
of many countries are owed by foreign nationals. They participate in the stock market and other 
investments that shape and control the life of the people in the particular country. So, even if 
they are many miles away from the center they still play a decisive role in the economic life of 
the people. There is the implosion of the third world in the first and that reorders society and 
social theories.78   

 
 Consequently, individuals today are capable of having multiple identifications and 
attachments, including that of their cultural community, nation of origin, naturalized nations, and 
the worldwide human community.79 Living this multiple, complex, interactive and contextual 

                                                
77 Nestor Garcia Canclini, “Hybrid Cultures, Oblique Powers,” in Media and Cultural Studies: Key Works, eds. Meenakshi G. 
Durham & Douglas M. Kellner (Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2006).  
78 ibid., 77. 
79 Martha C. Nussbaum, “Capabilities and Disabilities,” Philosophical Topics 30, no. 2 (2002): 133-165. 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

19 

identities can be very challenging. For instance, those who invest in foreign countries may well 
encounter moral conflict in terms of their loyalty and attachment to the country of business. Do 
they base it on their economic interest and gain or feeling of connection to the people of that 
country? Equally, many of the youth from Asia, South America, Africa etc, who migrate to the 
U.S find themselves caught in this complex web of identities. While they consider themselves 
citizens of both countries many feel no longer or entirely accepted in either. There is then the 
need to teach students this new and multiple ways of being. Thus the goal of citizenship 
education in such a democratic and multicultural society will be to support them to gain 
knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to make intelligent decisions and choices that will not 
only be just and fair for their nation-state but the entire human community.80 Too much 
attachment to the cultural community can impede the attachment to the nation, while too much 
attachment to the latter can also have a damning effect on one’s concern and relationship to the 
entire human community. There should always be a balance and this balance can be very 
delicate.  
 

Kathleen Abowitz commenting on the need for this evenhandedness with regard to issues 
concerning other humans observes how our national imagination and compassion for victims of 
9/11 has been stirred by the news media, which at the same time neglected to value the sufferings 
of Afghans.  “The outpouring of compassion from around the country for the victims of the 
tragedy has been compelling and inspirational. However, our imaginations and compassions 
seem to have national boundaries; there have been far fewer documented cases of students or 
teachers attempting to imagine the lives, fears, and sufferings of Afghanistan citizens or of 
Muslims around the globe.”81 In her work, Cosmopolitan and Patriotism, Martha Nussbaum 
worries that too much nationalistic interest and patriotism can erode the U.S feeling of moral 
responsibility to the rest of humanity. It can make us have lesser value and respect for people of 
other countries.82 But the problem is that this is already the case as is obvious in our news media 
reporting of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, even here in the U.S, as 
demonstrated above in the differential education, there is less concern of the rich for the poor and 
the underrepresented student groups are not given the fair attention and value. The hope then is 
that civic education or rather education in general should be able to engage students in 
communal critical inquiry of understanding their civic responsibility to the entire humanity. In 
many states and schools in our nation it seems this type of education is made possible for 
students.  
 
Hope for the Future? 

 
While I have these analyses of some of the past failures of our educational system to 

critically engage our students in civic education that will help them value and appreciate 
themselves and others, there is still great hope for the future. In the study by Fine, et al., they 

                                                
80 James A. Banks, Educating Citizens in a Multicultural Society (New York: Teachers College Press, 2007). 
81 Kathleen Knight Abowitz, “Imagining Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism or Patriotism?, Teachers College Record, August 12, 
2002. 
82 ibid., 73. 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

20 

acknowledged the effort made in small public schools in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and 
New Jersey. These schools have quality faculty and instructional materials, dedicated to rigorous 
education for students, including poor and working-class youth and youth of color. Students in 
these schools learn about social stratification by researching history, economics and social 
movements with the possibilities and movements for social change and their responsibilities to 
participate in creating change.83 This is what civic education supposed to be and do for students.  

 
Equally, it is important to acknowledge the effort that is being made by organizations like 

Teaching to Change LA (TCLA) sponsored by UCLA IDEA office. In one of the workshops that 
teachers in these urban or working-class neighborhood schools had at UCLA, they shared how 
they have engaged in communal and critical inquiry that Dewey recommends. The students were 
engaged in a common critical search for meaning. It was a very empowering moment for the 
students who were engaged in such an inquiry. This was a way of entrenching the democratic 
principle of equal participation on the students. “The creation of citizens “in the fullness [sic] of 
their capacities” in turn demands that “free human beings [associate] with one another on terms 
of equality.” Relating to fellow citizens on the basis of equality does not imply a “mathematical 
equivalence” in which all must participate in the same way. Rather, it means that hierarchical 
understandings of individuals as “greater and less, superior and inferior,” must give way to a 
“metaphysical mathematics of the incommensurable in which each speaks for itself and demands 
consideration on its own behalf.”84  

 
This is a very heartening practice since these students are the future of society. And by 

learning how to participate with others in a relationship of equality and common search for 
meaning, the students are empowered to live as well-informed citizens who are able to engage in 
a democratic system. This is a very noble project to say the least. How I wish every American 
student is empowered the same way so that everyone is given the tools to participate in that 
common inquiry where divisions of race, gender and class do not stratify the society, where 
everyone is considered equal. For in these divisions lie the bane of democracy as Dewey would 
agree. There is then the need to liberalize this critical engagement of students in every American 
school, especially in California where the racial, class and ethnic gap is continuously widening, 
so that no one is left behind in the democratic process. With these efforts, it seems there is hope 
for our democracy! This will in turn increase students’ awareness and sensitivity of the human 
community beyond our borders, thereby engendering the global responsibility and 
responsiveness.  
 
Conclusion 
 

Civic education as this paper has demonstrated is what education is about for no one 
would claim to be educated without those skills that would enable him/her to collaborate with 
others in building both the national community and the human world. If this is true the quality of 
education we give to our children matters. Using Dewey’s ideas as framework, I have tried to 

                                                
83 ibid., 50. 
84 ibid., 66. 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

21 

highlight the importance of education in forming responsible citizens for the survival of 
democracy and the human family. A great disservice is done both to the individual, the society 
and indeed humanity at large when certain population of our nation is served with poor quality 
education. Those students learn a different civic text and may score their values and that of other 
humans differently. They learn rather to feel powerless, alienated, shameful, angry and betrayed 
than being empowered. “Their alienation seems to stretch from schooling denied, to governments 
that betray and democratic promises that remain unfulfilled.”85 Instead of learning to become 
responsible citizens they learn to disengage in any civic participation. It is therefore important to 
have an educational system that offers equal opportunity to all of our students.  

 
This equality of opportunity at home can only be the starting point for the global 

responsibility we have to the entire humanity. Because of globalization, our educational system 
and civic education should no longer focus on forming the national identity and national 
citizenship alone but to look beyond our frontiers to the global public. Students should be taught 
this new way of being in the world and the way to deal with the accompanying complexities. 
Possessing multiple identities by no means is easy and we owe our children the obligation to 
empower them to step beyond the boundaries of race, nationality, privilege, first world, third 
world, black, white and all the other binaries. Education can do this! I would like to close with 
this quote from Howard Mehlinger: 

 
The world is different from what it was fifteen or twenty years ago. Global 
interdependence is a fact of life. . . . What does this have to do with civic education? 
Civic education has traditionally been concerned with promoting nationalism. While 
nation-states will not suddenly disappear or lose their influence, nevertheless students 
must increasingly find identification with the species as a whole and not with American 
citizens only, be loyal to the planet as well as to the fifty states, and be committed to 
policies and goals intended to ensure the survival of the species rather than merely 
increasing American power and prestige at the expense of others.86 

References: 
Abowitz Knight Kathleen, “Imagining Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism or Patriotism?, Teachers 

College Record, August 12, 2002. 
Albrow Martin, “Introduction,” in Globalization, Knowledge and Society, eds. Martin Albrow & 

Elizabeth King (London: Sage, 1990). 
Anyon Jean, Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Urban Educational Reform (New York: 

Teachers College Record, 1997). 
______Radical Possibilities: Public policy, Urban Eduaction, and a New Social Movement 

(New York: Routledge, 2005). 
Banks A. James, ed. Diversity and Citizenship Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004). 
______Educating Citizens in a Multicultural Society (New York: Teachers College Press, 2007). 

                                                
85 ibid., 83. 
86 Howard D Mehlinger, “The Crisis in Civic Education,” Education for Responsible Citizenship: The Report of the National 
Task Force on Citizenship Education (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1977), 69. 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

22 

Barber R. Benjamin, “Public Schooling: Education for Democracy,” in The Public Purpose of 
Education and Schooling, eds. Goodlad I. John and McMannon J. Timothy (San 
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997). 

Berliner David, “Our Impoverished View of Educational Research,” Teachers College Record 
108, no.6 (2006): 949-995; Bourdieu Pierre, Distinction: A Social Critique of the 
Judgment of Taste (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984). 

Buber Martin, “The Education of Character” in Between Man and Man (New York: Macmillan, 
1965).  

California Department of Education 2004. Retrieved Oct. 7, 2010 from http://www.ed-
data.k12.ca.us. 

Canclini Garcia Nestor, “Hybrid Cultures, Oblique Powers,” in Media and Cultural Studies: Key 
Works, eds. Meenakshi G. Durham & Douglas M. Kellner (Massachusetts: Blackwell 
Publishing Ltd, 2006).  

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Economic Recovery Failed to Benefit Much of the 
Population in 2004 (Washington, DC: Matrix Group International, Inc., 2005). 

Darling-Hammond Linda, “The Flat Earth and Education: How America’s Commitment to 
Equity will Determine our Future,” Education Researcher 36, no.6 (2007): 318-334.  

Dawkins P. Marvin & Braddock J. Henry, “The Continuing Significance of Desegregation: 
School Racial Composition and African American Inclusion in American Society,” 
Journal of Negro Education 63, no.3 (1994).  

Delpit Lisa, Other People’s Children: Cultural conflict in the Classroom (New York: The New 
Press, 1995). 

Dewey John, School and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1897). 
______Experience & Education (New York: Touchtsone Books, 1938). 
______The public and its Problems (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1927). 
______“Education as Politics” [Essay, first published in New Republic 32 (1922): 139-41. 

Republished in Characters and Events, ed. Joseph Ratner (New York: Henry Hold and 
Co., 1929), and in Education Today, ed. Joseph Ratner (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 
1940), pp.157-63.] 

______“The School as Social Centre” [An address delivered before the National council of 
Education, Minneapolis, Minn., July, 1902. First published in Elementary School Teacher 
3 (1902): 73-86, and in Proceedings and Addresses of the National Educational 
Association, 1902, pp. 373-83.] 

Dreier Peter, “America’s Urban Crisis: Symptoms, Causes, Solutions,” North Carolina Law 
Review 71, (1993): 1351-1401. 

Durham G. Meenakshi & Kellner M. Douglas, eds. Media and Cultural Studies: Key Works 
(Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2006). 

Eaton Susan, The Other Boston Busing Story: What’s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line 
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001). 

__________ The Children in Room E4 (North Carolina: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2006). 
Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, School to College: Can State P-16 Councils 

Ease the Transition? (Washington, DC: U.S Department of Education, 2008). 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

23 

Ekstrom B. Ruth, Goertz E. Margaret, Pollack M. Judith & Rock A. Donald, “Who Drops out of 
High School and Why? Findings from a National Study,” Teachers College Record 87, 
no.3 (1986): 356-373. 

Frankenberg Erica, Lee Chungmei, & Orfield Gary, A Multiracial Society with Segregated 
Schools: Are we Losing the Dream? Report prepared by Civil Rights Project, Harvard 
University, 2003. 

Freire Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: The Continuum International Publishing 
Group Inc. 1970). 

Fine Michelle, Burns April, Payne A. Yasser, & Torre E. Maria, “Civic Lessons: The Color and 
Class of Betrayal,” Teachers College Record 106, no.11 (2004): 2193-2223.  

Gangi Robert, Schiraldi Vincent, & Ziedenberg Jason, “New York State of Mind?: Higher 
Education vs. Prison Funding in the Empire State, 1988-1998,” Justice Policy Institute 
(Washington DC, October 1998). 

Giroux Henry, “War Talk and the Shredding of the Social Contract: Youth and the Politics of 
Domestic Militarization,” in Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Global 
Conflicts, eds. Gustavo E. Fischman, Peter McLaren, Heinz Sunker, & Colin Lankshear 
(New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005). 

Gramsci Antonio, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. Quintin Hoare 
and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971). 

Groome Thomas, “What makes a School Catholic,” in The Contemporary Catholic School: 
Context, Identity, and Diversity, eds. McLaughlin, T; O’Keefe, J & O’Keefe, B. (London: 
The Falmer Press, 1996). 

Habash Anna, Counting on Graduation (Washington, DC: The Educational Trust, 2008). 
Handler F. Joel & Hasenfeld Yeheskel, Blame Welfare, Ignore Poverty and Inequality (New 

York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).  
Heath B. Shirley, Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms 

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 
Ingersoll M. Richard, “The Problem of Underqualified Teachers in American Secondary 

Schools,” Educational Researcher 28, no.2 (1999): 26-37. 
Ladson-Billings Gloria, The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teacher of African-American Children 

(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994).  
Lankford Hamilton, Loeb Susanna, & Wyckoff James, “Teacher Sorting and the Plight of Urban 

Schools:  A Descriptive Analysis,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 24, no.1 
(2002): 37-62. 

Larson Colleen & Murtadha Khaula, “Leadership for Social Justice,” in The Educational 
Leadership Challenge: Redefining Leadership for the 21st Century, ed. Joseph Murphy 
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 

Lynch Kathleen & Baker John, “Equality in Education: The importance of Equality of 
Condition,” Theory and Research in Education 3, no. 2 (2005):131-164. 

Massey Douglas & Denton Nancy, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the 
Underclass (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993). 

Mehlinger D. Howard, “The Crisis in Civic Education,” Education for Responsible Citizenship: 
The Report of the National Task Force on Citizenship Education (New York: McGraw-
Hill Book Company, 1977), 69. 



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

24 

McLaren Peter & Farahmandpur Ramin, Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New 
Imperialism (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005). 

McMannon J. Timothy, “Introduction: The Changing Purpose of Education,” in The Public 
Purpose of Education and Schooling. 

McNeil Linda, Contradictions of School Reform (New York: Routledge, 2000); FairTest, K-12 
Testing. Retrieved May 15, 2006, from http://www.fairtest.org/k-12.htm.  

National Center for Education Statistics, The Condition of Education 2008 (Washington DC: U.S 
Department of Education, 2008).  

Nauer Kim, White Andrew & Yerneni Rajeev, Strengthening Schools by Strengthening Families 
(New York: The New School, 2008). 

Nussbaum C. Martha, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” (Essay published in Boston Review, 
October/November 1994). 

Nussbaum C. Martha, “Capabilities and Disabilities,” Philosophical Topics 30, no. 2 (2002): 
133-165. 

Oakes Jeannie, Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality (New Haven: Yale University 
Press, 1985). 

Oakes Jeannie & Rogers John, Learning Power (New York: Teachers College University Press, 
2006). 

Ong Paul, Bonacich Edna, & Cheng Lucie, eds., The new Asian Immigration in Los Angeles and 
Global Restructuring (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994).  

Orfield Gary & McArdle Nancy, The Vicious Cycle: Segregated Housing, Schools and 
Intergenerational Inequality. Report prepared by Harvard Civil Rights Project in 2006.  

Orfield Gary & Lee Chungmei, Why Segregation Matters: Poverty and Educational Inequality. 
Report prepared by Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, 2005. 

Orfield Gary, Losen Daniel, Wald Johanna, Swanson B. Christopher, Losing Our Future: How 
Minority Youth are being Left Behind by the Graduation Rate Crisis. Report prepared by 
Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, 2004. 

Orfield Myron, American Metropolitics (Massachusetts: The Brookings Institution, 2002). 
Pastor Manuel, “A State United or a State Divided: Can Multiple Pathways Bring Together 

Multiple Californians? in Multiple Perspectives on Multiple Pathways (UCLA IDEA, 
2007). 

Pieterse Jan Nederveen, “Globalization as Hybridization,” in Media and Cultural Studies: Key 
Works, eds. Meenakshi G. Durham & Douglas M. Kellner (Massachusetts: Blackwell 
Publishing Ltd, 2006). 

Robins Kevin & Webster Frank, Times of the Technoculture: From the Information Society to 
the Virtual Life (New York: Routledge, 1999). 

Roscigno J. Vincent, “Family/School Inequality and African-American/Hispanic Achievement,” Social Problems 47, no. 2 (2000): 266-290. 

Rumberger W. Russell & Rotermund Susan, “Ethnic and Gender Differences in California High 
School Graduation Rates,” in California Dropout Research Project (UC Santa Barbara, 
2009). 

Scheurich Jim & Laible Julie, “The Buck Stops Here,” Educational Administration Quarterly 31, 
no.2 (1999): 313-322.  



 
In Factis Pax  
Volume 6 Number 1 (2012): 1-25 
http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ 
 

25 

Schofield Janet, “Review of Research on School Desegregation’s Impact on Elementary and 
Secondary School Students,” in Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, eds. 
James A. Banks & Michael C. Banks (New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1995). 

School Funding (US Census Bureau, 2011). 
Sklair Leslie, The Transnational Capitalist Class (Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001); 

Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). 
Skrla Linda, McKenzie B. Kathryn & Scheurich J. James, Using Equity Audits to Create 

Equitable and Excellent Schools (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2009). 
Sleeter Christine & Grant Carl, Empowerment through Multicultural Education (Albany: State 

University of New York Press, 1991). 
Smeeding Timothy, Rainwater Lee & Burtless Gary, “U.S. Poverty in a Cross-national 

Comparison,” in Understanding Poverty, eds. Sheldon Danziger & Robert Haveman 
(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001). 

Taysum Alison & Gunter Helen, “A Critical Approach to Researching Social Justice and School 
Leadership in England,” Education, Citizenship and Social Justice 3, no.183 (2008). 

The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2006).  
The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement, “The Civic Mission 

of Schools,” (New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York, 2003). Full report can be 
accessed through: http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/CivicMissionofSchools.pdf.  

Tiedt L. Pamela & Tiedt M. Iris, Multicultural Teaching: A Handbook of Activities, Information 
and Resources (Massachusetts: Simon & Schuster, 1990). 

Valenzuela Angela, Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring 
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999). 

Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (USA: Barnes and Nobles Publishing Inc., 2003). 
Wells A. Stuart & Crain L. Robert, “Perpetuation Theory and the Long-term Effects of School 

Desegregation,” Review of Educational Research 64 (1994).