As social media platforms and the internet have become an integral part of our civic and political lives, many questions about how to approach digital politics and civic engagement have emerged in the past few years. This project attempts to address some of those questions, specifically how we may think about civic education in the digital age. I begin with the premise that in the digital age, education for democracy must focus on its epistemic aspect. While proponents of aggregative forms of democracy consider vote to be the main form of citizen participation, forms of epistemic democracy such as deliberative democracy seek to contribute to social knowledge through communication amongst citizens, civil society, market players and state institutions. I initially ground my inquiry within the American context by highlighting the participatory character of the American democratic ethos. For this, I evoke John Dewey’s view of democracy as involving collective inquiry that allows both individual growth and the enrichment of collective life. Then, by examining Jürgen Habermas’ deliberative and Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic models of democracy against the backdrop of increasing digital mediation of civic and political discourse, I problematize democratic subjectivity in the digital age and suggest using Etienne Balibar’s notion of transindividuality, which he develops from 17th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. While Habermas demonstrates that certain communication conditions are necessary for legitimate political action, Mouffe reminds us that taking into account the importance of collective affective drives can help us take seriously the plurality of our contemporary democracies. However, I argue that in the digital age the strengths of these two approaches must be adapted to the evolving materiality of the environment in which people’s lived experience takes place rather than merely kept for instances of communication that occur within state institutions. For this, Balibar’s suggestion to think of the process of freedom of speech as a public good allows us to ground discourse in the material context in which it is produced and maintained, and provides a generative way of thinking of the role of education in our times.

This dissertation asks how far Americans in the twentieth century reconciled the demands of global supremacy with the claims and realities of democracy. As an answer, it offers the first history of the movement for citizen education in world affairs. This movement, loose but coherent, acted on the belief that since the United States was a mass democracy, the creation of an interested, informed public for foreign policy was essential to its peace and security. After World War I, members of the foreign policy elite resolved to teach Americans to lead the world, and they created a network of new institutions to do so. The most important and visible of these institutions was the Foreign Policy Association, a non-profit, non-partisan group founded by New York progressives in 1918 to support Woodrow Wilson in the fight over the Treaty of Versailles. By 1925, it had morphed into the first true foreign policy think tank in the nation, with a research staff creating new, public-facing knowledge and disseminating it to a broadening public. The research staff’s Foreign Policy Reports and Foreign Policy Bulletin gave information to diplomats, scholars, editors, businessmen, lawyers, and teachers, information that was otherwise inaccessible. As democracy was threatened at home and abroad during the Great Depression, the Association became more ambitious, founding branches in twenty cities to circulate foreign diplomats and a new breed of experts in international politics around the country. It pioneered broadcasts over the nascent national radio network, and tapped into a broader movement for adult education. With the encouragement of Franklin Roosevelt, a former member, the Association promoted intervention in World War II, and became a key partner of the State Department in the selling of the United Nations. Many members of the foreign policy elite believed that the rise of the United States to world leadership entailed new responsibilities for its citizens. As the prewar functions of the Association had been rendered obsolete, it resolved after 1947 to promote community education in world affairs, to make world leadership a part of daily life. Under the rallying cry of “World Affairs Are Your Affairs,” the Association partnered with the Ford Foundation to help create dozens of World Affairs Councils, most of them patterned on the success of the Cleveland Council on World Affairs. These Councils became a stage for international politics, bringing the world to cities across America, and those cities to the world. But by its own measurements, let alone the results of surveys or the intuition of officials, this movement to make every citizen a statesman failed. The Association and its subsidiary Councils remained weak, short on cash and beset by rivalries. Increasingly, they took refuge in an ever-smaller, educated, white elite, and, informed by social science, they wrote off ever more of the American electorate as uninterested or incapable when it came to world affairs. Very few Americans, it became clear by the early 1960s, were willing to dedicate themselves to world affairs on the model of citizenship that their leaders hoped, and to those leaders, the public therefore seemed fundamentally apathetic. The infrastructure that the foreign policy elite had spent decades building calcified, even before the traumas of the Vietnam War. A chasm developed between policymakers and the public, one that has proven impossible to bridge since.

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published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

This thesis is a critical examination of the history of philosophies governing public education in the United States. The first half, chapters one through six, outlines American conceptions of the role of the school in relation to the state and to democracy. The second half is an account of critical progressive philosophies that have challenged the American status-quo since the independence. The main argument that I propose here is that the creation of an education system in America has followed the philosophies of federalism and private democracy. These philosophies are economically centered and define the citizen in economic terms. Progressive educators have long questioned this definition and seek to redefine citizenship to describe participatory democracy, and communication based on experience and an ethic of care.

This qualitative research focused on the political knowledge holdings of adults. The research was conducted from the perspective and for the field of adult education. A purpose of this dissertation research was to provide a new and expanded footing for future inquiry and to enhance the further development of both theory and practice. The methodology was selected with that in mind.This study involved two distinct components. Part one involved a systematic random sample of 30 adults from a small midwestern city. A 16 question telephone survey was administered to each of the 30 adults. The survey consisted of the type questions used by previous researchers to measure political knowledge. The questions required respondents to identify political figures and election issues. Respondents were also asked to answer political parties questions and civics questions.The qualitative component, part two, was the primary thrust of this research. Seven informants were identified from different life circumstances. The informants and the 30 randomly selected adults resided in the same community. A minister, a law enforcement officer, a small business person, a retired person, a minimum wage worker, a factory worker, and an adult college student were individually interviewed on twoseparate occasions. Each interview was transcribed and analyzed by the researcher. At the conclusion of each informant's final interview, the 16 question survey, previously given to the 30 telephone respondents, was administered to each informant.Conclusions of this study were not generalized beyond the study's research participants. The informants were found to have varying areas of political knowledge. These varying areas of political knowledge arose from the informants varying personal experiences and life circumstances. Informants were not well informed, nor were they equally informed, across multiple areas of political knowledge. The seven informants performed virtually the same as did the thirty telephone respondents on the sixteen question survey.This study demonstrated that qualitative research methodology can illuminate and make meaningful that which is undetected through the use of questionnaires. Where the results of the questionnaires reflected a sameness between and among the informants and telephone respondents, the seven case studies uncovered distinct differences. / Department of Educational Leadership

M.Litt. et Phil. / The purpose of this study is to determine the need for civic education and the degree to which this need is addressed in Curriculum 2005. (Curriculum 2005 is the new education curriculum, implemented in state schools since 1998.) As a young democracy, one of the challenges South Africa faces is to consolidate democracy. Part of this challenge is to establish a culture of political tolerance. Civic education, implemented in schools, is a method to achieve these goals. In the rationale of Curriculum 2005, it is stated that ". . . the child is given opportunities to grow and develop as an active citizen, contributing constructively to the building of a democratic, non-racist, non-sexist and equitable society." (Foundation Phase: Draft Policy/Phase Document, 1997) Intentionally or unintentionally, Curriculum 2005 appears to be the Department of Education's answer to the need for civic education in South Africa at this stage. The degree to which this need is fulfilled needs to be determined, as well as the shortcomings and where and how it can be improved. For civic education to be successful and effective, broad criteria were identified for the content; the method; the approach; resource materials and teacher education. This study found that there is a fair degree of elements of civic education in Curriculum 2005. There are, however, five main problems that may hinder the effectiveness of civic education. The first is the method. Civic education is not taught as a separate subject, but interwoven in mainly the social learning area. The second obstacle is the content. Thirdly, the majority of teachers who have to teach civic education lack sufficient ability and knowledge, as they did not receive training in this field. A fourth point is the budget constraints. On the one hand time and money is needed to develop a civic education programme, while on the other hand, there are some urgent needs to upgrade and expand physical infrastructure in schools. Lastly, the lack of sufficient and appropriate resource material for teachers, probably poses the single biggest obstacle for the successful implementation of civic education. The Department of Educuation did not provide official textbooks or guidelines, and the sourcing of material for discussion and examples is left to the teacher's own discression. Although there is a clear need for civic education in South Africa, and the intention to fulfil this need seems to be present in Curriculum 2005, the means to achieve this goal are absent. The combination of these five points leads to the conclusion that if the results of civic education could be measured, any form of success and effectiveness in Curriculum 2005, would be nothing more than pure coincidence.

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published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education