Gibbs's detailed description of decision-making around teaching war in a school that taught the children of active-duty soldiers provides an important glimpse into the numerous factors influencing their curricular and pedagogical choices. Gibbs rightly argued that the limited perspective of patriotism that resulted from the teachers' reluctance to…

The first six years of the child's life are infinitely the most important, as they are the years in which attitudes are being established, habits formed, and character trends largely fixed. This article examines topics such as race relations and prejudice in kindergarten, the role of kindergarten teachers, soldier play in kindergarten and its…

In her famous text "Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism", Martha Nussbaum argued for cosmopolitan education in ways that evoked a tension between cosmopolitanism and patriotism. Among others, Charles Taylor considered her treatment of patriotism vague and lopsided, and pointed out that patriotism is not as secondary or as dispensable as…

In this article, the author explores key distinctions relevant to aims talk in education. He argues that present formulations of aims fail to adequately capture or speak to several overlapping domains involved in schooling: qualification, socialization, and the educational in the form of subjectification (Biesta, 2010). Drawing off Egan and Biesta…

In a time of alarm about the poisoning of electoral politics, public passions inflamed by sophisticated techniques of mass polarization, and fears that the country is losing control of its collective future, higher education is called upon to take leadership in "reinventing citizenship." It needs to respond to that call on a scale unprecedented in…

The public has always had a keen interest in textbooks on history. Despite all the differences among textbooks on national histories, most countries have a similar focus: the task of shaping the new generations' positive image of their own people in its long or short history, while not disregarding any sinister, dark, at times frightful pages of…

If one puts together "China Is Unhappy" and the book "China Can Say No" of 13 years ago, one is quite likely to get the impression that "China's nationalism is heating up." "China does not wish to lead anyone, and should only think of leading itself"--those are the words printed on the back cover of…

Normative thinking around democracy often emphasizes the supremacy of electoral politics, underplaying the salience of education as a defining feature to produce a more meaningful, engaged, inclusive form of democracy. Critical pedagogy can be an extremely useful, illuminating and transformative means and process of deconstructing how democracy is…

In recent times, few aspects of moral education have drawn the attention of Russian officials as has patriotic education. The new steps in patriotic education demonstrate the revival of the policy of State Patriotism that had been challenged for a short period at the beginning of educational reforms in the 1990s. The revitalization of…

Since September 11, 2001, arguments have been put forward for a sort of specifically non-pluralistic, conservative, patriotic educational policy in the United States, by educators historically sympathetic toward assimilationist policies and curriculum in U.S. schools. In response to pluralist calls for tolerance if not positive recognition of…

This article argues that while an attachment to one's country is both natural and even partially justifiable, cultivating loyal patriotism in schools is untenable insofar as it conflicts with the legitimate aims of education. These aims include the epistemological competence necessary for ascertaining important truths germane to the various…

The debate over patriotic education in Japan is marked by power shifts between the two different political groups that have different views of the role of patriotic education. By analyzing the power shift from a historical perspective, this essay makes a point that one of the problems of the debate over patriotic education in Japan is that the…

A resurgence of national and international interest in citizenship education, citizenship and social cohesion has been coupled with an apparent emergence of a language of crisis (Sears & Hyslop-Margison, 2006). Given this background, how can or should one consider a subjective sense of membership in a single political community? What this article…

M. Karen Powers and Catherine Chaput's ""Anti-American Studies" in the Deep South: Dissenting Rhetorics, the Practice of Democracy, and Academic Freedom in Wartime Universities" begins a much needed discussion about the current and ongoing assaults against academic freedom in American universities, which have not received…

Following World War II, fear rooted in Communist paranoia gripped America. This distress seeped into all aspects of American culture, including education. The American people became increasingly worried that Communist influences would infiltrate the schools and pervert the minds of children. At the forefront of this quagmire was Dr. Earl James…