democratic Citizens
Schools are crucial to preparing students to live in and support our democratic society, responsible for: earning a wage with which they can support themselves, their families, and contribute to social institutions; being informed, discerning voters; being responsible to serve on a jury, resolve disputes, and decide the liberty of their neighbors. They need to learn how social, economic, cultural, and political systems support our democracy. They need to learn the history that has advanced us to this moment, and how to think critically about how society can progress, to provide more opportunity to more people. These capacities and mindsets need to be developed starting in the earliest grades, with curriculum that makes democratic values like responsibility explicit, that addresses issues of equity, including practices like those of restorative justice.
A democracy is not born once, existing forever more. Democracy must be reborn every day, by citizens who dedicate themselves to the ideal of democracy: the ideals that individuals matter, that they are each endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that we join together in communities of responsibility to pursue the common good, that we disagree and sharpen our opinions not only by learning from people with whom we already agree but by arguing with people who contribute different facts, weigh our shared values differently, and draw different opinions.
What is the work?
Developing rigor and democratic habits of mind. Implementing and supporting programs that align with the highest values of our democracy. Insisting and interrogating equity throughout your community.