1 - Citizen, the Most Important Office in a Democracy

Summary

Abstract: All democratic education is directed against tyranny, but some kinds of tyranny are easier to identify than others. One kind of tyranny involves a visible dictator who controls public and private lives toward arbitrarily determined ends. Another kind of tyranny, more insidious than the first, controls what people come to want for themselves and for others – this is the result of the tyranny of habit. We want what we are conditioned to want, and we often find it hard to imagine anything else. One of the aims of education for the office of citizen is to provide students with the intellectual tools and to develop the character dispositions required to recognize, monitor, and respond to the tyranny of habit. The remainder of the chapters in the book is an elaboration on this aim and the way it sets the stage for the education of new patriots and their role as custodians of democracy.