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Beyond Politics: Community Civics and the Redefinition of Citizenship in the Progressive Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Julie A. Reuben
Julie A. Reuben*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

In his 1857 manual The American Citizen: His Rights and Duties According to the Spirit of the Constitution of the United States, John Henry Hopkins described the citizen as” ‘a partner in the republic,’ “who had the right “to express his honest convictions, in word or writing, concerning every candidate for office, and every political measure contemplated or adopted by those who are in possession of the legislative or executive function.” In this passage, Hopkins expressed the common nineteenth-century assumption that citizenship entailed political activism. Hopkins and his contemporaries might have disagreed about what kinds of political activity were appropriate or effective, but they did not question that citizenship was essentially a political status, involving active participation in the public sphere.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , Winter 1997 , pp. 399 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by the History of Education Society 

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References

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