Abstract: Moral growth is an evolutionary process, for both the individual and the society. Democracy requires a certain kind of respect that is different from the expression of respect called for in other settings. Here, an object of respect is the capacity of the individual and the society to shape their own development and to determine their own idea of a good life. This calls for an education that aims to promote self-consciousness about existing and emerging possibilities and that enables rising citizens, both as individuals and as part of collective enterprises, to recognize their capacity for growth.

Abstract: Democratic ideas and habits do not arise automatically; they have taken centuries to develop, and stitching democracy together after its fault lines have been exposed, as they recently have been in the United States, is a long-term affair. Citizenship education requires contributions from an extended curriculum – math and science, art, and the humanities, as well as social studies and civics – focused on the specific needs of rising citizens. One place to begin is by taking the idea of citizenship as an office seriously and then asking what kind of education is needed to make that office effective in advancing democratic culture.

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.