ABSTRACT
While mobilizing education as a force for ‘social inclusion’ is a task of the highest importance, placing emphasis only on learning materials limits its potential contribution to realizing the comprehensive goal. The aspiration to include people (of diverse cultures, diverse socio-economic strata and diverse cognitive aptitudes) in educational institutions and through education to ensure their inclusion in adult society, requires sustained efforts to further students’ capacities for social participation throughout their schooling. If successful, such education can develop people who, when reaching maturity, will be equipped to reject exclusion from decision-making in social and political institutions. I wish to outline a plan for cultivating inclusive civic action in early childhood education and throughout formal schooling. I base this proposal on three arguments: (a) wide-ranging theoretical definitions of citizenship (state-individual relationships) cohere with theoretical definitions of civil society (non-governmental collectivities and organizations); (b) actions of state and nonstate collectivities in democracies are effected through politics, i.e., deliberation and participatory decision-making; (c) up-to-date practices for advancing learning cohere with procedures that shape civic action in a robust democratic state.
