ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that public schooling actually operates as a barrier to aspirations of most. Among educators, this realization began to rise to prominence in the mid-1900s, paralleling a series of civil rights movements that helped to raise public awareness of social inequities tethered to race, class, and gender. Democratic citizenship education thus reframes role of the school. Long seen as an institution designed to perpetuate cultural needs and social values, this movement has helped to reveal how the school actually participates in the creation of values and possibilities. Within a frame of democratic citizenship education, the learner is seen in a different way still, as neither deficient nor sufficient, but as partial – that is, in the twofold sense of the word as incomplete and biased. Democratic citizenship education entails constant attentiveness, ongoing investment, and a continuous reflexive criticality, all oriented toward ethical action. The original foci of critical discourses in democratic citizenship education were racism, classism, and sexism.
