Education for Everyone: Agenda for Education in a Democracy

The founders of our Republic envisioned education as providing for all citizens the necessary apprenticeship in the understanding and practice of democracy. To make democracy safe we must have universal schooling; to make schooling safe for education we must have democracy. But since the founding of our country the study and practice of democracy in our schools has weakened. We must return to the primary purpose of education and ensure that it is indeed for everyone. The Agenda for Education in a Democracy proposed by the authors is more than an effort to simply revitalize a faltering civics curriculum. It is about restoring a shared humanity to the educational process. It is about the need to make caring, compassion, freedom, dignity, and responsibility central to the mission of schooling. It is about placing power and responsibility—a concept more demanding of the individual than is accountability—in the hands of those who need and deserve it. It is about taking the idea of excellence seriously. It is about taking democracy seriously. It is about having real faith in real people to do what is right, just, and honorable.