Is Citizenship Education Working in the Public Schools?
YES: Diane Stark Rentner: “Public Schools and Citizenship,” Paper of the Center on Education Policy. NO: Rosemary C. Salomone: “Education for Democratic Citizenship,” Education Week. Diane Stark Rentner, associate director for the Center on Educational Policy, argues that the American public school system is the only institution dedicated to educating “all of the children of all of the people” and as such it brings a sense of commonality and unity to a diverse society. Rosemary C. Salomone, a professor of law at St. John’s University School of Law in Jamaica, New York, suggests that schools are failing to develop citizens of character and that the school itself must exist as a morally coherent community and as a microcosm of democracy.
