This paper analyses the problematic nature of citizenship as a modern achievement faced with the challenge of vindicating ancient ideals in what is increasingly considered to be a "postmodern" world. It offers a parallel analysis of childhood as a characteristically modern construct whose reality in children's life-worlds is threatened by social conditions of postmodernity, and whose discursive articulation is increasingly exposed to critique from the standpoint of philosophical post-modernism. In response, it argues for the incorporation of key elements of Athenian/republican citizenship--emphasising speech, action, and interdependence--in early childhood education, an incorporation already strongly prefigured in the exemplary experiment at Reggion Emilia in Italy. (Contains 4 footnotes.)