This chapter examines the following central question: How do direct democratic ballot initiatives affect the public good? A second, related question is this: When voters collectively make policy decisions, what responsibilities do researchers have to contribute to informing public deliberation about the relevant issues? In an attempt to answer…

In everyday language, whether a school is described as "public" or not is determined by the way it is funded and by who is allowed to attend it. Ideally however, a public school should also be defined and evaluated by its unique goal--to renew a public by providing the young with the skills, dispositions, and perspectives required to engage with…

This chapter proposes that the relationship between schooling, citizenship, and democracy--so often taken for granted and discussed using idealistic perspectives--is better understood when using the lens of "embodied cognition" and a focus on metaphorical and prototypical ways of thinking. Our goal is to examine the always conflictive and elusive…

In this paper, the authors explore what citizenship means in an age that is largely defined by consumption and when education--both within and outside of schools--has become increasingly commodified and commercialized. They raise questions regarding how citizens, publics, and axiological dispositions are formed and deformed by the parasitic…

Access to education is one of a range of social citizenship rights that are intended to afford members of a society an opportunity to share in a basic level of social, economic, and cultural well-being and to mitigate societal inequalities. The idea that every individual has a right to education is deeply entrenched in the international discourse…

The strong relationship between education and civic engagement is what leads Fraga and Frost (2010) to describe the U.S. school system as a "center of democratic governance" (p. 119). For immigrant communities, schools also serve to foster political socialization and incorporation. This chapter considers schools' democratic roles from an input…

In this article, the authors attempt to show what it means to think about democracy and education "within" society, culture, and religion. They use the term religion to discuss both "religion" as a social phenomena and "religiosity" as a spiritual, aesthetic individual commitment to the transcendent, eternal, and divine. They focus on what has…

In this article, the authors explore the potential of youth organizing to promote civic development, new forms of civic engagement that make public institutions more accountable and responsive to the needs of their constituencies, and an expanded commitment to acting in the interest of the public good. Their analysis draws from both the literature…

This chapter attempts to survey contemporary debates and research on outcomes of schooling that have been grouped together under the convenient label "nonacademic". This is not an affirmative labeling. As the nomenclature indicates, it is not a label that groups together things that share like properties. Rather, this is a label of distinction, a…

The 50th anniversary of "Brown v. Board of Education" in 1954 also recalls the anniversary of "Lau v. Nichols", decided exactly 20 years later in 1974. The two decisions were monumental in the history of civil rights and, interestingly, have shared similarities in the ways in which they have been reinterpreted since they were first decided several…