1 The CANDE Bar: The periodic newsletter of the Citizenship and Democratic Education SIG Colleagues: Forgive the plain presentation of this issue of the newsletter—our wonderful editor had an emergency that would have delayed delivery, so we went ahead with just the regular text. Please make sure to check out our new feature—our version of an op-ed page on citizenship education issues, called the CANDE BAR, and our special guest writer, Peter Levine. CONTENTS: 1. In memoriam, Douglas Ray, 1932-2007, pp. 9-10 2. Chair’s farewell column: pp. 2-4 3. Schedule of Civics and CANDE SIG panels at CIES 2008: pp. 14-18 4. CANDE BAR—Peter Levine & Doyle Stevick 5. Announcements—pp. 11-13 2 CHAIR’S FAREWELL Dear Colleagues, This time, I get to say farewell! I can officially hand off the reins of the CANDE SIG to new faces and fresh ideas, and I am excited to see what comes next. Please get involved! Opportunities abound for the energetic and creative. This SIG will be what you make it. Please come to the meeting, if you can, Monday, March 17: 12:10pm – 1:30pm Citizenship and Democratic Education SIG Business Meeting in 138 Horace Mann Hall. As I say farewell, will you indulge me a few thoughts? I’d like to share some ideas about what our SIG can become, reflections about what serving as Chair for three years (the maximum allowed in the bylaws!) has done for me, and about what I tried to contribute by organizing this group. CANDE SIG’S FUTURE The SIG, and this newsletter, can be a place for less-formal dialogue about citizenship education and democracy. My first professor in graduate school championed the bar, where people would congregate, engage in real dialogue, and let loose with all the provocative interpretations and ideas they wouldn’t share in the formal confines of conference presentations. The bar was a place to find out what people really thought, where scholars are more free to speak about their values, commitments, and concerns, in the camaraderie of colleagues. The medium of a newsletter—even an electronic one— may be outdated for our successors, but let me encourage others to step up to the CANDE BAR! Herodotus tells a story of a place whose government makes a major decision, either sober or drunk, but only ratifies it if they still agree when they are in the opposite condition. Perhaps this is a way of suggesting that both reason and sentiment need to be in alignment for good decisions to be taken. But perhaps an element of the model can keep our practice invigorated—being sure our professional dialogue extends into social contacts and vice versa, and that we enhance our scholarly work by exploring beyond the tight confines of research towards more adventurous thinking. Here, I believe that we should invite colleagues to share their ideas about relevant questions (e.g., asking our senior colleagues, “If you were to start over as a doctoral student right now in citizenship education, what question would you address in your dissertation?”) I thought up this new feature too late to attract many responses, but on the question of ‘what would you like to see happen in citizenship education?’ I am very pleased to include the reflections of Peter Levine, the indefatigable Oxford Ph.D. in philosophy and Rhodes Scholar who runs CIRCLE, which is now moving with him to Tufts. Peter maintains a terrific blog on civic engagement, posting every weekday, at: http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt/ . 3 So step up to the CANDE BAR! Dialogic, as it should be, nonalcoholic, but sufficiently uninhibited, sweet and tasty, perhaps with less nutritional value than most research publications, but we all deserve a little dessert now and then. Please send me any short reflections—preferably at least a sentence (partial though I am to fragments from my time as a classicist), interesting ideas, hunches, challenges, and whatnot, and I will see to it that they get to the appropriate person for the next newsletter. I would love to see the CANDE SIG continue to move into more interactive formats. Several of the SIGS have formed quite good websites—I appreciate what Noah Sobe has done with the Globalization SIG, posting syllabi and papers. Perhaps we could have a wiki (online texts that are editable by all contributors) where we coauthor a Manifesto for Citizenship Education, or articulate visions for practice. HANDING OFF CANDE has been quite good to me, and was a wonderful opportunity for dialogue within the community. Especially for a graduate student (at the time), developing the SIG allowed me to get into contact with people I admired, and allowed me to get into contact with many I didn’t know. Some have become authors of chapters in my two edited books, others have invited me to participate in publications, one may yet get me to South Africa. This is a terrific network, and one I value a great deal. These things obviously don’t just happen. I worked very hard to build this network and bring people into CIES’s circle. Every time I found an interesting publication, a neat panel at another conference, or the like, I would send a personal email to the participants, let them know about us, and invite them to participate in the SIG and in CIES. CIES is a hidden gem, and those who have chosen to participate are often delighted they did. One email made it to Mustafa Köylü in Samsun, Turkey, who participated in CIES 2006 as a result. “I especially thank you, for you encouraged me to participate in the conference. It was a wonderful conference. In addition, Hawaii is like a paradice. I really liked it. I wish I live for ever over there, but it is not possible.” Outreach is easy, and can be quite powerful. A few minutes can do amazing things. I do hope that others feel a bit of the missionary zeal that brings a broader range of participants into the fold and enriches our dialogues accordingly. Founding the Citizenship SIG has been fun in part just because it is so empowering. For graduate students, I recommend working within a SIG, or even founding one of your own. If there are twenty people out there concerned about what you are, bringing the group together can be a real contribution. Allow me to acknowledge Gary Homana, for all the work he’s done this year, handling our database, collecting money, keeping track of records, and so forth. It takes more than one person to do this right. Gracias, Bob Arnove, for convening the first meeting when I was forced to miss, and gathering the signatures. To Judith Torney-Purta, for lending her esteemed name to our new annual essay award competition, to Carole Hahn, David Grossman and Gregory Fairbrother for reviewing submissions, to Fernanda Astiz for her great work with the newsletter, to Victor Kobayashi and Wing On Lee for regular 4 encouragement, to everyone who has participated, to Fernanda and Hilary for all the administrivia help, and to Gita Steiner-Khamsi for inviting me to participate in bringing the conference to Charleston! As I leave this position, and all the stimulating professional contact it entails, I’m delighted to say I have a new colleague at the University of South Carolina who is a CANDE person as well: Sandra Schmidt, formerly of Michigan State, who is taking a position in our social studies program. One way or another, the dialogues will continue…. With fond regards, Doyle Doyle Stevick, University of South Carolina [email protected] 5 THE CANDE BAR: civic education without constraints, by Peter Levine I have been asked to write a short article about my ideal version of democratic education. This is an opportunity to ignore the usual constraints: time, money, and political pressures: We ought to treat students as citizens, giving them assignments that really matter and that stretch them both intellectually and ethically. Research shows that such opportunities boost their skills, knowledge, and habits. Besides, it is an ethical imperative to treat our fellow human beings--including our youth--as responsible members of the community. Too often, I think, we ask students to investigate issues and problems that arise within the adolescent world--such as drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, or their own stereotypes and prejudices--without asking them to evaluate and change the world that we have created for them. That world starts with the massive and powerful institutions that we have built to school them. If, as in many school systems, the downtown bureaucracy consumes much of the funding, the most experienced and successful teachers gravitate to the least challenging schools, or the textbooks don't match the standards, kids will feel the consequences. Therefore, one ideal form of civic education would be research by students into how their own systems are run. They will probably find that the educational system bears some responsibility for any shortcomings or inequities. But they may also find fault with other actors, such as the government as a whole, the teachers' unions, the taxpayers, or parents and the students themselves. As long as we are fantasizing (and ignoring all political constraints), we could imagine kids filing Freedom of Information requests, interviewing teachers off the record, attending public meetings, and taking photos of facilities. They could create spreadsheets to estimate the real expenditures of their school system, thereby learning valuable civic and business skills and obtaining power through information. When they uncovered waste and mismanagement, they could develop strategies for reform: alerting the media, filing class-action lawsuits, building public websites, or even working with political challengers.