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  • Educating for Democracy: Preparing Undergraduates for Responsible Political Engagement
  • Barbara Jacoby
Anne Colby, Elizabeth Beaumont, Thomas Ehrlich, and Josh Corngold. Educating for Democracy: Preparing Undergraduates for Responsible Political Engagement. San Francisco: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Jossey-Bass, 2007. 384 pp. Hardcover: $35.00. ISBN: 978-0-7879-8554-7.

In the wake of the enthusiasm college students demonstrated for politics during the 2008 general election season, those of us who espouse preparing students for lives of active citizenship as a critical role of higher education have been seeking ways to sustain and deepen their engagement with politics. In this vein, I and numerous colleagues have turned to Educating for Democracy: Preparing Undergraduates for Responsible Political Engagement. I am happy to say that I found it to be spot-on.

This book is indeed a worthy successor to the popular Educating Citizens: Preparing America’s Undergraduates for Lives of Moral and Civic Responsibility (Colby, Ehrlich, Beaumont, & Stephens, 2003). This new volume addresses head-on the issue that American higher education pays precious little attention to undergraduate students’ political learning and offers many useful lessons from exemplars whose excellent work counteracts this disturbing fact.

The book’s introduction elucidates numerous reasons why colleges and universities have avoided education for political engagement. Its broad definition of the political includes “deliberation about political values, collaborative public work, community and civic involvement that has a systemic dimension, various forms of engagement with public policy issues, as well as electoral politics on all levels” (p. 8). The following chapters detail the much-anticipated results of the foundation’s Political Engagement Project (PEP). The project set out to document the strategies used by the 21 participating courses and programs, clearly articulating how they teach effectively for political learning while sidestepping the potential trap of imposing particular ideologies on students. I believe that it succeeds admirably.

The names of the senior authors alone make us want to read this book. Thomas Ehrlich and Anne Colby have long been well known and well respected for their commitment to and their outstanding work in enhancing the education of undergraduates for civic responsibility, Ehrlich from the perspective of higher education and Colby from the perspective of the psychology of moral development. Elizabeth Beaumont and Josh Corngold added the perspective of political science, among others.

The Political Engagement Project examines in depth what kinds of pedagogical practices and learning experiences may best promote high-quality political engagement. The project collected both quantitative and qualitative data from the 21 featured programs but draws most heavily on in-depth interviews with faculty, program leaders, and students. I was immediately pleased that book is organized by modes of teaching and learning rather than by descriptions of the programs studied. Readers will appreciate the well-organized chapters that discuss particular learning goals related to political engagement together with strategies to achieve them.

The book is composed of four sections. Chapters 1–4 lay a strong foundation by taking clear, well-reasoned stances yet recognizing that all readers will not agree with them. Chapter 1 elaborates on the definition of political participation, highlighting critical distinctions between politics and other forms of civic participation such as community service, organized civic activities that build social capital (e.g., athletic leagues or religious organizations), and lifestyle choices including energy conservation and organic food consumption, unless these activities address issues in a systemic way or take on political goals.

Chapter 2 provides an overview of the role of higher education in preparing engaged, responsible citizens, highlighting an alarming paradox: Political knowledge and engagement have not [End Page 541] increased (and may have decreased) during the last 50 years although the proportion of the U.S. population attending college has grown dramatically. The third and fourth chapters address what is intriguingly called the open inquiry imperative. The authors speak directly to those who would challenge education for political development as inappropriately placed in the academy. They include in this audience conservative critics who have charged that higher education is imbued with a pervasive liberal bias. Faculty will find the clearly articulated strategies for creating environments of open inquiry in the classroom both affirming and instructive.

The...

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