Educating Citizens: Preparing America's Undergraduates for Lives of Moral and Civic Responsibility (review)

If you believe that higher education should be as much about developing character and citizenship as it is about advancing careers and commerce, this book is for you. I believe that a college education consists in knowledge, skills, abilities, and values, and that we educators should not shy away the last, including the values of teamwork, community responsibility and involvement, respect for others, independence, fairness, and equity. Education is about transformation, not simply transactions. Teaching, therefore, is not simply about transmitting information, but about transforming what we know, how we think, and how we think we know.

The authors of this excellent volume are Anne Colby, a specialist in the psychology of moral development; Tom Ehrlich, former law school dean, university president, and strong advocate for civic engagement by undergraduate students; Elizabeth Beaumont, their research associate and colleague at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; and Jason Stephens, also a research assistant at Carnegie and a doctoral candidate at Stanford University.

The book responds to the dismay often expressed over the excessive individualism and civic disengagement displayed in the United States and the calls for greater moral and civic renewal if American society is to retain the ideals that led to its founding. The basic assumptions are that college provides a preparation for citizenship as well as for the professions and that, in preparing students for life, college can advance their abilities for honorable work and personal integrity as well.

For those who question higher education's responsibilities for anything other than disciplinary knowledge, we must remember that institutions convey values and moral messages to students by how they act and what they act upon—out of class as well as within. Thus, colleges, should "stand for values that are fundamental to their highest sense of purpose" (p. 12). The authors identify three broad categories of moral and civic maturity: (a) understanding, (b) motivation and capacity, and (c) skills and practice (p. 19).

While some might assert that these are topics for a liberal arts curriculum only, the authors argue that these dimensions of liberal education should be required of all students. Otherwise, our accountants, engineers, and nurses, among others, will only know what to do but not whether they should do it.

The audiences for this book include faculty, staff, and trustees, as well as policymakers and others interested in higher education more broadly. The book includes chapters that provide (a) an examination of impediments to making moral and civic education more central to the curriculum and reward systems in higher education; (b) twelve case studies involving diverse institutions and how they foster student development and maturity across three dimensions, including connections with communities of various types; (c) "moral and civic virtue, variously defined; and concerns for systemic social responsibility, or social justice"; (d) research and theory; (e) pedagogical approaches, including the teaching of ethics; (f) incorporating moral and civic education throughout the curriculum; (g) extracurricular opportunities; (h) assessment; and (i) principles for understanding moral and civic education (pp. xiv-xv).

On balance, I found the book strong in its arguments and in anticipating rebuttals. I was especially impressed by the discussions of "socialization strategies," alternative approaches to student learning, and "identity." Socializing students to a culture of moral and civic responsibility requires more than general education courses, liberal arts concentrations, and interdisciplinary dimensions to a major. The authors argue that the entire campus culture can reinforce classroom learning through rituals, ceremonies, and symbols that might include each student signing the campus honor code or bestowing university recognition on someone known as an exemplar of the goals fostered.

The sections on alternative methods for teaching and enhancing student learning are excellent summaries of such practices as service learning, collaborative learning, and...