Critical Civic Literacy

This book has received the AESA (American Educational Studies Association) Critics Choice Award 2013.
Do we live in a democracy? Have we ever practiced democratic education? Will our children and grandchildren inherit a sane or sick society and political order? Those are some of the profound questions that this book tackles, within a broad and evocative conversation on civic literacy in America. Amid calls for academic standardization and high-stakes testing, civic education, once a cornerstone of public schools, has been relegated to a tertiary space. The eloquent voices in this text articulate critical perspectives on citizenship education because they realize the future of our commonwealth may well be at stake.
This important and timely book is a must-read for those interested in civics, social studies, social education, social foundations of education, and educational policy studies. Yet it will also appeal more generally to all educators and education professionals, policymakers, and public officials: it is written for all those who want to revive more humane possibilities for a polity in peril.

Joseph L. DeVitis is Visiting Professor of Educational Foundations at Old Dominion University. Recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he is a widely published scholar and public intellectual in educational policy studies. He is a past president of the American Educational Studies Association, the Council of Learned Societies in Education, and the Society of Professors of Education. His most recent books are Character and Moral Education: A Reader (Peter Lang, 2011), edited with Tianlong Yu, and Adolescent Education: A Reader (Peter Lang, 2010), edited with Linda Irwin-DeVitis.