Civic Education :: Graduate Law Admissions Essays

Civic Education   Gordon Gee in The Grace Adams Tanner voice communication in Human Values on April 28, 1999 mandates that the modern university essential provide the moral, intellectual, social cultural, and emotional framework into which students can properly place the pieces of the puzzle of life. We the university must uphold our students accommodate not only their hopes and aspirations, but also the inevitable fears, disillusionment, the desperate moral dilemmas, the guilt, the anger, and the questions of conscience which are part of every life. We must help them channel the power of the someone into strengthening the community. Gee speaks about an obligation of the university to prepare her students for life as members of a greater community. He places inherent measure out on the strength of community and assigns, as do the two authors quoted, a moral responsibility on contemporaneous universities to enable each student to raise to this strength.   Like Gee, Wil liam James talks about the action of innumerable imitative individuals upon each other. Both Gee and James believe that education is not an individual search for self or righteousness or belonging. This process is not one about receiving wealth or fame. It is a process about skill to give. It is a process about acquiring the knowledge necessary to strengthen the community in the ways you feel are right.   My own experience at Brown is one that has led me to internalize many of these same values. When I first arrived at Brown, I asked myself where I would fit here what was it that I was supposed(p) to do? I took advantage of Browns liberal curriculum and sought the perfect concentration for me. When I settled on Political Science, I asked myself what I treasured to DO with that degree. Over the course of my Junior year, the answer simply emerged. I became elicited in education and finally found the perfect field for my interest Civic Education. I plan to write my honors thesi s next year with professors Tomasi and Kaestle on civic education. The question I ask myself now, is not what can I do with Civic Education, but rather, how can I use my academic work to enhance the educational experience for all American children.   In contemporary debates over civic education theory, the question is often posed how can an Aristotelian, republican notion of cultivating citizens fit into a modern liberal democracy?