Routledge Research in Character and Virtue Education

<p>If a civic education is the essential foundation for a functioning, discursive democracy, how should it be taught? This book offers an innovative solution, arguing that far from abandoning the often- grand promise of civic education as a means of cultivating reasoning skills and democratic character, we should embrace it, and proposes a reimagined civic education based on teaching students in primary and secondary school law and legal reasoning.</p><p>Drawing on a range of theoretical disciplines— law, philosophy, ethics, sociology, psychology, and moral educational and child development theory— this monograph justifies the benefits of law learning as a form of character and civic education and offers historical and comparative educational examples to show what is possible. It demonstrates how legal teaching can be incorporated into a K- 12 curriculum and argues that such training can be transformative, guiding students to become citizens capable of meeting the demands of democracy: citizens with stronger reasoning skills, a motivation to self- examine their values and beliefs and bring them into conversation with social values, and an ability to effectively navigate political institutions and participate in public discourse.</p><p>This compelling and deeply original work will be of interest to scholars and educators in the fields of civic education, character and virtue education, legal studies, and philosophy of education.</p>