Civic Education : The Role of History and the Social Sciences in a Civil Society

  • History has a powerful capacity as an integrative discipline to help students understand the relationships of people, space, and time. For citizenship education, history has the potential to provide a "furniture of the mind" for citizens participating in a democracy. A thorough understanding of history is necessary for an individual to exercise judgment in analyzing political issues. An immersion in history forces the individual to reject simplistic answers to issues of the past and problems of the present. While history provides a furniture of the mind for civic education, it also has the potential to raise animosities among national and ethnic groups. This paper examines the recent democratic efforts of the Democracy Advancement Center in Riga, Latvia to foster citizenship education in the Republic of Latvia. The Democracy Advancement Center in Riga has taken the lead in civic education and works closely with Civitas, an international organization promoting democracy throughHistory has a powerful capacity as an integrative discipline to help students understand the relationships of people, space, and time. For citizenship education, history has the potential to provide a "furniture of the mind" for citizens participating in a democracy. A thorough understanding of history is necessary for an individual to exercise judgment in analyzing political issues. An immersion in history forces the individual to reject simplistic answers to issues of the past and problems of the present. While history provides a furniture of the mind for civic education, it also has the potential to raise animosities among national and ethnic groups. This paper examines the recent democratic efforts of the Democracy Advancement Center in Riga, Latvia to foster citizenship education in the Republic of Latvia. The Democracy Advancement Center in Riga has taken the lead in civic education and works closely with Civitas, an international organization promoting democracy through political science education. The DAC has chosen to organize its work around a curriculum, Project Citizen, which is issues-oriented rather than history-oriented. This paper summarizes to this point in time the recent efforts of the Democracy Advancement Center in Riga, Latvia, in concert with international partners, to initiate programs concerning content and pedagogy in Latvian schools.show moreshow less

Download full text files

Export metadata

Statistics

Number of document requests

Additional Services

Share in Twitter Search Google Scholar
Metadaten
Author:Lynn R. Nelson, Frederick D. Drake
URN:urn:nbn:de:bvb:384-opus4-8112
Frontdoor URLhttps://opus.bibliothek.uni-augsburg.de/opus4/955
Parent Title (English):Information: International Society for History Didactics
Type:Article
Language:English
Year of first Publication:1999
Publishing Institution:Universität Augsburg
Release Date:2008/06/18
Volume:20
Issue:1
First Page:18
Last Page:30
Institutes:Philologisch-Historische Fakultät
Philologisch-Historische Fakultät / Geschichte
Dewey Decimal Classification:9 Geschichte und Geografie / 90 Geschichte / 900 Geschichte und Geografie
Collections:Universität Augsburg / Informations / Mitteilungen / Communications - Herausgeber: International Society for History Didactics / Information 01/1999 / Civic Education : The Role of History and the Social Sciences in a Civil Society (Nelson, Lynn R. et al.)