Democracy’s Disappearance

Our students don’t understand what it is, so how will they defend it? asked Roosevelt Montás at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

"Values don’t merely infiltrate education from the outside, as ideological add-ons, but are constitutive of the very practice of teaching. It is more urgent than ever for colleges to break the stranglehold of specialization on undergraduate curricula and to educate students with an awareness of what is required to produce an informed citizenry.

"The place to start is with nondisciplinary curricula that take seriously the history — both admirable and shameful — that gave shape to our political order. A few colleges have undertaken this task, designing common curricula that place disciplinary specialties aside and focus on introducing all students to the fundamental problems of communal living, the existential quandaries of being human, and the political lineage that has shaped Western democracies."

#democracy