When Citizenship Fails Citizens: Community-Based Education for a New Democracy

Abstract: Faith in democracy is at an all time low amongst young people and many experience
what James Banks calls failed citizenship. John Dewey’s broader understanding of democracy
provides a way forward that is dynamic, timely, and rooted in community engagement. Dewey
believed that democracy was not as a specific form of governance, but instead the habits of
people living and flourishing together. Community-based learning (CBL) provides spaces and
opportunities to form the democratic habits that create, sustain, and are democracy and reflect educational philosopher Sarah Stitzlein’s idea of citizenship as shared fate. This lightning talk shows how CBL creates space for democratic habits and distinguishes it as more than civically formative, and instead as essential work of democracy itself that combats failed citizenship. It is an application of Dewey’s political work that helps show how CBL can galvanize democratic life in communities to revitalize and change our current democratic models.

Narrative: Below is a loose outline of what I would be addressing in the talk.

Introduction of Failed Citizenship

James Banks, an education theorist has come up with his own typology of experiences of
citizenship and described how they manifest in the individual’s civic participation and orientation
to the nation. Banks believes that many experience what he calls failed citizenship -
where citizens have the legal rights extended to all citizens, but are ambivalent towards the
nation, do not internalize the nations’ values, and tend to act only to support their own internal
group. The failure in failed citizenship is on the part of the larger democratic society for not
integrating them in a meaningful way, not the individual citizens. Banks believes that failed
citizenship is often the result of experiences of discrimination, pressure to assimilate at the cost
of cultural erasure, mediocre civic education, and lack of opportunities for meaningful civic
action for the greater whole.

Banks' conception of failed citizenship revolves on the crucial insight that citizenship is
more than just legal status. A citizen can legally have a right, but be impeded from using it (i.e.
voter suppression). This may lead that same citizen to feel ambivalent at best about the nation
because the nation seems to feel ambivalent towards them. Banks acknowledges that while his
research focused primarily on immigrants and people of color, the typology of failed citizenship
may also fit some white people (especially the rural poor) and those groups discriminated against because of their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and religion. If this stamp of failure seems to fit more citizens than not, a reevaluation is called for how citizenship is conceptualized and taught.

Flaws in current models

According to Sara Stitzlein, this perspective illuminates a major flaw in current civic
education - the idea that it is as simple as forming a student into the calcified mold of a
supposedly perfect citizen. According to Stitzlein, “While there are likely some traits of good
citizens that will withstand the test of time, we cannot know just what shape citizenship will take
as democracy changes to meet the needs of its environment and constituents.” In contrast to the idea that citizenship is a status one receives or earns and comes attached to a set of
responsibilities, Robert Asen said that citizenship is better considered a mode of engaging one's
community. Asen claims that by focusing less on what constitutes citizenship and instead on how citizenship proceeds, there is a recognition that civic modes change with time and are impacted by those who utilize it.

John Dewey’s Understanding of Democracy as Alternative Frame

In the face of increasing distrust in the efficacy of formal political structures and the
anemic and undeveloped state of current civic education in schools, a Deweyan framing of
democracy as process-based and communally rooted provides an approach that could revivify a belief in the importance of democratic commitments. Because Dewey emphasized that democracy is defined by the way that people come to live together (not simply by a formalized
listing of rights and procedures), relationships between individuals as fellow citizens become
essential to defining how a citizen should act and understand themselves. Consequently, the civic habits and collective action that help communities live together and flourish are just as central to effective democratic formation as information on governance structures. It adds foci to civic education and formation through an emphasis on building and practicing the habits that help people live together. The Deweyan approach to civic education encourages citizens to see
themselves as just that - citizens part of a larger whole, and not just beleaguered individuals
adrift in a hostile and partisan political sea.

Citizenships and Change

As a democracy shifts and grows with the current context, the educational commitment to fellow
citizens seems poised to fail.Especially given the highly polarized nature of current society, the failures of current civic education call for a broader understanding of democracy. In order to face these inevitable changes, civic education cannot be patterned on a predetermined sense of democracy, and instead must be open to change. To do so, Stitzlein says that educators should focus on using educational means that are aligned with the desired end - something that would help students “engage in collective problem-solving, inclusive communication, and shared governance as we rear them for the role of citizen.”

Community-Based Learning as Space to Build and Practice Democratic Habits

Banks actually believes that failed citizenship can be reduced by leaning into education about difference and explicitly names culturally responsive and ethnic studies teaching as preferred methods to help students build skills around political efficacy and civic action. Banks says that the majority of students in civic classrooms are actually in need of better recognition of the complex, multiple, and often conflicted identities they carry as they work to establish citizenship identities. Community-based learning (CBL) is uniquely poised to help respond to all of the concerns raised above. Because CBL is rooted in contextualized community action and relationships, students will have the opportunity to build new civic habits that John Dewey called for, while also engaging in complex problem-solving in and alongside communities. It then becomes essential for CBL practitioners and instructors to begin to name this work as the formation of civic habits and the action of citizenship to help students reclaim their own civic capacity as a way to fight failed citizenship.