Diversity and Distrust
Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy

The author's liberal agenda for civic education offers a fundamental challenge to free market libertarians, the religious right, parental rights activists, postmodernists, and many of those who call themselves multiculturalists.

Stephen Macedo believes that, when it comes to education policy in the United States and other culturally diverse democracies, diversity should often, but not always, be highly valued. We must remember, he insists, that many forms of social and religious diversity are at odds with basic commitments to liberty, equality and civic flourishing.

Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Place of Diversity

1. Diversity Ascendant

Public Schooling and American Citizenship
2. Civic Anxieties
3. Civic Excess and Reaction
4. The Decline of the Common School Idea
5. Civic Ends: The Dangers of Civic Totalism

Liberal Civic Education and Religious Fundamentalism
6. Multiculturalism and the Religious Right
7. Diversity and the Problem of Justification
8. The Mirage of Perfect Fairness
9. Divided Selves and Transformative Liberalism

School Reform and Civic Education
10. Civic Purposes and Public Schools
11. The Case for Civically Minded School Reform

Conclusion: Public Reasons, Private Transformations

Notes
Index