We have left behind the delicate balance between the celebration of our diversity and the dedication to our unity, which lies at the heart of the American ideal. The citizen must also demonstrate a reasoned commitment to fundamental values, such as life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, equality, truth, and promotion of the common good. This position paper calls for a renewed effort by social studies educators, schools, and communities to teach character and civic virtue. This is a critical time in the history of our democracy when the social fabric that binds us together appears to be weakening. The schools, especially the social studies educators, have a critical role to play in the reaffirmation of our Constitutional compact.
Civic values are the principles that guide both the government and the public life of the people.
They define the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. The civic values incorporated in our Constitutional democracy are derived from many sources. There were spiritual principles from our Judeo-Christain heritage and democratic principles from the Iroquois Confederacy and ancient Greece. Significant contributions in the articulation of civic values came from the Enlightenment philosophers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They believed that people are born with certain natural rights, given by God, that no one, including the government, should violate.