Reinvigorating Civic Agency in General Education: Lessons from the Past and Present

There is broad agreement among social scientists and political philosophers that civic education needs to be revived for the sake of our democracy. For example, Danielle S. Allen counters educational policies that prepare students for work in the global economy with education for “participatory readiness,” which promotes civic agency.  These calls for intervention echo Progressive Era educational policy, in which schools were viewed as “laboratories of democracy.” In this talk, Mountford explores the role of civic education in the United States during this period, including the teaching of reading, writing, listening, and speaking, taught as integrated communication arts oriented toward public expression. She advocates for first-year writing programs to be re-organized around participatory readiness and civic empathy as the primary learning outcomes under which all others are subsumed. Though her extended example is reform of first-year writing and public speaking programs, the talk has implications for general education requirements overall.

Bio:

Roxanne Mountford is Professor of Rhetoric and Writing and Chair of English at the University of Oklahoma, where she also serves as Director of the First-Year Composition Program. She has published widely on the history of rhetoric, issues of race and gender in rhetoric and composition, and rhetorical education, including The Gendered Pulpit: Preaching in American Protestant Spaces and the co-authored Women’s Ways of Making It in Rhetoric and Composition. 

Date: Monday, September 23, 2024

Time: 3:30 - 5:00 p.m.

Location: McClung 1215-16