What does American civic education inspire China's education?

First, the basic value orientation and theoretical basis of civic education in American schools

Freedom and democracy are the core values of American democratic political system. Civic education is an important way to realize this demand, which is rooted in the American Constitution. Civic education in the United States cherishes democracy and freedom because of its historical and cultural heritage. If ancient Greece and Rome are the cradles of liberal democratic thought and Britain is the cradle of liberal thought, then the United States is the most effective place to practice liberal thought. Liberalism, as the mainstream political thought in western countries, is the important content of western political culture and the theoretical basis of ruling strategy. His civic education also shows a strong tendency of liberalism, which has been the most important philosophical basis of his civic education for more than 200 years. Civic education under the guidance of liberalism fully affirmed the equality and autonomy of individuals, the priority of freedom rights, and recognized the diversity of values. Therefore, it is not surprising that freedom and democracy have become the basic value orientation of civic education in American schools.

Responsibility has become the basic value orientation of civic education in American schools, which is gradually established with the trend of communitarianism. Communitarianism believes that the traditional ethics is impacted because the individual subjectivity advocated by individualism dispels the mainstream or bottom line ethics, makes the consistent value standards disappear, and causes moral disorder and confusion. For this reason, communitarianism believes that civic education should be based on all members of the community (that is, all citizens of the country), arrange civic education for the same political value, cultivate citizens who can identify with their political communities, and emphasize citizens' active participation and practice, so as to cultivate community awareness and promote or realize political and social benefits.

The three concepts of freedom, democracy and responsibility are related to the American constitutional system and complement each other, among which liberalism is its foundation. Therefore, the starting point and destination of civic education in American schools are still based on civil rights, and responsibility education is an important means to enhance citizens' ability to exercise their rights.

Second, the goals and contents of civic education in American schools

As a federal country, the educational administration system in the United States is decentralized, and each state has complete autonomy in civic education. Therefore, the contents of its civic education are also different, including the following three aspects: (1) Understanding the basic contents and norms of the American political system, which is considered by American moral education circles as the minimum requirement for qualified citizens. (2) Cultivate a sense of participation and understand the social responsibilities that citizens should bear. (3) Cultivate students' necessary moral quality. The goal of civic education in American schools is to cultivate the American spirit of all citizens, "Americanize" the influx of immigrants, and establish and maintain a unified and powerful United States of America.

The curriculum content of civic education in American schools is arranged according to the law of students' physical and mental development, which has obvious hierarchy. In primary school, the content of civic education is relatively simple, mostly to cultivate the understanding of national symbols, such as the national flag and national anthem, and to cultivate their patriotic feelings. In junior high school, the content of civic education has a certain depth, focusing on stating historical events and people. In senior high school, the content of civic education is complicated, including American political system, political process, economic system, international status and so on, with the nature of theoretical analysis. At the same time, the main content of civic education in American schools is to teach how to establish limited government and how to prevent unlimited government from undermining democratic politics based on the Constitution. It takes the control of administrative ability and administrative power as the primary teaching content, and trains students how to have the basic values, ideas and abilities of citizens under the constitutional conditions.

Third, the characteristics of civic education in American schools

The characteristics of civic education in American schools mainly include:

1. Knowledge transfer in the implementation of civic education and teaching. Many researchers and educators believe that the function of directly imparting correct moral concepts cannot be completely denied. Because the age characteristics of primary and secondary school students determine their lack of judgment, and the ambiguous and seemingly neutral approach of the popular value clarification education model often causes unnecessary confusion, so it is necessary to inject it positively and teach it qualitatively.

2. The implementation of civic education curriculum is three-dimensional and systematic. Civic education not only attaches importance to the positive transfer of knowledge, but also emphasizes the cultivation of value recognition and ability. It believes that the emotional and technical goals of civic education are more profound than the knowledge goals. Therefore, civic education in American schools is not limited to classrooms and textbooks, but extends to campus society and communities outside the classroom, so that students can be educated through extensive participation in campus environment and social environment. Its outstanding feature is that the implementation of civic education is limited to schools, and the community, which is an important educational resource, is used to contain the learning content in the community where students live, and the public policy issues in the community where students live are directly selected as the research object. Through a series of trainings such as mutual cooperation, investigation, discussion and final report among students, all students can participate in social management, thus giving full play to the role of the community in civic education.

3. Practicality and criticism in the implementation of civic education teaching. On the one hand, the implementation of civic education teaching practice has practical characteristics, which are mainly reflected in the vivid, flexible and true selection of teaching content, the openness of teaching process and teaching place arrangement, and the emphasis on on on-site teaching with examples. The specific methods are as follows: (1) Go to the court to attend the trial activities of the court and discuss the mock trial, so that students can make judgments as judges. (2) Self-made laws and regulations, so that students can write a school safety law according to the campus situation, or put forward preventive measures for social problems. (3) Diagnose laws and regulations, find loopholes in laws and regulations through analysis and discussion, and add or delete them. Through debates, oral reports, mock trials and other forms, not only the students' logical reasoning ability and language expression ability are trained, but also their interpersonal skills are cultivated. On the other hand, the key feature of the implementation of civic education teaching practice is that civic education pays special attention to the cultivation of critical thinking ability. In order to cultivate students' value and ability to advocate and pursue a constitutional democratic society, civic education in American schools should first impart existing knowledge to students, and then enable students to analyze, judge and take actions that meet the requirements of a democratic society when they encounter social and political problems. Therefore, based on such requirements, the cultivation and training of critical ability has been widely valued, and critical thinking has become an important method of civic education. For example, using Kohlberg's moral dilemma discussion method, we can choose controversial or difficult social and political issues, such as professional responsibility, public policy, legal cases, etc., and present real stories in social life in a relaxed and happy way, so that students can analyze, judge and solve such problems according to their knowledge.

Fourthly, the enlightenment of civic education in American schools to moral education reform in China.

1. Take the cultivation of national spirit as the core goal of civic education. We must devote ourselves to cultivating national spirit in civic education. Because the national spirit embodies the greatest cohesion and centripetal force between nations in a country and is the most fundamental link between the country and citizens. Modern countries are formed on the basis of the principle of nationalism. In the complicated world, for every country, in order to maximize the interests of the country and the nation, the cohesion of the country and the centripetal force of citizens are very important. Therefore, the country needs to form and strengthen this cohesion and centripetal force through civic education, so as to cultivate its national spirit and exert its powerful spiritual strength.

2. Put civic practice and participation in an important position in civic education. Civic education in China is mainly carried out within the scope of moral education, focusing on imparting knowledge and values, and paying insufficient attention to students' practice and participation. Therefore, civic education in China must cultivate citizens' awareness and ability of practice and participation. Because the acquisition of citizenship is not only a legal form of civil rights, but also requires citizens to have enough ability to actively participate in a reasonable public management process. Therefore, future civic education should put civic practice and participation in an important position.

3. Put the awareness of rights and obligations in a prominent position in civic education. The lack of civic awareness is considered as an important factor restricting the development of China's modernization. Therefore, to strengthen civic education, we must first strengthen civic awareness education. The core of civic awareness is the awareness of rights and obligations. Due to the lack of thousands of years' cultural tradition of rights in China, citizens' awareness of rights is weak in real life. Therefore, to cultivate self-disciplined citizens, we should emphasize the education of civil rights awareness, position civil education in the organic unity of civil rights and obligations, and realize the balance between rights education and compulsory education.