Civil Education Through National Service: Lessons from American History. Circle Working Paper 12.

Fostering an ethic of active citizenship is typically a key goal for national service. However, national service advocates often assume that national service will act as civic education, paying insufficient attention to what this means and how different policy designs further or undermine different conceptions or aspects of citizenship. This paper explores the relationship between national service and civic education through a study of the Civilian Conservation Corps and VISTA, to see what lessons might be learned and applied to the nation?s current program, AmeriCorps. Given that citizenship has multiple, contested meanings, this is looked at from five perspectives: (1) constitutional citizenship; (2) critical citizenship; (3) citizenship as patriotism; (4) as service; and (5) as work. While this list is neither exhaustive nor the perspectives mutually exclusive, different goals are suggested for the national service civic education agenda.