Citizenship Education in Texas: Gaps between Theory and Practice in the State Curriculum Standards

One of the most controversial notions of the twenty and twenty-first centuries is defining citizenship among nations. The power to decide who is and is not a citizen has become so prominent in the culture of the United States that the topic now pervades the curriculum, particularly in states with diverse and rapidly growing populations, such as Texas. Although the question of citizenship is currently at the center of a very political discussion, it is not a new topic nor is it recent curricular development. A significant number of countries around the world use their educational systems as a means of facilitating citizenship, usually through a course on the structure, theory, and function of government. This is the case in many U.S. schools in which rituals in the education system, such as the pledge of allegiance at school each day, are intended to generate patriotism and nationalism (Edwards, Wattenberg, and Lineberry 2008). In the United States, creating democratic citizens has long been a justification for supporting state-funded public schools (Butts and Cremin 1976; Evans 2011; Ravitch 2010). Although there is noteworthy socialization of the young in the primary grades, this analysis focuses on secondary socialization in schools, particularly at the high school level. Creating democratic citizens is of such importance that it is built into state-mandated curricula.