Welcome to Civic Space

Welcome to Civic Space, a blog that stands where education, learning, and democracy intersect. Its purpose is simple--to provide a space where faculty, students, staff, and activists can go to live out the public purposes of education. These purposes--to train students to become active, informed citizens, to work in concert with the community for the common good, to host conversations about public life, to raise questions, and to solve problems democratically, have been in eclipse for years. But in spite of trends to the contrary (the decline of civics and history in the curriculum, the ickyness of American politics, the atomization of society) they are re-emerging, for two reasons. First, the education system is the last, best place in America to support them. And second, the more we learn about learning, the more we know that learning in community, be it through service-learning, learning communities, internships, study abroad, is learning that lasts because it is democratic.

I've come to this belief slowly. I'm Gary Daynes, a historian and the Director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, UT. I began my career believing that history was an end in itself. I still believe that learning history is valuable, but I'm ever more convinced that its greatest purpose is a civic one--to ferret out alternatives, however unworkable, to the present. That belief has led me to teach courses in conjunction with community organizations, nad to consider in my own work the ways that education can return to its rich democratic roots.