A Study Of The Citizenship Education In The Process Of American Modernization

This article presents that modernization is a process of traditional society transforming into modern society, which will inevitably involve the systematical changes of the areas of economy, politics, society, and values etc., especially the change of state institution system and state ideology. It has been proved by the practice of modernization that state building is the political premise of modernization, which will be stuck without this premise. The modern state concomitant with modernization has dual features: one is nation-state and another is democratic-state. As the special features of modern state, nation-state-building has provided the modernization with the necessary institute premise, powerful dynamics for development, and guaranteed stable order; the democratic-state-building has provided the modernization with the legal politic conditions. Interacting in the modern-state-building, nation-state refers to the organizational form of modern state, which centers on sovereignty; democratic-state refers to the institution system of modern state, which is based legally on"sovereignty belongs to the people". Since the modernization, the modern state is no longer a politic organizational form only decided by force, but is a dynamic and sustained legalization building process in which people interacts to seek mutual understanding and obtain common value. Therefore, in this process, education is indispensible to state-building, especially the shaping of citizen education. Because, nation-state needs the social integration function of citizen education for the realization of national identities and the construction of national integration; while democratic-state-building needs the democratization function of citizen education to realize the transmission of democratic idea and preparation of citizen participation, and then promote the process of state democratization. Moreover, the functional orientation of citizen education always presents differently due to the differences of the features of each nation- and democratic-building in the modernization process. Therefore, it becomes logical to study the relationship between American modernization and citizen education from the state-building dimension.The United States is a highly developed modern state, also is a state with the synchronization of the building of nation-state and democratic-state. It is believed in this essay that the brewing period of American modernization is the beginning of synchronous building of nation-state and democratic-state, as well as the commence of the idea that citizen education is considered as shaping nation features, developing social cohesive force and promoting democratic republican. Transition period of modernization is the important phase for the United Stats to realize the transition from agricultural society to industrial society. The state order, stability and integration construction becomes the main task of state-building. Then, the social integration function of citizen education is growing to be the most prominent feature, and citizen education is considered as the most powerful approach to realize nation identities and state unity. The mature period of modernization, the demand of citizen's democratic right was raised and the democratic function of citizen education was promoted, with the rapid urbanization and industrialization of the United States. At the same time, this period was also the extremely developed period of American nationalism. The succession wars like Spanish-American war, WWI and WWII colored the citizen education with the features of nationalism and even the militarism. Since the 1970s, with the rising of neoconservative, the state-building of the Untied States strengthened the protection of government authority besides emphasizing on the freedom and equality. The nationalism and patriotism promoted and integrated mutually. Meanwhile,"Active Citizenship"emerged to meet the needs of state-building. It became the objective of citizen education to educate citizens with knowledge, idea, responsibility, and participate ability. Either the communalism citizen education emphasizing citizen's identities and sense of belongings to their political community, or the pluralism citizen education advocating the cultural diversity and admitting the cultural equality and interaction, both stressed relatively the harmony and unity of the social integration function and the democratization function of citizen education.In brief, this article shows that the citizenship has undoubtedly become the relationship dimension of American modern state-building and citizen education from the relation of state-building and citizen education in the process of American modernization. On one hand, citizenship embodies the inherent requirement of state-building; on the other hand, citizenship needs the shaping of citizen education. Moreover, based on the different requirement of modernization building at different periods of modernization, the state-building would emphasize differently between its two dimensions—the nation-state and the democratic-state. Although the United States always claims itself as the model of democratic-state-building in the process of state-building, it overlooks the contribution of the nation and the nation-state in this building process. However, in view of the course of the American modernization development, nation-state-building has the absolute superiority on the whole since the establishment of the states, while the democratic-state-building has the relative superiority. Meanwhile, the tension of the two dimensions in the state-building has been leading the functional orientation of citizen education. The social integration function of citizen education takes the absolute position in the state-building while the democratization function takes the relative position. The functional tendency of citizen education has been conditioned and affected by the strain of the two dimensions in state-building.