A Study On Historic Evolution And Practice Innovation Of Citizenship Education In American Schools

As a leading country in the West World, American has established more perfect system of citizenship education in its schools with more elaborate and feasible educational contents as well as practical schemes. As a whole, the conception of its citizenship education doesn't only belong to American people, which is also a common treasure being shared by the world people. Although its citizenship education demonstrates the values of the whole human being's education, how to exam it closely and study the matters of its citizenship education deeply in a broader overview, especially, how to review the citizenship education in American schools are our sacred mission entrusted by a new era.This paper is composed of three components, including introduction, main body and concluding remarks .The backgrounds , purposes , meanings and methods of the study have been discussed in the introduction, pointing out the progress and deficiency in this subject. The importance and conceptions of the citizenship education in schools have been approached in the part Ⅰ, which are all based on exploring the development and analyzing the meanings of the citizen and citizenship. The author looked back on the course of the development on the citizenship education in American schools clearly basing on exploring its cultural backgrounds and historic origins in the part Ⅱ.What American have done for their citizenship education in schools since the 1980s have been discussed, especially ,analyzing the most important strategies have been made after "9·11"in the part Ⅲ.The aims , contents , main approaches and patterns on implementing citizenship education in American schools have been discussed in part Ⅳ.In the part Ⅴ, the author summarized its features, revealed its problems and prospected its development tendency. In the last part, the author made some suggestions on practicing the citizenship education in our schools in accordance with the history and present situations of citizenship education both in America and China. Moreover, the author emphasized that we have to proceed from the situation as a whole and open up a magnificent prospect if our members in China mean to really realize the changes of their mentality, ideology , behaviors and some others from tradition into modern, especially the modernization of ourselves.