A Discussion On American General Education From The Perspective Of Citizenship Education

General education is a very important form in American Universities, famous for its graduates who have broad knowledge, love for justice and goodness, thus attracting experts and scholars concerning higher education from over the world to study its ideal and various educational modes. Although variety exists in American general education with differences happening in view on philosophy, knowledge, organization and practices of classes, there still exists something in common in its principle, among which the value orientation of American general education is worthy of research. Thus, this paper uses the method of reading and analyzing some related classical texts and historical documents to demonstrate that American general education indeed plays the role of citizenship education, that is, general education aims to undertake responsibility for a democratic society by educating students as responsible citizens. This is what American higher education is meant to do for American society.With the purpose of clarifying the value orientation of American general education and proving that it has the goal of making students good citizens, the origin of American general education, the ancient liberal education is first presented in this paper to find whether American general education inherits the tradition of citizenship education from the liberal education in ancient Greek. Second, the view is drawn to the present, making the draft about the development of American general education to prove that it still takes the duty of helping citizens achieve their personal development and thus protecting democracy with all those changes in times, social structure, economy, educational concepts and so on, which gives a strong support for the hypothesis that American general education acts as citizenship education. Third, the paper gives brief conclusions based on what has been found in the research before.The specific conclusions:the origin of American general education, the ancient liberal education indeed tends to choose the value of achieving good citizens by education, finding that the aim of it is to train the free citizens of the state as men who are both rational and virtuous, so that they can properly take part in the public affairs.American general education, coming from the ancient liberal education, is quiet different from its ancestor in many aspects, however, it keeps the core value of liberal education that it is carried out for citizens, and the proof can be found in its targets and goals, contents and methods:American general education is for every American citizen of a free society, it aims at helping American people become responsible citizens participating in the public affairs with independent thoughts, rationality and wisdom; American general education contains more diverse subjects and knowledge, and more different methods of teaching are utilized in general education to help achieve all-round development of every man so that the knowledge and skills a citizen should has as well as the personality and execution as a citizen are all concerned to meet the goal of citizenship education.In brief, American general education not only inherits the tradition of citizenship education from the liberal education in ancient Greek, but also adjusts the educational aims, contents and methods to meet the requirements from the democratic society and the public, that is, general education is carried out for citizens participating in the public affairs with broad knowledge, independent thoughts and fair deeds. It shows that American general education takes the role of citizenship education in American universities, and this is what it should do for a free society.