Research On Civic Education In The Context Of American Comprehensive School Reform

With the development of multi-dimensional school reforms,the reform mechanism which includes both the cohesion and flexibility has gradually been recognized by the community.This kind of reform mechanism is particularly required in the field of civic education.On the one hand,it is based on the basic functions of political socialization in the connotation of modern civic education.On the other hand,a flexible civic education mechanism is a necessary condition for fostering civic awareness levels to participate in public affairs.The Comprehensive School Reform(CSR)is aimed at creating such an educational system,which is from the federal to the specific schools and through the education intermediary to establish a co-ordination between the government and the schools,the schools and the teams of experts working between the network,and through a series of laws to establish a security system to promote its orderly operation.The study of the reform mechanism of the American comprehensive school is the basis of the thesis.The first chapter of the paper through the study of the reform process,reveals the background of comprehensive school reform,reform mechanism and its characteristics.The CSR was officially launched in 1998 by the US federal government,which is the extension and strengthening of the "school model reconstruction" program in the 1980 s,was to establish the legal protection system for the reform by the signing the "No Child Left Behind Act"(NCLBA)in 2002.As for the social context,the growing international competition in the trend of globalization has led to a reflection of crisis awareness in the United States,thus the state has strengthened the intervention of compulsory education and gradually incorporated into the government functioning mechanism.Otherwise,before the beginning of this reform,the "School Model Reconstruction" program provided with a good model for reference and practice basis.As for the concept of background level,in view of the progressive education movement which was well accepted in the first half of the 20 th century.After the analyzation of the drawbacks which was resulted from it,the factorism,new progressism and other thoughts which are emphasis on the restoration of academic standards of educational trended to be prevailed in this period.Meanwhile,the system theory and governance theory have also emerged and prevailed in this period,and provided the theoretical basis and directional guidance for the national education system reform.On the basis of these,the second chapter examines the civic education mechanism of the school in the period of CSR.In this part,the paper reveals the concept orientation and mode construction of the development of civic education in the school under the operation of the CSR through the historical logic of the traditional values and realization of civic education in American schools.On the basis of clarifying the reform mechanism of CSR and the development of civic education in this historical period,the third chapter makes a critical review of school civic education.First,some data results of the CSR was presented in this chapter to prove the positive effect of this reform.At the same time,through the case and the actual survey results at that time,this part critically analyzed the concept of domination in this reform and the rigid mechanism,also with its negative impact on the development of school civic education.Secondly,the particularity of civic education is also revealed in this chapter,which in terms of goal setting,content and mode of education activities and evaluation criteria.it is analyzed through the comparativeness with many other general education curriculums.According to this particularity,this chapter focuses on the conflict between the comprehensive school reform on the deeper impact of school civic education,that is the conflict between the goal of focus on the performance of curriculum and the content of cultivation which is includes the awareness and capacity of participation in the public society.This goaloriented not only weakened the importance of school civic education from the conceptual level,but also caused the unfavorable intervention to the school civic education process due to the implementation of its strict performance appraisal rules and accountability system.