for political science scholars working in the areas of youth participation and civic
education.
The Need for Deliberative Civic Education
The argument that effective citizenship ought to be promoted by enhancing
communication skills is certainly not a new one in the United States as Gastil and
Dillard’s (1999) historical review of the topic reveals. Communication scholars and
practitioners have expended considerable effort to develop a pedagogy of deliberative
civic education both in the college classroom, as well as in variety of nontraditional
learning environments (Gastil & Dillard, 1999; McMillan & Harriger 2002; Murphy,
2004.) Yet the argument made here is that this approach should play an especially
important role in higher education’s efforts to produce civic leaders. The first reason is
that deliberative civic education addresses skills that are under-emphasized in other civic
education traditions. Despite the long tradition of deliberative civic education programs,
formal efforts to cultivate good citizenship have traditionally been dominated by liberal
political theory. This approach focuses on promoting detailed knowledge of government
institutions and awareness of individual rights (Boyte, 2003). The emerging alternative
to liberalism as a framework for civic education efforts is communitarian political theory.
This approach is based on the argument that “America suffers from excessive
individualism, an over-emphasis on rights and an under-emphasis on responsibilities, and
an increasingly litigious culture where citizens seek resolution of conflicts through courts
rather than communal life” (Boyte, 2003, p. 88). Hence civic education efforts in this
Convention