Learning How to Hope

Abstract

This chapter moves from a broader discussion of quality citizenship education and developing trends among youth to looking specifically at how hope and democratic habits might be taught in schools and civil society. It includes a call to develop communities of inquiry, nurture communication and deliberation, foster criticality and dissent, cultivate imagination and storytelling, view citizenship as shared fate, and build trust. It describes classroom practices and activities that can foster habits of hope, as well as opportunities to employ related skills and dispositions of citizenship. It extends this education beyond schools and youth into adults and civil organizations, where larger impact on today’s democracy may be made.