A roadmap for global, humanizing, and collaborative civic education

At a time of so much global upheaval—a devastating pandemic, a deepening climate crisis, entrenched racism, and profound social and economic inequalities—many of us are searching for new tools to help young people navigate and address our world’s intersecting public problems. Keith Barton and Li-Ching Ho’s new book, Curriculum for Justice and Harmony: Deliberation, Knowledge, and Action in Social and Civic Education, tackles this complex landscape, offering a rich and thought-provoking vision for a curriculum that invites students to examine the globe’s most pressing social issues while centering the principles of justice and harmony. Across their 11-chapter book, Barton and Ho argue for “a complete reorientation of the curriculum of social and civic education” (p. 14). They aim to provide social educators with a set of curricular principles that will engage students in habits of collaborative thinking, deliberation, and action around issues of public concern. In contrast to much existing scholarship in social education that is rooted in specific local or national contexts, Barton and Ho’s proposal stands out for its deliberately global focus: their intent is to offer curricular principles that transcend national boundaries and have global applicability. They do this by drawing on both Eastern and Western theoretical traditions and providing concrete curricular examples from varied national contexts.