The Study On The Co-curriculum Of The American Civic Education In Elementary And Middle Schools

The United States is one of the first countries which implement the civiceducation, and the civic education in United States is comparatively mature. As thedays goes by, the traditional civic education methods could no longer meet therequisition of the new times’ civic education, which focuses on the aims to cultivatethe responsible and participatory citizenship, the civic education in the United Statewent through a transition in the1980s. Since then, a co-curriculum which isdeveloped by some non-government organizations and the schools together has beencarrying out.The operation of the co-operation curriculum provides the implementation of thecivic education in the United States a more extensive space, which can encourage thestudents to take part in the problems they are interest in, and to solve the realcommunity problem with their own efforts. The students’ abilities to collect thematerials, to communicate, to work in teams and the skills to participate can beimproved through taking part in this kind of co-curriculum. The co-curriculum couldlay a good foundation for the American students to be a qualified American citizen.This thesis is consisted of two parts, the introduction and the main body.The first part is the introduction. In this part, five problems are discussed: thebackground of the study and the presentation of the study question; the meaning andthe purpose of this study; the article interview, in which four parts are included andthey are the study on the civic education curriculum in the United states by Chinesescholars, the study on the civic education curriculum in the United states by theforeign scholars, the study on the practical activities in the American civic educationin and abroad; the demonstration of the study methods and the keywords in the study.The second part contains the content from the Chapter One to Chapter Four, inwhich the author analyzes the co-curriculum for the students in the primary andsecondary schools in the United States from its background to the effect, and alsoconcludes the characteristics and the shortcomings of this kind of co-curriculum.In Chapter One, the thesis adopts the method of historical analysis to illustratethe requirements on the citizen from the civic education’s recession to its recovery inthe aspects of international background and the domestic background. The rise of thecommunitarianism proposes the new requirements on the civic education and it is thenew requirements that make the cultivation of the responsible and participatorycitizens ready. Besides, the establishment of the center for civic education providesthe practical basics for carrying on the co-curriculum.In Chapter Two, the thesis introduces and analyzes the co-curriculum in the civiceducation from the objectives, contents, the procedure and the methods, the effectsand the evaluation. Because the co-curriculum contains two elements, theclass-teaching and the hearing, the author introduces from both of them whenintroducing the content of the co-curriculum. So does the corresponding its procedureand method. In the end of this part, the author summarizes all of the evaluation on the civic education such as its effects, professional organization in the aspects of societyand schools.In Chapter Three, a promotional project on the safety of school bus, which iscarried out for the ninth-grade students in the Lincoln East High School, Lincoln City,Alaska, is chosen as a case to analyze the co-curriculum. Through this case study, wenot only know how the co-curriculum is carried out, but also know that this kind ofcurriculum dose have an effect on the making the students concern about the societyand their own interests as an American citizen to some extent.The last chapter, Chapter Four, concludes that the characteristics and the exitingproblems of the co-curriculum in the primary and secondary schools in United States.