Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description
Educating Citizens for the American Republic
Instructor(s): Natalie Taylor, Government
Description: Drawing on the writings of a number of prominent American citizens, we
will consider the education that is fitting for citizens of a republic, who prize
freedom and equality. American thinkers have long noticed that American democracy
requires certain moral and intellectual virtues of its citizens. What are these virtues?
What sort of education will foster them? We will begin our study of these questions
with readings from the colonial period and continue with selected writings by nineteenth
and twentieth century authors. We will conclude the seminar by considering the education
offered at liberal arts colleges, which have been described as "distinctively American."
Students will meet some of America's great political, historical, and literary figures,
while formulating their aspirations for their own educations.
Course Offered