Civic Empowerment Gap: A Levinsonian Analysis of Social Studies Mission Statements

Open Access
- Author:
- Bard, Jessica
- Area of Honors:
- Education and Public Policy
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- David Gamson, Thesis Supervisor
Dana Mitra, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Civic Empowerment Gap
Civic Education
Civics
Education
Democratic Education - Abstract:
- The civic empowerment gap in the United States is disturbingly large, but it is often overlooked. Civic engagement—and therefore civic empowerment—are necessities to successful democratic governance, yet the disparities between poor, Black, and Hispanic/Latinx communities and wealthy, White communities are massive. The civic empowerment gap largely originates in schools, as the gap in high-quality civic education is vastly similar to the gap in civic empowerment among these communities. Civic education is a major component of social studies curricula, thus creating a focus on social studies for this study. This thesis aims to understand how social studies mission statements indicate how the civic empowerment gap can be found in the goals of high schools across the United States. Using a rhetorical analysis of social studies mission statements from 27 high schools across the United States, I searched for three key themes of high-quality civic education: knowledge and skills, behavior and participation, and attitudes. Among the mission statements included in this study, a trend emerged that is consistent with existing research on the civic empowerment gap. The findings of this study indicate that there may be a gap among the goals of social studies curricula correlating with the racial makeup and income levels of the school district. These findings encourage further exploration of how mission statements represent the civic education experiences within the classroom.