“The teaching of civics and American history must be framed as a welcome to all who would seek to be engaged citizens,” says Pete Peterson, dean of The Pepperdine School of Public Policy (SPP). Civic education, he notes, should produce “humble and passionate citizens who take seriously their political and civic responsibilities throughout their lives.”
Rather than seeing the American Founding as irredeemably corrupt, as some critics do today, Peterson agrees with leaders of the civil rights movement such as Martin Luther King, Jr., who conceived of our founding principles as “ideals to be realized.”
Based at Pepperdine, one of “America’s leading Christian institutions,” the SPP prepares future leaders, Peterson says, “through a curriculum that balances ‘Great Books’ coursework in history and philosophy with the latest methods of policy analysis” – essentially a “graduate civics education.” Graduates will be able “to quantitatively evaluate a policy proposal” and situate it within historical circumstances, which is why SPP offers core classes such as “Great Books in Ethical Leadership” and “Roots of American Order.”
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