Abstract Social democracy recognizes that individual development is always in relation to others within a social context and guarantees dignity and freedom for the widest swathe of individuals through inclusiveness and participation. Jane Addams’s perspective on education and its relevance to realizing a social democracy offers an alternative construction of education’s role in helping students learn about the interconnectedness of individuals in a democratic society by emphasizing the moral considerations of cooperation, respect, and mutual commitments to the common good. Schools are an ideal site for this. To this end, Addams’s work can serve as a philosophical framework for teaching a social studies curriculum that confronts the increasing emphasis on teacher accountability and standardization, which limits the development of community relations within the modern educational system and thus limits the building of social democracy. While many states subscribe to these democratizing ideals found in Addams’s theory, states fail to implement curricula and pedagogies capable of realizing them. To this end, we consider the objectives of the Alabama Social Studies Course of Study, as its aspirations do align with Addams’s goals, but it ultimately falls short in achieving them.
Atkinson et al. (Sun,) studied this question.