Deliberative civic education and civil society: a consideration of ideals and actualities in democracy and communication education

Deliberative civic education is broadly conceived as instruction that utilizes varying forms of classroom deliberation and deliberative exercises to enhance the democratic skills of citizenship and to increase understanding of democratic practice. The purpose of this essay is to explore how the contemporary, critical elements of rhetorical study might be applied to the promise of deliberative civic education in college classrooms. I argue for the importance of incorporating critical dimensions of deliberative civic education into the liberal arts curriculum by explicating the tensions that exist between ideal, structured forms of deliberation and the actual practices of democracy. The notion of civil society, understood as both a site of rhetorical activity and a mediator of public life and public issues, affords students an especially productive inquiry into these tensions.