RealClear Wire: “The John Dickinson Forum: Teaching the Virtues of Self-Government”
By Mike Sabo
As part of the Making Citzens Series, Mike Sabo at RealClear has been highlighting civic institutions that are working to instill a solid understanding of American civics among students and teachers, including the John Dickinson Forum at George Fox University. The Making Citizens Series features several programs that have partnered in some way with the Jack Miller Center in these pursuit, including the John Dickinson Forum.
“Some educators approach civics in terms of activism and protests,” Professor Mark David Hall notes, “but protest for its own sake is not useful in civic education.” As Hall notes, “Before students can be participants in self-government, they must have a knowledge of the basic principles of America’s constitutional order.”
The John Dickinson Forum at George Fox University provides students with this crucial foundation in civic knowledge.
The university’s Herbert Hoover Professor of Politics, Hall founded the Dickinson Forum five years ago “to encourage discussion and debate” about “America’s founding principles and current events as they relate to those principles.” A specialist in American political thought and early American Christianity, Hall has written or co-edited twelve books, including most recently, “Did America Have a Christian Founding?”
A partner program of the Jack Miller Center, the Forum offers various activities for students, including lectures, discussions of books and current events, and debates. It has partnered with various institutions in the Pacific Northwest, making its programs available to students at other colleges and universities and the public at large…
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Mike Sabo is the Editor at Real Clear Public Affairs’s American Civics portal. He is a graduate of the Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship at Hillsdale College.
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