In the age of the smart machine and Big Data, educators are called to find common ground across partisan divides in the fight for freedom against the looming dangers of an Orwellian world. The old idea of schools and colleges as social centers, or civic sites, is a resource.

There are educational benefits to choice, but it also divides people who otherwise would be allies, says Deborah Meier.

In a world where "informational" has replaced "relational" in education as well as everywhere else, we begin a democratic awakening by recalling and promoting public relationships.

Can the charter movement offer progressive alternatives to traditional public schools, as it once did? Deborah Meier considers.

The recent Making Citizens report is mistaken about the youth civic education initiative Public Achievement -- it reflects itself the mobilizing, good versus evil approach which has come to dominate public life in our time, the approach to politics it also decries. The debate has also illuminated possible common ground to integrate civics and citizenship education and move beyond binary thinking.