Beyond Idealized Citizenship Education: Embodied Cognition, Metaphors, and Democracy

This chapter proposes that the relationship between schooling, citizenship, and democracy--so often taken for granted and discussed using idealistic perspectives--is better understood when using the lens of "embodied cognition" and a focus on metaphorical and prototypical ways of thinking. Our goal is to examine the always conflictive and elusive relationship between citizenship and schooling using conceptual tools developed in the fields of cognitive science and linguistics. We will not engage in a traditional review of who is who in "citizenship education," a task already accomplished by many scholars and instead focus on those aspects that are often overlooked or directly neglected in this area. First, we present a brief introduction of the conceptual roots of the strong association between schooling, citizenship, equity, and governance. Second, we explain metaphorical and prototypical ways of understanding "citizenship," focusing on the "nation as family" metaphor. Then, we conclude by describing how the conceptual model we are advancing explains differing views on how to deal with issues of democratic governance and the relationship of schooling and citizenship. (Contains 13 notes.)