Promoting social responsibility .

Shelley Berman has contributed editorially to The School Administrator multiple times over the past dozen years on disparate issues, none more enthusiastically than the subject he addresses in this issue--the vital role of public education in promoting civic engagement in a democratic society.

Now in his second year as the superintendent of the Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Ky., after 14 years leading the suburban system in Hudson, Mass., Berman's driving mantra is fueled by personal commitment to social consciousness raising. It's what led him as a social studies teacher to restructure his history classes around core political themes and to co-found Educators for Social Responsibility (www.esrnational.org) in 1981 and serve as its president for seven years.

"I've always felt that public education must have, at its core, a civic mission--that was my reading of Horace Mann, John Dewey, Francis Parker, George Counts and other progressive educators," says Berman, who helped the Education Commission of the States launch what has become the National Center for Learning and Citizenship (whose director Terry Pickeral is co-author of another article here).

Berman believes it's time for superintendents to stand up for a larger mission that's been constricted by the focus on standards, accountability and standardized testing. "Our real work in education is to help students develop the skills and convictions to create a more just, sustainable and peaceful world. We need to show young people a larger vision of the world around them and inspire young people to a larger mission than simply self-interest.... If we don't place the civic mission of education at the core of our work, how can we expect those working for us to do so?" he asks.

While we've assembled this month an impressive array of thinkers and doers on the connection between the public schools and an effective democracy--Charles Haynes, Carl Glickman, George Wood and Sandra Day O'Connor, among them--I hope you'll give special heed to Berman's words, which begin on page 29.

Jay P. Goldman

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