Introduction

The contemporary political and educational landscape is described as reflecting a series of related civic predicaments that form the basis of today’s overarching paradigmatic crisis. It is suggested that in order to overcome the challenges posed by these related crises, American educators in particular need to recover the value of America’s democratic–revolutionary tradition–a tradition symbolized by Thomas Jefferson’s revolutionary theory. On this basis, the author argues for a major reconsideration of Jefferson’s legacy for a new generation of Americans. In this way, Jefferson’s revolutionary theory is framed as a democratic rhetoric, one that can remind Americans of what was most revolutionary about their revolution, namely its ongoing, intergenerational character. The three-part structure of the book is modeled after the three-part structure of the jeremiad, a form of rhetoric central to the nation’s reformist impulses. Translating the jeremiad in Jeffersonian terms, Part I, the “promise” represents the promise of American democracy as an intergenerational project, and Part II, the “declension,” discusses three ways in which the nation has betrayed its founding principles, and Part III, the “renewal,” is posited as a Jeffersonian-inspired reconstruction of the civic purposes of public education.