Article 1: Cultivating Individual Agency in Progressive Times: The Civic Education Program at shortridge High school 1883–1928

In 1887, Civil Government became a required course for graduation at Shortridge High School in Indianapolis, Indiana (Uriebel 1996). The Civil Government course was typically taken by students as freshmen and was the foundation for a broader civic education program instituted by one of Shortridge High School’s most famous teachers, Laura Donnan. Donnan came to Shortridge in 1883 with a Masters degree in American Constitutional History from the University of Michigan. She was charged to develop future citizens with a focus on their individual agency, and her perspective was represented in the title of her master’s thesis, “Duties of a Private Citizen in a Republic” (Cox 1936). Donnan’s views on how to best cultivate active citizens differed from many of the leading civic education theorists of the period in terms of their intended outcomes for civic education, theorists which included a future colleague of Donnan’s, Arthur W. Dunn. This paper frames the significance of Laura Donnan’s practice and the civic education program at Shortridge High School within the history of social studies and civic education, to examine how Donnan’s practice contrasted the purported dominant trends in civic education trafficked by social theorists such as Dunn.