Civic education is divided into broad sense and narrow sense. In a broad sense, it refers to the integration of various educational means to train people to effectively participate in the public life of the country and society and to train informed citizens in modern society; In a narrow sense, it refers to the civic discipline of developing the necessary knowledge to participate in the public life of the country or society. According to the depth and breadth of civic education, civic education is understood as three aspects: "education about citizens": emphasizing the management of national history, political structure and political life process; "Through civic education": Get civic education by actively participating in schools and social activities; "Education for citizens": to cultivate students in knowledge and understanding, skills and attitudes, values and sexual orientation, so that students can really exercise their duties as citizens in their future adult life.

Generally speaking, it refers to the education that the state or society trains its members to have the character and ability to faithfully perform civil rights and obligations in accordance with relevant laws and requirements. The purpose is to cultivate citizens' patriotism, public morality and awareness of rights and obligations. The origin and concept first came into being with the emergence of the Democratic Republic.

Civic education has different specific connotations in different times and countries. It was first put forward and implemented in ancient Greece. Sparta demanded that the children of slave owners be trained into brave soldiers who are strong and loyal to the country. In addition to cultivating people's loyalty and courage, Athens paid more attention to developing people's wisdom and aesthetic power, and let citizens participate in the Athenian-style slave owners' democratic social life.

With the formation and development of the bourgeois nation-state, some bourgeois thinkers, such as Hegel and Fichte, emphasize the implementation of civic education. Kerschensteiner, a German educator, called the German Empire "the country with the highest value" and advocated that the purpose of all education is to cultivate citizens loyal to this country. No matter what their political and religious beliefs are, we should cultivate their character and spirit from four aspects: willpower, judgment, delicacy and struggle, so that they can serve the country. He also combined civic education with labor education to make every citizen have the skills to serve the country. The teaching content usually includes national system, political system, common sense of law and Tianjin, civics and so on. In some capitalist countries, the contents of civics, geography, history and sociology are merged into "social subjects", which are also strengthened by organizing students' extracurricular activities.