This article addresses some of the problems inherent in attempts to understand citizenship education through the concept of popular sovereignty and the formation of self-governing citizens. It does so via a historical investigation of the processes responsible for the separation of sovereignty and government and sovereignty and moral truth in the early modern state. It is argued that in losing sight of the importance of these separations for the formation of liberal pluralist states, current philosophical liberalism risks turning the school system into an instrument of moral coercion, jeopardizing its role as an instrument of social governance.