A fines del siglo XIX y principios del XX un pedagogo mendocino C. N. Vergara (Mendoza, 1859-1929) hace experiencia en Buenos Aires, Argentina, de una república escolar animada por una política solidaria. Con este escrito pretendemos situar la experiencia para tensionar las nociones de república-institución educativa-política y solidaridad. Tomamos como pre-texto para acometer la cuestión, incidentes del siglo XXI. Algunos testimonios que dicen sobre la vida que circula hacia fuera y hacia dentro de las instituciones educativas. Incidentes que como ejercicios (...) de pensamiento nos dan qué pensar. La infancia literal de los primeros años de vida, la de Josefina y la de Milena, en los testimonios adultomorfos que se entregan a “experienciar” la posibilidad siempre abierta de la emergencia de un sujeto que eclipsa. Pero también de aquella infancia escolarizada a la que el devenir infante le ha sido intervenido institucionalmente. La institución educativa argentina, específicamente en la Escuela Normal Mixta de Mercedes se presenta en toda su potencia en la afirmación de un lugar en el filosofar y, para una filosofía movilizante y movilizadora que no permanezca dentro de los muros sino que los atraviese y se desborde en la calle en la renovación de los actores, de los actos y sus ejecuciones. (shrink)

The republican political tradition, which originated in Ancient Rome and picked up by several early-modern thinkers, has been revived in the last couple of decades following the seminal works of historian Quentin Skinner and political theorist Philip Pettit. Although educational questions do not normally occupy the center stage in republican theory, various theorists working within this framework have already highlighted the significance of education for any functioning republic. Looking at educational questions through the lens of freedom (...) as non-domination has already yielded important insights to discussions of political education. However, consideration of the existing republican educational discourse in light of the wide range of issues discussed in Pettit’s recent works reveals that it suffers from two major lacunae. First, it does not take into consideration the distinction (and deep connection) between democracy and social justice that has become central to Pettit’s republicanism. Thus, the current discussion focuses almost exclusively on education for democratic citizenship and hardly touches upon social justice. Second, the current literature thinks mainly in terms of educating future citizens, rather than conceiving of students also as political agents in the present, and of school itself as a site of non-domination. This paper aims at filling these voids, and it will therefore be oriented along two intersecting axes: the one between democracy and justice, and the other between future citizenship in the state and present citizenship at school. The resulting four categories will organize the discussion: future citizens and democracy; future citizens and social justice; present citizens and democracy; present citizens and social justice. This will not only enable us to draw a clearer line between the civic republican and liberal educational theories, but also make civic republican education a viable alternative to current educational approaches. (shrink)

This book takes the thinking of Quentin Skinner, Philip Pettit and J. G. A. Pocock on republican liberty and explores the way in which this idea of liberty can be used to illuminate educational practice. It argues that republican liberty is distinct from both positive and negative liberty, and its emphasis on liberty as non-dependency gives the concept of liberty a particularly critical role in contemporary society. Each chapter formulates and expounds the idea that an empire of liberty (...) requires the existence of what are termed 'liberty-bearing agents', and shows how education - with a particular emphasis on knowledge - is needed to foster the human powers which allow people to become liberty-bearing. It is also emphasised, however, that republican liberty is non-perfectionist and non-eudaimonic: the core values enshrined in an empire of liberty centre on non-dependency rather than the promulgation of a certain way of life. Drawing on prominent seventeenth century contract theorists, the link between liberty and authority is explained, suggesting that appropriate authoritative structures need to underpin the provision of education, and especially schooling, if educational practice devoted to the pursuit of liberty is to flourish. Liberty and Education will be of value to both educational theorists unfamiliar with republican theory, as well as republican theorists interested in how their theory might play out in education. It will also be of interest to researchers and students from the fields of politics and the philosophy of education. (shrink)

As a result of the public demand for higher ethical standards, business schools are increasingly taking ethical matters seriously. But their effort has concentrated on teaching business ethics and on students' ethical behavior. Business faculty, in contrast, has attracted much less attention. This paper explores the context and the implications of an alleged case of plagiarism in a master's dissertation submitted to a university lacking both an ethical code of conduct and a formalized procedure to deal with academic misconduct. The (...) events evolved into a bitter political process in which the more ethically aware members of faculty challenged efforts to cover-up. Here the focus is on the motives and behavior of faculty members involved in this case rather than the alleged plagiarist's. The role played by the main actors involved in the process in examined using the theory of moral development and the organizational politic perspective. The paper discusses the mechanisms available to raise ethical awareness and prevent academic misconduct, and the limitations of self-regulation and self-monitoring that prevails in the university system. It also examines the impact of ethics instruction and faculty ethical standards on students' behavior and concludes that ethics instruction can only be effective when the principles taught are in line with daily actions of their instructors. (shrink)

Antonio Gramsci is one of the major social and political theorists of the 20th century whose work has had an enormous influence on several fields, including educational theory and practice. Gramsci and Education demonstrates the relevance of Antonio Gramsci's thought for contemporary educational debates. The essays are written by scholars located in different parts of the world, a number of whom are well known internationally for their contributions to Gramscian scholarship and/or educational research. The collection deals with a broad (...) range of topics, including schooling, adult education in general, popular education, workers' education, cultural studies, critical pedagogy, multicultural education, and the role of intellectuals in contemporary society. (shrink)

The intellectual founding fathers of the French Third Republic were innovative thinkers who achieved an original synthesis of republican and liberal principles. This becomes evident when one examines the works of four philosophers who played a crucial role in the French intellectual and political life of the period extending from the 1870s to the early 1900s: Emile Littre, Charles Renouvier, Henry Michel and Alfred Fouillee. Among their many contributions to moral and political philosophy, I highlight two themes: (...) a) a conception of political liberty that grants a pre-eminent place to civic education as a means to free citizens from domination by dogmatic religious authorities, sectarian political movements or unexamined beliefs of any kind; b) the need to implement reasonable social reforms in order to ensure that the many and complex relations of functional interdependence constitutive of modern societies are equitable and realize an ideal of national solidarity. I suggest that these ideas ought to be carefully examined by contemporary proponents of civic republicanism. (shrink)

Education is oftentimes understood as a deeply ethical practice for the development of the person. Alternatively, education is construed as a state-enforced apparatus for inculcation of specific codes, conventions, beliefs, and norms about social and political practices. Though holding both of these beliefs about education is not necessarily mutually contradictory, a definite tension emerges when one attempts to articulate a cogent theory involving both. I will argue in this paper that Habermas’s theory of discourse ethics, when combined with his (...) statements on constitutional democracy and law, manifests this tension for formal education. Through a contrast with Dewey’s social-liberal view of education on the one hand, and the procedural liberalism and its associated view of education, common to Rawls and others writing in the contemporary Anglo-American tradition on the other, the questions of what this means for education and why it matters are raised and addressed. (shrink)

While education for democracy has been heavily influenced by the deliberative perspective on democracy, a recent turn towards an agonistic perspective on democracy places a great deal of faith in the role of political emotion and conflict. Educational scholars have mostly interpreted agonism in relation to the emotional and conflictual experiences that occur within school. Some scholars draw general pedagogical insights from this perspective, while others use it to propose conflictual approaches to classroom discussions. Overestimating, however, the extent to (...) which experiences of agonism within school applies to politically experienced agonisms beyond the school, is problematic. Such overestimations undermine the core political insights of agonistic theory, concerning the democratic potential of radical collective movements. Agonistic theory acknowledges the psychological need among disgruntled citizens for radical alternatives enabling them to oppose and rearticulate the established power dynamics in society. The purpose of agonistic democracy is to enable rearticulations of hegemony through the institutions of representative democracy, rather than as opposed to them. Important for this paper, however, is the argument that such rearticulations depend on the rhetorical force of collective movements. Emphasizing that we cannot assume the presence of such movements in everyday school life, the paper revisits the following question: What are the didactical implications of an agonistic perspective on democracy? The democratic potential of collective movements is not easily captured through experiences within the pedagogical context alone, but proposals are made as to how this potential can be grasped in other ways. (shrink)

The neo-republican political philosophy (sometimes referred to as civic republicanism) advances the idea of freedom as non-domination, in an attempt to provide democracy with a solid normative foundation upon which concrete principles and institutions can be erected so as to make freedom a reality. However, attempts to develop a republican educational theory are still hesitant, and fail to take the republican radical conception of freedom to its full conclusions. This article suggests that dialogue between neo-republicanism and (...) critical pedagogy can be mutually productive. In the first part of the article we present the neo-republican theory, and contrast it with traditional liberalism. In the second we focus on existing neo-republican theories of education, and claim that they do not take the republican presuppositions to their necessary conclusion, namely to an educational theory fully committed to the idea of freedom as dondomination. A republican educational theory, we argue, must take into consideration not only the freedom students will have in the future, but also their freedom in the present: it should think of school as a small-scale republic, which prepares its inhabitants to be future citizens of the state while at the same time treating them as free citizens in their own right. In the third part we use insights taken from critical pedagogy to chart the direction republican education must take by applying three key republican notions—democratic control, civic contestation, and trust. In the fourth and last part we outline four aspects in which neo-republicanism can shed new light on contemporary debates in critical pedagogy: the connection between democracy and justice, the multiplicity of forms of domination, critical education within schools, and work with students from relatively privileged backgrounds. (shrink)

This paper develops a critical normative analysis of charter schools. It categorizes and evaluates the main arguments in defense of charters: market competition, improved learning outcomes, autonomy and innovation, and their potential to function as “counterpublics.”After finding each argument wanting, the paper proposes a tripartite critique of charters based on (i) their deleterious effects on social solidarity, (ii) the procedural injustice involved in access, and (iii) their substantively unjust outcomes. We show how charter schools under-mine social and political solidarity (...) by fragmenting communities into more homogenous subsets. Although they purport to be equally open to all, charters covertly rely on morally arbitrary characteristics such as class, race, and disability in admissions. Finally, we argue that they unfairly reduce the quality of education for some students, thus resulting in substantively unjust outcomes. (shrink)

In response to the difficult social, economic and political problems that Colombia faces, such as inequality, discrimination, weak civil society—fuelled by illegality and drug trafficking—the Colombian Ministry of Education has embarked on an ambitious citizenship education program, with the hope of strengthening the role of education by establishing alternative solutions. This innovative program attempts to counteract Colombians' recourse to violence as a means of solving the country's endemic problems by developing the competencies of students, teachers and other participants (...) in education. The competencies include sound reasoning, care for others, communication skills, reflection on action, knowledge and active participation in classroom, school and community matters. This six-and-a-half-year-old project has started to create an educational system that takes into account many of the elements and relationships fundamental to the socio-political and moral behaviour of all involved. The paper indicates the horizons that this program opens up and discusses some of the problematic aspects that still need to be addressed for the program to be sustainable. (shrink)

Following González Vergara (2006a, 2009, 2012), the presence of the morpheme se in Spanish is explained by a lexical phenomenon that modifies the logical structure of sentences in which it appears. This phenomenon decreases the importance of the Actor and favors the Undergoer. According to this proposal, this phenomenon expresses itself, in most of the Spanish sesentences, as a lexical rule that makes unspecific the highest ranking argument. Taking the above as a basis, this paper explores and proposes explanations for (...) se alternating verbs of the type of matar(se), morir(se), dormir(se), despertar(se), terminar(se), adelgazar(se), engordar(se), envejecer(se), mejorar(se), controlar(se), crecer(se) y aparecer(se) in the framework of the Role and Reference Grammar. (shrink)

Recent claims that civic republicanism can better address contemporary political problems than either liberalism or communitarianism are generating an intense debate. This is a sharp insight into this debate, confronting normative theory with historical and comparative analysis. It examines whether republican theory can address contemporary political problems in ways that are both valuable and significantly different in practice from liberalism. These expert authors offer contrasting perspectives on issues raised by the contemporary revival of republicanism and adopt a (...) variety of methodological approaches to address the practical implications of republican thought within a coherent thematic framework. This book also *clarifies core themes and contested areas of republican thought, especially the notion of liberty, the specific political institutions needed to realize it, and the nature of solidarity among citizens. * shows how republicanism continued to influence the development of liberal thought in nineteenth century Britain * examines the development of alternative republican discourses, including the established political practice and ideology of the French republican tradition * applies republican perspectives to contemporary political concerns such as the creation of social trust and the expansion of public accountability * explores the implications of republican theory for policy areas including houses, education and marriage in diverse multicultural societies This book will be of great interest to researchers and students studying republicanism in political science history, social policy and education. In addition, it is a valuable resource for those concerned with citizenship, democratic theory, multiculturalism, nationalism and patriotism, and politics beyond the nation-state. (shrink)

Prior to its election to office in 2007, the Australian Labor Party announced a commitment to introduce Trade Training Centres (TTCs) into all Australian secondary schools as an initiative of its Education Revolution. TTCs were proposed as a key element of Federal Labor's education and training policy that aimed to manage future risks to Australia's competitiveness in the emerging global economy and to support school-to-employment transitions for young people. This analysis adopts a governmentality framework to conceptualise the Federal Government's introduction (...) of TTCs alternatively as a key strategy for nationalising social investment politics in Australia. The paper draws on recent Australian policy documents to argue that TTCs are social technologies that work to open up social spaces in and around schools for governing relationships between schools and other community stakeholders, particularly businesses and families. The paper concludes by examining policy implications, including those of social justice, for promoting school community partnerships through TTCs. (shrink)

This paper examines the iconic conception of aesthetic education in the work of Friedrich Schiller, with the aim of elucidating Schiller’s unique innovation of this notion in understanding i) the relationship between aesthetic and ethical value and ii) the transformative possibilities within a collective, social dimension of aesthetic experience. The paper provides an overview of the Kantian origins of Schiller’s aesthetic programme (Section 1). It then considers Schiller’s critique of the perceived failings of the Kantian and Enlightenment republican models (...) of ethical value and political emancipation (Section 2) before turning to his positive alternative aesthetic programme (Section 3). The paper concludes (Section 4) with some evaluation and reflection on Schiller’s original contributions. (shrink)

Nationalism is inextricably connected with the modern history of nations and nationstates, and reflects the axiological sets derived from the aspirations of young nations. However, recent political, economic and social developments at the global level have determined the resurgence of nationalism, and signs of the pheno¬menon are also visible in Europe, although the old continent has enabled principles of cross-border solidarity and cohesion through transnational constructions such as the European Union. Europeanism, European identity and identification with Europe are still (...) fragile, and rather indefinite, and at the same time challenged by new and powerful types of nationalism. The present work argues that national education emerged and developed as a natural response to the formation and affirmation of nationstates, whereas multicultural, respectively intercultural education may answer the needs of contemporary societies, which face pressure to balance complex national and transnational mutations. This paper's contribution is to focus on the European context, and it stresses the necessity of transnational agreement on terms and semantics connected with intercultural education, given its potential role in supporting equity, solidarity and social stability. (shrink)

Discourses of public education reform, like that exemplified within the Queensland Government's future vision document, Queensland State Education‐2010 , position schooling as a panacea to pervasive social instability and a means to achieve a new consensus. However, in unravelling the many conflicting statements that conjoin to form education policy and inform related literature , it becomes clear that education reform discourse is polyvalent . Alongside visionary statements that speak of public education as a vehicle for social justice are the visionary (...) or those reflecting neoliberal individualism and a conservative politics. In this paper, it is argued that the latter coagulate to form strategic discursive practices which work to secure dominant relations of power. Further, discussion of the characteristics needed by the ‘ideal’ future citizen of Queensland reflect efforts to ‘tame change through the making of the child’ . The casualties of this vision and the refusal to investigate the pathologies of ‘traditional’ schooling are the children who, for whatever reason, do not conform to the norm of the desired school child as an ‘ideal’ citizen‐in‐the‐making and who become relegated to alternative educational settings. (shrink)

According to Philip Pettit, we should understand republican liberty, freedom as ‘non-domination,’ as a ‘supreme political value.’ It is its commitment to freedom as non-domination, Pettit claims, that distinguishes republicanism from various forms of liberal egalitarianism, including the political liberalism of John Rawls. I explain that Rawlsian political liberalism is committed to a form of non-domination, namely, a ‘political’ conception, which is: (a) limited in its scope to the ‘basic structure of society,’ and (b) ‘freestanding’ (...) in nature (that is, compatible with the ‘fact of reasonable pluralism’). I show that the political conception of non-domination is an integral part of political liberalism through an exploration of the kind of citizenship education that political liberalism mandates for all students. Such an education would impart to future citizen the skills and knowledge necessary for them to realize republican freedom vis-à-vis their political institutions, their workplaces, and, by means of an enforceable ‘right of exit,’ the various associations to which they might belong. (shrink)

Migrants invariably and unavoidably experience domination under the nation-state centered concepts, categories, and institutions that structure our political thinking. In response, we need to build new forms of citizenship, including local, regional, transnational, and supranational forms of belonging, accompanied by meaningful, democratic, political power. In this paper, I examine historical and present-day alternative models of political organization as possible viable alternatives to state-centric liberal democracy. It begins the task of assessing these models using radical republican (...) theory that grounds non-domination in the active and equal participation of people subject to power.I have three broad aims. First, we need to break down the native-migrant dichotomy to highlight commonalities and search for solidarities among migrants and other marginalized and oppressed groups, including indigenous groups. Second, I seek to awaken the political imagination. Many people do not believe there are viable alternatives to liberal democracy centered around the nation-state. In response, we should draw attention to the ways in which the nation-state’s hegemony is fragile and fragmented and the ways in which sovereignty is complex and contested. Most importantly, we need to consider alternative models for inspiration. Third, we need tools for assessing the desirability of alternatives and for building new forms of citizenship.In what follows, first I explain why the dominant, nation-state centered model of political organization is unable to deliver justice in today’s world, or, indeed, address the collective dangers that humanity faces. I next provide a sketch of a radical republican vision that provides normative guidance our thinking about alternative institutions. I end by using this radical republic vision to reflect on possibilities to guide efforts to remake the world. (shrink)

One of the main themes of Bobbio’s writings was the relationship between law and politics. Yet an ambiguity runs through his writings on this point. He saw politics and law as intimately related, with the one entailed by the other. Yet, the tautologous relationship he saw as existing between the two posed a potential problem – what could be called the Hobbes challenge. For if politics is impossible without law, yet all law flows from politics, then we seem faced with (...) a dilemma of either a vicious circle or an infinite regress. Bobbio never really confronted this dilemma, although in a bid to escape the prospect of the Hobbesian lawless sovereign he gestured towards a natural law solution at odds with his legal positivism. Instead, this article suggests an alternative in precisely the non-sovereign account of politics Hobbes criticized, that of a republican democracy based on political equality rather than popular sovereignty. In this account, the rule of law can be reconciled with the rule of persons precisely because men must rule together as rulers and ruled in turn, rather than any one or group of them permanently ruling over the others. Law on this account results from a particular type of politics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal CommunityPaul HendricksonThe University of South Carolina. Hauke Brunkhorst. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005. Pp. xxv + 262. $42.50, hardcover.Public appeals to solidarity have been pervasive throughout the storied history of political dissent and democratic politics. From the French Revolution and the European revolutions of 1848 to decolonization, Polish Solidarność, and the antiglobalization movement, solidarity has been invoked as a means (...) of reinventing citizenship, rights, and community. Yet political theorists have not generally accorded the concept of solidarity a degree of attention comparable to that afforded other core political concepts, such as freedom, equality, and deliberation. In Solidarity, Hauke Brunkhorst seeks to remedy this neglect, arguing that the concept of solidarity should be deemed fundamental to democratic theory and practice: "In modern societies, solidarity coincides with the concept of democracy" (xxiii). Brunkhorst presents this thesis as a corrective to current theory, but he also develops it—in the spirit of much Frankfurt School theorizing—as a Zeitdiagnose, as a timely diagnosis, regarding the threats globalization poses to democratic self-governance: "Power, law, and money are globalized [today] at the expense of democratic solidarity" (7).Solidarity, as Brunkhorst understands it, is a thoroughly modern concept. The "ideas of 1789"—in particular, the fraternité of the French Revolution—provided the historical foundation for an egalitarian and democratic model of solidarity. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the concept of solidarity [End Page 343] gradually replaced that of fraternity in the wake of industrialization. Drawing on Marx, Brunkhorst argues that what promoted working-class solidarity was "not the local sympathy of communal relations or the friendly affection... of a tightly structured polis," but rather the railway, the steamship, and the telegraph (60). Brunkhorst's historiography is woven into a broad social-theoretic framework. Following Durkheim, he reasons that the modern division of labor is not founded on the mechanical solidarity of Gemeinschaft, on a shared sense of affinity, ritual, and communal belonging, but on the organic solidarity of Gesellschaft, on the integration of an individualized, pluralist, and functionally differentiated society.To readers acquainted with contemporary German appropriations of the sociological tradition, many of Brunkhorst's conceptual moves will seem familiar. But his unique fusion of social-theoretic and historical argumentation yields a fascinating and novel characterization of solidarity. For Brunkhorst, solidarity is not a form of sentiment or emotional bond; it is not premised on compassion for "tormentable bodies" (Brecht) or on a "flexible feeling of sympathy" (Rorty); rather, "it is nothing but the democratic realization of individual freedom" (3). This normative model of solidarity is guided by the regulative ideal of a political association without domination; it envisages a polity in which the individual is neither servant nor master to her compatriots. As modes of governance become increasingly globalized, democratic forms of solidarity must reach beyond the rights traditions of particular nation-states to include a "human-rights patriotism."Brunkhorst traces this ideal back to Greco-Roman antiquity and the Judeo-Christian tradition. Drawing principally on the writings of Greek and Roman philosophers, he argues that civic friendship (philia) provided a space for mutual freedom, emancipated individuals from the bonds of kinship, generalized friendship into a form of patriotism (philia politike), and realized the universal essence of man as a political being. But this civic-republican model remained profoundly elitist, excluding the many on the basis of gender, class, and citizenship status. More suggestive and original is Brunkhorst's treatment of Jewish and Christian thought. The intersection between rhetoric and philosophy is central to his interpretation of the Exodus story and covenant theology as a form of collective countermemory and as a prophetic practice of critique. Through his reading of the Jotham fable and other biblical narratives, he argues that the Jewish prophets and the Christian New Testament avowed "the equal proximity of all humans to God" and contributed to a "prophetic project of egalitarian solidarity" (33, 36). [End Page 344]Brunkhorst's historical reconstructions culminate in the French Revolution. On his view, the otherworldly universalism of the Judeo-Christian tradition was secularized and institutionalized in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789) and the first French... (shrink)

The article presents a plebeian strand of republican constitutional thought that recognises the influence of inequality on political power, embraces conflict as the effective cause of free government, and channels its anti-oligarchic energy through the constitutional structure. First it engages with two modern plebeian thinkers – Niccolò Machiavelli and Nicolas de Condorcet - focusing on the institutional role of the common people to resist oppression through ordinary and extraordinary political action. Then it discusses the work of two (...) contemporary republican thinkers – Philip Pettit and John McCormick – and contrasts their models of ‘contestatory’ and ‘tribunician’ democracy. Finally, I incorporate a political economy lens and propose as part of republican constitutionalism not only contestatory and tribunician institutions but also anti-oligarchic basic rules to keep inequality and corruption under control. (shrink)

Creating a new discourse of peace in schools offers educators a choice in how they think, believe, and act in response to student wrongdoing and conflict. In this article the reader is introduced to how restorative justice principles can be used in education as a way of supporting a school-wide culture of care, where building and maintaining healthy relationships are fundamental principles. Thisnew discourse offers an alternative to the traditional discipline practices in schools, which focus on rules and consequences. (...) The literature, research and major findings underlying this new discourse are explained. Finally, circles are described as an application of this new discourse. (shrink)

The story of a group of teachers and high school students who from 1968 to 1970_ _broke away from the public schools to start an al­ternative school of their own design. The introductory chapters focus on Den­ker and Bhaerman, explaining how they came to start the project. The middle two chapters center on events and issues during the two years the authors were with the school. The final two chapters analyze the politics of free schools and the teaching of adolescents. (...) Denker and Bhaerman write in a lively, candid, and personal style, describing the events as they happened—even if these events show the school in a bad light. The book is directed toward those who want to understand the free school move­ment of the sixties and early seventies and toward those who want to move beyond it. Students and teachers, Bhaerman says, “ulti­mately must face what they had been avoid­ing while rebelling against traditional in­stitutions: that the responsibility for their education lies with themselves and that what they took from the ‘free school’ was directly proportional to what they put in.” An Introduction by Lawrence Dennis and an Afterword by Bhaerman and Denker put both this experiment and the free school movement in historical perspective. (shrink)

Efforts to develop democratic schools have moved along particular rules and standards of ‘reasoning’ even when expressed through different ideological and paradigmatic lines. From attempts to make a democratic education to critical pedagogy, different approaches overlap in their historical construction of the reason of schooling: designing society by designing the child. These approaches to democracy make inequality into the premise of equality, assuming a consensual partition of the world and the need for specific agents to monitor partitioned boundaries, thus reinserting (...) differences as the basis of practice. Democracy, however, according to Jacques Rancière, only becomes visible when its partitioning is challenged under the opinion of equality. Yet, undoing the epistemological dogma of planning embodied in the notions of ‘critical’ and deliberative democracy might also involve confronting the comparative style of thought which provides the epistemological ‘rules’ that insert inequality as equality. Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome and Derrida's justice help extend Rancière's democracy and equality into unfamiliar terrain. What implications might this have for thinking about educational policy and curriculum? The argument, ironically, maintains Enlightenment attitudes about reason and rationality, but while ‘trying’ different epistemological rules and recognizing how the epistemological and ontological fold into one another it provides an alternative understanding of education and democracy. (shrink)

Educational practices which reinforce cultural diversity are often commended in the name of pluralism, though such practices may be condemned on the same grounds if they are seen as a threat to the fragile sense of political unity which holds a pluralistic society together. Therefore, the educational implications of pluralism as an ideal are often ambiguous, and the ambiguity cannot be resolved in the absence of a clear understanding of the particular civic virtues which a pluralistic society should engender. (...) Two influential conceptions of civic education which purport to affirm the ideal of pluralism are examined and both are found wanting. Liberal political theory proclaims the paramount importance of justice in public life, and justice can be construed in a way that accomodates diversity. However, the kind of civic education which liberalism entails does too little to restrain the centrifugal forces latent in cultural diversity. Communitarian political theory exalts civic friendship as the supreme public virtue, but the civic education it supports is compatible with only a highly attenuated cultural diversity. A third alternative is canvassed which combines the liberal stress on justice with a conception of patriotism distinct from civic friendship. The implications of this alternative for disputes about bias in public schools are briefly discussed. (shrink)

Education stands at the intersection of Noam Chomsky's two lives as scholar and social critic: As a linguist he is keenly interested in how children acquire language, and as a political activist he views the education system as an important lever of social change. Chomsky on Democracy and Education gathers for the first time his impressive range of writings on these subjects, some previously unpublished and not readily available to the general public. Raised in a progressive school where his (...) father was principal, Chomsky outlines a philosophy of education steeped in the liberal tradition of John Dewey, more concerned with cultivating responsible citizens than feeding children facts. The goal of education, Chomsky argues, is to produce free human beings whose values are not accumulation and domination, but rather free association on terms of equality. Spanning issues of language, power, policy and method, this collection includes seminal theoretical works like Language and Freedom , a social analysis of the role of schools and universities in the American polity, and specific critiques of language instruction in America's classrooms today, along with new interviews conducted by Carlos Otero that serve to encapsulate Chomsky's views. Engaging and incisive, Chomsky on Democracy and Education makes accessible the key insights that have earned Chomsky such a committed following. (shrink)

For academics and students, Education Management in Managerialist Times offers a critical guide to existing educational management texts and makes a strong case for redefining educational management along more socially and politically informed lines. The book also offers practitioners alternative management strategies intended to contest, rather than support, managerialism, while being realistic about the context within which those who lead and manage schools currently have to work.

This paper offers a genealogy of dialogic education, tracing its origins in Romantic epistemology and corresponding philosophy of childhood, and identifying it as a counterpoint to the purposes and assumptions of universal, compulsory, state-imposed and regulated schooling. Dialogic education has historically worked against the grain of standardized mass education, not only in its view of the nature, capacities and potentialities of children, but in its economic, political and social views, for which childhood is understood as a promissory condition. Dialogic (...) education is oriented to what Dewey called “a future new society of changed purposes and desires,” made possible by an emergent form of social character. It has followed its own developmental trajectory from its origins in Pestalozzi’s Rousseau-inspired innovations, through anarchist theory and practice and the Progressive Education movement, to its current most salient formulation in the Democratic Education movement, whether as an enemy within the gates of standardized education or as expressed in innumerable alternative forms of schooling or unschooling. The paper highlights several key characteristics, gleaned from all those forms, of the dialogic school—identified as intentionality, transitionality, emergence, aesthetic temporality, interdisciplinarity and group governmentality--and argues further that community of philosophical inquiry theory and practice as a form of post-Socratic group dialogue that emerged in the 1970’s, is a pedagogical praxis that offers a grand operational template for dialogic education as a form of schooling. (shrink)

An Aims-based Curriculum spells out a ground-breaking alternative to the familiar school curriculum constructed around a number of largely academic subjects. Its starting point is not subjects, but what schools should be for. It argues that aims are not to be seen as high-sounding principles that can be easily ignored: they are the lifeblood of everything a school does. -/- The book begins with general aims to do with equipping each learner to lead a personally fulfilling life, and to (...) help others to do so too. From these, they derive more specific aims covering the personal qualities, skills and understanding needed for a life of personal, civic and vocational well-being. -/- The second half of the book, on political realities of implementation, takes this process of aims-derivation further. Some of its detailed aims, but by no means all, overlap with conventional curriculum objectives. It also looks at the role of the state in curriculum decisions, as well as the implications of the book’s central argument for student choice, school ethos, assessment, inspection and teacher education . (shrink)

The proponents of critical pedagogy criticize the earlier Neo‐Marxist theories of education, arguing that they provide only a ‘language of critique’. By introducing the possibility of human agency and resistance, critical pedagogists attempt to develop not only a pedagogy of critique, but also to build a pedagogy of hope. Fundamentally, the aim of critical pedagogy is twofold: 1) to correct the pessimistic conclusions of Neo‐Marxist theories, and 2) to transform a ‘language of critique’ into a ‘language of possibility’ . Then, (...) what political projects do critical pedagogies present to us? What alternative visions of schooling do critical pedagogies offer against the mainstream pedagogy? The purpose of this paper is to identify main projects of critical pedagogy, and to explore overarching politics that underlie the field of critical pedagogy. Although there are diverse theories and approaches in critical pedagogy, three overarching projects can be identified, which I call: 1) the project of experience, 2) the project of anti‐system, and 3) the project of inclusion. Based on an examination of the general trends and characteristics of these three projects of critical pedagogy, I argue that three prominent politics that underlie the field of critical pedagogy are culturalist politics, self/identity politics, and grassroots politics. In trying to better understand why and how critical pedagogy has developed the political stances as it has, the last part of the paper links these three politics to the historical developments of the New Left and the New Social Movements. (shrink)

I argue that political liberals should not support the monopoly of a single educational approach in state sponsored schools. Instead, they should allow reasonable citizens latitude to choose the worldview in which their own children are educated. I begin by defending a particular conception of political liberalism, and its associated requirement of public reason, against the received interpretation. I argue that the values of respect and civic friendship that motivate the public reason requirement do not support the common (...) demand that citizens “bracket” their comprehensive commitments in politics. Rather, citizens should seek to enact policies the justification of which is compatible with the truth of their fellow reasonable citizens’ worldviews. Next I argue that no single educational approach can meet this standard of justification. Many believe that state sponsored education in a pluralist, liberal society ought to present multiple worldviews in a neutral way. I argue that this aspiration is unrealizable, and no other educational model will plausibly meet the justificatory demand. Finally, I address two objections to my favored alternative: that it may allow for the inculcation of disrespect, and that it violates children’s autonomy. Against the first, I claim that political liberals have no grounds for thinking that reasonable citizens will seek to inculcate disrespect. Finally, I argue that there is no conception of autonomy that can sustain the second. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt's essays about the 1957 crisis over efforts of a group of youth, the “Little Rock Nine,” to desegregate a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, reveal a tension in her vision of the “public.” In this article Aaron Schutz and Marie Sandy look closely at the experiences of the youth desegregating the school, especially those of Elizabeth Eckford, drawing upon them to trace a continuum of forms of public engagement in Arendt's work. This ranges from arenas of “deliberative (...) friendship,” where unique individuals collaborate on common efforts, to a more conflictual “public stage,” where groups act in solidarity to change aspects of the public world. While Arendt famously asserted in her essay “The Crisis in Education” that political capacities should not be taught in schools, it makes more sense to see this argument as focused on what she sometimes called the conflictual “public stage,” reflecting the experience of the Little Rock Nine. In contrast, Schutz and Sandy argue that Arendt's own work implies that “deliberative friendship,” as described in her essay “Philosophy and Politics” and elsewhere, should be part of everyday practices in classrooms and schools. (shrink)

By offering an analysis of different conceptions of corruption connected to the political regime and contingency in which they developed, the article retrieves a systemic meaning of political corruption. Through the works of Plato, Aristotle, Polybius and Machiavelli, it reconstructs a dimension of political corruption particular to popular governments and also engages with recent neo-republican and institutionalist attempts at redefining political corruption. The article concludes that we still lack a proper conception of systemic corruption comparable (...) to the one of the Ancients because we are yet unable to account for the role procedures and institutions play in fostering corruption through their normal functioning and what this means for liberal democratic regimes. (shrink)

The Politics of the Texbook analyzes the factors that shape production, distribution and reception of school texts through original essays which emphasize the double-edged quality of textbooks. Textbooks are viewed as systems of moral regulation in the struggle of powerful groups to build political and cultural accord. They are also regarded as the site of popular resistance around discloding the interest underlying schoolknowledge and incorporating alternative traditions.

The Landless Workers’ Movement has been the principal protagonist developing an alternative educational proposal for rural public schools in Brazil. This article analyzes the MST’s differential success implementing this proposal in municipal and state public schools. The process is both participatory—activists working with government officials to implement MST goals—and contentious—the movement mobilizing support for its education initiatives through various forms of protest. In some locations, the MST has succeeded in institutionalizing a participatory relationship with government actors, while in other (...) regions the MST has a more limited presence in the schools or has been completely banned from participating. Drawing on the concept of coproduction—the active participation of civil society actors in the provision of public goods—the author argues that coproduction is a joint product of high levels of social mobilization and government orientation. The former is necessary in all cases, while the latter can take the form of either a left-leaning or clientelistic government. (shrink)

Abstract‘Raising aspirations’ for education among young people in low socioeconomic regions has become a widespread policy prescription for increasing human capital investment and economic competitiveness in so-called ‘knowledge economies’. However, policy tends not to address difficult social, cultural, economic and political conditions for aspiring, based in structural changes associated with globalization. Drawing conceptually on the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Williams, Arjun Appadurai and authors in the Funds of Knowledge tradition, this article theorizes two logics for aspiring that are (...) recognizable in research with young people and families: a doxic logic, grounded in populist–ideological mediations; and a habituated logic, grounded in biographic–historical legacies and embodied as habitus. A less tangible third ‘logic’ is also theorized: emergent senses of future potential, grounded in lived cultures, which hold possibility for imagining and pursuing alternative futures. The article offers a sociological framework for understanding aspirations as complex social–cultural phenomena, and for capacitating emergent and hopeful aspirations through school- and community-based research and dialogue. (shrink)

Abstract:Over the past quarter century, charter schools have evolved from a fringe educational philosophy to a prominent academic option for American school children and their families. While the history and political positioning of charter schools have been well documented, the tenet of choice continues to be central in the debate regarding the merit of the charter alternative to traditional public schools. In this essay, I seek to dispel the notion that choice is a simple selection between binary opportunities, (...) but rather a complex exchange between stakeholders. I present how educational options such as charters present a different paradigm of values when compared to precedents of the common schools of the mid-nineteenth century and established public education policy. Although some practices in charter schools may challenge the comforts of long-standing educational traditions, I assert that within these choices there may be opportunity for the music education community to truly reimagine its practices. I conclude with a call to music educators to make important decisions regarding charter schools and music education. Thoughtful steps can be taken to develop this curricular conversation and music educators have a professional duty to begin the dialogue. Failing to do so will be, by default, a choice to limit music education to traditional venues, thereby ignoring one of the fastest growing educational enterprises of our generation and an opportunity to provide a music education for all. (shrink)

As the gap between the world’s rich and poor grows wider and the limitations of institutional solutions such as foreign aid continue to be exposed, students of development are shifting their focus toward individualistic business-based solutions that seek to draw members of marginalized communities into the global marketplace. This focus on the individual, however, raises three interconnected issues: it privileges a view of the human person as individualistic versus relational, it proposes isolated solutions that are not scalable, and it can (...) leave would-be change agents feeling hopeless. Drawing on insights from sociology, political philosophy, and Catholic social thought, the current paper presents an alternative path to educating for an inclusive economy by arguing that our greatest structural challenges require us not to abandon institutional solutions but rather to develop better institutions rooted in a fuller notion of the human person. Specifically, by cultivating a mindset of relationality through immersion experiences and mindfulness practices, we propose that business education can empower students to develop hope-filled solidarity with the marginalized, understand their role in the global economic system, and as future business leaders, build virtuous institutions for the common good. (shrink)

The Republican education, its concepts, theories, and form of discourse belong to the shared European heritage of the pre-modern Age. The pedagogy of humanism and its effects on the early Modern Age are represented by Republicanism. Even if Republicanism found a political continuation in liberalism and democratism of the Modern Age, the same cannot be said of pedagogic continuity without some reservations. In pedagogy of the Modern Age an alternative to Republicanism prevails that builds onto a body (...) of concepts, discourse, and theory; it goes back to an old theological tradition. Rousseau chooses this alternative exclusively for his concepts of education. He is neither the inventor nor the one who builds up this language in contrast to pedagogical Republicanism. Nonetheless, the pedagogical canonization of Rousseau as one of the co-founders of pedagogical Modernity, marks the specific development that this theological language of pedagogy undergoes at the turn of the nineteenth century. Originally it is closely linked to specific theological, dogmatic lines of thought, namely, to the respective Piety movements within the two Christian denominations of Western Europe. Yet at the turn of the nineteenth century, this theological language of pedagogy increasingly loses that exclusive link to this particular context and becomes thus freely available to any form of pedagogy, which puts at its centre the child’s soul, absolute inwardness, and introspection as both holy and also threatened by a basically decadent social environment and outward world. (shrink)

Educational neutrality states that decisions about school curricula and instruction should be made independently of particular comprehensive doctrines. Many political philosophers of education reject this view in favor of some non-neutral alternative. Contrary to what one might expect, some prominent liberal neutralists have also rejected this view in parts of their work. This paper has two purposes. The first part of the paper concerns the relationship between liberal neutrality and educational neutrality. I examine arguments by Rawls and Nagel (...) and argue that some of the same arguments they use to justify liberal neutrality also justify educational neutrality; thus, if we accept these arguments for liberal neutrality, we should also accept educational neutrality. The second part of the paper defends educational neutrality against objections that it is impossible and objections that it is undesirable. (shrink)

Citizenship and its education is again gaining importance in many countries. This paper uses England as its primary example to develop a Habermasian perspective on this issue. The statutory requirements for citizenship education in England imply that significant attention be given to the moral and social development of the learner over time, to the active engagement of the learner in community and to the knowledge skills and understanding necessary for political action. This paper sets out a theoretical framework that (...) offers a perspective on learning suitable for these far-reaching aims. We argue that schools need to shift from the currently dominant discourse of accountability to incorporate a discourse of care in order to make room for an effective and appropriate pedagogy for citizenship. Habermas’s social theory gives us a theoretical framework that properly locates schools within the lifeworld as part of civil society. Schools should therefore attend to hermeneutical and emancipatory concerns, not only to strategic interests. We put these in the context of Habermas’s social theory to paint an alternative vision learning for citizenship education which is based in developing the dispositions, values and attitudes necessary for lifelong learning with a view to developing ongoing communicative action. (shrink)

The paper argues that the liberal approach to social rights is contradictory and provides an alternative account that draws on solidarism, a strand of nineteenth-century French Republican thought. Solidarism links together a normative theory of social obligation and a descriptive account of social value, debt and unearned increment. The theory of social property provides a distinctive foundation for social rights.

This paper argues that it is important for educators in democratic education to understand how the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, the United States and around the world can never be viewed apart from the affective investments of populist leaders and their supporters to essentialist ideological visions of nationalism, racism, sexism and xenophobia. Democratic education can provide the space for educators and students to think critically and productively about people’s affects, in order to identify the implications of different affective (...) modes through which right-wing populism is articulated. Furthermore, this paper points out that ‘negative’ critique of the affective ideology of right-wing populism is not sufficient for developing a productive counter politics. An affirmative critique is also needed to set alternative frames and agendas which endorse and disseminate alternative concepts and affective practices such as equality, love and solidarity. These ideas provide critical resources to democratic education for developing a culture and process of democracy that transcends the negativity of mere critique of either right-wing populisms or inadequate forms of democracy. (shrink)