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Political Liberalism and Political Education
Abstract
John Rawls expounds a new liberal political theory that supposedly differs from traditional varieties in the narrowness of its scope and the distinctive solution it offers to the problem of legitimacy. The contrast between Rawls's “political liberalism” and “ethical liberalism” is said to emerge strikingly in the approach to political education each entails. But the differences Rawls stresses between the two liberalisms are illusory, and the real implications of his theory for political education clearly show this. However, Rawls does offer a powerful case for a liberal political theory, albeit of a traditional kind, and its educational agenda can be endorsed as a corrective to political domination and manipulation, even though the agenda must be pursued at the cost of some ethical diversity.
... See Gutmann (1995), Kymlica (2002, pp. 232-240), Brighouse (1995) and Callan (1996). I discuss the question of convergence at length later in this paper. ...
... I discuss the question of convergence at length later in this paper. Proponents of relatively robust autonomy education as a component of civic education include Gutmann (1987Gutmann ( , 1995, Macedo (1995), Reich (2002), Costa (2004) and Callan (1996). Rawls (1993) and De Wijze (1999) favor a more restricted education for autonomy. ...
... Some (including me) think that his actual recommendations regarding civic education are inconsistent with the principles he invokes to defend them. On this matter, see Callan (1996Callan ( , 1997, Costa (2004), Davis and Neufeld (2007) and Neufeld (2013). 10 Critics argue that reciprocal positive regard is not necessary for democratic citizenship; mere tolerance will suffice. ...
Several philosophers of education argue that schooling should facilitate students’ development of autonomy. Such arguments fall into two main categories: Student-centered arguments support autonomy education to help enable students to lead good lives; Public-goods-centered arguments support autonomy education to develop students into good citizens. Critics challenge the legitimacy of autonomy education—of the state imposing a schooling curriculum aimed at making children autonomous. In this paper, I offer a unified solution to the challenges of legitimacy that both arguments for autonomy education face. I first defend a particular construal of liberal legitimacy, and then consider each legitimacy challenge in light of that construal. I argue that the legitimacy challenges confronting both types of argument can be overcome. Further, I explain why we should pursue both arguments, rather than resting the entire case for autonomy education on one or the other. I conclude that each argument—if it can justify autonomy education at all—can justify autonomy education consistent with the requirements of liberal democratic legitimacy.
... I take the position that liberal feminism should not be deterred from promoting autonomy and equality for girls and women by claims about deleterious consequences of removing some of the diversity between cultures. In this I share Eamonn Callan's support for 'educationally subversive liberalism' (Callan, 1996), agreeing with his view that the social costs that might be incurred by political education based on autonomy are worth it if they counter domination. While liberalism is criticized for its tendency to favour equality over diversity, it does remind us of the tragic side of difference, and how it has frequently been the cause of inequality, oppression and instability. ...
... They have been the target of critics of political liberalism (e.g. Callan, 1996Callan, , 1997Hampton, 1993), who have argued that the burdens of judgment make political liberalism inevitably slide into comprehensive liberalism. ...
Liberal feminism, like liberal political theory in general, is sometimes criticized for overemphasizing equality and the promotion of autonomy at the expense of valuing diversity. Some might thus see an approach to difference in education that is based on liberal feminism as a threat to cultural diversity. This article argues that although cultural diversity has some benefits, liberal feminism should not be deterred from promoting autonomy and equality for women by encouraging the alteration of practices that harm their interests. Siding with Susan Moller Okin's liberal feminism in Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? the contrast between comprehensive and political liberalism in recent work by Okin and by Martha Nussbaum is explored. It is claimed that a liberal feminist approach to the education of women and girls would necessarily be a form of comprehensive liberalism.
... For this reason, private school choice critics highlight schools run by fundamentalist Christians as instilling particular values that are inconsistent with shared social values [19]. Critics who perpetuate this stereotype of Christian fundamentalist schools claim such schools are less likely to encourage selfrule, tolerance, and respect for diversity among their students compared to traditional public schools [8,[20][21][22][23]. In contrast, some scholars argue that, because Catholic schools stress the intrinsic value of each human being, in what Sikkink [24] calls "the hidden civic curriculum", they are more likely than public schools to advance the development of community-oriented democratic citizens [25][26][27][28]. ...
A major concern in the ongoing debate over school choice is whether private schools help to increase their students’ levels of tolerance necessary for a functioning democracy in the United States. Over 40 years ago, scholars at the University of Minnesota created a survey which measured political knowledge, political tolerance, perceived threats from opposing groups, and support for democratic norms anchored in each respondent’s view of the political group they find most distasteful. In 1997, researchers at various universities used a similar survey instrument to derive responses from students in eighth-grade social studies classes who were enrolled in seven public and twenty-four private schools in New York City and Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. Those original data remained archived and unexamined for decades. We analyze those data using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and rigorous Nearest Neighbor Matching (NNM) methods based on propensity scores. We find that students who attended private schools demonstrate higher levels of political knowledge and stronger support for democratic norms when compared to observationally similar students who attended public schools.
... While Rawls says comparatively little about civic education, leaving many dissatisfied with his response to Okin, a number of others have stepped up to the plate and offered explications and defenses of the role of civic education from the perspective of political liberalism: Brighouse (1998), Callan (1996), Gutmann (1987), and Macedo (1995), among others. It is frequently argued that mandated civic education is justifiable because the state has a fundamental and vested interest in the creation of fully contributing citizens 9 -basically, citizens who are well-informed, tolerant, fair-minded, and generally evince 'core liberal values' (Macedo 1995, p. 485). ...
In response to the feminist concern that various religions undermine the ability of young women to realize themselves as free and equal citizens, Rawls has suggested that mandatory civic education could balance out non-egalitarian faiths. However, mandated civic education, if substantive enough to meet the demands of feminists, would likely disrupt the ability of religious conservatives and their children to develop and freely exercise the two moral powers. The result of this dilemma is twofold: the first is that a Rawlsian society which includes both feminists and religious conservatives may never be able achieve a stable overlapping consensus in the right way unless substantial accommodations are made for religious conservative families with regard to education. The second result is a broader one, namely, that using the public education system to condition students’ thinking beyond what political liberalism requires may undermine legitimacy and produce instability and polarization. Therefore, the public education system ought to be depoliticized as much as possible.
... Fakat Rawlsçu eğitim yaklaşımının hem gelişmiş hem de gelişmekte olan demokrasiler açısından tartışmaları için örneğin bkz. Bull 2012;Callan 1996;Çelik 2016a;Costa 2004;Fowler 2011. 8 Bu çalışma boyunca 'hakkaniyet' kavramı, eşitlikçi bir adalet teorisi olan 'hakkaniyet olarak adalet' teorisi ve bu teoriden kaynağını alan kabiliyetler yaklaşımı bağlamında kullanılmıştır. ...
... Hence, the isolationists and fundamentalists dominate the literature and are discussed as if they represent religion generally (Brighouse, 2000;Burtt, 1995;Callan, 1996;Gutmann, 1987;Weithman, 1997). ...
... He admits however, "that liberal political virtues and attitudes will spill over into other spheres of life" (1995a, 477). Callan (1996) eloquently discusses the tenability of the claim made by political liberalism that its educational ideals are limited to the public domain. Rawls (1993) himself admits that the effect can be that children are educated towards a comprehensive liberal conception of the good life (199,200). ...
This article begins with a description of the central characteristics of fundamentalism and fundamentalist education. The critical analysis of fundamentalist education focuses on the notion of respect for people. Comprehensive liberal, political liberal, and fundamentalist conceptions of respect for people are compared. The article ends with the education of children toward respecting people by asking the question, "How, in schools, should children be taught to respect other persons?" Fundamentalism is the religious phenomenon of the twentieth century. The media, the political system, and the grass roots of America have recognized that it is here and it is here to stay. (Falwell 1981, 1)
... How can respect for diversity, emphasised in both the Constitution and the White Paper on Education and Training, be reconciled with their attendant stress on critical and independent thinking? I cannot resolve this tension here, though my sympathies lie with the kind of ethical liberalism expressed by Eamon Callan (1996) in which the social costs of political education based on autonomy are worth incurring if they counter political domination. The point I prefer to make is to draw attention to the need for policy-makers and philosophers of education in South Africa to recognise that aspects of the liberal conception of education in post-apartheid policy require debate. ...
An influential view of liberalism and its view of education holds that it is a western construct unsuited to non-western societies. Bikhu Parekh’s critique of liberal democracy is taken here as representative of that position. In challenging that view, this article shows through an analysis of recent policy that post-apartheid education in South Africa expresses a liberal view of education, just as the political order introduced in 1994 is a liberal one. If we adopt Parekh’s principle that societies should be allowed to choose their own destinies, there are transcendental grounds for promoting liberalism and a liberal view of education outside of the liberal western democracies.
Buku ini menyajikan kajian mendalam tentang berbagai aliran pemikiran kewarganegaraan yang berkembang dalam konteks filosofis, teoritis, dan praksis. Dengan pendekatan lintas disiplin, buku ini mengulas bagaimana pemikiran tentang kewarganegaraan telah terbentuk dan bertransformasi seiring waktu, baik dalam teori maupun dalam penerapannya di dunia nyata.
Pada bagian filosofis, buku ini mengeksplorasi pemikiran dasar tentang hak dan kewajiban warga negara, teori keadilan, dan konsep-konsep utama seperti kebebasan, persamaan, dan solidaritas yang menjadi landasan teori-teori kewarganegaraan. Dari pemikiran klasik seperti Plato dan Aristotle hingga filsuf modern seperti John Rawls dan Michael Walzer, buku ini menggali ide-ide yang membentuk pandangan kita tentang negara dan masyarakat.
Bagian teoritis akan membahas beragam teori kewarganegaraan yang berkembang, seperti teori kewarganegaraan liberal, komunitarian, dan kosmopolitan, serta perbandingan antara aliran-aliran ini dalam konteks hubungan antara individu, negara, dan dunia internasional. Teori-teori ini dipresentasikan dengan mempertimbangkan konteks sosial, politik, dan budaya yang memengaruhi pembentukan konsep kewarganegaraan di berbagai belahan dunia.
Sementara itu, bagian praksis membahas penerapan berbagai pemikiran kewarganegaraan dalam kehidupan nyata. Buku ini mengkaji bagaimana teori-teori kewarganegaraan diterjemahkan ke dalam kebijakan publik, sistem hukum, dan struktur sosial yang ada di berbagai negara. Bagian ini juga menggali isu-isu kontemporer, seperti kewarganegaraan global, migrasi, hak asasi manusia, dan tantangan kewarganegaraan dalam era globalisasi dan digitalisasi.
Melalui buku ini, pembaca diharapkan dapat memahami dinamika aliran pemikiran kewarganegaraan yang berkembang, serta dampaknya terhadap pembentukan identitas dan partisipasi dalam kehidupan bernegara, baik dalam konteks lokal maupun global.
What kind of education is needed for democracy? How can education respond to the challenges that current democracies face? This unprecedented Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the most important ideas, issues, and thinkers within democratic education. Its thirty chapters are written by leading experts in the field in an accessible format. Its breadth of purpose and depth of analysis will appeal to both researchers and practitioners in education and politics. The Handbook addresses not only the historical roots and philosophical foundations of democratic education, but also engages with contemporary political issues and key challenges to the project of democratic education.
In 1895, pioneering theorists of state schooling James McLellan and John Dewey wrote that
This chapter explores how different orientations within philosophy of education are reflected in the ways in which philosophers of education have engaged with multiculturalism. I discuss some central themes – including recognition, integration and the ideal of the common school – that have been addressed by philosophers of education writing on issues of multiculturalism and diversity. Focusing mainly on the analytic/Anglophone tradition, I consider the ways in which a rigorous philosophical engagement with educational policy and practice has both enriched and problematised central conceptual distinctions and positions within mainstream political philosophy. I conclude by reflecting on some historical shifts within the field, and draw on critical pedagogy and social justice pedagogy, as well as on a personal narrative, in reflecting on the tensions and complexities raised by a consideration of multiculturalism and the challenges they suggest for educators and philosophers of education.
In this chapter Elizabeth Edenberg considers the problem children, conceived of as future citizens, pose to understanding the scope and limits of Rawls’s Political Liberalism by focusing on the civic education of children. Can a politically liberal state provide all children the opportunity to become reasonable citizens? Or does the cultivation of reasonableness require comprehensive liberalism? In considering these questions, the author shows that educating children to become reasonable in the way Rawls outlines imposes a demanding requirement that conflicts with Rawls’s aim of including a wide constituency in the scope of political liberalism. Rawls’s aim of making reasonableness broadly inclusive for political purposes is in tension with his goal of using reasonableness as the standard that delineates the scope of liberal legitimacy. Edenberg argues that political liberalism can and should try to cultivate the reasonableness of its future citizens through the civic education of children. However, a defensible version of political liberal civic education requires introducing a bifurcation within Rawls’s conception of reasonableness. A political liberal form of civic education should aim towards the inclusive scope of reasonableness by cultivating reasonableness in only two of what appear to be three senses that Rawls emphasizes. Teaching children that legitimacy requires embracing public reason demands more than may be justifiably required by a state that seeks to be broadly inclusive.
A previous study has justified the idea that a politically liberal conception of formal education can be applied in a developing democracy if such a society has reached a narrow overlapping consensus on its education system or modifies its education system from a minimally coercive perspective. This study further considers the fundamental question of how to determine such an educational account’s curriculum elements. In this sense, this study aims to provide a perspective on determining some core curriculum elements of a politically liberal conception of formal education, while focusing its attention to developing democracies.
Education has always been a significant topic of interest not only for theorists and practitioners of education but also for political philosophers. Philosophers aimed to describe the relation between education and democracy by referring to various functions that educational institutions can play for contributing the improvement of democracy since the time of Stoics in Ancient Greece and Rome. This paper aims to draw the conceptual and moral boundaries of what democratic education amounts to. When dealing with the meaning of democratic education, there is one significant matter that is the source of confussion for many of us: whether democratic education and liberal education are same, and if not, to what extent they are different. In line with this question, this paper argues that democratic education cannot be reduced to liberal education in the sense of promoting merely liberal values but it should be founded on the idea of creating autonomous citizens as a necessary minimum liberal requirement. Thus, it is claimed that, along with the value of autonomy, democratic education may promote various different values at the same time as long as these values are not unreasonable in the sense of disrespecting the equal moral status of every citizen. First, arguments regarding the concept of autonomy that are developed by political liberalism and classical/comprehensive liberalism are analyzed comparatively. Second, the significance of the promotion of autonomy as a moral principle in democratic education is discussed. Third, possible other values that can be supported along with autonomy are outlined. Since this paper is a theoretical analysis which aims to examine critically certain contemporary liberal theories on education, it does not intend to focus on the practical field of education.
A central task in contemporary political philosophy is to identify principles governing political life where citizens disagree deeply on important questions of value and, more generally, about the proper ends of life. The distinctively liberal response to this challenge insists that the state should as far as possible avoid relying on such contested issues in its basic structure and deliberations. David McCabe critically surveys influential defenses of the liberal solution and advocates modus vivendi liberalism as an alternative defense of the liberal state. Acknowledging that the modus vivendi approach does not provide the deep moral consensus that many liberals demand, he defends the liberal state as an acceptable compromise among citizens who will continue to see it as less than ideal. His book will interest a wide range of readers in political philosophy and political theory.
No account of contemporary politics can ignore religion. The liberal democratic tradition in political thought has long treated religion with some suspicion, regarding it as a source of division and instability. Faith in Politics shows how such arguments are unpersuasive and dependent on questionable empirical claims: rather than being a serious threat to democracies' legitimacy, stability and freedom, religion can be democratically constructive. Using historical cases of important religious political movements to add empirical weight, Bryan McGraw suggests that religion will remain a significant political force for the foreseeable future and that pluralist democracies would do well to welcome rather than marginalize it.
Weaving together history, philosophy, and curriculum, Grappling with the Good offers a vision of public education in which students learn to engage respectfully with the diversity of beliefs about how to live together in society. Robert Kunzman argues that we can and should help students learn how to talk about religion and morality, and bring together our differing visions of life. He describes how such an approach might work in the K'12 setting, explores central philosophical principles, and shares his ongoing experiences and insights in helping students to 'grapple with the good.'
School choice has lately risen to the top of the list of potential solutions to America's educational problems, particularly for the poor and the most disadvantaged members of society. Indeed, in the last few years several states have held referendums on the use of vouchers in private and parochial schools, and more recently, the Supreme Court reviewed the constitutionality of a scholarship program that uses vouchers issued to parents. While there has been much debate over the empirical and methodological aspects of school choice policies, discussions related to the effects such policies may have on the nation's moral economy and civil society have been few and far between. School Choice, a collection of essays by leading philosophers, historians, legal scholars, and theologians, redresses this situation by addressing the moral and normative side of school choice. The twelve essays, commissioned for a conference on school choice that took place at Boston College in 2001, are organized into four sections that consider the relationship of school choice to equality, moral pluralism, institutional ecology, and constitutionality. Each section consists of three essays followed by a critical response. The contributors are Patrick McKinley Brennan, Charles L. Glenn, Amy Gutmann, David Hollenbach, S. J., Meira Levinson, Sanford Levinson, Stephen Macedo, John T. McGreevy, Martha Minow, Richard J. Mouw, Joseph O'Keefe, S. J., Michael J. Perry, Nancy L. Rosenblum, Rosemary C. Salomone, Joseph P. Viteritti, Paul J. Weithman, and Alan Wolfe.
John Stuart Mill's essay On Liberty, published in 1859, has had a powerful impact on philosophical and political debates ever since its first appearance. This volume of newly-commissioned essays covers the whole range of problems raised in and by the essay, including the concept of liberty, the toleration of diversity, freedom of expression, the value of allowing ‘experiments in living’, the basis of individual liberty, multiculturalism and the claims of minority cultural groups. Mill's views have been fiercely contested, and they are at the centre of many contemporary debates. The essays are by leading scholars, who systematically and eloquently explore Mill's views from various perspectives. The volume will appeal to a wide range of readers including those interested in political philosophy and the history of ideas. © Cambridge University Press 2008 and Cambridge University Press, 2009.
This book attempts to reconfigure feminism in a way that responds to cultural diversity. The author contends that a discourse of rights can be formulated and that this task is crucial to negotiating a balance between women's interests and multicultural claims.
In diesem Beitrag soll dem Markt-Modell der freien Schulwahl eine Sichtweise gegenubergestellt werden, die in politischen Formen liberalen Denkens wurzelt. Â… Das Ziel des vorliegenden Beitrags besteht nicht in der Entwicklung einer Argumentation fur oder gegen die Schulwahl, sondern darin, die Debatte daruber von der einseitigen Ausrichtung auf wirtschaftsliberales Gedankengut zu befreien. Die alternativen Konzeptionen sind mit dem Markt-Modell vereinbar, konnen aber unabhangig davon vertreten werden. Sie gehen von der Frage aus, wie mit dem faktisch vorhandenen religiosen, weltanschaulichen, kulturellen und padagogischen Pluralismus in modernen Gesellschaften umzugehen ist. Die Idee der Schulwahl bietet eine mogliche Antwort auf diese Frage: Demnach sollen Eltern die Freiheit haben, uber die schulische Bildung ihrer Kinder entsprechend ihren eigenen Wertvorstellungen zu bestimmen. Der in liberaldemokratischen Gesellschaften selbstverstandliche Pluralismus in der familiaren Erziehung soll auf den Bereich der Bildungsinstitutionen ausgedehnt werden. Die Toleranz gegenuber unterschiedlichen Familienkulturen und Erziehungsstilen soll zu einer Toleranz gegenuber unterschiedlichen Vorstellungen von Schule und Unterricht ausgeweitet werden. Eine Vielfalt an Bildungsinstitutionen, die auf unterschiedlichen padagogischen, weltanschaulichen und kulturellen Grundlagen beruhen, ware die Folge einer solchen Politik. (DIPF/Orig.)
The idea of school choice is often discussed as a feature of market-based educational reforms. This paper presents a different perspective on educational choice: Starting from John Rawls' "Political Liberalism", political philosophers have developed arguments for choice that are based on the values of individual autonomy and tolerance. The views of these philosophers, however, diverge in important respects. The main points of dissent - which concern the relevance of civic values and individual autonomy - are discussed in this paper. As is shown in the last section, liberal core ideas might also be used to form an argument against school choice. (DIPF/Orig.)
Recent decades have witnessed a striking decline in our commitment to the ideal of the common school. At least part of that decline may be explained by our impoverished understanding of the common education that befits a diverse society in which citizens aspire to live together on a basis of mutual respect. The widespread assumption that a common education in these circumstances must be confined to the lowest common denominator of moral commitment leads to a distorted vision of the proper purposes of common schooling. I argue that a richer vision of the purposes of such schooling can be inferred from the principle of equal respect, using Rawls's account of liberal democratic virtue. I use that argument also to clarify the kinds of separate schooling that are commendable or at least acceptable from a liberal democratic perspective. /// Au cours des dernières décennies, l'idéal de l'école commune a connu un net déclin, ce qui peut s'expliquer, du moins en partie, par notre compréhension appauvrie de l'éducation commune pouvant convenir à une société diversifiée au sein de laquelle les citoyens aspirent à vivre ensemble dans le respect mutuel. Le postulat courant selon lequel une éducation commune dans ces circonstances doit être restreinte au plus petit commun dénominateur en matière d'engagement moral entraîne une perception déformée des buts souhaitables de l'éducation publique. Faisant appel au concept de vertu démocratique de Rawls, l'auteur soutient qu'une vision plus exhaustive des buts de l'éducation commune peut dériver du principe du respect mutuel. Il en profite en outre pour analyser les différents types d'éducation distincte qui sont recommandables ou du moins acceptables du point de vue de la démocratie libérale.
Most liberal political theorists of education argue that it is better to teach students to tolerate diversity, than to protect the potentially illiberal commitments of some members of the political communities. In fact, neither approach is wholly satisfying, yet they remain the focus of much political theorizing about education. This article suggests that this misguided focus is, in part, a consequence of a focus, by liberal political theorists of education, upon the 1987 Mozert v. Hawkins court case. Mozert raised serious questions about the nature of toleration in liberal society, but from an educational standpoint, the Mozert case led political theorists to consider what curricular content is appropriate for liberal political education, rather than on the practices that democratic citizens must cultivate. I turn to Hannah Arendt to offer a critical account of the liberal responses to Mozert and then call for a theory of democratic education that fosters practices of democratic decision-making and has, as its aim, not merely to foster respect for diversity, but to allow future citizens to practice critical engagement with diversity.
Liberal multiculturalist theories argue for adopting group-specific policies as a means of securing properly liberal ends. Religious groups rarely, if ever, qualify on these accounts. This article suggests that such exclusion is unwarranted in the case of confessional religious schooling, which is meant to inculcate in students a specific set of religious beliefs and behaviors.
John Rawls claims that the kind of citizenship education required by political liberalism demands ‘far less’ than that required by comprehensive liberalism. Many educational and political theorists who have explored the implications of political liberalism for education policy have disputed Rawls's claim. Writing from a comprehensive liberal perspective, Amy Gutmann contends that the justificatory differences between political and comprehensive liberalism generally have no practical significance for citizenship education. Political liberals such as Stephen Macedo and Victoria Costa maintain that political liberalism requires a form of citizenship education that is far more demanding than that suggested by Rawls. Gordon Davis and Blain Neufeld, in contrast, defend Rawls's position. These different views have implications for the content of mandatory citizenship education, understanding of the ‘common school ideal,’ and the scope for educational choice within the framework of political liberalism. However, the differences between Gutmann, Macedo, and Costa, on the one hand, and Davis and Neufeld, on the other, might be attributable, at least in part, to their different foci. Gutmann, Macedo, and Costa focus on non‐ideal theory, specifically the contemporary American context, whereas Davis and Neufeld begin, as does Rawls, within ideal theory, and consider non‐ideal circumstances from that perspective.
For multiculturalists who favour a relativist approach, globalization and the increasing interconnectedness of societies pose a threat to cultural diversity. In this paper we show, through an exploration of the work of Martha Nussbaum, that a viable universalist feminism can accommodate a thin and so defensible version of multiculturalism. Nussbaum's treatment of culture in relation to women's education and the cultivation of capacities for world citizenship fosters inclusion of norms and traditions from different ways of life, while leaving room for a critical perspective on them. On these grounds, there is considerable scope for cooperation between comparative education and feminist philosophy's liberal theorists.
Darrel Moellendorf argues that duties of justice have global scope. We share Moellendorf's rejection of statism and his emphasis on duties of justice arising out of association in Cosmopolitan Justice. Building on Moellendorf's view that there are cosmopolitan duties of justice, we argue that in education they are both negative and positive, requiring redistribution of educational resources and transnational educational intervention. We suggest what kinds of intervention are justifiable and required, the kinds of international structures that could regulate them, and a conception of cosmopolitan citizenship to underpin education for global citizenship.
This article, contrary to many feminist interpretations, argues that Rawls s work reflects not a patriarchal inability to address coercive family structures, but a deep understanding of the role of family life in expressing diversity, individual goods, and liberty. Moreover, his later espousal of a political liberalism founded on fairness and cooperation signifies not a shift toward toleration of either patriarchy or oppression in the family Rather, by understanding the relationship between the political and the comprehensive as porous, and as neither dichotomous nor distinctly separate realms, Rawls proposes an effective strategy for combating oppression in the family while protecting comprehensive ends from political oppression. Ultimately, his paradigm accounts for the actual and the potential practices, and for the coercive and the voluntary aspects, of family life. He thus pushes "the limits of the possible."
Political liberalism, conceived of as a response to the diversity of conceptions of the good in multicultural societies, aims to put forward a proposal for how to organize political institutions that is acceptable to a wide range of citizens. It does so by remaining neutral between reasonable conceptions of the good while giving all citizens a fair opportunity to access the offices and positions which enable them to pursue their own conception of the good. Public educational institutions are at the center of the state’s attempt to foster both of these commitments. I argue that recent empirical research on the role that non-cognitive dispositions (such as assertiveness) play in enabling students to have access to two important primary goods – opportunities for higher education and desirable jobs – creates a distinctive challenge for a liberal egalitarian education in remaining neutral with respect to conceptions of the good while promoting equal opportunity.
This article asks whether centralized goal formation of the sort involved in Goals 2000 or in the development of state curriculum standards is consistent with pluralism reasonably conceived. It argues that an educational system that is consistent with pluralism reasonably conceived must (a) provide or allow every culture fair and adequate time and resources for the reproduction of its distinctive or distinguishing values; (b) provide adequate time and resources for the reproduction of the society's public values, especially citizenship; and (c) provide adequate time and resources for members of different cultures to learn from and about one another It concludes that curriculum encompassing standards and accountability mechanisms that make schools fully accountable to the state are inconsistent with pluralism and argues for flexible standards and accountability that are more narrowly focused on the state's central interests in education, but that permit significant local variation.
In the early 1990s Israel underwent a so-called constitutional revolution. According to the champions of this revolution, Israel has essentially become, as a result of this momentous event, a constitutional democracy, upholding individual freedom and liberties and allowing for judicial review of parliamentary legislation. Despite the congratulatory rhetoric, it is generally agreed upon that the constitution is still in need of some essential supplements before Israel can qualify as a fully constitutional democracy. The main question addressed in this paper is the following: is it ‘reasonable’ that Israel take the further necessary steps that qualify it as a fully constitutional democracy? The doubts raised in this regard stem from the very concerns that lead political philosophers (mainly Rawls) to stress the unique value of liberal democracy. As they argue, liberal democracy provides deeply divided societies with the best means to secure their legitimacy and political stability. Israel's political realities, I argue, defy this claim. Moreover, Israel's political realities may also carry a valuable lesson to other states, even to seemingly robust liberal democracies. It is not the purpose of the paper, of course, to argue that Israel's existing rule of government should be embraced by other states – far from that. Israel should undergo some radical changes so that it can protect the rights and interests of all its citizens. Yet, to achieve this purpose, it should transcend, I will argue, liberal democracy. As matters stand, simply strengthening its liberal character, Israel's political system may be exposed to a growing challenge to its legitimacy and stability. It should, therefore, reject liberal democracy and especially the principle of neutrality that is intimately connected with a liberal rule of government and embrace, instead, the ideal of multicultural democracy. This ideal, I argue, is better equipped to answer the need of deeply divided societies to secure their legitimacy and stability.
Recently, several groups in the United States and Canada-for example, American Indian/First Nations people, African-American males, and the deaf-have claimed the right to receive state support for cultural identity schools-that is, separate schools whose educational aims and practices are designed to reinforce a particular cultural identity. It is widely assumed that liberalism must be committed to a principle of cultural neutrality that prevents a liberal state from assigning legitimacy to such demands. This article provides a close examination of the ethical principles a liberal state may adduce in making political judgments about such matters. First, two dominant perspectives that have emerged recently within liberal political and educational theory are developed and critically evaluated and their educational implications examined. Specifically, a distinction between "strong" and "moderate" cultural identity schools is identified, and it is argued that a liberal state may legitimately support the latter but not the former. I conclude by considering several contextual factors a liberal state may have to consider in determining the legitimacy of specific demands for moderate cultural identity schools, especially demands made by disadvantaged minority cultural groups.
A liberal state based on propositions about the desirability of individual autonomy is bound to be committed to educational programmes which are incompatible with the beliefs and values of parents from non-liberal religious and cultural minorities. One response to this has been support for public funding of those separate schools which offer an education culturally congruent with the values of parents in non-liberal communities. To resolve the potential threat to liberal individualist ideals a condition of support for individual autonomy is usually attached to liberal acceptance of this solution. This condition is in conflict with the motivation which underpins the setting up of such schools. Despite the growing literature on this debate surprisingly little attention has been given to the work of Isaiah Berlin. This article draws on Berlin's version of liberalism developed within the context of a commitment to value pluralism in order to seek clarification of this liberal dilemma.
Contemporary political educators seek to elicit critical self-reflection (autonomy) alongside the commitments, affections, and dispositions that make democracy possible (democratic affect). The liberal ambition to develop a society in which each individual freely chooses a democratic polity, meaning chooses it with full knowledge, requires the improbable creation of the philosopher-democrat. By focusing their attentions on the practice of implementing a liberal society, political educators have revealed the extent to which it is beyond their reach.
This chapter argues the need to acknowledge the limitations of multiculturalism in approaching social justice in South African education, in the face of the understandable post-apartheid enthusiasm for multiculturalism. Examining policy documents and public discourse about the concept and implementation of multiculturalism as well as the concept of culture itself, the authors raises a tension between multiculturalism, on the one hand, and the frequently proclaimed policy goals of promoting a non-sexist order and of teaching critical thinking in a culture of human rights, on the other. Indeed, it is suggested that an uncritical enthrallment to multiculturalism is more likely to prejudice the education of girls by preventing a critique of oppressive practices that undermine their interests and rights. While the political liberalism that preoccupies political philosophy in the West offers little guidance on dealing with difference to countries like South Africa, the emergence of a liberal universalist feminism offers greater scope for educational intervention against oppressive practices wrongly defended in the name of multiculturalism.
This paper asks whether there are reasonable concerns about liberty raised by standards driven systemic reform. Part I explores three kinds of concerns, students' interests in autonomy and authenticity, academic freedom, and pluralism. Part II explores two ways of conceptualizing the balance between liberty and various public interests, neo-classical economics and contemporary conservative thought. The paper draws two major conclusions about standards driven systemic reform: (1) This picture of reform raises serious questions about liberty. It may be inconsistent with some liberty interests of students. It is likely to pose serious questions about academic freedom and about pluralism. These concerns should make us cautious about systemic reform and should motivate us to a broader discussion of its assumptions and consequences. (2) The best defense of public sector reform efforts against their market oriented competition is one that emphasizes the importance of political goods such as citizenship. However, standards driven reform needs to avoid linkage with any nationalistic form of communitarianism. In order to do this it needs to seek ways to balance the demands for centralized goals and an educational system with an equal concern for local democracy, pluralism and community. A view of standards and accountability that is narrowly focused on clear public interests is crucial. The paper concludes with an argument that we need to focus attention on the question of what makes for good educational communities, a discussion that is not abetted by debating issues of reform in a framework that poses choices between public sector and market approaches.
Liberalism has always had a powerful concern with the education of its citizens. But who should exercise final authority over the education-parents or the state? The answer rests, in large part, on our understanding of the character of the self-rule or autonomy to be taught. For as autonomy comes to mean unpredetermined choice, it becomes ever more difficult to justify parental control of education. In fact, parental control, supported by the earliest liberals, is now thought to produce ethical servility. Liberal theorists-such as John Dewey, Amy Gutmann, and Eamonn Callan-break with thinkers like Locke and Mill in allowing the state to override parental preferences in the name of greater equality, preparation for autonomy, and democratic deliberation. We argue that taking educational authority away from parents and giving it to the state is an illiberal policy, meaning one that fails to abide by Locke's central distinction of political and parental power. This failure will lead both to greater ethical servility and to fewer reasonable alternatives from which autonomous individuals can choose.
John Rawls claims that his system of political liberalism represents the "completion and extension" of liberty of conscience, a grand solution to the problem of religious diversity that accompanied liberalism's emergence in the early modern world. I argue that such a claim cannot withstand historical scrutiny, that Rawlsian liberalism instead represents a retreat from the commitments that drove liberal tolerationists. Rawls's political liberalism forces individuals with non-mainstream comprehensive doctrines either to change the doctrine to fit Rawls's conditions of publicity; to manufacture a "public" justification for comprehensively derived political stances; to seek to change the parameters of public debate through, for example, civil disobedience; or to advance comprehensively derived views only so long as public reasons follow in due course. The first two of these solutions run counter to the historical development of liberty of conscience, and the third fails due to Rawls's pervasive emphasis on stability. The fourth misrepresents the nature of moral reasoning and comprehensive doctrines themselves. In conclusion, I argue that underlying Rawls's liberalism is a belief-action split that has historically suppressed religious liberty and, more troubling, a type of repression that undermines the very notion of comprehensive doctrines.
INTRODUCTION. It is easy and popular these days to be a political liberal. Compared to ‘ethical liberals’, who justify the use of state power by way of one or another conception of people's true moral nature, ‘political liberals’ seek a less controversial foundation for liberal politics. Pioneered within the past twenty years by John Rawls and Charles Larmore, the ‘political liberal’ approach seeks to justify the coercive power of the state by reference to general political ideas about persons and society. Since it abandons the debates about personal moral value that have historically dogged liberal theory, political liberalism offers itself as a more latitudinarian, indeed a more liberal, form of liberalism. Being a political liberal is not the only way to be a good liberal, but this approach has become prevalent enough that I shall focus upon it here. At the same time, it is not so easy or popular these days to be a compassionate conservative. As a presidential candidate in 2000, George W. Bush sprinkled his campaign speeches with references to a new, more compassionate form of conservatism. Unlike some forms of conservative thinking, Bush's stated approach rested not on the ideal of cutting back public spending for welfare, assistance, or schooling programs, with the goal of returning the provision of such goods to the realm of the market and activity among voluntary associations. Instead, Bush emphasized his determination to retain a large public role in the provision of social services, but to remodel the way in which such services are delivered.
This article addresses an idea central to liberal debates on civic education: the spillover thesis. Both egalitarian liberals and their religious opponents in these debates claim that liberal civic education creates spillover effects into the way individuals assess the meaning of their own lives. Some religious citizens fear that their politically reasonable conceptions of the good life are being undermined by education that emphasizes the practice of autonomous reasoning. Egalitarian liberals usually acknowledge this risk or cost, but deny that religious citizens should be given special dispensation from the burdens of autonomous reasoning. Some may even hope that conservative religious beliefs will be eroded by the practice of liberal civic education. This article disputes the spillover thesis. Given the best evidence available from the field of cognitive psychology, we challenge the notion that critical personal reflection about public matters is bound to spillover into critical reflection about private moral matters. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that human beings are usually well equipped to compartmentalize and are capable of reasoning in different ways depending on the context. Thus, reasonable citizens of faith are not necessarily unduly burdened by programs of civic education; nor are liberal programs of civic education necessarily going to lead us to a more secular society of autonomous thinkers. The article also speaks to a broader civic humanist tradition in political philosophy that includes Plato, Tocqueville, Rousseau, and Marcus Aurelius. For these authors, the success of a political enterprise is seen to crucially depend on the inculcation of a robust and comprehensive system of private virtue. For without private virtue, there is no public virtue. If we are correctly interpreting the available psychological research, private virtue need not be as crucially relevant for the success of common political enterprises. The inculcation of private moral virtue does not so clearly translate into making good leaders, voters, and public servants.
Many scholars have viewed the rise and political influence of religious conservatives in the U.S. with some alarm, arguing that their commitments are so illiberal and undemocratic as to be a substantial threat to the creation and maintenance of a just and stable democratic polity. In particular, many worry that religious conservatives lack the requisite civic virtues necessary to making pluralist democracies work. After attending to what sorts of virtues a good citizen ought to possess, we present evidence drawn from interviews with state-level religious conservative activists suggesting that political mobilization and integration into institutions of deliberation and electoral contestation actually works to make them better citizens, at least with respect to one important virtue, political autonomy. If such engagement can temporize the dangers politicized religion can sometimes pose, those concerned about religion's public influence might have their fears eased. Religious conservative activists can make for good citizens, fellow participants in the project of constructing a common political order that is durable, decent, and democratic.
With the rise of feminist and cultural protests, political liberalism has been criticized for promoting a version of public neutrality that does not take diversity seriously and marginalizes sexual, religious and cultural minorities. Thus, the "politics of difference" has been seen as a legitimate democratic alternative to a kind of liberalism hostile to diversity. Stephen Macedo aims to show that political liberalism respects a broad range of conceptions of the good and of ways of life, but cannot accommodate minorities who reject pluralism itself in order to maintain their group identity and whose claims and practises impede civic education and undermine toleration.
A familiar view of civic education is that it should make emotional allegiance to basic political institutions its paramount aim and curtail social criticism as a potential threat to that allegiance. Civic education so conceived is inimical to the political virtues that befit a liberal democracy, even when democracy is understood in ways that emphasize representation over participation. Nevertheless, critical reason may also seem to be an inadequate basis for political virtue if reason cannot nourish the affective engagement in politics that such virtue requires. A conception of political virtue is outlined that claims to give both criticism and emotional engagement their due, and the educational implications of that conception are explored in relation to the development of a sense of history.
Rejoinder: Pluralism and Polarization
- Macedo
The Separation of Church and State and the Obligations of Citizens
- Audi
Liberalism: The New Twist
- Hampshire