Abstract

Civic education is a primary aim of public schooling in liberal democratic states, which rely on a well-educated, civic-minded citizenry for their perpetuation. Because liberal democracies can differ, it is important to decide for what kind of democracy schools should be educating. Recently, deliberative democracy has come into vogue as a political - and hence civic educational - goal. Because of differences in perspectives as a result of life experiences, however, racial, ethnic, economic, and/or religious minorities are disadvantaged in deliberative settings. Even if they fully participate, and even if all citizens welcome their participation, minority group members are unlikely to be able to influence debate appropriately. Furthermore, the steps that teachers or schools might take to overcome this problem in the future themselves impose serious costs on children, especially those who grow up in segregated minority communities. These costs may outweigh deliberative democracy's putative benefits over adversarial democracy.

Highlights

  • Among liberal democratic states which rely on a well-educated, civic-minded citizenry for their very existence, health, and perpetuation, civic education is rightly seen as being an essential component of public education

  • Both through formal curricular mechanisms such as the design of history, language, and literature curricula and establishment and assessment of civics standards, and through institutional mechanisms such as open or comprehensive school admissions policies, mixed-ability classes, and recess or lunchroom rules, public schools in many liberal democratic societies are designed — at least in part — to promote the goals of establishing common civic membership and civic virtue among all students. This was one of the primary arguments given in favor of publicly funding “common schools,” as Horace Bushnell wrote in 1853: “There needs to be some place where, in early childhood, [children] may be brought together and made acquainted with each other; to wear away the sense of distance, otherwise certain to become an established animosity of orders; to form friendships; to be exercised together on a common footing of ingenuous rivalry. . . . Without this he can never be a fully qualified citizen, or prepared to act his part wisely as a citizen.”

  • Civic education in a tyrannical state will inevitably be significantly different from civic education in a democratic state — and more to the point for the purposes of this article, civic education for a democracy characterized by separation of powers, say, will be different from civic education for a parliamentary democracy

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Summary

Introduction

One reason that equal participation (or at least “vocalization”) does not necessarily translate to equal appropriate consideration within a deliberative setting is that minority groups may have such different experiences from the majority group that they come to understand how the world (or the nation) works in a way that is significantly different from, and even incomprehensible to, members of the advantaged majority.

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