Citizenship and Education in Liberal-Democratic Societies

Abstract

Abstract The essays in the volume address educational issues that arise when national, sub-national, and supra-national identities compete. These include: how to determine the limits to parental educational rights when liberalism’s concern to protect and promote children’s autonomy conflicts with the desire to maintain communal integrity; whether, given the advances made by the forces of globalization, the liberal–democratic state can morally justify its traditional purpose of forging a cohesive national identity or whether increasing globalization has rendered this educational aim obsolete and morally corrupt; and whether liberal education should instead seek to foster a sense of global citizenship, even if doing so would suppress patriotic identification. In addressing these and many other questions, the volume examines the theoretical and practical issues at stake between nationalists, multiculturalists, and cosmopolitans in the field of education. The 15 essays included (which were originally presented at a symposium on ‘Collective Identities and Cosmopolitan Values: Group Rights and Public Education in Liberal–Democratic Societies’, held in Montreal from June 22 to 25, 2000), and an introductory essay by the editors, provide a genuine, productive dialogue between political and legal philosophers and educational theorists. The essays are arranged in three parts: I: Cosmopolitanism, Liberalism and Common Education (six chapters); II: Liberalism and Traditionalist Education (four chapters); and III: Liberal Constraints on Traditionalist Education (five chapters).