Civic Education and Liberal Legitimacy

How can civic education in a liberal democracy give social diversity its due? Two complementary concerns have informed a lot of liberal thinking on this subject. Liberals like John Stuart Mill worry that "the plea of liberty" by parents not block "the fulfillment by the State of its duties" to children. They also worry that civic education not be conceived or conducted in such a way as to stifle "diversity in opinions and modes of conduct."' Some prominent contemporary theorists add a new and interesting twist to these common--concerns. They criticize liberals like Mill and Kant for contributing to one of the central problems, the stifling of social diversity, that they are trying to resolve.2 The comprehensive liberal aim of educating children not only for citizenship but also for individuality or autonomy, these political liberals argue, does not leave enough room for social diversity. Would a civic educational program consistent with political liberalism accommodate significantly more social diversity than one guided by comprehensive liberalism?3 Political liberals claim that it would, and some recommend political liberalism to us largely on this basis. This article shows that political liberalism need not, and often does not, accommodate more social diversity through its civic educational program than comprehensive liberalism. Section I examines the defining difference between political and comprehensive liberalism and suggests why we might expect to find a significant difference in the accommodation of social diversity by political and comprehensive liberalism through civic education.

Nowadays it often appears that liberals have been outflanked on the issue of diversity. Political activists and theorists increasingly insist that greater weight be given to what distinguishes particular groups from others. Those who clamor for a "politics of difference" are as likely to be attacking as seeking to extend liberal values and practices. Iris Marion Young, for example, wants a politics that "attends to rather than represses difference," in which no group "is stereotyped, silenced, or marginalized."' She dismisses the ideal of impartiality and such notions as moral universality, human nature, essentialism, and various other pre-postmodern sins and vices, because all deny the basic significance of group-based differences: "Groups cannot be socially equal unless their specific experience, culture, and social contributions are publicly affirmed and recognized."2 Young rejects "melting pot ideals of assimilation and unity," not surprisingly, arguing that the "desire for political unity will suppress difference, and tend to exclude some voices and perspectives from the public."3 She advocates "bilingual-

There are significant inequalities in the lives of America’s children, including inequalities in the education that these children receive. These educational inequalities include not only disparities in funding per pupil but also in class size, teacher qualification, and resources such as books, labs, libraries, computers, and curriculum, as well as the physical condition of the school and the safety of students within it. While not all schools attended by poor children are bad schools, and not all schools attended by well-off children are good schools, there are clear patterns. Poor children are more likely to attend crowded and poorly equipped schools with less qualified teachers than the children of more affluent families. They are less likely to have computers, books, and advanced placement academic courses. To give one example of the differences in school resources, the wealthiest districts in New York spent more than $25,000 per pupil at the same

In 1977, Jane English pointed out that "by making the parties in the original position heads of families rather than individuals, Rawls makes the family opaque to claims of justice." Since then, a number of feminists have written on issues having to do with gender and the family in Rawls's A Theory ofJustice. 1 I argued in two earlier articles, and then in Justice, Gender, and the Family, that the absence of a discussion of justice in families and justice and gender was a significant problem, for reasons both internal and external to the theory.' I also argued, however, that Rawls's theory of justice had very great potential to address these issues. And I have tried to make some suggestions as to what a feminist extension of Rawls's ideas might include. I shall turn to these later in this article. In the introduction to Political Liberalism, Rawls mentions, as one of a number of "major matters" omitted from Theory, "the justice of and in the family." He reminds us that he did, however, "assume that in some form the family is just."3 It is not at all clear that, in Political Liberalism, he still holds to this assumption, or even to the requirement that families ought to be thought of in terms ofjustice. In publications

The question of whether those who think of themselves as egalitarians really do, or should, value equality has received considerable attention in recent years. Alternative principles have been offered as better capturing those distributive intuitions formerly known as ‘egalitarian’. Some endorse sufficiency—comparisons do not matter; what is important is that all have enough. Others favor giving priority to the worse off. The

The Law of Peoples

In the old days, material egalitarians tended to favor equality of outcome advantage, on some suitable conception of advantage (happiness, resources, etc.). Under the influence of Dworkin’s seminal articles on equality, contemporary material egalitarians have tended to favor equality of brute luck advantage—on the grounds that this permits people to be held appropriately accountable for the benefits and burdens of their choices. I shall argue, however, that a plausible conception of egalitarian justice requires neither that brute luck advantage always be equalized nor that people always bear the full cost of their voluntary choices. Instead, justice requires that initial opportunities for advantage be equalized—roughly along the lines suggested by Arneson and Cohen. Brute luck egalitarianism and initial opportunity egalitarianism are fairly similar in motivation, and as a result they have not been adequately distinguished. Once the two views are more clearly con-

Many recent arguments for rights or exemptions for religious or other cultural groups that may not themselves be liberal are based on liberal premises—whether the central liberal value be individual autonomy or tolerance for diversity of ways of life. Any consistent defense of group rights or exemptions that is based on liberal premises has to ensure that at least one individual right—the right to exit one’s group of origin—trumps any group right. What this entails will be explored later, but for several reasons, the claim itself seems prima facie incontrovert-

There has been an explosion of interest in the concept of citizenship among political theorists. In 1978, it could be confidently stated that "the concept of citizenship has gone out of fashion among political thinkers" (van Gunsteren 1978, p. 9). Fifteen years later, citizenship has become the "buzz word" among thinkers on all points of the political spectrum (Heater 1990, p. 293; Vogel and Moran 1991, p. x). There are a number of reasons for this renewed interest in citizenship in the 1990s. At the level of theory, it is a natural evolution in political discourse because the concept of citizenship seems to integrate the demands ofjustice and community membership-the central concepts of political philosophy in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively. Citizenship is intimately linked to ideas of individual entitlement on the one hand and of attachment to a particular community on the other. Thus it may help clarify what is really at stake in the debate between liberals and communitarians. Interest in citizenship has also been sparked by a number of recent political events and trends throughout the world-increasing voter apathy and long-term welfare dependency in the United States, the resurgence of nationalist movements in Eastern Europe, the stresses created by an increasingly multicultural and multiracial population in Western Europe, the backlash against the welfare state in Thatcher's England, the failure of environmental policies that rely on voluntary citizen cooperation, and so forth. These events have made clear that the health and stability of a modern democracy depends, not only on the justice of its 'basic structure' but also on the qualities and attitudes of its citizens:' for example,

Globalization and Citizenship Education in Hong Kong and Taiwan

Mapping Educational Opportunity: Spatial Analysis and School Choices

In recent years there has been an explosion of new scholarship in comparative civic education, which is reflected in this special issue of Research in Comparative and International Education (RCIE). The current scholars build on the early work of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, known as IEA. In 1975 IEA published the first crossnational study of civic education, which was based on a survey of students in nine countries (Torney et al., 1975). Almost 25 years passed before IEA again undertook a cross-national study in civic education (Torney-Purta et al., 2001; Torney-Purta et al., 1999). In the meantime, only a few researchers conducted studies that spanned multiple countries. The second IEA study, referred to as CivEd, was instrumental in bringing scholars from approximately 30 nations together on a regular basis over an eight-year period. The CivEd meetings not only produced an important study; they also stimulated cross-national conversations about research in education for citizenship and democracy. Further, as many countries and regional associations, such as the European Union, were experiencing increased interest in democratic civic education, scholars shared information about the existing research base within countries and regions. New organizations formed around comparative civic education research, such as CitizED and the Citizenship and Democracy Education (CANDE) special interest group of the Comparative and International Education Society. A growing number of individuals and teams of scholars presented new research at annual conferences of these organizations. Consequently, both the quality and quantity of research in comparative civic education has increased dramatically over the past decade. The editorial board of RCIE decided that it was time to feature this active subfield of comparative education in a special issue of the journal on comparative civic education research. Our goal was to illustrate the diversity of research methods employed and the varied types of questions explored by researchers. We sought to highlight work from a wide range of countries and regions and from both senior scholars and new scholars. In the past, other than the large-scale IEA studies, much of the research in civic education has been nation-specific, and published articles most often focused on civic education within a single country. In this issue, we sought research

This study investigated research trends in civic and citizenship education by systematically reviewing research regarding international frameworks for civic and citizenship education. We focused on major international large-scale assessments – specifically, the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study, and its predecessor, the Civic Education Study. Using four electronic databases, we analyzed 135 peer-reviewed journal articles. The analysis showed that differences among countries in research interests might be linked to different cultural backgrounds. It also showed that the greatest number of articles were published in social science disciplines, education research in particular. The results highlight the necessity of investigating principals’ and teachers’ perceptions of civic and citizenship education. Future research could focus on understudied variables such as adolescents’ civic participation, and home and peer civic education contexts, utilizing diverse variables from the ICCS 2016 data. By summarizing and discussing research trends, this study provides a blueprint for future research in the field of civic and citizenship education.

Next article No AccessEquality of OpportunityCharles FrankelCharles Frankel Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Ethics Volume 81, Number 3Apr., 1971 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/291810 Views: 69Total views on this site Citations: 20Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Mitja Sardoč The trouble with merit, Theory and Research in Education 20, no.22 (Jun 2022): 135–144.https://doi.org/10.1177/14778785221108844Rodney E. Hero, Morris Levy Unequal values: equality and race in state of the union addresses, 1960–2018, The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics 6, no.33 (Oct 2021): 499–528.https://doi.org/10.1017/rep.2021.21Winston C. Thompson A limited defense of talent as a criterion for access to educational opportunities, Educational Philosophy and Theory 53, no.88 (Aug 2020): 833–845.https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1804358Mitja Sardoč Patriotism and Its Critics, (Jul 2020): 1–8.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54484-7_29Ngozi Chuma- Umeh Issues of Human Right to Basic Education and Equality of Educational Opportunity in Africa: A Case Study of Nigeria, (Jul 2017): 7–27.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53703-0_2Nicola Riva Equal Chances and Equal Options: Two Conceptions of Equality of Opportunity, Ratio Juris 28, no.22 (May 2015): 293–306.https://doi.org/10.1111/raju.12083Derrick Darby, Argun Saatcioglu Race, inequality of opportunity, and school choice, Theory and Research in Education 13, no.11 (Mar 2015): 56–86.https://doi.org/10.1177/1477878515572288Oscar Espinoza Solving the Equity/Equality Conceptual Dilemma: A New-Goal Oriented Model to Approach Analyses Associated with Different Stages of the Educational Process, (Nov 2009): 127–143.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3221-8_9Oscar Espinoza Solving the equity–equality conceptual dilemma: a new model for analysis of the educational process, Educational Research 49, no.44 (May 2008): 343–363.https://doi.org/10.1080/00131880701717198Elaine Ridge, Yusef Waghid Equity and Distance Education, Equity & Excellence in Education 34, no.33 (Dec 2001): 80–86.https://doi.org/10.1080/1066568010340310John Edwards Group Rights v. Individual Rights: The Case of Race-Conscious Policies, Journal of Social Policy 23, no.11 (Jan 2009): 55–70.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279400021322Bert C. Buzan MERITOCRACY'S CONVERT: JUSTICE WHITE AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, Southeastern Political Review 21, no.44 (Nov 2008): 803–821.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.1993.tb00391.xRichard J. Ellis Rival Visions of Equality in American Political Culture, The Review of Politics 54, no.22 (Aug 2009): 253–280.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034670500017836John Edwards What purpose does equality of opportunity serve?, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 17, no.11 (Jun 2010): 19–35.https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.1990.9976218Kenneth R. Howe In Defense of Outcomes-based Conceptions of Equal Educational Opportunity, Educational Theory 39, no.44 (Sep 1989): 317–336.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5446.1989.00317.xAnthony F. Shorrocks The Galton Lecture for 1985: Inequality of Economic Opportunity, (Jan 1988): 47–71.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09644-2_4Alan H. Goldman The Justification of Equal Opportunity, Social Philosophy and Policy 5, no.11 (Jan 2009): 88–103.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052500001266E. A.G. Clark BALANCING THE CLAIMS FOR EQUALITY IN EDUCATION AND THE PRESERVATION OF CULTURAL IDENTITIES, Philosophical Papers 11, no.11 (Jan 2010): 40–59.https://doi.org/10.1080/05568648209506197 Felix E. Oppenheim Egalitarian Rules of Distribution, Ethics 90, no.22 (Oct 2015): 164–179.https://doi.org/10.1086/292144Robert D. Heslep Preferential Treatment and Compensatory Justice, Educational Theory 26, no.22 (Apr 1976): 147–153.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5446.1976.tb00720.x

This article examines the concept of ‘radical otherness’ from the perspectives of John Rawls’ political liberalism and Chantal Mouffe's agonistic pluralism, and studies the relevance of these approaches to contemporary citizenship education. In this context, the notion of ‘radical otherness’ refers to such ethical, political or religious doctrines that are incompatible with the basic principles of liberal democracy and thus present a potential challenge to democratic institutions. The article suggests that despite its recent popularity in political philosophy and theory of education, Mouffe's agonistic pluralism faces difficulties in providing an adequate response to the issue of accommodating radical others in contemporary democratic societies. As a rejoinder to the Mouffean approach to political education, the paper develops a view of citizenship education based on Rawls’ concept of reasonableness, and the democratic principles associated with it. It is argued in the paper that these principles—reciprocity and the burdens of judgment—are constituent elements of the symbolic space required by democratic politics. The article further suggests, however, that to properly address the issue of radical otherness in contemporary democracies, the limitations of the Rawlsian approach must also be recognised. Accordingly, Rawls’ theory needs to be complemented with a more critical understanding of the economic, social and political processes and mechanisms that currently create structural injustice and social and political inequality in contemporary democracies.