Radicalizing Democratic Education: Unity and Dissent in Wartime

Abstract

In the summer of 2002, Israeli students took their final exams toward a high-school diploma. At seventeen or eighteen, just before gaining their voting rights and beginning their military service, the civic studies exam confronted them with the question: “explain why conscientious objection is subversive.” With the stroke of a pen, decades of democratic deliberation on the balance between conscience and compliance, between majority rule and minority dissent, were eradicated. The students were presented with the conclusion, veiling a demand to condemn soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied territories. At a culminating point of their civic education, they were expected to explain why opposing the decisions of a democratic government, in the context of war, is treacherous. Comments This article was originally published as Sigal Ben-Porath, Democratic Education: Unity and Dissent in Wartime, in Philosophy of Education 2003, ed. Kal Alston (Urbana, Illinois: Philosophy of Education Society, 2004), 245-253. Reprinted by permission of the Philosophy of Education Society. NOTE: At the time of the publication, author Sigal R. Ben-Porath was affilicated with Princeton University. Currently (December 2006), she is a faculty member at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs/25 245 Sigal R. Ben Porath P H I L O S O P H Y O F E D U C A T I O N 2 0 0 3 Radicalizing Democratic Education: Unity and Dissent in Wartime