“The Public” in Public Schools: The Social Construction/Constriction of Moral Communities

Abstract

The question posed in this paper is: How do public schools, which are supposed to be universally accessible moral communities, engage in patterns of systematic exclusion? Through three case studies of public secondary schools, in each of which issues of exclusion of groups of students have arisen, this analysis pierces educational ideologies of “merit,” “choice,” and “tradition” as they have justified moral exclusion from public education.