Democratic Theory Of Education Research Articles

Moving beyond Mozert: Toward a democratic theory of education

Most liberal political theorists of education argue that it is better to teach students to tolerate diversity, than to protect the potentially illiberal commitments of some members of the political communities. In fact, neither approach is wholly satisfying, yet they remain the focus of much political theorizing about education. This article suggests that this misguided focus is, in part, a consequence of a focus, by liberal political theorists of education, upon the 1987 Mozert v. Hawkins court case. Mozert raised serious questions about the nature of toleration in liberal society, but from an educational standpoint, the Mozert case led political theorists to consider what curricular content is appropriate for liberal political education, rather than on the practices that democratic citizens must cultivate. I turn to Hannah Arendt to offer a critical account of the liberal responses to Mozert and then call for a theory of democratic education that fosters practices of democratic decision-making and has, as its aim, not merely to foster respect for diversity, but to allow future citizens to practice critical engagement with diversity.

Harmonization of the Educational Sub-Systems of Cameroon: A Multicultural Perspective for Democratic Education

This study explains that lack of harmonization is responsible for the problems of equity and quality education in Cameroon. The objective of this paper is to inquire whether the discrepancies in achievement levels of students from the two sub-systems of education in Cameroon can be traced in lack of harmonization. To attain this objective, a mixed research method of quantitative and qualitative data collection was used to diagnose the problems of lack of harmonization in the educational sub-systems of Cameroon. Some of the problems highlighted include, lack of equity and quality education in both general and technical secondary schools. This paper therefore, exploits Dewey’s democratic theory of education, James Banks multicultural theory of education and the system theory in order to emphasize the importance of harmonization in educational development of Cameroon. A critical perspective is recommended for the process of harmonization. This emphasizes harmonization in a multicultural context. In order to produce democratic citizens for a democratic and multicultural society, a blending of values must recognize and preserve the differences that exist. That is, the experiences of learners, aptitudes and cultures must be given recognition.

Jacques Rancière’s Aesthetic Regime and Democratic Education

Abstract This article examines the shared crisis in art and education through the lens of Jacques Rancière’s aesthetic theory. Using China Mieville’s novel The City and the City as a literary model for understanding the relation between these two practices, the author argues that democratic education is, first and foremost, a reconfiguring of the distribution of the sensible. Through a critical analysis of lifelong learning, relational pedagogy, and stultifying pedagogy, the article concludes with a theory of democratic education that finds its inspiration in not only Rancière’s theory but also in Mieville’s novel.

On Equality versus Adequacy: Principles and Normative Frameworks

The adequacy principle as the criterion of a just distribution of educational resources came on to the scene in litigation in the late 1980s. At about the same time, Amy Gutmann incorporated another kind of adequacy principle, as a criterion of political equality, into her more expansive normative theory of democratic education. This distinction between a principle of distribution and the normative theory in which it is embedded should be kept in view. Thus, I will refer to Gutmann’s normative theory as the adequacy framework. I will also apply this label to similar normative frameworks held by thinkers such as Elizabeth Anderson and Debra Satz.

The Miseducation of White America

This paper was delivered at the University of Delaware during the first Louis L. Redding Civil Rights Symposium. The premise of this paper is that most public school curriculum remains a vestige of segregation. In order to desegregate public education, effective means must be developed to challenge the uniquely American racial hierarchy in which many white students view people of color as inferior. Desegregation should not simply be viewed as the process of placing people of different races in close proximity. Creating racially mixed schools as the primary remedy for desegregation has failed to promote racial equality as mandated by the Fourteenth Amendment because it has not challenged our ideas about race and racial identity. A democratic theory of education would encompass the idea of a desegregation process that includes transforming the curriculum in public institutions of education to divest students of wrongly held views about race.

Un‐contented characters: an education in the shared practices of democratic engagement

How should children be educated for democratic politics in ways that do not undermine their diverse needs, ideas, and interests? The dual challenges for a democratic theory of education are, first, to protect the pluralism of the young from standardization or indoctrination by the old, and second, to protect the social cohesion of the political community from the disruptive radicalism of its youngest members. I argue that liberal theories address this challenge by imagining an education in shared values (or content) that, in the end, undermines democracy. Following Aristotle and John Dewey, I suggest that an education in shared practices of democratic engagement provides a source of commonality that also preserves plurality.

Democracy Without Ideology?

Ockham’s razor or the principle of parsimony has come down to us as the claim of the fourteenth century philosopher, William of Ockham, that theoretical entities must not be multiplied unnecessarily. Less famous but similarly parsimonious is the claim by Antonio Gramsci that ideological elements are usefully minimized in social scientific theory. In what follows I will apply Gramsci’s razor to democratic theory considered as a central tenet of educational theory. I will identify what might reasonably be meant by ideological elements in a social scientific theory and contrast them to nonideological elements. Then I will describe how democracy functions ideologically in educational theory and, following John Dewey, will offer a nonideological democratic theory of education. Finally, I will discuss in Gramscian terms an advantage that nonideological theory exercises over ideological theory.

Democratic Education: A Deweyan Reminder

Educational historians, philosophers, and sociologists have long warned that the increasing encroachment of business logic in public schools bodes ill for democracy as a way of life. Many have concluded that the business person's interest in affecting public education is to bring about a greater bottom line, which, of course, is profit, albeit secured in the name of democratic freedom and social progress. These scholars have noted that the corporate parasite is eating away the insides of our public schools and is reproducing its hereditary material (consumer materialism) within the bodies and souls of its captive hosts: our children. Through corporate advertisements on school walls, corporate-sponsored curriculum materials and programs, and corporate-sponsored fundraisers and contests (not to mention the enormous political influence corporations have in framing the very aim and purpose of public education), corporations use schools as conduits by which to establish consumption as the ultimate expression of participatory democracy and, thus, as the supreme good and standard of personal growth. Drawing upon the work of John Dewey, this paper articulates a conception of democracy and a democratic theory of education that privileges the social over the private, the public over the corporate, such that the homo-economicus ideal that our public schools train our children to aspire to on a daily basis is checked by a wider commitment to the good life, defined in more socially benevolent ways.

Democratic Education and Social Learning Theory

THE ROLE OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE THEORY OF DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION In a passage that anticipates a large contemporary literature about the aims of public education, Amy Gutmann asserts that common schools help children to develop “the capacities for choice among good lives” so they can participate “in collectively shaping their society.” State control and the principle of non-repression prevent adults from limiting children’s deliberative scope. Though parents and community may legitimately predispose children toward some conceptions of the good life and away from others, they may not “sanction imposition of non-critical consciousness on children.”

Democracy and Education: The Missing Link May Be Ours

In this article, John Willinsky calls on educational researchers to consider participating in scholarly publishing experiments that leverage information technologies. Willinsky argues that publishing systems that provide greater public access to educational research are likely to help us to better understand and extend Dewey's democratic theory of education while promoting a more deliberative democratic state. Through this appeal, researchers can expand education's role within democracy by increasing the impact educational research has on practice and by providing an alternative perspective to the media's coverage of educational issues. The author challenges researchers to participate in this democratic experiment by thinking of their work as a way to expand global opportunities for edification and deliberation within the public sphere of this information economy.

Civic Responsibility and Higher Education (review)

During the past four decades, there has been a fascination with the relationship of education to democratic citizenship and political participation, a relationship made evident by the numerous studies on political socialization that correlate [End Page 423] education to political attitudes, behaviors, and knowledge (e.g., Almond & Verba, 1963; Putnam, 1993; Nie, Junn, & Stehlik-Barry, 1996; Niemi & Junn, 1998; Hahn, 1998). In these works, education is the single most powerful predictor of civic and political engagement, and therefore considered one of the keys to strengthening civic culture. Almond and Verba (1963) observed that among other variables "none compares with the educational variable in the extent to which it seems to determine political attitudes" (p. 379), and Putnam (1993) stated that "education is one of the most powerful influences on political behavior almost everywhere, including Italy" (p. 118). On the other hand, Nie, Junn, and Stehlik-Barry (1996)argue that political engagement (knowledge of and participation in politics) is determined by one's relative, rather than absolute, educational attainment, whereas democratic enlightenment (values and norms) increases in step with educational attainment. Although it is clear that formal education has an effect on political behavior, it is more difficult to determine if education is an independent variable or a proxy of other variables, such as social class, and school is sorting out by socioeconomic status. In addition, there has been a smaller body of work on the theory of democratic education, highlighted in 1916 with John Dewey's landmark Democracy and Education, which asserts the prominent role of education to the success of democratic culture (e.g., Dewey, 1916, 1939; Gutmann, 1987; Torres, 1998).