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Schools as social spaces: Towards an Arendtian consideration of multicultural education
Author(s) -
AzadaPalacios Rowena
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of philosophy of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.501
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9752
pISSN - 0309-8249
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9752.12577
Subject(s) - citizenship , plural , sociology , politics , multiculturalism , citizenship education , epistemology , pedagogy , vulnerability (computing) , heuristic , environmental ethics , gender studies , law , political science , linguistics , philosophy , computer security , computer science
Hannah Arendt has been criticised for the sharp distinction she drew between the social and political realms, and her application of this distinction to schools. In this paper, I demonstrate that this distinction can be interpreted as a heuristic that Arendt developed to address a tension that she had encountered in her attempt to understand childhood. She understood schools to be spaces that could prepare children for citizenship. However, she also recognised that attempts to prepare children for citizenship threatened two characteristics of childhood: their vulnerability and their natality. Arendt's heuristic can be fruitful for addressing dilemmas in citizenship education in ethnoculturally plural contexts.