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Beyond Democratic Justice: a Further Misgiving about Citizenship Education
Author(s) -
Kristjánsson Kristján
Publication year - 2004
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/j.0309-8249.2004.00376.x
Subject(s) - citizenship , democracy , economic justice , citizenship education , sociology , philosophy of education , social justice , higher education , social science , political science , law , politics
This paper begins by rehearsing some commonly heard conservative and radical objections to the idea of citizenship education. I then explore another potentially radical objection, implicit in the tenets of ‘character education’ and ‘socio‐emotional learning’ but rarely stated explicitly. According to this objection, citizenship education, with its overarching ideal of democratic justice, politicises values education beyond good reason by assuming that political literacy and specific (democratic) social skills, rather than transcultural moral and emotional ‘basics’, are the primary values to be transmitted. I show how this objection is based on three major disagreements about (a) the good and the right, (b) pluralism and (c) the connection between morality and politics.