Research Catalog

Title

Democratic education stretched thin : how complexity challenges a liberal ideal / David J. Blacker.

Author

Blacker, David J.

Publication

Albany : State University of New York Press, c2007.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

x, 249 p.; 23 cm.

Summary

"Is a democratic education promoting the ideals of human equality and individual liberty still tenable in a postmodern world of increasingly diverse and competing interests? Drawing on contemporary political theorists, including Michael Walzer and John Rawls, and also on philosophers such as Descartes and Hume, David J. Blacker addresses this question, outlining the dispute between orthodoxy and proceduralism, and proposing a new approach of liberal contextualism to resolve the impasse and enrich our conception of democratic education. He discusses a wide range of controversies surrounding students' constitutional rights, religion in public schools, special education, civic and moral education, sex education, students' citizenship status, and educational accountability, and argues for change at both the institutional and personal levels. He concludes that democratic education must be allowed to connect with how individuals understand the ultimate aims and purposes of their lives."--Jacket.

Series Statement

SUNY series, the philosophy of education.

Uniform Title

SUNY series in philosophy of education.

Subject

• Contextualism (Philosophy)
• Democracy
• Education > Philosophy
• Education > United States > Philosophy

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 227-238) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction -- Politics and policies -- The impasse: proceduralism versus orthodoxy -- Complex equality and the educational sphere -- Education's institutional autonomy -- Accountability in context -- Persons and passions -- Cartesian inwardness: doubting Democrats -- Humean outwardness: reasonableness as civic friendship -- The educated prejudices of liberal contextualism.

ISBN

• 0791469654 (alk. paper)
• 9780791469651 (alk. paper)
• 0791469662 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 9780791469668 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2006004611

OCLC

64084265

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library