Education, Paideia and Democracy: Experiences of the U.S. Educational System
Titel:
Education, Paideia and Democracy: Experiences of the U.S. Educational System
Auteur:
John Sargis
Verschenen in:
International journal of inclusive democracy
Paginering:
Jaargang 2 (2005) nr. 1 pagina's 6
Jaar:
2005
Inhoud:
Today there are few thinking people who would deny that the public school system in the United States of America is broken and cannot be reformed. The failures of public schooling are variously attributed to the shortcomings of its teachers, its students (and their parents), or its administrators. Rarely is the system of educating our youth seriously questioned by those who educate, and never critiqued by others. We contend that the system of public education is fundamentally flawed; that its purpose is not, as common belief has it, to educate, to enlighten, and thereby to produce citizens who act in both their own and in their society’s best interests, that is, citizens for a true democracy. In fact, viewed historically and conceptually, the purpose of public schooling is to produce a mass work force which does not think for itself, but should accept without question the rhetoric and orders of the ruling economic, political, and social elite, who have amassed a concentration of economic and political power. What is needed is to reappropriate a term used in the ancient Greek world, paideia; that is, a vision of educating which is an integral part of a genuine democratic society, i.e. a society aiming at individual and social autonomy-- freedom from domination. This has little to do with liberal or social democratic definitions of ‘justice’, as a granting of a certain fairness or of political rights fought for within the present institutional framework of the market economy and its political complement representative democracy. A democratic society for us implies being free from the domination and manipulation of human over human and human over Nature and this can never be achieved within the system of the market economy and representative ‘democracy’ with its inherent concentration of economic, social, ecological, and political power.
Uitgever:
The International Network for Inclusive Democracy (provided by DOAJ)
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