Democratic Education in a Globalized World: A Normative Theory 9780367136543, 9780367136550

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1:
Introduction
1 Global problems from an educational perspective
2 Contemporary political philosophers’ neglect of education
3 Political philosophy of education and philosophy of political education
4 The mutual dependence of education and global justice
5 Chapter-by-chapter synopsis
Notes
References
Chapter 2: Global democratic justice as the normative ground of educational public policy
1 Introduction
2 Functionalism
3 Human capital formation
4 Liberal perfectionist education
5 Global democratic justice
Justification-baseddemocratic justice
A global conception of democratic justice
Public autonomy and personal moral autonomy
6 Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 3: Global democratic educational justice
1 Introduction
2 Equal educational opportunity
From equal moral respect to equal educational opportunity
Formal equal educational opportunity
Fair equal educational opportunity
Radical equal educational opportunity
3 Democratic educational adequacy
The misapplication objection
The natural aristocracy objection
The epistemic inaccessibility objection
The leveling down objection
The parental liberty violation objection
4 Democratic educational justice
5 A global conception of democratic educational justice
6 Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 4: Global democratic citizenship education
1 Introduction
2 Domestic democratic citizenship education
Gutmann
Anderson and Satz
3 Deficits of domestic democratic citizenship education
The inapplicability within undemocratic domestic contexts
The inapplicability within undemocratic inter-, trans- and supranational contexts
The counterproductivity for domestic democracy
The counterproductivity for inter-, supra- and transnational democracy
4 A global conception of democratic citizenship education
Notes
References
Chapter 5: Global citizenship education as transnational democratic conscientization
1 Introduction
2 The formation of global consciousness
3 Moral cosmopolitan education
4 Transnational democratic conscientization
Attitudes for transnational democratic conscientization
Knowledge for transnational democratic conscientization
Skills for transnational democratic conscientization
5 Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 6: Critiques of autonomy and of education for autonomy
1 Introduction
2 The illusions of autonomy
The transparent self
The self-identicaland unitary self
The independent self
3 Normalization through education for autonomy
4 The ideology of education for autonomy
5 Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 7: Postcolonial critiques of democratic education
1 Introduction
2 Postcolonial theory
3 Western parochialism
4 Transnational practices of democratic citizenship education
5 Hubris
6 Epistemic deficiencies
7 Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 8: Conclusion
1 Introduction
2 Global democratic justice as the normative ground of educational public policy
3 Global democratic educational justice
4 Global democratic citizenship education
Notes
References
Index

Citation preview

Democratic Education in a Globalized World

Due to the economic and social effects of globalization democracy is currently in crisis in many states around the world. This book suggests that solving this crisis requires rethinking democratic education. It argues that educational public policy must cultivate democratic relationships not only within but also across and between states, and that such policy must empower citizens to exercise democratic control in domestic as well as in inter- and transnational politics. Democratic Education in a Globalized World articulates and defends democratic conceptions of global citizenship education and educational justice on the basis of a democratic understanding of global justice. It will be of interest to researchers across the fields of education, political theory, philosophy, development and postcolonial studies. Julian Culp is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Amer­ican University of Paris, France. He received his Ph.D. and Habilitation in Philosophy from the Goethe University of Frankfurt, Germany.

Routledge International Studies in the Philosophy of Education

Pedagogical Alliances between Indigenous and Non-­Dualistic Cultures Meta-­Cultural Education Neal Dreamson Education and Free Will Spinoza, Causal Determinism and Moral Formation Johan Dahlbeck Teaching and Learning as a Pedagogic Pilgrimage Cultivating Faith, Hope and Imagination Nuraan Davids and Yusef Waghid Education and the Pursuit of Wisdom The Aims of Education Revisited John Ozoliņš Flourishing as the Aim of Education A Neo-­Aristotelian View Kristján Kristjánsson Democratic Education in a Globalized World A Normative Theory Julian Culp Education and the Public Sphere Exploring the Structures of Mediation in Post-­Colonial India Suresh Babu G. S. For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-­International-Studies-­in-the-­Philosophy-of-­Education/book-­series/SE0237

Democratic Education in a Globalized World A Normative Theory

Julian Culp

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Julian Culp The right of Julian Culp to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-­in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-13654-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-13655-0 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

To Mum, Nelson and Tom

Contents



Preface Acknowledgments

1 Introduction

viii x 1

2 Global democratic justice as the normative ground of educational public policy

24

3 Global democratic educational justice

54

4 Global democratic citizenship education

87

5 Global citizenship education as transnational democratic conscientization

109

6 Critiques of autonomy and of education for autonomy

136

7 Postcolonial critiques of democratic education

161

8 Conclusion

181



190

Index

Preface

The core idea of this book is that in the present era of globalization it is necessary to rethink democratic education in institutions of primary and secondary education in two fundamental ways. First, rights to democratic education should be conceptualized not only as domestic legal rights that citizens hold vis-­à-vis their co-­citizens, but also as moral rights that every person possesses vis-­à-vis all other persons, wherever they reside. Second, the kind of democratic citizenship education that can occur through schooling should have the facilitation of democratic relations inside, as well as across, national borders as its goal. I substantiate these two novel ways of thinking about democratic education by way of articulating conceptions of global democratic educational justice and global democratic citizenship education in Chapters 3 and 4, respectively. Then, in Chapters 5 and 7, I also spell out some of the pedagogical and public policy implications of these two conceptions of democratic education. Among other things, I emphasize the importance of a particular kind of multicultural education that combines the study of general features of human cultures with the detailed, historically situated study of at least one particular culture with which students are not already familiar. Despite these very practical concerns, the major aim of this book is to articulate a normative theory that justifies why it is necessary to revise a primarily nationalist or nation state-­oriented way of conceiving democratic education. The normative vindication that I develop throughout the course of this book proceeds as follows. I begin by arguing, in Chapter 2, that education requires a normative grounding and must not be conceived as functionalist adaptation to whatever social changes might be presently occurring. Instead I claim that a particular conception of justice should be recognized as the normative ground of education and justify why justice should be conceived in a democratic and internationalist manner. Elaborating on such an international conception of democratic justice, I specify that its fundamental political requirement is to build up appropriately arranged domestic and international structures of justification that permit citizens and state representatives to participate in domestic, inter- and transnational processes of opinion and will formation. The recognition of such a conception of global justice as the normative ground of educational policy implies, first of all, that such policy should be

Preface   ix j­ustified in terms of how conducive it is in realizing this fundamental political requirement. Thus I develop in Chapters 3, 4 and 5 conceptions of educational justice and citizenship education that are informed by this international understanding of democratic justice. Following this, I defend these conceptions against the criticisms that they are normalizing and give rise to neo-­colonial thinking and practices in Chapters 6 and 7. Despite my focus on problems that my conception of democratic education may have in practice, I am afraid that many readers will find my argumentation excessively abstract and too far removed from the everyday concerns of democratic education. I acknowledge this concern but, like Kant (1960 [1803], 8), I firmly believe that the prospect of a theory of education is a glorious ideal, and it matters little if we are not able to realize it at once. Only we must not look upon the idea as chimerical, nor decry it as a beautiful dream, notwithstanding the difficulties that stand in the way of its realization.

Reference Kant, Immanuel. 1960 [1803]. Education. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Acknowledgments

The Leibniz Research Group on “Transnational Justice” at the Goethe University of Frankfurt provided a superb research environment for conducting my research on this monograph. Rainer Forst created and led this research group through the use of a Leibniz Award grant from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). He and the other members of this group – Mahmoud Bassiouni, Dorothea Gädeke, Esther Neuhann, Regina Schidel and Johannes Schulz – were extremely supportive of my research. This research group is embedded within a number of other institutions at Goethe University from which I have also benefitted immensely. These institutions are the Research Colloquium in Political Theory, the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders,” the Center for Advanced Study “Justitia Amplificata: Rethinking Justice – Applied and Global,” the Chair for Political Theory and Philosophy, the Chair for International Political Theory, the Institute of Philosophy and the Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities (Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften). I am thankful to the many individuals – both academic and non-­academic – who have sustained these institutions and have made them so valuable to me. The Department of History and Philosophy at Goethe University accepted the draft manuscript of this book as the written part of my Habilitation in Philosophy in 2018. I am very thankful to Rainer Forst, Darrel Moellendorf, Matthias Lutz-­Bachmann, Martin Saar and Christiane Thompson for having served as members of the examination committee and for having provided me with very acute comments on the entire manuscript. I am afraid, however, that I was not able to do justice to all of their critical comments. In addition, I also received invaluable comments at a book-­in-progress workshop of the Hoover Chair for Social and Economic Ethics at the Catholic University of Louvain, where I was a Bernheim Fellow in the spring of 2017. Hervé Pourtois, Nicolás Brando, John Pitseys and Danielle Zwarthoed presented incisive comments on Chapters 3, 5, 6 and 7. The debates and exchanges that I had at this and other academic events in Louvain-­la-Neuve and Brussels with Katarina Pitasse Fragoso, Axel Gosseries, Hervé Pourtois, Louis Larue, Pierre-­ Etienne Vandamme, Philippe van Parijs, Bruno Verbeek and Danielle Zwarthoed were encouraging and thought provoking.

Acknowledgments   xi Furthermore, I discussed drafts of Chapter 2 in Prague, Graz, Leuven, Flensburg, Berlin and Tutzing, a draft of Chapter 3 in Eichstätt, drafts of Chapter 4 in Berlin and Eichstätt, drafts of Chapter 5 in Buenos Aires, Leeds, Munich, Cape Town, São Paulo and Recife as well as drafts of Chapter 7 in Zhuhai and Gießen. I am very thankful to my hosts, discussants and audiences at these events, including Vitor Blotta, Alejandra Boni, Morten Fibieger Byskov, Nicolás Brando, Filipe Campello, David Crocker, Jay Drydyk, Jeanette Ehrmann, Hugo El Koli, Johannes Himmelreich, Helder de Schutter, Francisco García Gibson, Pablo Gilabert, Rebecca Gutwald, Lisa Herzog, Sabine Hohl, Lori Keleher, ­Matthias Klatt, Stacy Kosko, Regina Kreide, Jun-­Hyeok Kwak, Lukas Meyer, Julio Montero, Subin Nijhawan, Mariana Pimentel, Barbara Reiter, Ingrid Robeyns, Hartmut Rosa, Pranay Sanklecha, Michael Schefczyk, David Schweikard, Mitu Sengupta, Michael Spieker, Philippe Streit, Krassimir Stojanov, Thomas Pölzler, Fabian Wendt and Lea Ypi. Other important interlocutors were Harry Brighouse, Allen Buchanan, Johannes Drerup, Tim Engartner, Juan Espíndola, Anton Leist, Martha Nussbaum and Melissa Williams, to whom I am very thankful for their interest in my work. Conversations with my new colleagues at the Amer­ican University of Paris, where I have worked since the fall of 2018, have also been helpful in the final stages of composing this book. These colleagues include Maria Bach, Elena Berg, Valerio Coladonato, Oliver Feltham, Jessica Feldman, Philip Golub, Jayson Harsin, Peter Hägel, Michelle Kuo, Rebekah Rast, Celeste Schenck, Sharon Weill, Jula Wildberger and Albert Wu. Daniel Callies, my father John Culp, Simon Lambek and Jiewuh Song proofread draft chapters and thereby improved my writing in multiple ways. I am thankful for their willingness to carry out this tedious task. I also owe many thanks to Helena Hurd and Matthew Shobbrook at Routledge for their efficient work in turning the manuscript into a book. Their clear sightedness and kindness made our collaboration very pleasant. I am dedicating this book to my mother, Renate Culp-­Valtl, and my two godsons Nelson and Tom. My mother – as well as Subin Nijhawan, Johannes Plagemann, Nina Pauer, Andrea Simon and Volker Simon – helped me, remaining relentless while I was writing this book. Finally, I am deeply grateful to Katharina for animating my work with her philosophical spirit, as well as for so much else.

1 Introduction

1  Global problems from an educational perspective Presently, several pressing problems can be neither understood nor solved from an exclusively nationalist point of view. These are ecological, social and democratic problems such as the harmful effects of climate change, widespread extreme economic poverty and undemocratic global governance institutions. Not only the causes but also the solutions to these problems involve various actors from around the world, which is why it is apt to call them “global problems.” Social scientists (Habermas 2001, 2008a, 2008b; Beck 2008; Lessenich 2016, 50–63) suggest analyzing such global problems from the point of view of “world domestic politics,” rather than the binary perspective of “domestic” and “foreign affairs.” Similarly, moral and political philosophers argue that an adequate normative understanding of these problems requires to avoid restricting the use of the concept of justice to problems of “domestic justice” or “social justice” within states, but to extend its use to problems of “global justice” worldwide.1 The adoption of the perspectives of global justice is also imperative in the case of educational public policy, especially as it pertains to school education – that is, institutions of primary and secondary formal education.2 This is because, first, to the extent that the solutions to problems such as extreme economic poverty require actions of various actors from around the world, citizenship education through schooling must no longer be limited to nurturing a consciousness for domestic justice.3 Rather, it has to be conceived in terms of what is usually referred to as global citizenship education and must contribute to the creation of a motivationally effective consciousness for global justice.4 Second, as a particular kind of school education of a certain quality is a necessary condition for solving global problems such as large-­scale extreme economic poverty, the rights to such an education should be understood as a matter of global educational justice (cf. Bloom 2004). This is to say that states should not be regarded as the only actors that bear moral responsibility for the realization of the rights to education of their citizens. Instead, other public actors, such as other states and international organizations, should also be recognized as carriers of such responsibility.5 Thereby, global problems such

2   Introduction as extreme economic poverty – as well as, although differently so, the harmful effects of climate change and undemocratic global governance institutions – have a bearing on issues of global citizenship education, on the one hand, and global educational justice, on the other. However, thus far, the philosophical literature on global justice has neither tackled the issue of the particular ways in which global citizenship education should nurture which kind of consciousness for global justice. Nor has it determined which rights to which kind of school education should be recognized as a matter of global educational justice. Several of the existing conceptions of citizenship education have a domestic bias and consider merely which consciousness citizenship education would have to nurture in order to deal properly with domestic problems (cf. Gutmann 1987; Anderson 2007; Lange 2010; Lange and Himmelmann 2007; Satz 2007). Other conceptions of citizenship education, by contrast, do not have such a bias and take global problems into consideration (cf. Suárez-Orozco and Qin-­Hilliard 2004; Suárez-Orozco 2007; Suárez-Orozco and Sattin-­Bajaj 2010). However, they fail to be informed by theories of global justice and therefore lack a systematic normative-­theoretical exploration and treatment of global problems. Similarly, the existing conceptions of educational justice also have a domestic bias, as they specify merely which rights to education exist as a matter of domestic justice (cf. Brighouse 2000; Anderson 2004; Brighouse and Swift 2006a, 2009a, 2014a; Satz 2007; Stojanov 2006, 2011; Swift 2003). This is why, I argue, it is necessary to reformulate and justify anew the principles of global educational justice and global citizenship education on the basis of a theory of global justice. Therefore, this book aims at developing novel conceptions of global educational justice and global citizenship education by fleshing out the normative implications of a particular conception of global justice for educational public policy. These conceptions of global educational justice and of global citizenship education consist of principles which determine which moral rights to education individuals have as a matter of global justice and which kind of consciousness for global justice should be promoted in which ways by global citizenship education. Thus, the idea that guides this book is that educational public policies that address primary and secondary institutions of formal education should be normatively justified by reference to a conception of global rather than merely domestic justice or some other normative ground. By working out this idea, this book provides a normative conception of how educational public policy bears on the solution of global problems that is based on considerations of global justice. The aims of this introductory chapter are to emphasize the importance of engaging with the demands of global justice in educational public policy and to outline the argumentative trajectory that I will pursue in order to articulate and defend my conceptions of global educational justice and global citizenship education. To achieve these two aims, this introductory chapter unfolds as follows. In Section 2 I begin to elaborate on the neglect of normative issues of education by contemporary political philosophers. I qualify this

Introduction   3 neglect in Section 3 by showing that there is actually a considerable amount of current philosophical research on what could be dubbed political philosophy of education and philosophy of political education. In Section 4, however, I argue that neither political philosophers (of education) nor philosophers of (political) education have thus far examined the relevance of global justice theorizing for educational public policy. On the one hand, I will thereby lend support to the claim that contemporary political philosophers have neglected thus far normative problems of education. On the other hand, however, my argument also points out that there has been a certain neglect of political philosophy by contemporary philosophers of education, since these philosophers of education have failed to incorporate the recent findings of the theories of global justice in their conceptions of educational justice and citizenship education. This book fills the gap in the philosophical literature that has resulted from this specific kind of mutual neglect by way of bridging the literatures in philosophy of education and political philosophy. Section 5 lays out the particular way in which this book does so by outlining the overall argumentation of this book in the form of a chapter-­by-chapter synopsis.

2  Contemporary political philosophers’ neglect of education Lately, several philosophers – including Axel Honneth (2015) and Martha Nussbaum (2010) – have critically argued that contemporary political philosophers fail to pay sufficient attention to normative questions of educational public policy. Honneth (2015), for example, expressed such a concern in his recent essay “Education and the Democratic Public Sphere – A Neglected Chapter of Political Philosophy.” Therein, he laments the fact that political philosophers engage so little with questions of democratic education: To be sure, efforts are still made to reinvigorate theoretical reflection on democratic education, but nowadays these efforts tend to come from a pedagogical discourse abandoned by philosophers; they are no longer at the centre of political philosophy itself.… Political philosophy today seems to have lost the insight that a thriving democracy must continually reproduce the cultural and moral preconditions of its own existence by way of general educational processes.6 (Honneth 2015, 19) One reason why Honneth is so concerned that so few political philosophers address issues of democratic education is simply that educational public policies have a profound impact on political behavior and choice. As Honneth (2015, 20–1) puts it: The problem of state-­organized education is far too central to political agency and far too consequential with regard to the possibility of democracy

4   Introduction and the rule of law for it to be straightforwardly separable from the theory or philosophy of politics.7 Hence educational public policies must be part of any sensible philosophical analysis of political developments.8 Honneth (2015, 30–2) additionally emphasizes that a number of acute political problems, for example, those arising from the digitalization of economic and political life, are directly linked to questions of democratic education. In this way Honneth picks up Dewey’s thought that properly addressing political problems cannot be done without re-­thinking educational public policy. Acknowledging his debt to Dewey, Honneth (2015, 30) remarks that “Dewey … pointed out throughout his pedagogical writings that along with the various challenges that require public problem solving, the material to be taught in schools must also change.” One should therefore expect that political philosophers who grapple with the major political problems of their age would be immersed in issues of educational public policy. For example, one would assume that political philosophers would attempt to identify new conceptions of citizenship education that determine which attitudes, knowledge and skills of citizens’ educational public policy should be promoted so that citizens can act and think democratically when their economic and political lives are subject to processes of digitalization, global economic integration or ecological degradation. It is easy to provide many more examples in order to substantiate Honneth’s point that educational public policies have a pervasive impact on democracy and that these policies should therefore also occupy the minds of political philosophers. In the case of several European and North Amer­ican societies, the rise of nationalist and populist right-­wing parties,9 the proliferation of terroristic acts by citizens with migration background and the so-­called waves of refugees come easily to mind.10 What seems problematic in all of these examples, among other things, is the threat of – to use Honneth’s terminology – democracy’s “cultural and moral preconditions,” which in turn gives rise to the question of whether current educational public policies are inadequate for securing these conditions. In this way a concern for democracy seems to require reflecting upon educational public policies. In addition, several Western countries have recently adopted educational public policies that are problematic from a democratic point of view and should therefore also be subject to political philosophers’ critical analyses (cf. Nussbaum 2010, ch.  2; Nida-­Rümelin 2013, 12). For these policies have tended to adopt a narrowly conceived human capital conception of education, which means that they are oriented towards furthering the students’ future employability and economic growth (cf. Biesta 2015). Yet, again, although these changes clearly threaten the reproduction of democracy’s “cultural and moral preconditions,” so far, hardly any political philosophers have examined the recently adopted policies.

Introduction   5 A case in point for this economization of educational public policy is that for many years the Organization for Economic Co-­operation and Development (OECD) has actively promoted the idea that a greater share of each student cohort should access tertiary education.11 One aspect of the rationale for this strategy is that the number of years of formal education of a given individual correlates positively with that individual’s salary. Hence by encouraging countries to increase the number of every cohort that frequents higher education, the OECD believes they are supporting the augmentation of salaries and of economic growth.12 Problematically, however, the heightened focus on the role that schooling has for students’ future employability and economic growth might erode the understanding among educational policy makers, school directors and teachers that schooling is indeed decisive for the democratic education of future citizens.13 But what renders political philosophy’s lack of interest in educational problems so curious is not just the fact that recently adopted educational public policies narrowly favor economic objectives and thereby threaten what Honneth calls the “moral and cultural preconditions” of democracy. This lack of interest is also remarkable in light of the centrality of educational questions in the canonical texts of the Western tradition of political philosophy. As Eamonn Callan (2004, 71), for example, has remarked, “the nature of citizenship and the education suited to its realization have traditionally figured the basic questions of normative political theory.” Plato’s The Republic, for example, is as much a treatise in political philosophy as it is one in philosophy of education. For in that work Plato offers an elaborate educational theory that explains how the citizens of his ideally just city will eventually develop the kind of consciousness for justice that is assumed in his conception of justice. At the core of this educational theory is a role-­specific educational system for the respective members of the three classes that constitute his ideally just city – the elite guardians acting as philosopher kings and queens, the auxiliary guardians and the moneymakers. This educational system requires, among other things, that those who belong to the classes of the auxiliary and ruling guardians are raised exclusively within the public educational institutions and not at all within their families. Thereby this system shall ensure that the members of these classes develop an appropriate consciousness for justice, which – in Plato’s (1991, 111/433a–b) view – means that everyone “minds his own business rather than mingling in others’ affairs.” But not only ancient philosophers like Plato, but also modern political thinkers like Rousseau (1979 [1762]) and Kant (1960 [1803]) have found it necessary to devise an educational theory that would show how an appropriate consciousness for justice can come about. Both believed that any political philosophy is deficient if it puts forward a particular conception of justice, but fails to be complemented by a conception of citizenship education that reveals how a consciousness for a particular kind of justice could come about. To the extent that this systematic point about the complementary interworking of political philosophy and philosophy of education still holds true today,

6   Introduction ­ onneth’s observation about the political philosophers’ neglect of educational H problems is indeed quite bothersome, even when conceding that academic specialization requires intradisciplinary differentiation.14

3  Political philosophy of education and philosophy of political education As the previous section has shown, Honneth’s critique of political philosophers who neglect the issues of democratic education points to a serious problem within political philosophy. However, his critique overlooks a considerable amount of contemporary political-­philosophical work on education, for it is actually possible to discern quite a few endeavors by philosophers – both political philosophers and philosophers of education – to tackle questions pertaining to educational public policy. This philosophical research at the intersection between education and politics can be labeled political philosophy of education or philosophy of political education. To begin, liberal political thinkers like Stephen Macedo (1990) have offered subtle accounts of liberal virtues, and the way in which such virtues could be instilled through educational public policies, in response to communitarian, and also feminist, critiques of liberalism’s neglect of its “moral and cultural preconditions.”15 Communitarians’ so-­called social-­ontological critique questioned liberals for their abstraction from the social conditions that individuals require to be able to conceive of themselves and others as agents that are capable of individual choices. Related to this critique, another motivational critique stated that, unless individuals conceive their identity as being fundamentally constituted by shared social values and corresponding social obligations, they would not be able to bring up the motivation that is required for maintaining a liberal political order (cf. MacIntyre 1984: Sandel 1982: Taylor 1994). In response to these critiques, liberal political philosophers sought to develop an account of how a social-­ ontologically plausible and motivationally effective liberal understanding of political community and social obligation could eventually turn into reality through educational public policy. Thus, in light of the social-­ontological critique, several political philosophers have, for example, recognized the importance of membership in distinct cultural groups for the autonomous agency of individuals. Membership of such groups, they argued, is indispensable for individuals to gain the kind of normative orientation that is necessary for such an agency (cf. Kymlicka 1989; cf. also Raz 1986, 391). They have therefore defended the group rights to a relatively large degree of cultural self-­determination, because otherwise cultural groups would not be able to provide normative orientation. The defense of these rights, in turn, gave rise to demands for rights to multicultural education that would allow citizens to remain faithful to a cultural group without having to assimilate to the dominant culture of their society. Thereby, members of diverse cultural groups would form distinct cultural identities through multicultural education and become able to develop autonomous agency.

Introduction   7 In correspondence with this multicultural conception of certain rights to education and in response to the motivational critique, liberal philosophers have also defended multicultural conceptions of citizenship education (cf. Taylor 1992; Kymlicka 1995, 2001; Gutmann 1993, 1995; Tamir 1995; Macedo 2000; Williams 2003; Feinberg and McDonough 2003). Marcelo Suárez-Orozco and Désirée Qin-­Hilliard (2004), for example, have criticized the civic-­nationalist conception of citizenship education, which relies on one all-­encompassing set of characteristics that all citizens must possess. Similarly, Melissa Williams (2003, 2009) has also put into question the static character of the civic-­nationalist understanding of identity and advanced what she calls a shared fate conception of citizenship education. This dynamic conception emphasizes that the fates of those who live together in political communities are intertwined, and posits that the conception of citizenship should grow out of, and reflect, the developments of these intertwinements. By promoting such a complex and dynamic understanding of civic identity through citizenship education, these theorists have argued, an effective motivation to fulfill liberal demands of justice will eventually come about. To that effect they have also claimed that citizenship education would require teaching of the historical contingency of civic self-­understandings and the diverse kinds of interlacements among citizens.

4  The mutual dependence of education and global justice When considering these instances of what I have referred to as political philosophy of education and philosophy of political education, Honneth’s claim that political philosophy has neglected problems of education seems exaggerated. But whatever the merits of Honneth’s claim may be, it is evident that theorists of global justice, in particular, have neglected issues of educational public policy. These theorists have concentrated on a host of other practical issues including climate change (cf. Caney 2012; Moellendorf 2015), the design of international trade regulation (Moellendorf 2005; Barry and Reddy 2008; Hassoun 2012; James 2012), development practice (Pogge 2004; Culp 2014, 2016), migration (cf. Carens 2013; Miller 2016), secession (cf. Buchanan 2004), international legal human rights (Nickel 2008; Beitz 2009; Buchanan 2013) and health (Pogge 2005). This observation confirms Honneth’s claim because it implies that political philosophers have failed to engage with certain normative aspects of educational public policies. But this observation also brings to light an additional point, namely, that philosophers of education have neglected thus far the relevance of the recent theorizing of global justice within political philosophy for educational public policy. So it is not just the political philosophers who have neglected important political aspects of educational problems, but vice versa, philosophers of education have failed to recognize that political philosophers have articulated and defended novel conceptions of global justice that also influence the way in which they should think about educational public policy. Before explaining this particular neglect by philosophers of education further, consider first how political philosophers have failed to work out the normative

8   Introduction implications of their conceptions of global justice for educational public policy. The neglect of educational public policy within the political-­philosophical literature on global justice seems to be explainable by a certain kind of “institutionalism.”16 By that I mean a tendency within the contemporary theorizing of justice, and of global justice in particular, to focus on institutional analyses of how to overcome injustices.17 These analyses usually include proposals for institutional reforms in areas of global governance such as climate change, international development and migration. Theorists of global justice believe that these proposals, if implemented, would reduce or eradicate the particular injustices that they identify in these areas of global governance. Some assume that these reductions in injustice would come about even if the consciousness for justice remained unchanged under the reformed institutional arrangements. Thereby, some of these theorists display an “ordo-­liberal” way of thinking, as they attempt to achieve just outcomes merely by arranging institutional structures in ways that would incentivize individuals to act in particular ways, but without intending or expecting a change of consciousness for justice in those who are living within these structures. Other theorists like Christine Straehle (2010), by contrast, believe that, through institutional reform, the consciousness for justice would change in ways that are conducive to global justice. As a result of these kinds of institutionalism, they do not pay attention to how educational public policies could change the existing consciousness for justice in an attempt to mold citizens’ motivations in ways that would be conducive to realizing global justice. Undoubtedly, such “institutionalist” thinkers are correct in their belief that greater justice can be achieved through institutional reform, and that such gains in justice do not always necessitate a change of consciousness for justice prior to the institutional reform. Nevertheless, certain institutional reforms would be much easier to achieve and would be more effective if a change in consciousness for justice were to occur that does not simply reflect the effects of the institutional change. Therefore, from a purely instrumental point of view, examining which kind of consciousness for justice is most desirable, and which kind of educational public policies are most conducive to bringing about such consciousness, makes a difference. Moreover, institutional reforms do not get off the ground sometimes precisely due to the prevailing consciousness for justice. In such cases even the “institutionalist” political philosophers must consider which kind of change in consciousness would allow institutional reform to take place, and who could effectuate that change and in what ways. A good case in point is the supranational institutional scheme of the European Union. While it is quite remarkable that this institutional scheme could arise in the absence of a strong and widespread European political consciousness, presently, the existence of this scheme is threatened again and again precisely due to a certain lack of such a consciousness. Hence the continuity and stability of an institutional scheme of the kind that the EU represents is dependent upon the formation of a particular kind of political consciousness. Likewise, EU policies, such as the very recent decision to distribute refugees among EU countries,

Introduction   9 might have been implemented successfully if there were a European political consciousness that impelled national governments across Europe to take such decisions more seriously. I do not deny the importance of an “institutionalist” approach to theorizing justice, as those institutions that constitute the economic, legal and political background conditions of our actions are clearly highly consequential for realizing global justice. Rather, my point echoes the communitarian motivational critique of liberalism as well as Honneth’s point about the pervasive impact of educational policy that it is necessary to complement such theorizing by a greater concern for the educational public policies that affect the prevalent consciousness for justice. A change in consciousness for justice through educational public policy could either render such injustice-­reducing reforms feasible in the first place, or make them more effective or efficient. Furthermore, such a concern for educational public policies also allows theorists of global justice to respond more effectively to the critique of several liberal nationalist theorists that the obligations of global justice are motivationally too demanding (cf. Miller 1995, 65). In response to this motivational critique – which not only reflects a communitarian concern but is also akin to the critique of Plato’s conception of justice that led Plato to develop an educational theory – Lea Ypi (2010, 2011) has argued that a global justice avant-­garde must disseminate the basic ideas about problems of global injustice. Such an avant-­garde, she argues, consists, for example, of social activists working in transnational non-­ governmental organizations. However, despite the recognition of the motivational challenges related to the realization of global justice by thinkers like Ypi, hardly any political philosopher has argued thus far that adequate educational reforms were necessary to prompt the motivation to fulfill obligations of global justice.18 This confirms, once again, Honneth’s claim that political philosophers have neglected problems of education. In addition to this claim of Honneth, however, a further claim is also valid insofar as philosophers of education take little note of the most recent developments in political philosophy, in particular, those that pertain to the theorizing of global justice. This is evidenced, for example, by the lack of global justice-­based conceptions of global citizenship education, which specify which consciousness for global justice educational public policies must be promoted and in which ways. Indeed, several theorists of citizenship education have recognized that, due to the ongoing processes of globalization, they need to revise their conceptions of citizenship education (cf. Suárez-Orozco and Qin-­Hilliard 2004; Suárez-Orozco 2007; Suárez-Orozco and Sattin-­Bajaj 2010). This has led these theorists of citizenship education to devise conceptions of global citizenship education that, in one way or another, aim at preparing students for a world that is in many respects globalized. The problem with these conceptions, however, is that they are primarily oriented towards inoculating in students a global consciousness that enables them to appreciate merely how phenomena and processes across state borders are increasingly interdependent. In this way global citizenship education attempts to build up

10   Introduction a better empirical understanding of the present-­day cultural, economic and political realities that students will face as grown-­ups. Indeed, the existing conceptions of global citizenship education correctly identify a nationalist bias as the core problem of present-­day practices of citizenship education in several countries. For not only the historic, but also the present citizenship education in countries such as France or Germany continues to be characterized by a state-­centered focus. Citizenship education in these countries basically means creating citizens that assume their civic-­democratic responsibilities within their respective nation states. In France, for example, the emergence of institutions of primary and secondary education is closely tied to the formation of a democratic nation in the aftermath of the French revolution. In Germany, similarly, ever since the end of World War II the idea of building a democratic nation that would prevent the rise of yet another authoritarian regime fundamentally shaped civic education. Despite the enduring importance of national civic-­democratic education in and throughout schooling, it is problematic when political education focuses nearly exclusively on democratic relations inside states. For, under conditions of globalization, moral and political responsibility extends beyond and across national borders. This explains the importance of conceptions of global citizenship education. The problem with the existing global conceptions of citizenship education, however, is that they lack a systematic normative-­theoretical grounding. As a consequence of this, these conceptions are functionalist in the sense that they merely aim at facilitating the reproduction of the given cultural, economic and political orders, which already have been globalized, rather than attempting to change these orders in light of normative ideas about global justice. For example, speaking multiple languages and being able to navigate a variety of cultural settings are clearly “assets” in a globalized economy. But these skills do not necessarily translate into a moral concern for human beings beyond one’s own family and nation. Hence they are not necessarily conducive to establishing a certain kind of consciousness for global justice. So this kind of education may in fact contribute to the further alienation of an elitist cosmopolitan class from those who neither possess such educational experiences nor benefit from globalization.19 In addition, whenever the existing conceptions of global citizenship education do appeal to normative ideas like human rights or ecological sustainability, for example, they nevertheless fail to specify the relative moral weight of these ideas relative to other ideas that merely pertain to the functional reproduction of the already given cultural, economic and political orders. Thus the idea of human rights or of ecological sustainability could be taught alongside other “global issues” such as the liberalization of international trade or finance. In this way, however, it remains unclear how relevant, in moral terms, ideas such as human rights are relative to the increased material wealth that could be gained through an even greater integration of the global economy. Hence one crucial task of engaging with the implications of a certain conception of global justice in the domain of educational public policy is showing which kind of global citizenship education would be apt for bringing about and

Introduction   11 maintaining the kind of motivation necessary to realize the relatively demanding requirements of global justice. However, it is not just theorists of citizenship education who have failed to recognize the importance of global justice theorizing. Likewise, other philosophers of education who have been developing conceptions of educational justice also have made the same mistake. The contemporary conceptions of educational justice suffer from a domestic bias to the extent that they fail to determine the relative moral importance of realizing certain moral rights to education domestically rather than realizing certain moral rights to education globally. In this way they explore solely how educational public policy fares regarding the realization of moral rights to education inside the domestic realm. Two eminent philosophers, Elizabeth Anderson (2004, 2007) and Debra Satz (2007, 2012), for example, articulate and defend a domestic conception of educational justice, according to which justice in education requires the provision of a democratically adequate education that prepares future citizens for their role as democratic agents. Other very influential philosophers, such as Harry Brighouse (2000, 2006) and Adam Swift, by contrast, have articulated another domestic conception of educational justice that requires the realization of equal educational opportunity (cf. Brighouse 2000, 2006; Brighouse and Swift 2006a, 2008, 2009a, 2014a; Swift 2003). In both of these conceptions of educational justice, the one of democratically adequate education and the other of equal educational opportunity, a liberal theory of social or domestic justice normatively underpins the respective domestic conceptions of educational justice. In the case of Anderson and Satz, it is a certain democratic or relational egalitarian conception of social or domestic justice. In the case of Brighouse and Swift, by contrast, it is a luck-­egalitarian or distributive-­egalitarian thinking about social or domestic justice.20 Thereby these philosophers have not taken into consideration which rights to education would be required by concerns of global justice. Perhaps this way of proceeding was defensible at the time when authors like Brighouse started writing about educational justice, considering that at that time only a few theories of global justice had already been worked out, and the topic of global justice had played only a marginal role within political philosophy. Meanwhile, however, the topic of global justice attracts an enormous amount of scholarly attention within political philosophy.21 However, since conceptions of global justice involve a profound re-­ conceptualization of the requirements of justice, one cannot assume without further argument that theories of educational justice that have been grounded on conceptions of domestic or social justice can remain unchanged. To illustrate, consider the domestic conception of educational justice as equal educational opportunity. There are two versions of this conception, a weak one and a strong one, which Brighouse and Swift call the meritocratic conception and the radical one, respectively. The weak version states that all citizens with equal (natural) talents and equal motivation to use their talents should have equal chances for formal educational achievement. By contrast, the strong version holds that all citizens with equal motivation to use their talents, but irrespective of the relative

12   Introduction level of their talents, should have equal chances for formal educational achievement. A major problem of both versions is that it seems morally objectionable to fully realize equal educational opportunity domestically regardless of the educational opportunities that citizens of other states are able to enjoy. One reason why this problem arises is that fully realizing the conception of equal educational opportunity is most likely extremely costly. Therefore, the realization of this conception is likely to represent what Brighouse terms the (2000, 131) “bottomless pit” because its requirements are so difficult to meet and a seemingly infinite amount of resources would have to be spent in order to fulfill them entirely. To elaborate, consider the chances for educational achievement of students whose parents are migrants and do not speak the official language of instruction in schools. Because of their parental background, these students’ linguistic competencies will be less developed than those of students whose parents have not migrated. Due to the pivotal role of language for educational achievement, those students whose parents have migrated, other things being equal, will have lesser opportunities for educational achievement than those students whose parents have not migrated. But since these lesser educational opportunities that result from the students’ parental background cannot be viewed as a result of their natural talents or their motivation, it follows that the conception of equal educational opportunity will deem them as unjust and call for measures that would equalize educational opportunities. Now, the problem with such a call is that equalizing educational opportunities that have this kind of origin is extremely – if not even infinitely – costly. This is because simply improving linguistic competencies in the official language of instruction of those students who do not speak that official language at home is already very difficult. Yet improving them up to the point where these competencies are no longer to the students’ relative disadvantage is a truly Herculean task.22 Problematically, however, educational resources that are invested in such programs could have also been spent on educational initiatives abroad that focus on basic educational competencies of extremely poor and otherwise disadvantaged students. Hence striving for domestic educational justice understood as equal educational opportunity potentially represents an endless task that dries up motivational and monetary resources that would otherwise be available for achieving much more basic levels of education elsewhere. Thereby the full realization of domestic educational justice can hinder educational policy makers in dealing with the basic concerns of education worldwide. So while children in certain countries could lack fundamental reading, writing and basic arithmetic skills, educational policy makers in wealthy Western societies might still be absorbed by honoring the extremely demanding egalitarian requirements of equal educational opportunity. What is needed, therefore, is a more sophisticated conception of educational justice that properly relates to considerations both of domestic and of global educational justice.

Introduction   13 To sum up this section, we see that, despite the burgeoning literature on global justice, thus far neither the political philosophers nor the philosophers of education have elaborated sufficiently on the normative implications of a particular conception of global justice for how to conceive educational justice and citizenship education. This is why the existing conceptions of educational justice solely employ domestic theories of social justice, and, likewise, conceptions of global citizenship education fail to be informed by theories of global justice. Against this backdrop of a particular kind of mutual neglect between political philosophers and philosophers of education in the area of global justice, this book will elaborate on the idea that educational public policies that address primary and secondary institutions of formal education should be normatively justified by reference to a conception of global justice. In the next section I will outline how I will do so in this book by way of offering an outline of the overall argumentation in the form of a chapter-­by-chapter synopsis.

5  Chapter-­by-chapter synopsis In this discussion of the neglect of problems of education in the academic debate about global justice I have assumed all along that justice should count as the normative ground of educational public policy. This assumption is in need of justification, however, because some other normative theorists of educational public policy regard either human capital formation or personal autonomy as the normative grounds of educational public policy. This is why, in Chapter 2, I vindicate justice as the normative ground of educational public policy by way of the negative argument that these alternative grounds of educational public policy – human capital formation and personal autonomy – suffer from severe problems. In addition to that, in Chapter 2 I also argue in favor of a democratic or discourse-­theoretic conception of global justice. According to this conception, principles of global justice need to be arrived at through appropriately structured domestic, international and transnational political discourses. Thus the primary requirement of this conception is to create the social, economic, cultural and political conditions that are necessary in order to allow people to participate in the discursive co-­determination of any further requirements of justice. Therefore, I conclude this chapter by arguing that educational public policies must ensure that individuals can effectively participate in the political decision-­making processes of their respective social orders. In Chapter 3 I articulate a conception of global educational justice that determines which moral rights to education individuals possess as a matter of global justice. I defend my conception of global educational justice through a critical analysis of the two currently most dominant conceptions of educational justice in contemporary philosophy of education. These are the conception of equal educational opportunity by Brighouse and Swift and the conception of democratic educational adequacy by Anderson and Satz. Those who defend the conception of equal educational opportunity argue that offering equal educational opportunities either to those citizens with equal talents and equal motivation or

14   Introduction simply to those with equal motivation is sometimes more important than securing a democratically adequate education. However, like those who defend the conception of democratic educational adequacy, I maintain that an adequate democratic education should always enjoy priority over equal educational opportunity. My reasoning for this is simply that there is a reasonable disagreement concerning the meaning and normative importance of equal educational opportunity which must be solved – again and again – by a democratic deliberation rather than by a philosophical argument. But in contrast to those who defend the conception of democratic educational adequacy, I hold that the scope of validity of the conception of democratic educational adequacy is global and not merely domestic. The global validity of the ­conception of democratic educational adequacy implies that the right to a democratically adequate education must be regarded as a matter of global justice. So the responsibility for realizing this right to have a democratically adequate education does not fall solely upon each state vis-­à-vis its citizens, but also on the actors outside of states, like the other states and international organizations. By relying on the democratic conception of global justice, I defend in Chapter 4 a conception of global democratic citizenship education. This conception demands the formation of not only a domestic but also a transnational democratic consciousness enabling citizens to partake effectively in both domestic and inter-, supra- and transnational decision making. Therefore the aim of this conception is “transnational democratic conscientization.” In Chapter 5, I further develop this concept by determining certain ends and processes of global citizenship education which consist of certain attitudes, skills and knowledge that are necessary for exercising democratic agency on the domestic as well as on the inter-, supra- and transnational levels. They include an epistemic modesty as well as contextual knowledge about domestic and transnational political affairs. One of the processes that I identify for realizing these ends is a particular kind of multicultural education. In these ways I flesh out some of the concrete implications of my democratic conception of global citizenship education. Chapter 6 will subject my conceptions of global educational justice and global citizenship education to critiques of autonomy, which have become rather widespread in today’s German-­speaking educational theory arena. These criticisms not only question the validity of normative ideas like autonomy, but are also highly skeptical of the desirability and feasibility of educational practices that aim at realizing such normative ideas. I concede to the critics of autonomy that the ideal of personal ethical autonomy is problematic to the extent that individuals are neither fully transparent to themselves, nor necessarily possess a unitary understanding of their identity, nor are they entirely independent from their social environments. I will argue, however, that whatever the merits of this critique may be when directed at an understanding of the personal ethical autonomy, this critique does not necessarily affect my conceptions of global educational justice and global citizenship education, which affirm the moral importance of personal moral autonomy and public autonomy.

Introduction   15 After responding to these critiques, I will expose my conception of democratic citizenship education to certain critiques of the actual practice of education for autonomy. These objections say that the kind of democratic citizenship education that my conception envisions has normalizing and ideological effects that are morally problematic. I acknowledge that a certain normalization occurs unavoidably through any educational public policy, but I reject the claim that this normalization is necessarily a problematic one. Moreover, I recognize the problem that an education for autonomy can have ideological effects, but argue that these types of effects can be avoided with properly designed educational public policies. Chapter 7 begins by discussing the potential criticism of postcolonial theorists that my emphasis on universal normative standards within my conceptions of global educational justice and global citizenship education is a parochial one. More specifically, this criticism says that the use of these standards involves an arbitrary extrapolation of democratic principles from the Western to non-­ Western contexts. In response, I will argue that the mere fact that such standards have emerged in the Western contexts does not render them inapplicable to non-­ Western contexts. In addition, I defend the view that it is questionable on empirical grounds to suggest that basic normative ideas about democracy pertain exclusively to the West. Chapter 7 also discusses those postcolonial critiques, which target, more specifically, certain practical implications of my conception of global citizenship education. These critiques claim that transnational practices that are meant to promote democratic consciousness are affected by hubris and epistemic deficiencies. So despite the potentially good intentions of those who are engaged in such practices like, for example, the public officials at UNESCO, their endeavors are unlikely to be able to help them in realizing their aims of transnational democratic conscientization in practice. In response to these objections I argue that an awareness of the problems that practices of transnational democratic conscientization have will help to avoid the predicament of becoming self-­defeating. Chapter 8 concludes my argument by pointing to the major normative implications that follow from the three core claims that I defend in this book. These three core claims are that a conception of global democratic justice constitutes the normative ground of educational public policy, that rights to democratically adequate education should be recognized in all states as a matter of global democratic educational justice and that global democratic citizenship education should pursue the cultivation of both domestic and transnational democratic consciousness. Despite the normative-­theoretical character of these three core claims, the book nevertheless is oriented towards educational practice. Chapter 5 lays out several practical conclusions that follow from my democratic conceptions of global educational justice and citizenship education. In addition, Chapters 6 and 7 respond to a great many objections that concern the realization of these democratic conceptions in educational practice.

16   Introduction

Notes   1 By now the literature on global justice is vast and complex. In Culp (2014) I suggest differentiating between statist (Blake 2001; Nagel 2005; Brock 2009; Nussbaum 2006, 2011; Miller 2005a, 2005b, 2007), globalist (Beitz 1999 [1979]; Gosepath 2001; Pogge 1989; Moellendorf 2002; Tan 2004; Caney 2005, 2011), internationalist (Rawls 1999; Ronzoni 2009; Pettit 2010; Culp 2014) and transnationalist (Forst 2001; Fraser 2008; Moellendorf 2009) conceptions of global justice. Statist conceptions of global justice require merely achieving globally a certain minimal threshold of some individualistically conceived morally relevant good, but they do not demand, like the globalist, internationalist and transnationalist conceptions of global justice, more ambitious aims such as reducing the relative level of political or economic inequality among states or individuals from different states. The globalist conceptions focus on interpersonal relations worldwide, the internationalist conceptions on interstate relations and the transnationalist conceptions on relations among actors from different states that include non-­state actors.   2 By educational public policies I mean educational measures that public entities such as states and international organizations undertake in the schooling of children and youth and that aim deliberately at cultivating certain attitudes, knowledge and skills. I speak of “educational public policies” rather than “educational practices” in order to signal that I refer to public rather than private educational measures of the kind that can be found, for example, in families. My reasons for concentrating on normative demands on public measures are that these measures have a pervasive impact and that, in comparison to normative demands on private educational measures, they cannot be as easily criticized by the powerful claim that they violate familial rights to education; cf. Betzler and Bleisch (2015) and Brighouse and Swift (2006b, 2009b, 2013, 2014b) on legitimate parental partiality.   3 By citizenship education I mean educational public policies that aim at cultivating certain political attitudes, knowledge and skills in citizens. Such policies may include but are not restricted to courses of civic education in schools; cf. Crittenden and Levine (2016).   4 By consciousness for global justice I mean a motivationally effective sense of moral responsibility for realizing demands of global justice.   5 An “international” organization possesses merely an authority that is conditional on the consent of the states to which a certain rule is meant to apply. By contrast, a “supranational” institution possesses an authority for a certain policy area within certain states that is not conditional upon the consent of the states to which a particular rule is meant to apply.   6 See also Reichenbach (2002) for the claim that, conversely, theorists of (political) education have neglected political philosophy.   7 Honneth (2015, 20) also argues: With the political establishment of compulsory education, state administered schooling has become a crucial instrument for forming the habits and abilities of each new generation, influencing future citizens for better or for worse. The type, methods, and contents of school education may affect a democracy either in positive ways – for example by fostering cooperativeness and individual self-­ esteem – or in negative ones, gradually undermining democracy by teaching moral conformism and unquestioning obedience to authority.   8 Likewise, Ackerman (1980, 163) argues that “education cannot be treated as if it stood apart from the more general problems of liberal political philosophy.”   9 See for example Münkler and Münkler (2016, ch. 4) and Lobo (2016) for analyses of the nationalist right wing parties in Germany. Populist and nationalist political parties are a matter of educational public policy because their rise has not merely economic

Introduction   17 but also cultural causes, as the support of these parties by members of economic and political elites, as Thilo Sarazzin, testifies. 10 See also Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco (2013). 11 One OECD (2008, 13) report explains the economic relevance of tertiary education as follows: Tertiary education policy is increasingly important on national agendas. The widespread recognition that tertiary education is a major driver of economic competitiveness in an increasingly knowledge-­driven global economy has made high-­quality tertiary education more important than ever before. The imperative for countries is to raise higher-­level employment skills, to sustain a globally competitive research base and to improve knowledge dissemination to the benefit of society. 12 See Nida-­Rümelin (2014, 29–47) for a critique of this reasoning since the presently positive correlation between years of schooling and salary might collapse at the point where a greater number of each cohort accesses tertiary education. 13 See also Biesta (2016) on how the Panel for International Student Assessment (PISA) nourishes a competitive – rather than democratic – consciousness and OECD (2010) for an exclusively economic assessment of the relevance of improving PISA test scores. 14 This systematic connection between political philosophy and philosophy of education is also at the core of what Rawls (2005, xvii) calls “the problem of stability.” This problem regards how to ensure that a just social and political arrangement lasts over time. In Political Liberalism Rawls (2005, xvii) explains that he develops a political conception of justice, which is different from the comprehensive conception of justice that he defends in A Theory of Justice, because only his political conception of justice properly deals with the stability problem; cf. also Hill (1994) and Culp (2015) on the role of the stability problem in Rawls’s political philosophy. 15 See also Honneth (1994) and Forst (2002) on the debate between liberalism and communitarianism. For feminist views that emphasize the importance of social conditions such as an ethos of care for individual agency, cf. Gilligan (1982) and Nedelsky (1989). 16 See Holmes (1995) for a liberal account of the importance of institutions 17 This tendency has its origins, of course, in Rawls’s (1971, 5) claim that the basic structure of society is the primary subject matter of a theory of justice, which has subsequently been challenged by Cohen (1997, 2008) and sparked considerable controversy among liberal political philosophers such as Estlund (1998), Cohen (2001) and Ronzoni (2008). 18 Indeed, thinkers such as Nussbaum (1996, 1997) and Waldron (2003) have spelled out some basic ideas of an education that would nurture the motivation to realize concerns of global justice. Problematically, however, the kind of cosmopolitan education that Nussbaum and Waldron suggest is based solely on a very thin statist conception of global justice. Such a conception represents merely a rudimentary cosmopolitan morality that requires achieving a certain minimal threshold of some morally relevant good, but it does not demand more ambitious political or socio-­economic aims such as reducing the relative level of political or economic inequality among states or individuals from different states. Therefore, the kind of cosmopolitan education that Nussbaum and Waldron envision does not aim at generating those levels of motivation that would be necessary for achieving the demands of the so-­called globalist, internationalist or transnationalist conceptions of global justice. But it is these globalist, internationalist and transnationalist conceptions of global justice that contain the most innovative ideas of the recent work on global justice. In any case, even if we were to fully count the works of Nussbaum and Waldron as proper contributions to understanding the implications of global justice for educational public policy, it

18   Introduction nevertheless remained the case that relative to the sheer abundance of work on global justice in political philosophy there is very little scholarly work on the relevance of global justice for educational public policy. 19 Calhoun (2002) argues that cosmopolitanism is a certain kind of class consciousness of “frequent travelers.” He neglects, however, that the cultural cosmopolitanism to which he refers is also widespread among migrants from various classes. 20 The same holds true for the recognition-­based conception of justice that Stojanov (2006, 2011, 2018) defends, since he relies on a recognition theory of domestic justice in order to defend certain principles of educational justice. 21 For an overview cf. Brock (2015). 22 Similar considerations apply to building up the cultural capital of those students whose parents are migrants, as cultural capital is another key factor for formal educational achievement.

References Ackerman, Bruce. 1980. Social Justice in the Liberal State. New Haven: Yale University Press. Anderson, Elizabeth. 2004. “Rethinking Equality of Opportunity: Comment on Adam Swift’s How Not to Be a Hypocrite.” Theory and Research in Education 2/2, 99–110. Anderson, Elizabeth. 2007. “Fair Opportunity in Education: A Democratic Equality Perspective.” Ethics 117/4, 595–622. Barry, Christian and Reddy, Sanjay. 2008. International Trade and Labor Standards. New York: Columbia University Press. Beck, Ulrich. 2008. Die Neuvermessung der Ungleichheit unter den Menschen. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. Beitz, Charles. 1999 [1979]. Political Theory and International Relations. 2nd edn. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Beitz, Charles. 2009. The Idea of Human Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Betzler, Monika and Barbara Bleisch (eds.). 2015. Familiäre Pflichten. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Biesta, Gert. 2015. “What is Education For? On Good Education, Teacher Judgment, Educational Professionalism.” European Journal of Education 50/1, 75–87. Biesta, Gert. 2016. “Resisting the Seduction of the Global Education Measurement Industry: Notes on the Social Psychology of PISA.” Ethics and Education 10, 348–60. Blake, Michael. 2001. “Distributive Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 30/3, 257–96. Bloom, David. 2004. “Globalization and Education: An Economic Perspective.” In SuárezOrozco, Marcelo and Désirée Baolina Qin-­Hilliard (eds.). Education, Culture and Globalization in the New Millennium. Berkeley: University of California Press, 56–77. Brighouse, Harry. 2000. School Choice and Social Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brighouse, Harry. 2006. On Education. New York: Routledge. Brighouse, Harry and Adam Swift. 2006a. “Equality, Priority, and Positional Goods.” Ethics 116/3, 471–97. Brighouse, Harry and Adam Swift. 2006b. “Parents’ Rights and the Value of the Family.” Ethics 117/1, 80–108. Brighouse, Harry and Adam Swift. 2008. “Putting Educational Equality in Its Place.” Education Finance and Policy 3/4, 444–66. Brighouse, Harry and Adam Swift. 2009a. “Educational Equality versus Educational Adequacy: A Critique of Anderson and Satz.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 26/2, 117–28.

Introduction   19 Brighouse, Harry and Adam Swift 2009b. “Legitimate Parental Partiality.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 37/1, 43–80. Brighouse, Harry and Adam Swift. 2013. “Family Values and School Policy: Shaping Values and Conferring Advantage.” In Allen, Danielle and Rob Reich (eds.). Education, Justice, and Democracy. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 199–220. Brighouse, Harry and Adam Swift. 2014a. “The Place of Educational Equality in Educational Justice.” In Meyer, Kirsten (ed.). Education, Justice and the Human Good. Fairness and Equality in the Educational System London: Routledge, 14–33. Brighouse, Harry and Adam Swift. 2014b. Family Values. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Brock, Gillian. 2009. Global Justice. A Cosmopolitan Account. New York: Oxford University Press. Brock, Gillian. 2015. “Global Justice.” In Zalta, Edward (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available online via www.plato.stanford.edu. Buchanan, Allen. 2004. Justice, Legitimacy and Self-­Determination. New York: Oxford University Press. Buchanan, Allen. 2013. The Heart of Human Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Calhoun, Craig. 2002. “The Class Consciousness of Frequent Travelers: Toward a Critique of Actually Existing Cosmopolitanism.” South Atlantic Quarterly 101/4, 869–97. Callan, Eamonn. 2004. “Citizenship and Education.” Annual Review of Political Science 7, 71–90. Caney, Simon. 2005. Justice Beyond Borders. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Caney, Simon. 2011. “Humanity, Associations and Global Justice: A Defence of Humanity-­Centred Cosmopolitan Egalitarianism.” The Monist 94/4, 506–34. Caney, Simon. 2012. “Just Emissions.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 40/4, 255–300. Carens, Joseph. 2013. The Ethics of Immigration. Oxford: Oxford University Press Cohen, G. A. 1997. “Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice.” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 26/1, 3–30 Cohen, G. A. 2008. Rescuing Justice and Equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cohen, Joshua. 2001. “Taking People as They Are?” Philosophy and Public Affairs 30/4, 363–86. Crittenden, Jack and Peter Levine. 2016. “Civic Education.” In Zalta, Edward (ed.). ­Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available online via www.plato.stanford.edu. Culp, Julian. 2014. Global Justice and Development. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Culp, Julian. 2015. “G. A. Cohen, Constructivism, and the Fact of Reasonable Pluralism.” Analyse & Kritik 35/1–2, 131–47. Culp, Julian. 2016. “Toward Another Development Practice.” In Barcelos, Paulo and Gabriele de Angelis (eds.). International Development and Humanitarian Aid. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 79–107. Estlund, David. 1998. “Liberalism, Equality, and Fraternity in Cohen’s Critique of Rawls.” Journal of Political Philosophy, 6/1, 99–112. Feinberg, Walter and Kevin McDonough (eds.). 2003. Citizenship and Education in Liberal-­Democratic Societies. Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Forst, Rainer. 2001. “Towards a Critical Theory of Transnational Justice.” Metaphilosophy 32/1–2, 160–79. Forst, Rainer. 2002. Contexts of Justice. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fraser, Nancy. 2008. Scales of Justice. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a Different Voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

20   Introduction Gosepath, Stefan. 2001. “The Global Scope of Justice.” Metaphilosophy 32/1–2, 135–59. Gutmann, Amy. 1987. Democratic Education. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gutmann, Amy. 1993. “The Challenge of Multiculturalism in Political Ethics.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 22/3, 171–96. Gutmann, Amy. 1995. “Civic Education and Social Diversity.” Ethics 105, 557–79. Habermas, Jürgen. 2001. The Postnational Constellation. Cambridge: Polity Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 2008a. “A Political Constitution for the Pluralist World Society?” In Between Naturalism and Religion. Cambridge: Polity Press, 312–53. Habermas, Jürgen. 2008b. “The Constitutionalization of International Law and the Legitimation Problems of World Society.” Constellations, 15/4, 444–55. Hassoun, Nicole. 2012. Globalization and Global Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hill, Thomas. 1994. “The Problem of Stability in Political Liberalism.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 75, 333–52. Holmes, Stephen. 1995. Passions and Constraints. On the Theory of Liberal Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Honneth, Axel. 1994. “Einleitung.” In Honneth, Axel (ed.) Kommunitarismus. Eine Debatte über die moralischen Grundlagen moderner Gesellschaften. Frankfurt: Campus, 7–17. Honneth, Axel. 2015. “Education and the Democratic Public Sphere – A Neglected Chapter of Political Philosophy.” In Jakobsen, Jonas and Odin Lysaker (eds.). Recognition and Freedom: Axel Honneth’s Political Thought. Leiden: Brill, 17–32. James, Aaron. 2012. Fairness in Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1960 [1803]. Education. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Kymlicka, Will. 1989. Liberalism, Community, and Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kymlicka, Will. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kymlicka, Will. 2001. Politics in the Vernacular. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lange, Dirk. 2010. “Einleitung,” “Politik im Alltag” and “Politikbewusstsein und Politische Bildung.” In Konzeptionen politischer Bildung. Basiswissen politische Bildung. Vol. 1. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Hohengehren, 1–6, 108–14, 205–13. Lange, Dirk and Gerhard Himmelmann. 2007. “Demokratisches Bewusstsein und Politische Bildung.” In Lange, Dirk and Gerhard Himmelmann (eds.). Demokratiebewusstsein. Eine interdisziplinäre Annäherung an die politische Bildung. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 15–25. Lessenich, Stephan. 2016. Neben uns die Sintflut. Berlin: Hanser Lobo, Sascha. 2016. “Das Ende der Gesellschaft. Digitaler Furor und das Erblühen der Verschwörungstheorien.” Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 10, 59–74. Macedo, Stephen. 1990. Liberal Virtues. Citizenship, Virtue and Community. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Macedo, Stephen. 2000. Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in Multicultural Democracy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1984. “Is Patriotism a Virtue?” The Lindley Lecture at the University of Kansas. Lawrence: Department of Philosophy, University of Kansas. Moellendorf, Darrel. 2002. Cosmopolitan Justice. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Moellendorf, Darrel. 2005. “The World Trade Organization and Egalitarian Justice.” Metaphilosophy 36/1–2, 145–62. Moellendorf, Darrel. 2009. Global Inequality Matters. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Moellendorf, Darrel. 2015. “Can Dangerous Climate Change Be Avoided?” Global Justice: Theory, Practice, Rhetoric 8, 66–85.

Introduction   21 Miller, David. 1995. On Nationality. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Miller, David. 2005a. “Against Global Egalitarianism.” The Journal of Ethics 9/1–2, 55–79. Miller, David. 2005b. “Reasonable Partiality Towards Compatriots.” Ethical Theory and Practice 8/1–2, 63–81. Miller, David. 2007. National Responsibility and Global Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Miller, David. 2016. Strangers in Our Midst. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Münkler, Herfried and Marina Münkler. 2016. Die neuen Deutschen. Berlin: Rowohlt. Nagel, Thomas. 2005. “The Problem of Global Justice.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 33/2, 113–47. Nedelsky, Jennifer. 1989. “Reconceiving Autonomy – Sources, Thoughts and Possiblities.” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 1, 7–36. Nickel, James. 2008. Making Sense of Human Rights. 2nd edn. Malden: Blackwell. Nida-­Rümelin, Julian. 2013. Philosophie einer humanen Bildung. Hamburg: edition Körber-Stiftung. Nida-­Rümelin, Julian. 2014. Der Akademisierungswahn: Zur Krise beruflicher und akademischer Bildung. Hamburg: edition Körber-Stiftung. Nussbaum, Martha. 1996. “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism.” In Cohen, Joshua (ed.). For Love of Country. Boston: Beacon Press, 3–20. Nussbaum, Martha. 1997. Cultivating Humanity. A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 2006. Frontiers of Justice. Disability, Nationality, and Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 2010. Not for Profit. Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 2011. Creating Capabilities. The Human Development Approach. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. OECD. 2008. Tertiary Education for the Knowledge Society. Vol. 1. Paris: OECD. OECD. 2010. The High Cost of Low Educational Performance. The Long-­Run Economic Impact of Improving PISA Outcomes. Paris: OECD. Pettit, Philip. 2010. “A Republican Law of Peoples.” European Journal of Political Theory 9, 70–94. Pogge, Thomas. 1989. Realizing Rawls. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Pogge, Thomas. 2004. “ ‘Assisting’ the Global Poor.” In Chatterjee, Deen (ed.). The Ethics of Assistance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 260–88. Pogge, Thomas. 2005. “Human Rights and Global Health – A Research Program.” Metaphilosophy 36/1–2, 182–209. Plato. 1991 [380 bc]. The Republic. Ed. and trans. Bloom, Allan. 2nd edn. New York: Basic Books. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John. 1999. The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John. 2005 [1993]. Political Liberalism. Expanded paperback edition. New York: Columbia University Press. Raz, Joseph. 1986. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reichenbach, Roland. 2002. “Die Bildung des demokratischen Kopfes. Zwischen Demosorientierung und Ethnosorientierung.” Revue Suisse des Sciences de L’Éducation 24/3, 383–99. Ronzoni, Miriam. 2008. “What Makes a Basic Structure Just?” Res Publica 14, 203–18.

22   Introduction Ronzoni, Miriam. 2009. “The Global Order – A Case of Background Injustice?” Philosophy & Public Affairs 37/3, 229–56. Rousseau, Jean-­Jacques. 1979 [1762]. Emile, or On Education. Trans. Bloom, Allan. New York: Basic Books. Sandel, Michael. 1982. The Limits of Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Satz, Debra. 2007. “Equality, Adequacy, and Education for Citizenship.”. Ethics 117, 623–48. Satz, Debra. 2012. “Unequal Chances: Race, Class and Schooling.” Theory and Research in Education 10, 155–70. Stojanov, Krassimir. 2006. Bildung und Anerkennung. Soziale Voraussetzungen von Selbst-­Entwicklung und Welt-­Erschließung. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Stojanov, Krassimir. 2011. Bildungsgerechtigkeit. Rekonstruktionen eines umkämpften Begriffs. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Stojanov, Krassimir. 2018. Education, Self-­Consciousness and Social Action. Bildung as a Neo-­Hegelian Concept. London: Routledge. Straehle, Christine. 2010. “National and Cosmopolitan Solidarity.” Contemporary Political Theory 9/1, 110–20. Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo (ed.). 2007. Learning in the Global Era: International Perspectives on Globalization and Education. Berkeley: University of California Press. Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo and Desirée Baolian Qin-­Hilliard. 2004. “Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium.” In Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo and Desirée Baolian Qin-Hilliard (eds.). Globalization. Culture and Education in the New Millennium. Berkley: University of California Press, 1–37. Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo and Carolyn Sattin-­Bajaj (eds.). 2010. Educating the Whole Child for the Whole World: The Ross School Model and Education for the Global Era. New York: New York University Press. Suárez-Orozco, Carola and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco. 2013. “Conferring Disadvantage: Immigration, Schools, and the Family.” In Allen, Danielle and Rob Reich (eds.). Education, Justice, and Democracy. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 133–54. Swift, Adam. 2003. How Not to Be a Hypocrite: School Choice for the Morally Perplexed Parent. New York: Routledge. Tamir, Yael. 1995. “Two Concepts of Multiculturalism.” Journal of Philosophy of Education 29/2, 161–72. Tan, Kok-­Chor. 2004. Justice Without Borders. Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and Patriotism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Charles. 1992. Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition.” Princeton: Princeton University Press. Taylor, Charles. 1994. “Aneinander vorbei. Die Debatte zwischen Liberalismus und Kommuni­tarismus.” In Honneth, Axel (ed.). Kommunitarismus. Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 103–30. Waldron, Jeremy. 2003. “Teaching Cosmopolitan Right.” In Feinberg, Walter and Kevin McDonough (eds.). Citizenship and Education in Liberal-­Democratic Societies. Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 23–55. Williams, Melissa. 2003. “Citizenship as Identity, Citizenship as Shared Fate, and the Functions of Multicultural Education.” In Feinberg, Walter and Kevin McDonough (eds.). Citizenship and Education in Liberal–Democratic Societies. Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 208–47.

Introduction   23 Williams, Melissa. 2009. “Citizenship as Agency within Communities of Shared Fate.” In Bernstein, Steven and William Coleman (eds.). Unsettled Legitimacy. Political Community, Power, and Authority in the Global Era. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 33–52. Ypi, Lea. 2010. “Politically Constructed Solidarity: The Idea of a Cosmopolitan Avant-­ garde.” Contemporary Political Theory 9/1, 120–30. Ypi, Lea. 2011. Global Justice and Avant-­Garde Political Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2 Global democratic justice as the normative ground of educational public policy

1  Introduction In Chapter 1 I began by pointing out and qualifying the claim of contemporary philosophers, including Axel Honneth and Martha Nussbaum, that there is a curious neglect of normative problems of education within political philosophy. On the one hand, I agreed with these philosophers, because, considering the educational aspects of pressing political problems as well as the political dimensions of the ongoing changes to educational public policies, it is puzzling indeed how little political-­philosophical research there is on education. But, on the other hand, I also highlighted that some political philosophers actually deal with educational problems within the areas of research that I have suggested be dubbed political philosophy of education and philosophy of political education. For example, I mentioned the intricate debate regarding how to conceive educational justice and its practical implications for educational public policy. I argued, however, that this debate suffers from a domestic bias to the extent that exclusively domestic conceptions of justice – rather than global conceptions of justice – inform the existing conceptions of educational justice. Hence thus far neither political philosophers nor philosophers of education have determined a conception of global educational justice on the basis of a theory of global justice. This neglect, I claimed, is very curious given how intensively philosophers have lately been discussing theories and problems of global justice. But is the failure of philosophers to develop conceptions of global educational justice, which could then be used to formulate novel educational public policies, really so curious? Why should those who are concerned about educational problems recognize a conception of justice as the normative ground or source of educational public policies? After all, it is not self-­evident that a particular conception of justice should determine how to think of educational public policy. For a start, one can hold the functionalist view that any normative conception of educational public policy is mistaken because such policy necessarily reproduces the given social order. What is more, one can also argue that, instead of justice, some other concept – such as human capital formation or personal autonomy – should normatively ground educational public policy. In other words, it is an

The normative ground of educational policy   25 open question whether we should employ a conception of justice when normatively discussing educational public policy. My initial aim in this chapter is to vindicate justice as the normative ground of educational public policy by way of a “negative” argument. I call it a negative argument because it does not state positively why we should use a conception of justice to determine educational public policy. Instead, this negative argument considers alternative ways of deliberating on educational public policy and criticizes them for being unconvincing. I begin by analyzing and eventually rejecting in Section 2 the functionalist understanding of educational public policy, according to which any normative perspective on such policy is beside the point, simply because educational public policy unavoidably reproduces the given social order. In Sections 3 and 4, I examine two views that recognize that educational public policy is not necessarily pre-­determined in a functionalist way and that educational public policy can and should be normatively justified relative to some normative ground. More specifically, in Section 3 I engage with the idea that human capital formation is the normative ground of educational public policy, and in Section 4 I assess the alternative idea that personal autonomy represents this ground. I consider human capital formation as potential normative ground of educational public policy, as it appears to be the normative ground which is at work in the presently dominant public policies for education in several countries. My focus on personal autonomy, by contrast, is motivated by the fact that it represents the essence of the traditional as well as several contemporary theories of liberal education. These theories view the exercise of personal autonomy as the highest form of human flourishing.1 In both cases, I identify severe shortcomings. Yet I not only criticize these three views, but also claim that a certain conception of justice should be regarded as the normative ground of educational public policy. So I follow Rawls’s (1971, 3) lead in thinking that “[j]ustice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.”2 Thereby, I assume that social institutions, like those that are comprised of primary and ­secondary institutions of formal education, should be justified relative to a particular conception of justice. Thereby, I shift the burden of proof from those who regard a certain conception of justice as the normative ground of educational public policy to those who regard human capital formation or personal autonomy as such a ground. This shift of the burden of proof means that those who want to deny that a conception of justice is an apt ground of educational public policy would have to fulfill two desiderata. First, they would have to show why the alternative ground that they prefer to employ does not suffer from the problems that I identify in this chapter. In addition, they would also have to specify which problems arise when recognizing a conception of justice as the normative ground of educational public policy. In Section 5, I respond to a question that immediately arises once one views justice as normative ground of educational public policy. This question is: relative to which conception of justice should one determine educational public

26   The normative ground of educational policy policy? Since there are several distinct conceptions of justice on offer, it is insufficient for justifying specific educational public policies to simply accept that justice should be used as the normative ground in such a justification. Rather, it is necessary to employ one particular conception of justice. I will outline in Section 5 the basic ideas of a democratic or discourse-­theoretic conception of global justice, since I view this conception as the most compelling. Thereby I will argue in favor of this particular conception of global democratic justice in a “positive” manner, which is different from the “negative” way in which I have argued that justice should serve as the normative ground of educational public policy. For instead of criticizing alternative conceptions of justice and thereby establishing the validity of my conception of democratic justice negatively, I will positively defend my conception of global democratic justice by way of articulating the basic ideas that support this conception.3 In addition, I will identify personal moral autonomy and public autonomy as the major ends of educational public policy that are normatively grounded on global democratic justice. Finally, Section 6 summarizes my argumentation in favor of global democratic justice as the appropriate normative ground of educational public policy.

2  Functionalism Functionalist conceptions of education assume that educational public policies necessarily contribute to reproducing a certain kind of social order and explain the way in which they do so. For example, a functionalist conception of education may show how primary and secondary educational institutions of capitalist economies disseminate the beliefs that are necessary for maintaining a capitalist economic order (cf. Bowles and Gintis 1976). Schoolteachers may provide justifications for the legitimacy of private property and economic inequalities, and the ethos of private schools may embody the idea that such property and inequalities are legitimate. The point of a functionalist conception of education is thus to clarify and uncover the stabilizing and therefore conservative role that educational public policies play within social orders.4 Functionalist conceptions of education are in conflict with a thesis that has been attributed to Wolfgang Böckenförde, a legal scholar and former judge of Germany’s constitutional court (cf. Böckenförde 1976, 60). The thesis says that the functioning of the liberal-­democratic state presupposes a certain amount of moral motivation that the state cannot itself generate. This is because, so the argument goes, the moral motivation to comply with the norms of a liberal-­ democratic state can develop only in pre-­political communities that are outside the sphere of influence of the liberal state. Thus public policies, including educational public policies, have no effect on the development of moral motivation. Moral development only takes place in “private” social spheres such as the family, circles of friends or religious communities. If this thesis were correct, then educational public policies could not possess the stabilizing role that functionalism attributes to them, because the

The normative ground of educational policy   27 kind of conservative and stabilizing moral learning that these policies are supposed to effectuate actually would not occur. Yet it seems very awkward to assume that neither the structure of the school system, nor the ethos of any particular school nor the contents of the curriculum and the way in which that content is transmitted to students should not be consequential for the moral development of the younger cohorts of the population. So the functionalist view that educational public policies have an effect on the development of moral motivation that takes place within society seems correct. But the crucial problem with the functionalist way of conceptualizing education is its assumption that education necessarily stabilizes the existing social order. First, this assumption clearly contradicts the self-­understanding of several teachers, many of whom view themselves as agents who are able to change, at least in part, the normative orders that are governing their society. It simply seems inadequate to hold that the teachers’ belief that they are agents of social change merely is an ideology that enables them to carry on with their work.5 In addition, functionalism regards all normative controversies about education merely as epiphenomenal. According to functionalism, whatever the outcome of these controversies will be, they will not change the fact that the educational system and all its components will help to stabilize and reproduce the already existing social order. So educational controversies may simply concern alternative ways of maintaining the status quo through education. But this way of perceiving such controversies is implausible, because it seems to be a mere stipulation, as well as contrary to the idea of human freedom, that these controversies cannot unfold any transformative effect. Thus functionalism fails to appreciate the potentially transformative character of at least some educational public policies. Because of these problems, I contend that it is much more plausible to attempt identifying an appropriate normative ground relative to which educational public policy can be criticized and justified. In the following two sections I consider but eventually reject human capital formation and personal autonomy as normative grounds of educational public policy.

3  Human capital formation When analyzing human capital formation as the normative ground of educational public policy, it is important to recognize that it represents a system-­level rather than a micro-­level justification.6 System-­level justifications of education are of a consequentialist or instrumental kind. They argue for the importance of certain educational public policies by showing that realizing them is conducive to achieving some broader social or collective end. This system-­level justification for the human capital formation conception of education is that economic growth is the overarching end of a social order and that, accordingly, educational public policies should effectively contribute to that end by way of forming economically productive human capital (cf. Schultz 1961, 1963; Becker 1993 [1964]; Mincer 1974). A micro-­level justification of human capital formation, by

28   The normative ground of educational policy c­ ontrast, would focus on the importance that the development of human capital has for individuals. A straightforward criticism of the human capital formation conception of education is that the idea that economic growth constitutes the overarching social end is flawed. The problem with this idea is that both the intrinsic as well as the instrumental justifications of economic growth as overarching social end are unconvincing. Amartya Sen and Nussbaum are perhaps the most effective critics of economic growth as overarching social end (cf. Sen 1999, 35–53; Nussbaum 2000, 59–69). They argue convincingly that a justification of the intrinsic value of economic growth must fail, because recognizing this value would amount to endorsing a brute materialism. To view economic growth as an intrinsic value means to believe that it is valuable in and of itself to hold certain goods, which, as Sen has put it, is a kind of commodity fetishism. While goods … are valuable, they are not valuable in themselves. Their value rests on what they can do for people, or rather, what people can do with these goods…. This question is an important one to emphasize because “commodity fetishism” … is such a widespread phenomenon, and the important role that the exchange of commodities plays in modern societies tends to sustain that fetishism.7 (Sen 1984, 10) The mere existence of material goods in and of itself is not of any moral importance, unless it can be shown that these goods are instrumentally effective in bringing about something else that is valuable. Hence what is needed is an instrumental justification of economic growth. Following Sen and Nussbaum, we might say that the instrumental value of goods is that they enable people to enjoy effective freedoms to do certain things or to enjoy certain states of being, freedoms which Sen (1997 [1980]) and Nussbaum (1992) refer to as “capabilities.” Hence an increase in the production of goods and services should be regarded as valuable only to the extent that it expands human freedoms and increases human beings’ options to select certain actions and ways of being. In this way the system-­level justification is eventually turned into a micro-­level justification. Problematically, however, this kind of instrumental justification of economic growth suffers from the fact that economic growth is an aggregate and as such it is compatible with huge economic disparities among individuals. This means that it is possible that only a small number of the members of a social order benefits from the increases in freedom or some other value that material goods can bring about, whereas the other members enjoy only a very limited number of effective freedoms. During the 1980s and 1990s, most policy makers in OECD countries were perhaps not fully aware of this aspect of economic growth due to the doctrine of trickle-­down effects. Today, however, the evidence is clear that the material benefits of economic growth do not spread equitably across all

The normative ground of educational policy   29 members of society (cf. Milanovic 2005; Atkinson 2015; Fratzscher 2016; Stiglitz 2016). An objection to this critique of human capital formation as the normative ground of educational public policy is that this ground simply relies on the idea that, because individuals’ human capital correlates so strongly with their incomes, it is crucial that everyone develops her human capital through education. But formulated in this manner it is no longer aggregate economic growth, but a certain distributive norm that vindicates why a particular pattern of the formation of human capital should be regarded as the normative ground of educational public policy. Hence it is no longer economic growth but a certain norm of distributive justice that constitutes the ground of educational public policy. But that means that this objection already presupposes the claim that I also uphold, namely that a particular conception of justice should be recognized as the ground of educational public policy.

4  Liberal perfectionist education In Chapter 1 I highlighted that the current educational public policies in several societies are increasingly favoring the human capital formation conception of education. Nevertheless, it should not come as a surprise that many liberal philosophers endorse personal autonomy, rather than human capital formation, as the normative ground of educational public policy. Ever since the late but influential reception of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s (1960 [1792], 69) writings on education, the idea that education must be oriented towards furthering personal autonomy has become a core commitment of educational theory and public policy. Personal autonomy captures the idea that individuals are not – or no longer – confined to fulfilling one particular purpose at one particular place and time within a given societal or cosmological order. Individuals should live by their own lights.8 John Stuart Mill further developed von Humboldt’s conceptualization of personal autonomy. Like von Humboldt, Mill (1859, ch. 3, §§1–9) subscribes to the idea that human flourishing is realized best through the exercise of personal autonomy. In present times the enduring relevance of this way of conceiving human flourishing is to a considerable extent due to the work of Joseph Raz. Raz (1986, chs. 13 and 14) has offered an extremely influential Millian conception of what is called perfectionist liberalism, which regards personal autonomy as an objective good that ought to be maximized. A considerable number of philosophers of education agree with Raz that because personal autonomy represents an objective good, personal autonomy ought to be understood as the normative ground of educational public policy (Brighouse 2006, ch. 6; Meyer 2011). More specifically, they justify personal autonomy as the normative ground of educational public policy by showing that personal autonomy is of either intrinsic or instrumental importance for human flourishing. In order to be able to properly assess this line of argument, consider first how Raz conceptualizes the idea of personal autonomy.

30   The normative ground of educational policy On Raz’s view, for individuals to be autonomous they must view themselves as beings capable of agency, which requires that they can choose from a range of adequate options. Autonomy increases relative to the number of adequate options available, but does not increase further beyond a certain threshold of such options. Personally autonomous individuals consciously choose a particular way of life and identify with the lifestyle that their choice involves.9 The idea of personal autonomy also relies on the idea of “self-­creation,” which means that we come to have reason to pursue certain ends not only because these ends are valuable in themselves or because we view them as valuable, but also because we have committed ourselves to pursuing these ends. Thus individuals should be loyal to their ends, even though after an initial commitment to certain ends individuals might discover that their pursuit is very different from what they expected it to be and then revise their choices.10 Educational public policy cannot directly promote autonomy, because personal autonomy requires the uptake of an evaluative standpoint that the student can only adopt herself. Educational public policy can only help to bring about the conditions that are necessary for personal autonomy. Internal conditions refer to certain cognitive and physical abilities, as personally autonomous agents must be able to reason instrumentally as well as be able to reason about ends.11 The skills of reasoning in this way can be trained and practiced in a variety of disciplines and applied to all sorts of subject matters. For example, the application of rational choice theory to the decision making within firms might be useful for discerning and practicing the various parts of the cognitive process of instrumental reasoning. Furthermore, introductory classes to logic can enable the student to properly distinguish between fallacious and non-­fallacious forms of reasoning. As to the external conditions, one important aspect is that educative institutions should present students with various ways of life, as this might enable students to see more clearly what is involved in choosing one rather than another way of life. But in order to be properly exposed to a particular way of life, argues Brighouse (1998, 733), what is needed is a “somewhat enthusiastic advocacy” of this way of life by those who have actually adopted a certain way of life. Now, the justification for regarding personal autonomy as the normative ground of educational public policy is based on the claim that personal autonomy matters for achieving the highest form of human flourishing. Brighouse (2006, ch. 3), for example, endorses this claim and specifies it further by stating that, in his view, not only those individuals that are able to exercise personal autonomy lead lives that are worth living. He (2006, 16) concedes that “a life worth living” need not involve personal autonomy. For a life to be worth living it suffices for an individual to enjoy certain objective goods. So in Brighouse’s view it is the importance of personal autonomy for a maximally flourishing life that justifies regarding personal autonomy as the ground of educational public policy. An obvious objection to this kind of reasoning is that it is paternalistic. It presumes the knowledge that only the examined life that includes the exercise of personal autonomy is the most flourishing one. For why should someone whose life is not one that she has chosen among a decent range of adequate options fail

The normative ground of educational policy   31 to live a similarly flourishing life? In the pursuit of a religious life, for example, a person might deny that her life goes well because she is exercising autonomy. She might report that her life is in a certain respect heteronomous, as she perceives herself as being bound by religious norms.12 But she might nevertheless deny that her life is therefore less flourishing than that of those who lead autonomous lives. Thus it cannot be taken for granted that the exercise of personal autonomy constitutes the highest form of human flourishing for everyone. Thus the liberal perfectionist education is incompatible with the liberal idea of neutrality, according to which state policies must be, as Ronald Dworkin (1978, 127) puts it, “independent of any particular conception of the good life or what gives value to life.” But by promoting one specific type of flourishing, which consists of the exercise of personal autonomy, liberal perfectionist educational public policies are not neutral. Likewise, John Rawls has also called into question the view that perfectionist liberal education favors a personal autonomy-­based understanding of the good life, which members of certain religious groups might not share. As he puts it: Various religious sects oppose the culture of the modern world and wish to lead their common life apart from its unwanted influences. A problem now arises about their children’s education and the requirements the state can impose. The liberalisms of Kant and Mill may lead to requirements designed to foster the values of autonomy and individuality as ideals to govern much if not all of life. (Rawls 2005, 199) In reply to such an objection, Brighouse (1998) clarifies that he does not purport to justify educational public policies that promote autonomy but merely ones that facilitate autonomy. Brighouse thereby emphasizes that regarding personal autonomy as the normative ground of educational public policy does not mean that education should promote the actual exercise of autonomy. Instead, education for personal autonomy should only facilitate autonomy, which is to say that people should be put into a position where they are capable of exercising autonomy if they decide to do so. So the justification of education for personal autonomy as the ground of educational public policy is merely that personal autonomy is of instrumental value. This reply is convincing to the extent that it refrains from positing that the autonomous life is in an objective sense better than the non-­autonomous life. What is still missing in this reply, however, is an argument as to why the mere ability to lead an autonomous life is of normative importance, given that the importance of this ability cannot be the idea that the autonomous life is in and of itself better. Hence we need to ask, again, in what sense, if any, does the ability to exercise autonomy matter for leading a flourishing life? In response, Brighouse (2006, 17) further elaborates and clarifies his argument by holding that he assumes that there is a “plurality of personal constitutions.” Due to this plurality, it is more likely that individuals will lead flourishing

32   The normative ground of educational policy lives if they are able to decide among different paths of life, depending on which of these paths is best relative to their distinct personal constitution. To illustrate Brighouse’s reasoning, consider, for example, that I have a homosexual orientation, but do not recognize the possibility of pursuing a life path in which I am able to express my homosexuality.13 I am unable to choose between a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation. This lack of personal autonomy prevents me from leading a fulfilling life. By contrast, if I possessed personal autonomy, then I could choose a life path that would fit to my personal constitution, which includes this particular kind of sexual orientation. In this way it is not personal autonomy in and of itself that renders my life flourishing. Rather, personal autonomy is merely a vehicle that – under several, though not all, circumstances – enables me to lead a flourishing life. What makes my life a flourishing one is the fit between my personal constitution – my preferences, so to speak – and my path of life that corresponds to this constitution. The problem with this argumentation, however, is that it also relies on a controversial conception of the good that can be reasonably rejected. For one thing, this conception of the good relies on the controversial anthropological assumption that different individuals possess distinct personal constitutions such that individuals need to pursue different paths of life in order to experience human flourishing. Several religious doctrines, for example, question such a plurality and hold instead that there is one distinct kind of human nature and just one corresponding life path that is effective in rendering one’s life flourishing. A case in point is that several religious doctrines hold that only a religious life is conducive to human flourishing. It is problematic for a justification of educational public policy to rely on this sort of anthropology, i.e., one that members of such religious doctrines can reasonably reject from the point of view of their conception of the good. Furthermore, and more importantly, Brighouse’s conception of the good can be reasonably rejected by those who deny that their flourishing depends on a fit between their personal constitution and their particular course of life. Devout religious believers, for example, might hold that it is their compliance with religious norms that renders their lives “flourishing,” but deny that this implies that there is a fit between their personal constitution and their way of life. Perhaps religious believers would prefer working seven days per week rather than resting one day per week. But since they are committed to a particular religious doctrine, they nevertheless follow the religious demand and rest one day every week. Despite this (perceived) mismatch between their personal constitution and the religious way of life that they pursue, they may still hold that they lead a flourishing life and successfully realize a certain conception of the good.14 Consequently, those who are of this view can reasonably reject Brighouse’s claim that leading a fulfilling life requires a match between one’s personal constitution and one’s particular life path.15 To summarize, in this section I analyzed and rejected two influential justifications for personal autonomy as the normative ground of educational public policy. While the first referred to personal autonomy’s intrinsic importance for

The normative ground of educational policy   33 human flourishing, the second was grounded on its instrumental importance for human flourishing. I argued that these justifications are not convincing, because they rely on conceptions of the good that can be reasonably rejected. More specifically, my argument against the intrinsic importance of personal autonomy was that it is paternalistic. It presumes the knowledge that only the examined life that includes personal autonomy is one that is flourishing. Likewise, my argument against the instrumental importance of personal autonomy held that it paternalistically maintains that a flourishing life requires a fit between one’s personal constitution and one’s ways of life – a fit that the capacity for personal autonomy is able to facilitate. Therefore these justifications in favor of personal autonomy as the normative ground of educational public policy do not qualify as “neutral” justifications for public policies of education. Yet such a neutral justification is necessary within a social and political world that is characterized by a reasonable and lasting pluralism about conceptions of the good.16 In the next section I therefore present a conception of global democratic justice as the normative ground of educational public policy. This normative ground does not suffer from the problems that arise when one views human capital formation or personal autonomy as the normative grounds of educational public policy. This is why I maintain that the burden of proof of showing that global democratic justice should not be used as the normative ground of educational public policy rests on those who would rather want to defend human capital formation or personal autonomy as the correct normative ground of educational public policy.

5  Global democratic justice Since the concept of justice allows for a great variety of competing interpretations, this concept alone cannot properly determine educational public policy: a more determinate conception of justice is needed. Therefore, I will outline the basic ideas of a democratic or discourse-­theoretic conception of justice, which I regard as the most compelling conception of justice.17 According to this conception, the most important requirement of justice is to establish structures of justification that would allow everyone to veto or block the justifications that are given within political discourses for how to go about addressing particular political problems. On the basis of this democratic conception of justice, I then defend personal moral autonomy and public autonomy as ends of educational public policy, since the realization of these ends are necessary conditions for bringing about democratic justice. Later on, I will further develop my normative conception of educational public policy that is based on considerations of global democratic justice by way of determining the principles of a global conception of democratic educational justice in Chapter 3 and the principles of a global conception of democratic citizenship education in Chapter 4. The conception of educational justice identifies the justification and the content of the rights to education that all citizens within all states have as a matter of global democratic justice. By contrast, the conception of citizenship education offers a justification

34   The normative ground of educational policy of the particular content that citizenship education should have within all states so as to contribute to the realization of global democratic justice. My particular way of justifying this specific normative ground of educational public policies in this section is by offering an external justification for global democratic justice. The predicate “external” means that this justification is not tied to those normative ideas or principles that are immanent to a particular social order. So I do not justify my normative conception of global democratic justice by referring to the social fact that democratic justice constitutes an especially characteristic or “identity-­conferring” norm of the kinds of societies in which I and most of my audience has been living for most of their lives. Such an immanent justification of an educational end, which Amy Gutmann (1987) relies upon in her magisterial Democratic Education, is a motivationally powerful one.18 By relying on certain normative ideas that are already shared by members of a social order, an immanent justification is able to point towards the inconsistency of those who share these ideas but fail to acknowledge their implications in the case of education. This immanent justification follows a long tradition of normative educational thinking, which goes back to Aristotle.19 According to this tradition, educational practice should help realizing the normative principles that underlie a social order. Ideally, that is, educational policy should be conducive towards the ideals that the normative principles immanent within a societal order express. Hence, educational policy must form citizens’ character and intellect in a way that is instrumental for that purpose. It must not cultivate the vices that reproduce the actual practices that fall short of the normative principles that are inherent in the societal order. An immanent approach offers an appealing alternative normative methodology under contemporary circumstances: postmodern denials of moral obligations are still common and the ideal-­theoretical approaches to political philosophy appear out of touch with social reality.20 But an immanent justification also suffers from several shortcomings that render it an inadequate methodology for vindicating the normative ground of educational public policy. First of all, it is unclear which of the conflicting normative principles or sets of normative principles that are immanent to a social order should be regarded as valid and authoritative as the normative ground of educational public policies. Thus, for example, in contemporary Western societies certain democratic principles, which Gutmann identifies, stand in conflict with the norm of economic growth or personal autonomy, both of which I have criticized as normative grounds of educational public policy in this chapter. Second, if the immanent justification defended the selection of certain normative principles of a social order by reference to the fact that these principles are decisive for the reproduction of a social order, then it fell prey to a status quo bias. Therefore I regard as more compelling a methodological approach that is to a certain extent external to the actual public policies of education and the specific social orders in which these policies are embedded. Only such an approach, which argues from scratch, so to speak, is capable of offering a justification as to why some of the normative principles that can be found in a social order should

The normative ground of educational policy   35 be regarded as authoritative for determining the normative grounds of educational public policy and why other principles cannot be regarded as such. The external approach that I defend thus relies on a “freestanding” type of normative theorizing that is not based on or anchored in the social validity of the actually existing norms or principles.21 Justification-­based democratic justice Rawls elaborates on the concept of justice in the beginning of A Theory of Justice: [I]nstitutions are just when no arbitrary distinctions are made between persons in the assigning of basic rights and duties and when the rules determine a proper balance between competing claims to the advantages of social life. Men [sic] can agree to this description of just institutions since the notions of an arbitrary distinction and of a proper balance … are included in the concept of justice.22 (Rawls 1971, 5) Rawls’s definition captures not only distributive or substantive concerns about the “proper balance” of benefits and burdens, but also procedural or political concerns about the non-­arbitrary assignment of “basic rights and duties.”23 Problematically, however, most theorists of justice focus exclusively on the distributive or substantive aspect of the concept of justice. They concentrate, for example, on socio-­economic questions concerning the proper distribution of income and wealth or, more broadly conceived, the proper distribution of benefits and burdens. This is evidenced, for example, by the heavy weight that Richard Arneson (2006) places on distributive concerns in his review article on theories of justice after Rawls in the Oxford Handbook of Political Theory. This is also the case for theories of global justice, which, according to Chandran Kukathas (2006, 1), “address two main issues. First, what would a just distribution of benefits and burdens across the world look like? Second, what sorts of institutions would be required to secure such a just distribution?” However, Iris Young’s (1990, ch 1) Justice and the Politics of Difference set out a difficult challenge to what she refers to as the “distributive paradigm.” Her critique of this paradigm urges theorists of justice to direct their gaze towards the other aspect of the concept of justice, namely that of avoiding “arbitrary distinctions … in the assigning of basic rights and duties.” Her central argument is that theorists within the distributive paradigm overlook the question as to how a certain assignment of basic rights and duties has given rise to a particular distribution of goods – via political processes that deem a certain scheme of production and distribution as justified. Therefore Young (1990, 37) urges to displace “the distributive paradigm in favor of a wider, process-­oriented understanding of society, which focuses on power, decision-­making structures and so on.” She argues in favor of changing how we conceive justice. Instead of primarily

36   The normative ground of educational policy distribution-­oriented or goods-­centered view, she proposes an examination of the relations of power within social and political contexts. Relations of power not only determine how much of which goods persons possess and who produces which goods, they also imply who takes the decisions regarding who receives and contributes what.24 In a manner similar in spirit, Rainer Forst (2012, ch. 12, 2014, ch. 1) spells out the normative importance of avoiding a purely distributive “picture” of justice and of recognizing as well a different, political “picture” that concentrates on power relations. He (2007a, 300) calls this necessary shift in conceiving justice the “political turn.” Thus, he maintains that theories of justice must not primarily scrutinize the distribution of goods. Instead, or so he (2007b, 260) argues, these theories must focus on “the relationship between the persons involved [in a context of justice] and their relative standing within a scheme of exercising power.” Justice, he (ibid.) argues, primarily centers on “how you are treated” and not solely on “what you have.”25 And regarding how you are treated, what matters most is that you are recognized as a justificatory normative authority that is capable of putting into question the existing justifications for social, economic, cultural and political arrangements. This “picture of justice” relies on the idea that, so Forst (2012, 177), all moral persons possess a “basic moral right to justification,” which in turn is an implication of a particular understanding as to what showing moral respect to persons demands. This understanding of showing moral respect vis-­à-vis persons is ­justification-based, since it says that showing moral respect means behaving toward others in ways that are justifiable to them.26 It is congenial to Rawls’s understanding of moral respect, as Rawls (1971, 586) holds that moral “respect for persons is shown by treating them in ways that they can see to be justified.” Yet what persons “can see to be justified” must be understood according to a moralized notion of justification. A justification that someone gives to someone else for his or her behavior does not express respect simply by virtue of the fact that the addressee of the justification actually accepts, or might actually accept, the justification. Instead, the justification-­based understanding of moral respect means that persons express respect to each other by providing each other with justifications that meet the standards of a moral justification. On one influential account developed by Forst, who relies on Karl-­Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas’s discourse theory of morality, the standards of a moral justification consist of the criteria of generality and reciprocity.27 This is because these criteria must be fulfilled in order to redeem the validity claims that are contained in moral statements. Hence these standards are determined “recursively,” (Forst 2002, 4) that is, on the basis of an analysis of the validity claims contained in moral statements.28 This recursive determination of the standards relative to which moral statements ought to be justified is an implication of the higher order principle of justification (cf. Forst 2012, 18). This principle holds that statements must be justified relative to the validity claims that they contain. What is the particular content of the principles of generality and reciprocity? Generality means that a moral justification must not be justifiable solely

The normative ground of educational policy   37 to those persons who share a specific socio-­political context and also particular conceptions of the good. Rather, generality requires the justification to be justifiable to all persons, whether or not they belong to the same socio-­political contexts and endorse the same conception of the good. Further, reciprocity requires that the justifications given must not be one sided. Justifications should not be articulated in a manner that privileges certain persons by exempting them from certain moral requirements. Nor must justifications regard the interests of certain persons as facts of nature and thus beyond reasonable criticism. The two criteria of generality and reciprocity, then, express more concretely what it means to show respect to others “by treating them in ways that they can see to be justified.” To put the point in yet another manner, persons who show moral respect for one another must regard each other as equal justificatory authorities. When we are resolving the questions of how persons are to treat each other, all persons count as equally authoritative sources of justifications for particular forms of treatment. So no justification counts as morally valid simply because some person with an alleged natural right to rule has articulated it. That is, nobody enjoys any privileges when it comes to political decision making and in principle anyone can veto or block a particular decision or arrangement when he or she justly claims that this decision or arrangement is unjustifiable to him or her. Showing moral respect requires recognizing that all persons possess an equal moral status as participants of the justificatory moral community, which means that all persons possess a moral right to participate in the justification of principles of justice – which, again, is an entitlement that follows from what Forst (2012, 177) calls the “basic moral right to justification.” Due to this entitlement persons could not recognize as valid the imposition of a political order that would not allow them to challenge the justifications that those in power provide for the normative validity of that order. Any justification of such a political order would violate the principles of generality and reciprocity, because it would ascribe only to some but not to all the moral right to engage in the discursive articulation of the guiding normative principles of their political order. This would morally privilege some over others, and could hence be reasonably rejected on the ground of a violation of the norm of reciprocity. In accordance with this justification-­based understanding of what it means for persons to show moral respect to one another, we can also consider which kinds of socio-­political arrangements would be required to express this kind of moral respect. Such arrangements should publicly express the idea that moral norms must be reciprocally justifiable to all. Therefore principles of justice, which determine how the basic structures of social and political arrangements are to be regulated, must also be generally and reciprocally justifiable. Arguably, this means that social and political institutions must be justifiable to their members in such a way that they can come to see themselves as authors of their institutions. Therefore, such institutions must be perceivable as the result of a reasoning process in which nobody has been arbitrarily excluded and nobody has enjoyed the privilege of counting as a greater justificatory authority

38   The normative ground of educational policy than anyone else. On a more practical level, this means that fundamentally just social and political orders must afford all their members appropriate social and political roles through which they can encounter one another on an equal footing in the exchange of reasons concerning which norms should underlie their common institutions. The crucial point is that everyone must count as a justificatory authority, even if some people have less justificatory power than others or exercise their power only rarely if at all. This provision requires that every member of socio-­political arrangements must have a means of blocking, or vetoing, normative proposals when they can show that they do not meet the criteria of reciprocity and generality. The basic justificatory practices of a socio-­political order must, as Forst (2011, 9) puts it, enable persons “to demand and provide justifications and to challenge false legitimations.”29 The justice of social and political order, then, hinges upon the very existence of a basic structure of justification that empowers persons to engage discursively in practices of justification. Accordingly, a theory of justice has to provide an account of the effective social and political structures of justification that enable persons to call into question the justifications that are given for certain social and political contexts that, among other things, lead to a specific distribution of goods and scheme of production. The demand for such “basic structures of justification” is the most fundamental requirement of a democratic or discourse theory of justice (Forst 2001, 174, 176, 2012, passim). Thus such a conception of fundamental justice aims at determining the most essential conditions whose fulfillment is a primary demand of justice. Different from the fulfillment of the conditions of a conception of full or ideal justice, thus, as Forst (2001, 172) emphasizes, the satisfaction of these essential conditions does not render the social and political order fully or completely just.30 The political theory that captures best the institutional requirements of fundamental justice is a deliberative democratic theory (cf. Gutmann and Thompson 1996; Bohman and Rehg 1996; Young 2000, ch.  1). Deliberative democratic theory criticizes the idea that democracy is simply a particular way of aggregating individual preferences in the way social choice theory suggests (Miller 1992; Elster 1997; Young 2000, 18–26). It does not view individual preferences as fixed, but rather contends that these preferences are subject to change through discursive engagements amongst the members of a political order.31 This means, first, that individuals might change their preferences regarding their views of what is valuable for them in their private lives within the various associations of which they are part. This, in turn, also affects how they vote because, depending on the particular content of these preferences, they will come to different judgments concerning political policies or programs. Second, the commitment of deliberative democratic theory to the view that individual preferences are not fixed also means that their assessments as to which kinds of institutional principles are the most just – in the sense of being mutually acceptable for everyone – might also change in light of the public reasoning that addresses these principles.

The normative ground of educational policy   39 When formulated in a positive manner, the central moral point of this deliberative democratic theory is precisely that the basic principles of justice underlying a particular social and political order should result from an exchange of reasons among all those who are subject to that order. These exchanges represent “deliberations” that have the purpose of reaching a shared understanding among the discourse’s participants. They are thus, strictly speaking, different from “negotiations” in the sense that the participants of such discourses do not simply use rhetoric strategies in order to achieve the negotiation outcome that is most favorable for them individually – irrespective of whether or not this outcome is acceptable by the other participants as well.32 Rather, the aim of such political discourses or deliberations is to reach an outcome which all can accept, even if the more powerful agents could press upon the less powerful an outcome which would be more favorable to them. Reasonably democratic discourses are those in which this aim is institutionally anchored through mechanisms that guarantee that all participants can effectively block or veto those outcomes that they find unacceptable. More specifically, properly arranged processes of public opinion and will formation should enable the public justification of the principles of justice that will inform the determination of particular laws and public policies. “Properly arranged” means that power asymmetries among those who participate in these processes should not become so great that they betray the idea that all subjects possess equal normative authority.33 The particular institutions and mechanisms that are best suited in order to facilitate this kind of public justification, however, depends crucially on the specific kind of political order in which such deliberations are meant to take place (cf. Mansbridge and Parkinson 2012). A global conception of democratic justice Like several other political philosophers, I view exclusively domestic or national theories of justice as deeply problematic (cf. Beitz 1999; Pogge 1989; Moellendorf 2002; Caney 2005). The scope of a conception of justice must not be restricted to the boundaries of the nation-­state but must be extended globally. First of all, due to globalization it is implausible to assume without further ­argument that any demands of justice that reached beyond the nation state were unfeasible to realize. What is more, the kind of social relationships that I assume to ground or constitute a context of justice are (now) also global in scope. These are social relationships among persons worldwide that have pervasive impact and which therefore entail questions about their justifiability.34 To elaborate, however, I endorse a particular, internationalist conception of global democratic justice. It is internationalist because it holds that basic or fundamental global democratic justice requires that the national representatives of internally sufficiently just states ought to have sufficient justificatory power in international processes of opinion and will formation that affect the lives of their members (cf. Culp 2014, ch.  5).35 These international processes of opinion and  will formation are “international political discourses.” In such discourses,

40   The normative ground of educational policy official or formally recognized political agents deliberate and negotiate both empirical and normative questions that have an effect not only on their respective national political communities as well as on the world at large. More specifically, those who represent states that are internally sufficiently just must participate in the construction of the material or substantive principles of justice that will count as internationally valid. These principles will thus function as the normatively authoritative framework for building an international order that is basically or fundamentally just. A necessary requirement for appropriate democratic international political discourses is that they allow all who participating in them, as Forst (2011, 9) puts it, “to demand and provide justifications and to challenge false legitimations.” Accordingly, state representatives must enjoy sufficient justificatory power in international processes of opinion and will formation. They must be capable of partaking in discursively determining the (more) substantive principles that will serve as normative building blocks for a just international order.36 While such international processes must transmit the viewpoints of the members of the respective national population, it is also necessary that, additionally, citizens from various states can voice their demands through transnational processes of opinion and will formation. In this way these citizens will be able co-­determine international decision making.37 Furthermore, however, my conception of global democratic justice also requires institutionalizing basic structures of justification at the intranational, that is, domestic level. The reason for this is that the justifications for any kind of global order must be justifiable to citizens in their capacity as normative authorities. So structures of justification must also be in place domestically and allow citizens to demand and provide justifications and to challenge false legitimations. Otherwise the international processes of opinion and will formation cannot be properly thought of as being justifiable to all those who are impacted by the decisions reached in these process. Those who are impacted in such ways must also become politically capable, if at all capable, of critically examining the choices that the representatives of states made. Public autonomy and personal moral autonomy From the perspective of global democratic justice, a severe problem with the liberal perfectionist justification of personal autonomy as the normative ground of educational public policy is that it focuses exclusively on personal autonomy.38 Thereby the liberal perfectionist justification neglects the importance of public autonomy, by which I mean the capacity of reasoning with others about the binding norms that should structure social and political arrangements. Public autonomy refers to an individual as a public subject that is able to participate in public decision-­making processes. From a democratic perspective public autonomy is of fundamental importance, because such political arrangements cannot function democratically unless citizens possess the capacity for public autonomy. That is, in cooperation with others individuals must be able to reason

The normative ground of educational policy   41 c­ ritically about the public ends of their respective political communities. Individuals must be able to participate in an exchange of reasons through which they collectively determine how to arrange the basic structure of their social and political order. Through public deliberation, individuals must determine which principles and institutions they can mutually accept. Therefore, citizens must be capable of applying, understanding and proposing mutually justifiable principles of justice.39 Among other things, this requires that citizens accept the fact of reasonable pluralism about conceptions of the good. In particular, they must recognize that securing basic civic and political liberties such as the liberty of thought, the liberty of speech and the liberty of assembly unavoidably leads to a situation in which citizens come to endorse different conceptions of the good. For if citizens are free to use these liberties, then the exercise of reason makes it the case that they will come to formulate and adhere to different conceptions of the good. After all, they make different kinds of experiences in their lives and interpret in different ways the concepts that they use in order to render these experiences sensible to them in relation to their understanding of themselves and members of groups.40 In the context of the present discussion, this means, in particular, that citizens must accept that not all citizens will accept liberal perfectionism. In addition, they must also be “reasonable” in the sense of being able to be properly motivated to comply with the institutional rules that correspond to the principles that they have justified intersubjectively.41 According to this ideal of public autonomy, individuals therefore should become joint authors of the social and political orders that they inhabit, and be willing to maintain “their” normative orders by following these orders’ political rules.42 So they must also feel bound by a consciousness for justice to follow those norms that have been intersubjectively justified. After all, upholding deliberative arrangements of the sort just sketched demands accepting as valid democratically produced collective decisions and the particular distribution of benefits and burdens that goes along with these decisions. Hence in order to realize the collective or public good as it has been agreed upon through democratic decision-­making processes, individuals must possess a certain consciousness for justice. For realizing the ­collective or public good may at times demand of some people to withhold the pursuit of some of the projects that they would otherwise pursue. So democratic justice requires that educational public policies contribute to bringing about individuals’ capacity to exercise public autonomy. This justification for the development of public autonomy through educational public policies is akin to a kind of “civic republican” conception of education, as it is not based on a specific conception of the good life.43 It holds that the capacity for public autonomy must be taught in order to bring about democratic justice. Such education matters for bringing about such arrangements, regardless of whether or not it contributes to human flourishing. The point is simply that unless citizens possess those kinds of democratic attitudes, knowledge and skills that are necessary for the exercise for public autonomy, democratic arrangements can be neither established nor upheld (cf. Rawls 2005, 272–3, 2001, 156–7).

42   The normative ground of educational policy Hence it would be a mistake to object to such a normative ground of educational public policy that it is incompatible with the liberal idea of neutrality. Such an objection could point out that although some citizens might think that their lives go well because of their engagement in political activities such as, for example, organizing protests or deliberating in party committees, this need not be the case for all citizens. Yet such a critique would falsely presume that democratic justice as the normative ground of educational public policy would rely on a “civic humanist” conception of the good, namely one that regards political engagement as being a necessary element of a good life. It would be an ill-­ founded critique because the point of this normative ground of educational public policy, in contrast to the so-­called civic humanist conception of education, is not that this form of education would realize best human flourishing.44 This is why other philosophers of education have argued correctly that there is a relevant normative-­theoretical difference between a perfectionist liberal and a civic republican or “political liberal” conception of democratic education, even if in practical terms there is no significant difference between these two conceptions (cf. Brighouse 1995; Costa 2004).45 But in addition to furthering public autonomy, educational public policies that have democratic justice as their ground should also promote personal moral autonomy. Personal moral autonomy means the capacity to act on moral reasons and follow moral norms and thus is an instance of the concept of autonomy, which I understand as the capacity to follow reasons (cf. Culp 2018; Forst 2012, ch.  6). The normative importance of personal moral autonomy is that it is necessary in order to enjoy the moral right not to be arbitrarily interfered with in the conduct of one’s life. This is a right that is a direct implication of the moral right to justification, as interference counts as arbitrary precisely when and because it is not justifiable. Being the carrier of a moral right to justification, that is, just means that others must not arbitrarily interfere in one’s life, which in turn means that the possession of this requires the development of personal moral autonomy. Thus democratic justice, which recognizes such a basic moral right to justification, offers a deontological justification for regarding personal moral autonomy as the end of educational public policy.46 For this justification relies solely on the idea that education for personal autonomy is necessary in order to enjoy the moral right not to be arbitrarily interfered with in the conduct of one’s life. Thereby personal moral autonomy differs from the kind of personal autonomy that perfectionist liberals regard as the ground of educational public policy. In order to highlight this difference, I will subsequently distinguish between personal moral autonomy and personal ethical autonomy. When differentiating between “moral” and “ethical” autonomy, I employ a distinction that Habermas (1993) and Forst (2002, 258–63) articulate and emphasize.47 As Forst (2012, 15) explains, while morally answering the question “What should I do?” requires considering the legitimate claims of all morally affected persons, in ethical contexts it is posed as a question about the values, ideals, and “final ends” that constitute a good life and how this is then to be realized.

The normative ground of educational policy   43 Accordingly, by personal ethical autonomy I mean to refer to the capacity of reflexively identifying and pursuing one’s personal ends – either as an individual or as a member of a certain association. According to this understanding of ethical autonomy, individuals are autonomous when they determine the ends that are constitutive of their identity or their conception of the good and then aim at realizing these ends. By contrast personal moral autonomy refers to the capacity to act morally in the sense of being able to act according to moral norms that are justified by the criteria of reciprocity and generality (cf. Forst 2002, 268). The exercise of personal moral autonomy does not pursue the realization of a particular conception of the good. It aims at avoiding immoral behavior, which consists of arbitrary interferences in one’s own life and the lives of others, where interference counts as arbitrary when it cannot be justified by the criteria of reciprocity and generality. Hence the point of personal moral autonomy is not a “positive” one, according to which personal moral autonomy matters for pursuing one’s individual ends. Rather, its point is a “negative” one, according to which education for personal moral autonomy is necessary in order to reduce and perhaps even eliminate instances of immoral behavior in the form of arbitrary interpersonal interferences.48 So the idea of personal moral autonomy means that individuals should be aware that they have the right to reason critically which ends they would like to pursue in their private lives. But I do not hold that the normative importance of personal moral autonomy is grounded in the idea that its exercise is necessarily conducive to leading a flourishing life.49 The basic idea is rather that of non-­ domination, according to which no individual is entitled to decide for another individual how to lead his or her life (cf. Costa 2011, ch.  11). Costa puts this point as follows: [T]he case for educating citizens against domination is critically different from the case for educating citizens towards the cultivation of any ideal of personal autonomy. The positive value that reasonable people may give to ideals of personal autonomy can vary, since any such ideals will be controversial. But one can expect much wider agreement on the claim that domination is prima facie bad and that there are good reasons to avoid or prevent it. (Costa 2011, 86) Thus nobody is entitled to determine for others how they should think of their conception of the good. Thus the argument is based on the idea that individuals have a right to personal autonomy, whether or not the possession or exercise of this right contributes to, or is constitutive of, their flourishing. This is because when it comes to questions about the good life and what counts as human flourishing, everyone counts as an equal and independent normative authority. Consequently, nobody is bound to live according to someone else’s suggestions regarding what makes a human life a flourishing one, and this is simply because everyone can rely on her or his judgment about that issue.

44   The normative ground of educational policy So there is an important difference between a perfectionist liberal education for personal ethical autonomy and my justification of educational public policies that realize personal moral autonomy. Nevertheless some educational scholars could argue that my justification remained incompatible with the principle of liberal neutrality, because it involves teaching personal moral autonomy (cf. Galston 1992, 1995; Lomasky 1987). But they thereby failed to appreciate that the teaching of personal moral autonomy is unproblematic as long as it is not paired with the claim that the exercise of autonomy or some other conception of the good life is of greater value than any other conception of the good life.

6  Conclusion In this chapter I argued that global democratic justice constitutes the normative ground of educational public policy and that personal moral autonomy and public autonomy should therefore be regarded as the ends of educational public policies.50 My argumentation proceeded in three steps. First, I considered the functionalist claim that there is no point in discussing competing normative grounds of educational public policy because such policy necessarily reproduces the given social order. I rejected this claim because it is incompatible with the idea of human freedom and therefore also clashes with teachers’ not altogether implausible self-­understanding that they are agents of social change. Second, I discussed human capital formation and personal autonomy as alternative normative grounds of educational public policy and argued that their justifications are ultimately unconvincing. In this way, I showed that the normative grounds of educational public policy other than that of justice were in important respects deficient. Thereby I established negatively the relevance of the concept of justice as normative ground of educational public policy. The deficiencies that I identified in viewing human capital formation as the normative ground of educational public policy were that such a view problematically assumes either that economic growth is of intrinsic value or that it is of instrumental value for some conception of distributive justice. The problem of the first assumption is that ascribing intrinsic value to economic growth amounts to commodity fetishism. The second assumption is problematic because justifying the moral relevance of economic growth on the basis of its instrumental importance for some conception of distributive justice means to substitute human capital formation with that conception of distributive justice as the normative ground of educational public policy. In contrast, the central deficit of regarding personal ethical autonomy as the normative ground of educational public policy, I argued, is that this view relies on indefensible perfectionist claims. For those who maintain this view usually posit that a personally ethically autonomous life constitutes the highest form of flourishing and thereby violate the liberal principle of neutrality, according to which public policies should not favor one particular understanding of the good life over another such understanding. Or, alternatively, they argue that the capacity for personal ethical autonomy is of instrumental value in realizing whichever

The normative ground of educational policy   45 c­ onception of the good one may endorse. But this argument, I critically pointed out, relies on the assumption that leading a good life consists of choosing a way of life that optimally fits to one’s individual constitution – an assumption that is not universalizable. Finally, I offered a defense of a particular conception of global democratic justice that I argue constitutes the definitive normative ground of educational public policy. I identified the basic normative ideas that underlie this conception, namely the idea of a justification-­based understanding of moral respect, the idea of basic structures of justification as fundamental political requirements of justice, the idea of deliberative democracy as appropriate institutional arrangement for realizing these fundamental requirements of justice, and the idea of an internationalist interpretation of the demands of democratic justice at the global level. Based on this conception of global democratic justice, I determined public autonomy and personal moral autonomy as the major ends of a normative conception of educational public policy. In the following chapters I will further unfold this normative conception by way of determining the principles of global democratic educational justice and of global democratic citizenship education.

Notes   1 These theories that defend personal autonomy as an educational aim have also played an important practical role. They have informed, and continue to inform, many educational systems and institutions that offer a liberal education that is meant to facilitate the development of the students’ personalities.   2 Similarly, Forst (2012, 1) claims that justice is “[t]he most important normative concept” that applies to “norms and institutions” that claim to be justified.   3 In my previous work I defend at greater length the two claims that a theory of justice (i) should be conceived in a democratic or discourse-­theoretic manner (Culp 2015) and (ii) must be of global rather than merely domestic scope (Culp 2014, Part I).   4 See also Bourdieu and Passeron (1971) who argue that very idea of equal educational opportunity, which they refer to as an illusion, serves to stabilizes political and socio-­ economic inequalities.   5 Similarly, Biesta (2015, 80, my emphasis) argues “that in the design, enactment and justification of education we have to engage with normative questions.”   6 See Allen (2015, ch. 1) for this distinction.   7 See Fromm (1976, passim) for a similar critique of commodity fetishism.   8 The core meaning of the concept of autonomy, which alternative conceptions of autonomy flesh out differently, is the idea of acting consciously on the basis of reasons. (Here I follow Hart’s (1961, 156) distinction between a concept and a conception, and Forst (2012, ch.  6) who applies this distinction to the discussion of autonomy.) An autonomous person, that is, knows which reasons she has for acting in the particular way that she does. In a similar fashion, albeit even more abstractly, Weithman (2015, 57) has recently provided this definition: To act autonomously is to follow the authority of reason. To live autonomously is to follow the authority of reason in the ongoing conduct of one’s life. To hold one’s beliefs autonomously is to follow the authority of reason in determining what to believe about how to live or what to do.

See also Culp (2018), Macedo (1990, 269), Gutmann (1995, 563), Brighouse (1998, 728) and Forst (2012, 129) on similar understandings of autonomy.

46   The normative ground of educational policy   9 Individuals must thus make use of what Habermas (1993) refers to as the ethical use of reason. Taylor (1985) emphasizes that the self-­understanding of an autonomous person also requires clarity about one’s identity, that is, about who one is and wants to be. 10 The idea of self-­creation is compatible with both inter- and intrapersonal pluralism about values. So relative to all individuals and each individual, there are mutually exclusive sets of values, the realization of each of which is of equal importance. There is no impartial point of view from which it would be possible to determine which set of values was best for all individuals or for any single individual. 11 Instrumental reasoning refers to the means-­ends rationality of choosing those actions that are most effective for achieving a particular set of given ends. Reasoning about ends – which Max Weber calls Zweckrationalität – by contrast, necessitates the ordering of ends, so as to differentiate between the most ultimate or highest ends, on the one hand, and other intermediate or mid-­level ends that are conducive towards the realization of the higher ends. 12 By contrast, Burtt (2003) argues that followers of religious doctrines are likely to develop the capacity for personal autonomy as a consequence of their serious engagement with the origins of, and tensions within, their religious doctrines. 13 Brighouse (2006, 17) uses this example, too. 14 Brighouse or others might reply that the religious believer has a higher-­order interest or preference for leading a religious way of life and that there is therefore, in this sense, a fit or match between her personal constitution and her way of life. This objection relies, however, on the problematic assumption that commitments – like those of a religious kind – can be easily re-­interpreted as higher- or second-­order preferences. For reasons that I cannot lay out here, such a re-­interpretation fails to capture the deontic nature of commitments. See Sen (1973), Anderson (2001) and Heath (2008) for pertinent analyses of the distinct nature of commitments. 15 Along similar lines several authors have argued that education for personal autonomy risks undermining religious values; cf. Lomasky (1987), Galston (1992, 1995) and Burtt (1994, 1996). This discussion departs from the cases of Wisconsin v. Yoder and Mozert v. Hawkins County, which are also discussed by Macedo (1995a, 1995b). 16 See Rawls (2005, 54–8) who claims that such pluralism is unavoidable due to what he calls the “burdens of judgment.” 17 My defense of the democratic or discourse-­theoretic conception of justice follows the ground-­breaking work of Forst (2002, 2012, 2014, 2017), as I will further explain in the remainder of this chapter. I offer a critical comparison between this democratic way of conceiving justice and the luck-­egalitarian conception of justice that Cohen (2008) defends in Culp (2015). Of course there are many other conceptions of social and global justice, including communitarian, libertarian and epistemic ones, which I do not discuss. My central reason for this neglect is that my primary aim in this work is to gain certain philosophical insights by combining political philosophy and philosophy of education, rather than to offer a political philosophical analysis of alternative conceptions of justice. 18 This justificatory approach, which can also be labeled normative reconstruction, is also characteristic of Honneth’s freedom-­centered theory of justice that he develops in Freedom’s Right. In this book, Honneth (2014, 64) sets himself the task of “picking up on values and ideas already institutionalized in society” in order to reconstruct alternative normative understandings of social freedom in the spheres of the family, the market and the domestic legal sphere. In Culp and Soroko (2016) I critically comment on Honneth’s reconstructive justification of a social freedom-­based conception of justice. 19 Aristotle (1958, 332/1337a) argues that “the citizens of a state should always be educated to suit the constitution of their state.” 20 An example of such an ideal theory can be found in Cohen (2008). The critiques of these ideal theories emphasize, for example, that ideal theory fails to analyze the

The normative ground of educational policy   47 h­ istoric and ongoing practices of oppression and the way in which these practices shape social institutions and widely shared epistemic assumptions; cf. Mills (2005). 21 The meaning of the term “freestanding” is similar to the one that Rawls (2005, 10) uses in order to characterize his political conception of justice as fairness as one that is shareable among all members of a well-­ordered society despite the fact that these members endorse very different conceptions of the good and distinct metaphysical views. 22 For the distinction between concept and conception, see also Hart (1961, 156). 23 The remainder of this sub-­section follows my discussions in Culp (2014, ch. 4, sect. 2 and ch. 5, sect. 5). 24 It is certainly debatable whether the main target of Young’s critique, namely Rawls’s ideal theory of justice as fairness, as laid out in A Theory of Justice, falls within the distributive paradigm. After all, Rawls’s account of primary goods includes political liberties and opportunities to access positions of political authority. Thus Rawls pays attention to the process-­oriented question of who will decide who receives and contributes what. Yet because Rawls articulates a theory of ideal justice, his theory determines definitely which basic structure must be viewed as just in distributive terms. Rawls’ theory of ideal justice offers, a complete and not just a partial ordering of alternative arrangements of the basic structure. Thus one may wonder whether Rawls’s theory of ideal justice grants sufficient room for deliberation about ideal distributive justice. Be that as it may, Young underlines very clearly the importance of the first aspect of the concept of justice, which focuses on the ascription of basic rights and duties that guarantee just political procedures. 25 Even if Young and Forst concentrate on the political power that people have to participate in and challenge the dominant sites of decision making, there remain, of course, considerable differences between them. Among other things, while Young seems to emphasize the necessity of creating fair conditions for political bargaining, Forst holds that political deliberation itself helps creating a more reasonable, shared understanding of justice. 26 Thereby such a justification-­based understanding of moral respect differs from an alternative interest-­based understanding of moral respect, which says that respect consists in satisfying morally significant interests and which, among others, Buchanan (2004, 85–8, 128–31) defends. 27 For an explication of the criteria of reciprocity and generality, see, Forst (2002, 68–9 and 133–4, 2012, 80–1); on the research program of a discourse-­theoretical moral philosophy, see Habermas (1990). 28 This idea relies on a pragmatic theory of meaning according to which we understand propositions by acknowledging the specific type of reasons that would have to be provided in order to redeem the validity claims that these propositions raise; cf. Habermas (1981, 168–9 and 400). 29 The other task of a discourse theory of justice, namely to develop criteria for valid justifications within political and legal discourses, can be left aside here. Subtle and comprehensive treatments of this task within a framework that reconstructs the distinct logics of argumentation, which are recognizable in moral, ethical, political and legal discourses, can be found in Habermas (1993) and Forst (2002); cf. also Benhabib (1994). 30 In a similar fashion Nussbaum (2011, 19) defends a conception of “basic social justice,” which contains a list of “fundamental political entitlements,” and does not specify what ideal justice requires. 31 As Buchanan (1954, 120) has clarified, “the definition of democracy as ‘government by discussion’ implies that individual values can and do change in the process of decision-­making.” 32 Here I follow Peters’ (2007, 217) definition the term “discourse”, which I use interchangeably with the term “deliberation”, and which emphasizes that claims that are part of a discourse claim to be grounded on appropriate reasons: “Discourse,” he

48   The normative ground of educational policy explains, “occurs if empirical statements, descriptions or reports, explanations, interpretations, proposals prescriptions, normative judgments or evaluations are supported by some kind of justification, by some argumentative backing, or by some presentation of evidence.” See Heath (2001, ch. 1; 2008, ch. 1) for a differentiation between the Habermasian theory of communicative action that underlies the notion of deliberation and the theory of instrumental rationality and action that underlies the idea of negotiation. 33 See Habermas (1996, ch. 8) for a characterization of the institutional features of such arrangements in the domestic case. 34 See Abizadeh (2007) and Risse (2012) for especially clear and comprehensive discussions of different grounds of justice. On the distinction between the existence and the feasibility conditions of justice, cf. Beitz (2008 [1983], 111). 35 For similar internationalist accounts, see Christiano (2010) and Pettit (2010). 36 See Habermas (2008, 334) for his proposal for a transnational negotiation system among states. 37 Despite the importance of transnational social movements and political discourses for my conception of global democratic justice, I nevertheless refer to it as an internationalist rather than a transnational conception. There are three features of my conception of global justice that render it appropriate to label it as an internationalist one. One such feature of my conception of global justice is that it assumes that the international system of states can in principle realize fundamental global justice. It neither calls for anarchy nor for world government, but for a democratic international system. Another relevant feature is that my conception of global justice holds that (democratic) states and (democratically constructed) international law are central bearers of rights and responsibilities of global justice. States and international law play a central role for both conceptualizing and realizing global justice. Finally, my conception of global justice is compatible with the view that different states will domestically realize certain conceptions of social justice in different ways. It recognizes the importance of issues of justice across, between and beyond states, but also maintains that social justice needs to be realized in context-­specific ways in different states. 38 For a similar argument, cf. Nussbaum (2010, ch. 1). Other philosophers of education that put particular emphasis on the public autonomy to participate in processes of democratic decision making are De Wijze (1999) and Costa (2004). 39 In Rawls’s theory of justice, in which the idea of fair cooperation is among the most basic normative ideas, this means that citizens must be capable of proposing and ­complying with fair conditions of social cooperation. Thus citizens’ education, Rawls (2001, 156) argues, should “encourage the political virtues so that they want to honor the fair terms of social cooperation in their relations with the rest of society.” 40 See Rawls (2005, 54–8) on what he calls the “burdens of judgment.” 41 By postulating the possibility of being motivated by a principle of justice, I rely on a Kantian theory of human motivation according to which reasons can have motivating force irrespective of whether they reflect a subjective desire. 42 This metaphor of joint authorship does not mean that my conception of public autonomy assumes that all individuals will eventually gather and decide together which laws should be put in place and which policies should be implemented. That would be an unrealistic utopian claim. “Joint authorship” can, however, play the role of a regulative idea that practically informs actions and policies even if not everyone participates in collective decision making and even if there is no unanimous agreement on how to decide. 43 For a (neo-)republican reading of Rawls’s political philosophy and his remarks on educational philosophy, cf. Costa (2004; 2011, ch. 6). 44 It is indeed the case that those citizens who regard political engagement as an important or perhaps even the most important source of wellbeing will benefit more from such an education than other citizens whose conception of the good is somewhat

The normative ground of educational policy   49 apolitical. However, this unequal treatment of citizens through this kind of educational public policy, which seems to conflict with the liberal idea of neutrality, would merely be a side effect of the civic republican conception or political liberal conception of education. 45 Gutmann (1995, 573) also argues: Most (if not all) of the same skills and virtues that are necessary and sufficient for educating children for citizenship in a liberal democracy are those that are necessary and sufficient for educating children to deliberate about their own ways of life, more generally (and less politically) speaking. 46 I understand this justification as deontological because it does not specify the right in terms of a maximization of the good. For this account of deontological as opposed to teleological justifications, see Rawls (1971, 30). 47 See also Williams (1983) on a similar distinction between moral and ethical issues. 48 My distinction between ethical and moral personal autonomy is similar to that between “autonomous” and “authentic” forms of positive self-­determination, which differentiates between an individual normative orientation towards moral norms, on the one hand, and an individual normative orientation towards realizing one’s subjectively identified needs; cf. Menke (1996, ch. 4). 49 Therefore individuals should not be taught that such personal moral autonomy matters for human flourishing. Similarly, Rawls (2001, 157) emphasizes that educational public policies must not “seek to cultivate the distinctive virtues and values of the liberalisms of autonomy and individuality.” 50 It is important to keep in mind, however, that personal moral and public autonomy are merely regarded as necessary aims of educational public policies. Hence educational public policies may also pursue other aims. It is also compatible with this view that within the legitimate boundaries of private education other educational aims are pursued. Thus my (overall) conception of the (legitimate) aims of education is more pluralistic and permissive than my narrow focus on personal moral and public autonomy as the required aims of educational public policies in this chapter might suggest. See Biesta (2015, 77) who argues that “in education the question of purpose is a multidimensional question because education tends to function in relation to a number of domains.”

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The normative ground of educational policy   51 De Wijze, Stephen. 1999. “Rawls and Civic Education.” Cogito 13/2, 87–93. Dworkin, Ronald. 1978. “Liberalism.” In Hampshire, Stuart (ed.). Public and Private Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 113–43. Elster, Jon. 1997. “The Market and the Forum: Three Varieties of Political Theory.” In Bohman, James and William Rehg (eds.). Deliberative Democracy. Cambridge: MIT Press, 3–34. Forst, Rainer. 2001. “Towards a Critical Theory of Transnational Justice.” Metaphilosophy 32/1–2, 160–79. Forst, Rainer. 2002. Contexts of Justice. Berkeley: University of California Press. Forst, Rainer. 2007a. “First Things First: Redistribution, Recognition and Justification.” European Journal of Political Theory 6, 291–304. Forst, Rainer. 2007b. “Radical Justice: On Iris Young’s Critique of the Distributive Paradigm.” Constellations 14/2, 260–65. Forst, Rainer. 2011. “Transnational Justice and Democracy.” The Formation of Normative Orders Working Papers 4, 1–18. Forst, Rainer. 2012. The Right to Justification: Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice. New York: Columbia University Press. Forst, Rainer. 2014. Justification and Critique. Cambridge: Polity Press. Forst, Rainer. 2017. Normativity and Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fratzscher, Marcel. 2016. Verteilungskampf. Warum Deutschland immer ungleicher wird. Munich: Carl Hanser. Fromm, Erich. 1976. To Have or To Be? New York: Harper and Row. Galston, William. 1992. Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues and Diversity in the Liberal State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Galston, William. 1995. “Two Concepts of Liberalism.” Ethics 105/3, 516–34. Gutmann, Amy. 1987. Democratic Education. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gutmann, Amy. 1995. “Civic Education and Social Diversity.” Ethics 105, 557–79. Gutmann, Amy and Dennis Thompson. 1996. Democracy and Disagreement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1981. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Vol.  1. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. Habermas, Jürgen. 1990 [1983]. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge: MIT Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1993. “On the Pragmatic, the Ethical, and the Moral Employments of Reason.” In Justification and Application – Remarks on Discourse Ethics. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1–18. Habermas, Jürgen. 1996. Between Facts and Norms. Cambridge: MIT Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 2008. “A Political Constitution for the Pluralist World Society?” In Between Naturalism and Religion. Cambridge: Polity Press, 312–53. Hart, H. L. A. 1961. The Concept of Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Heath, Joseph. 2001. Communicative Action and Rational Choice. Cambridge: MIT Press. Heath, Joseph. 2008. Following the Rules. New York: Oxford University Press. Honneth, Axel. 2014. Freedom’s Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life. New York: Columbia University Press. Kukathas, Chandran. 2006. “The Mirage of Global Justice.” Social Philosophy and Policy 23/1, 1–28. Lomasky, Loren. 1987. Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

52   The normative ground of educational policy Macedo, Stephen. 1990. Liberal Virtues. Citizenship, Virtue and Community. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Macedo, Stephen. 1995a. “Liberal Civic Education and Religious Fundamentalism: The Case of God v. John Rawls?” Ethics 105, 468–96. Macedo, Stephen. 1995b. “Multiculturalism for the Religious Right? Defending Liberal Civic Education.” Journal of Philosophy of Education 29/2, 223–38. Mansbridge, Jane and John Parkinson (eds.). 2012. Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Menke, Christoph. 1996. Tragödie im Sittlichen. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. Meyer, Kirsten. 2011. Bildung. Berlin: de Gruyter. Milanovic, Branko. 2005. Worlds Apart. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mill, John Stuart. 1859. On Liberty. Available online via www.oll.libertyfund.org. Miller, David. 1992. “Deliberative Democracy and Social Choice.” Political Studies 40, 54–67. Mills, Charles. 2005. “Ideal Theory as Ideology.” Hypatia, 20/3, 165–84. Mincer, Jacob. 1974. Schooling, Experience, and Earnings. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, Columbia University Press. Moellendorf, Darrel. 2002. Cosmopolitan Justice. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 1992. “Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism.” Political Theory 20/2, 202–46. Nussbaum, Martha. 2000. Women and Human Development. The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 2010. Not for Profit. Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 2011. Creating Capabilities. The Human Development Approach. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Peters, Bernhard. 2007. Public Deliberation and Public Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pettit, Philip. 2010. “A Republican Law of Peoples.” European Journal of Political Theory 9, 70–94. Pogge, Thomas. 1989. Realizing Rawls. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John. 2001. Justice as Fairness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John. 2005 [1993]. Political Liberalism. Expanded paperback edition. New York: Columbia University Press. Raz, Joseph. 1986. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Risse, Mathias. 2012. On Global Justice. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Schultz, Theodore. 1961. “Investment in Human Capital.” Amer­ican Economic Review 51/3, 1–17. Schultz, Theodore. 1963. The Economic Value of Education. New York: Columbia University Press. Sen, Amartya. 1973. “Behavior and the Concept of Preference.” Economica 431, 241–59. Sen, Amartya. 1984. “Goods and People.” In Resources, Values and Development. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 509–32. Sen, Amartya. 1997 [1980]. “Equality of What?” In Choice, Welfare, and Measurement. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 353–72. Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press. Stiglitz, Joseph. 2016. The Great Divide. New York: Norton and Company.

The normative ground of educational policy   53 Taylor, Charles. 1985. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Von Humboldt, Wilhelm. 1960. “Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Gränzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen.” In Flitner, Andreas and Klaus Giel (eds.). Schriften zur Anthropologie und Geschichte. Werke in fünf Bänden. Band I. Stuttgart: Cotta, 56–233. Weithman, Paul. 2015. “Academic Friendship.” In Brighouse, Harry and Michael McPherson (eds.). The Aims of Higher Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 52–73. Williams, Bernard. 1983. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. XXX. Young, Iris. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Young, Iris. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

3 Global democratic educational justice

1  Introduction In public discourse on education, experts often critically point toward the highly positive correlation between students’ educational achievement and their parents’ education, income and citizenship.1 In different national settings there are, of course, distinct aspects of the respective school systems that appear to explain this correlation. In Brazil it is the extremely low quality of public schools; in Germany it is the early school type-­specific differentiation between students who are prepared either for technical apprenticeships or for academic education; in the United Kingdom it is the existence of elite private schools and selective public schools; and in the United States it is the financing of public schools through local property tax (cf. Kozol 1991, 2005). Despite these contextual variations regarding the ways in which inequalities in educational achievement reproduce themselves, educational experts tend to share a common moral concern (cf., e.g., Stifterverband 2017). They hold that inequalities in educational achievement that have their source in students’ social background are morally problematic. Their reasoning for this concern seems to be that the occupation of particular social positions can neither be legitimized by reference to divine will nor by mere chance. Rather, individuals’ social positions should be determined by factors they are responsible for. Thus, since students’ educational achievement strongly influences which social positions they will eventually occupy, students’ responsible agency rather than factors outside of their control such as their social background should determine their educational achievement. In such reasoning, educational experts in public discourses implicitly adopt an understanding of justice in education that is built on the principle of equal educational opportunity. This principle says that inequalities in educational achievement can only be accepted as just if they emerge from an educational system within which every student enjoys equal opportunities to excel. Despite the intuitive appeal of this way of conceiving educational justice, the principle of equal educational opportunity is extremely difficult to grasp. Nevertheless, it is possible to exclude at least the following meaning of equal educational opportunity as inadequate. The principle does not mean that everyone, whatever her choices are, should end up with the same educational achievement. This would

Global democratic educational justice   55 render obsolete the idea that everyone should have an equal educational opportunity. Equal educational opportunity is not meant to do away with inequalities in educational achievement. It is meant to justify such inequalities. However, when we try to come up with a positive formulation of the meaning of equal educational opportunity, we are confronted with a great variety of possibilities, as Christopher Jencks has shown in his seminal essay “Whom must we treat equally for educational opportunity to be equal?.” For example, one meaning demands that those students that have enjoyed the least education before entering school – whether in their families, kindergartens or pre-­schooling – should receive the greatest amount of educational resources in schools as a matter of compensation.2 In this way, it will be ensured that by the end of their school education all students have received a roughly equal amount of private or public educational resources.3 By contrast, another understanding of equal educational opportunity maintains that schooling should not only compensate for inequalities in “external” educational resources, but also for inequalities in “internal” educational resources. If some are disadvantaged in attaining educational achievement due to their (paucity of ) natural talents, that is, their genetic makeup, then they should be compensated for this by means of additional “external” educational resources such as teachers’ attention, textbooks and other equipment.4 Finally, yet another understanding of equal educational opportunity, which is the one that Jencks ultimately favors, argues that the government should provide all students with exactly the same amount of “external” educational resources. On this understanding, educational public policies should not function as vehicles to compensate for inequalities in educational achievement that result from students’ social backgrounds or natural talents. Rather, equal educational opportunity requires providing everyone with the same amount of public educational resource despite their unequal social backgrounds and natural talents. In these ways the general idea of equal educational opportunity is compatible with quite disparate ways of allocating private or public educational resources among students. These plural meanings of equal educational opportunity give rise to considerable controversy about justice in education, despite the fact that in Western societies, as Jencks (1988, 518) points out, “no group defends unequal opportunity … in education.” Yet rather than giving up on a philosophical exploration of the exact meaning of equal educational opportunity, Jencks uses the existence of this controversy as an argument for his view that an equal allocation of public educational resources expresses best the requirements of equal educational opportunity. Such an allocation, he (1988, 532) argues, would represent the “egalitarian ‘null hypothesis’ ” within a liberal society in which those who favor an unequal allocation of public educational resources would have to carry the burden of proof as to why such an allocation is justified. But given the lasting controversy about the requirements of justice in education conceived as equal educational opportunity, Jencks holds that it is impossible to muster such a proof. Hence, he defends as the best interpretation of equal educational opportunity an equal allocation of publicly provided educational resources among all.5

56   Global democratic educational justice Jencks’ account remains a central point of departure for normative discussions of justice in education within liberal political philosophy. These discussions are divided into two major camps. On the one hand, Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift (2006a, 2009a, 2014a), like Jencks, have affirmed the fundamental importance of a principle of equal educational opportunity. But unlike Jencks they have argued that there is a valid justification for an unequal provision of state-­funded educational resources that is sensitive to students’ different social backgrounds and natural talents. Thereby Brighouse and Swift’s principle of equal educational opportunity captures well the concern of those who worry about the highly positive correlation between students’ educational achievement and their parents’ education, income and citizenship (cf., e.g., Spiewak 2017). For the principle is meant to ensure that students’ educational achievement is no longer, or at least to a lesser extent, determined by factors that are outside of the students’ control. On the other hand, Elizabeth Anderson (2004, 2007) and Debra Satz (2007, 2012) have marshaled several reasons as to why the principle of equal educational opportunity is irrelevant for conceiving justice in education. They have argued instead that educational justice consists of providing a democratically adequate education that prepares students for their future role as democratic citizens. This focus on an education that adequately prepares students for democratic citizenship is similar in spirit to those voices in politics that argue that schools must politically empower students (cf., e.g., Raffray 2014). In response, Brighouse and Swift have refined their view and argued that their conception of equal educational opportunity is not meant to replace, but rather to complement a democratically adequate education. In so arguing, they have made not only a substantial point about the demands of educational justice, but also the methodological point that a conception of educational justice can and should consist of several principles – including, among others, equal educational opportunity and democratic educational adequacy. In this chapter I will lay out my reasons as to why I agree with Brighouse and Swift that a conception of educational justice should consist of multiple principles and that the dichotomy between conceiving educational justice either in terms of equal educational opportunity or in terms of democratically adequate education is misguided. However, I criticize Brighouse and Swift for failing to appreciate that recognizing the principle of democratic educational adequacy affects how we should conceive of the principle of equal educational opportunity. More specifically, I argue that Brighouse and Swift neglect that accepting democratic educational adequacy means that democratic processes must ultimately determine how to conceive, weigh and eventually implement equal educational opportunity. Thus the fundamental requirement of educational justice is that educational public policies ensure that education is democratically adequate, even if full educational justice demands, in addition, the realization of a certain understanding of equal educational opportunity. In the view I will defend, giving proper weight to principles of educational justice other than that of democratic educational adequacy is a matter that pertains to suitably arranged democratic procedures rather than to philosophical theorizing. Hence properly conceiving the principle of equal educational opportunity should proceed

Global democratic educational justice   57 through democratic procedures rather than through philosophical theorizing, even if philosophical theorizing matters for such democratic procedures and thereby also shapes the justified understanding of equal educational opportunity. Therefore, in opposition to Brighouse and Swift, I deny that the principle of equal educational opportunity could sometimes be of greater importance than that of democratic educational adequacy. In this respect, my conception shares Anderson and Satz’s fundamental concern about democratic educational adequacy, but develops it further in two ways. First, it takes on board Brighouse and Swift’s methodological point that justice in education can and should consist of multiple principles. And second, my conception properly situates the principle of equal educational opportunity within a conception of democratic justice in education by justifying why this principle does not have the fundamental importance that the principle of democratic educational adequacy has. My argumentation in favor of this “complex” conception of educational justice unfolds in three steps.6 I begin in Section 2 by outlining Brighouse and Swift’s articulation and defense of their conception of equal educational opportunity. Then, in Section 3, I present Anderson and Satz’s conception of democratic educational adequacy by way of discussing their five objections to Brighouse and Swift’s conception of educational justice. In Section 4, I outline a conception of democratic educational justice, which includes the principles of democratically adequate education and equal educational opportunity, but ascribes fundamental importance to democratic educational adequacy. Finally, in Section 5 I further extend this conception of democratic educational justice and develop a global conception of democratic educational justice on the basis of my democratic conception of global justice that I have articulated in Chapter 2. Section 6 concludes my argumentation.

2  Equal educational opportunity Brighouse and Swift offer the probably most influential and sophisticated philosophical conception of equal educational opportunity in the liberal academic ­discourse. As already mentioned, they criticize Jencks’ view that equal educational opportunity means that all students should receive an equal amount of publicly provided educational resources. Their decisive reason for this is that Jencks’ view is unable to justify why students who are bodily disabled should receive a greater-­than-equal share of publicly funded educational resources. This is, in Parfit’s terminology, a “repugnant conclusion” that follows from Jencks’ view because, as Brighouse (2000, ch. 6) emphasizes, his view would leave students with disabilities with much fewer effective educational opportunities relative to those students without disabilities. In addition, another reason against Jencks’ equal-­public-educational-­ resources-for-­all-view, which Brighouse and Swift do not mention, is that it is compatible with providing all students with an extremely low level of publicly funded educational resources. Satz (2007, 628), for one, gives the Californian example where “a successful school finance equity case has been coupled with a lower proportion of state revenue spent overall on education than before its

58   Global democratic educational justice enactment.” So the equal-­public-educational-­resources-for-­all-view is blind towards what can be effectively achieved with the equal amount of educational resources that are publicly provided to all.7 From equal moral respect to equal educational opportunity Due to these limitations of Jencks’ conception, it is very valuable indeed that Brighouse and Swift have conceptualized equal educational opportunity differently. The argumentative strategy that they have employed for this purpose is to situate the principle of equal educational opportunity within a liberal-­egalitarian theory of justice. At the most fundamental level such a theory is grounded in the principle of equal respect, which says, according to Brighouse (2000, 116) “social and political institutions must be designed in a way to realize equal respect for the value of all individual persons.” One way in which Brighouse and Swift (2014a, 15) derive the importance of equal educational opportunity from this equal respect principle is by reference to the intrinsic value of education, which they ascribe to educational goods such as knowledge, intellectual independence and various practical skills. Due to the intrinsic value of these educational goods, Brighouse argues, all citizens should receive an equal opportunity to benefit from education, because otherwise government would treat them unequally: If, knowingly, we distribute goods to the advantage of some so that they can be expected to have richer and more fulfilling lives than others, it will appear that more value is being placed on the lives of those so favored, and thus that unequal respect is being accorded. (Brighouse 2000, 121−2) One problem with this rationale, however, is that students differ regarding the importance that they ascribe to the intrinsic value of education, such that the practical implications for realizing equal educational opportunity are very difficult if not impossible to determine. For it is unclear how government bodies such as ministries of education could determine how much relative benefit students derive from publicly provided educational resources. Hence it is not clear how such entities could possibly design educational policies in ways that would even out the unequal benefits that students derive from the intrinsic value of certain educational goods.8 This is a complicated issue, which I will not explore any further here, however, because Brighouse and Swift also do not elaborate in any depth on this argument that refers to education’s intrinsic value. Instead, Brighouse and Swift dedicate much more attention to a different line of argument in favor of a particular understanding of equal educational opportunity, which, by contrast, focuses on the instrumental value of education. This line of argument begins with the observation that in functionally highly differentiated market economies it is impossible to avoid socio-­economic inequalities. This is because in market economies, at least by and large, decentralized market

Global democratic educational justice   59 mechanisms regulate economic activity and determine prices by demand and supply rather than a centralized governmental decision. And so this question arises: how, if at all, can these socio-­economic inequalities be made consistent with the principle of equal moral respect? The answer that Brighouse and Swift provide is that these inequalities could be consistent with that principle if the opportunities that individuals had to receive unequal shares of socio-­economic goods would be justly arranged. In order to achieve this, what matters is to appropriately arrange the opportunities to occupy and exercise public offices and professional positions, because it is to these opportunities that unequal shares of socio-­economic goods are attached.9 And since in liberal societies the level of one’s educational achievement is the perhaps most decisive factor for accessing such offices and positions, it is opportunities for education that need to be arranged justly. The way in which public policies structure educational opportunities thus becomes the key aspect for assessing whether socio-­economic inequalities are just. As such, the concern for the equal respect principle that animates concerns about socio-­economic inequalities transforms into a concern about unequal opportunities for accessing public offices and professional positions, which in turn give rise to worries about unequal educational opportunities (cf. Brighouse 2000, 122–6; Brighouse and Swift 2009a, 118; 2014a, 15). This train of thought highlights clearly the relevance of equality of opportunity for the determination and justification of equal educational opportunity. Since education is instrumentally valuable for the opportunities to access public offices and professional positions to which a range of socio-­economic goods are attached, equal educational opportunity is crucial for bringing about equality of opportunity. However, as there are multiple interpretations of equality of opportunity, it is necessary to be clear which specific interpretation Brighouse and Swift endorse so as to be able to appreciate fully the particular way in which they believe that equal educational opportunity matters. Formal equal educational opportunity In its normatively least demanding meaning, the principle of equality of opportunity means merely formal equality of opportunity. Formal equality of opportunity says that those who are equally qualified for carrying out certain public offices or professional positions should enjoy equal chances of attaining them. The saying that “careers should be open to talents” captures this idea of formal equality of opportunity. Nobody should be excluded from being considered for a certain position simply because of personal attributes – such as class, gender or race – that are irrelevant for the competent execution of a particular office or position. It is unclear, however, what, if anything, the implication of formal equality of opportunity is for how to conceive equal educational opportunity. Formal equality of opportunity refers primarily to the point at which persons enter into certain public offices and professional positions when processes of formal primary and

60   Global democratic educational justice secondary education have already taken place. Yet if we – for better or worse – understand formal primary and secondary schooling itself as a “career,” then formal equality of opportunity would mean that nobody should be excluded from schooling on grounds that are irrelevant for participating successfully in schooling. Formal equality of opportunity can thus be said to normatively vindicate an inclusive system of education, which ensures that everybody that is able to learn in formal institutions of primary and secondary education should receive the opportunity to do so. Satz (2007, 627) expresses this point as follows: “Formal educational equality of opportunity entails that no educable child can be excluded from an education. It precludes an educational system from distributing its positions on a discriminatory basis: it must be open to all who can learn.”10 This interpretation of equal educational opportunity on the basis of formal equality of opportunity may be thought to be a compelling one, especially relative to a situation in which education has not been provided to all. Nevertheless, however, many find formal equality of opportunity too weak. This is because it neglects that persons from a particular social background will have greater ease in acquiring the qualifications necessary for certain positions than others, despite the fact that their natural talents and motivation to use them might be just the same.11 Due to the especially informed choices of their well-­educated parents or due to the personalized education that well-­to-do parents provide to their children, students that are equally naturally talented and motivated will attain unequal educational achievements and thus end up enjoying unequal opportunities to access public offices and professional positions. To illustrate, it might be the case that while some of these students from privileged social backgrounds learn at very well-­equipped private schools with highly motivated teachers and benefit from various kinds of extra-­curricular activities such as singing, acting and dancing, other students from less privileged social backgrounds will learn at schools of low quality and will not be exposed to additional learning opportunities outside the formal educational setting of schools. Thus, even if all who can learn receive educational opportunities, the opportunities of some students will be fewer than those of others. And the fewer educational opportunities that they receive will not necessarily allow them to access certain public offices and professional or social positions, even if they are equally talented and motivated. For instance, some of the students of the less privileged social backgrounds might not be able to enter institutions of higher education, simply because of their inappropriate school education. Although in such a case formal equal educational opportunity has not been violated, educational practices nevertheless appear to be unjust in the sense that they are unable to provide everyone with a fair opportunity to access the public offices and professional positions to which unequal shares of socio-­economic goods are attached. One way in which to capture this intuition is to argue that since students cannot be held responsible for their social background that determines the particular form and shape of their educational opportunities, it is unfair when students have lesser educational opportunities on that ground alone. Thereby the unfairness of formal equality of opportunity seems to consist of the

Global democratic educational justice   61 fact that some enjoy lesser opportunities than others through no fault of their own. Thus many, including Brighouse and Swift, believe that realizing merely formal equality of educational opportunity is insufficient to justify socio-­ economic inequalities and hence fails to live up to the requirements of the principle of equal moral respect (cf. Mason 2001). Fair equal educational opportunity In light of the deficiencies of formal equality of opportunity John Rawls (1971, 65–90) has formulated a principle of fair equality of opportunity. The realization of this principle demands that persons’ social background must not influence the chances that persons have for being successful, where being successful primarily refers to occupying and exercising public offices and professional positions that come along with the receipt of certain socio-­economic goods.12 Rawls formulates the principle of fair equality of opportunity as follows: To specify the idea of a fair chance we say: supposing there is a distribution of native endowments, those who have the same level of talent and ability and the same willingness to use these gifts should have the same prospects of success regardless of their social class of origin, the class into which they are born and develop until the age of reason. (Rawls 2001, 43−4) Brighouse and Swift draw on this idea of fair equality of opportunity when they conceptualize and argue for a principle of educational justice in terms of fair equality of educational opportunity. They argue that students with equal natural talents and motivation should have equal prospects of educational achievement, because otherwise they will enjoy unequal chances of success.13 This is because it would be unfair, according to Brighouse and Swift, if students with equal talents and motivation would have unequal chances for educational achievement, since then these students would end up having unequal chances of success, which in turn would violate the idea of fair equality of opportunity. Along these lines Brighouse and Swift formulate their understanding of fair equality of educational opportunity, which they call the “meritocratic conception”: An individual’s prospects for educational achievement may be a function of that individual’s talent and effort, but they should not be influenced by her social class background.14 (Brighouse and Swift 2014a, 15) To elaborate, this principle of fair equality of educational opportunity does not require, as Jencks has argued, that all should receive an equal amount of publicly provided educational resources.15 For if some students receive more educational resources from their parents than others who are equally naturally talented and motivated, then it might be necessary that some students receive more publicly

62   Global democratic educational justice funded educational resources in order to guarantee that opportunities for educational achievement remain equal. But fair equality of educational opportunity does not determine how great the differences should be in prospects of educational achievement among those who have unequal talents and motivation. Thus, it is conceivable that some with much more talent and motivation than others receive much more or much less educational resources than others who are less naturally talented and motivated. This is compatible with fulfilling the very specific requirement that the chances for educational achievement among those who are equal regarding their natural talent and motivation should be the same. This implies that those with greater talents and motivation need not have greater chances of educational achievement.16 If those with fewer talents and less motivation receive greater amounts of “external” educational resources, then they might have greater chances of educational achievement than those with greater natural talent and motivation. This is why Brighouse and Swift’s label “meritocratic” is confusing. It suggests that those with greater talents and motivation should have greater chances of educational achievement, at least if we think that aptitude for educational achievement should be regarded as the proper understanding of merit in this case. And indeed, Swift (2003, 24) suggests that this is the underlying motivation for using the label “meritocratic” when he writes that a student’s educational achievement “should depend on how intelligent she is, and how much effort she’s prepared to make when applying her intelligence.” Yet this claim does not follow from Swift’s (ibid.) other characterization of his “meritocratic view,” according to which “people with the same level of merit – IQ plus effort – should have the same chance of success.” Again, this is because it is conceivable that equal chances of educational achievement obtain among those with equal levels of merit, in the sense just defined, even if those with less merit have greater chances of success than those with greater merit, which might be the case if those with less merit receive greater amounts of “external” educational resources.17 Radical equal educational opportunity There is a peculiar feature of fair equal educational opportunity, however, because it is unclear why differentials in prospects of educational achievement must not derive from students’ unequal social background, but may derive from their unequal natural talent. To the extent that students can neither be held responsible for their social background, nor for their natural talent, it seems as if a more coherent articulation of equal educational opportunity should not allow differentials in natural talents to influence their chances for educational achievement. This at least seems to follow from a so-­called luck-­egalitarian understanding of equality of opportunity that relies on the intuition that no one should be worse off than anybody else through no fault of his or her own. Many theorists have embraced precisely this intuition and made it a central building block in their

Global democratic educational justice   63 liberal-­egalitarian theories of distributive justice (cf. Dworkin 2000, Cohen 2008). Stefan Gosepath, for example, formulates this basic notion like this: It is unjust when a person is placed in a condition more unfavorable than another person (based on the measure of his share of resources), except in the case where his condition is the result of conditions, for which he himself is responsible, has made his own free choice or has made an avoidable failure. (Gosepath 2004, 365; trans. J. C.) From this perspective, the only characteristic of a student that may determine students’ educational achievements should be their effort. Following this line of reasoning, Brighouse and Swift have formulated the following “radical conception” of equal educational opportunity: An individual’s prospects for educational achievement may be a function of that individual’s effort, but it should not be influenced by her social class or her level of talent. (Brighouse and Swift 2014a, 17) The main practical implication of this conception is that students who are less talented than other students in attaining educational achievement but who are otherwise equal in every respect should receive more “external” public or private educational resources so that the remaining differences in educational achievement would merely reflect unequal effort. Radically equal educational opportunity would thus not simply require that those students who possess equal “internal” educational resources in terms of talent and effort should receive equal “external” public or private educational resources. Rather, except for the inequality in effort that students exercise, the sum of all other internal and all external private or public educational resources should be equal. The problem with their radical conception, as Brighouse and Swift point out themselves, is that students’ effort seems to be a function of students’ social background and talents, which is why it appears problematic to regard students’ effort as a characteristic for which they can properly be held responsible.18 The reasons for this are, first, that students from “successful” families experience greater rewards for their efforts, since their parents live less stressful lives and are able to give greater attention to their children. Relatedly, successful parents demonstrate themselves that it is worth exercising effort and thereby encourage their children to become eager students. In addition, an unequal display of effort might also be a consequence of slight inequalities in natural talents. A student’s particularly skillful exercise of certain tasks might simply be due to such talents, but can nevertheless provoke a kind of social recognition that encourages the student, as Brighouse and Swift (2014a, 17) put it, “to continue to exert effort.” Due to these ways in which unequal effort does not appear to track students’ responsible behavior, it might be thought that equal educational opportunity

64   Global democratic educational justice would require evening out differentials in students’ efforts, too. Brighouse and Swift (2014a, 18) call this the “extreme” conception of equal educational opportunity. This conception, however, would lead the idea of equal educational opportunity ad absurdum, because its realization would amount to bringing about equal educational achievements for all. Thus, educational achievement would be decoupled from the students’ actual educational choices, which would effectively render obsolete the idea of an educational opportunity. Brighouse and Swift therefore refrain from subscribing to this extreme conception. But they remain committed to the ideas of the meritocratic and the radical conceptions of equal educational opportunity, and maintain that they express valid requirements of justice in education.

3  Democratic educational adequacy Recently, Anderson and Satz have fiercely criticized equal educational opportunity in the way in which it has been conceptualized by Brighouse and Swift. In addition, they have also offered a distinct conception of educational justice to which I will subsequently refer to as democratic educational adequacy. Their conception provides a philosophical account of a movement in US judicial decision making that focuses on the idea of educational adequacy rather than educational equality.19 This movement started out with the US Supreme Court decision San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973). The US Supreme Court maintained in that decision that substantial inequalities in public spending per student, which resulted from the rules governing school funding, were permissible on the condition that the smallest per student spending would still suffice for providing an adequate education. Similarly, Anderson (2007) and Satz (2007) defend the idea that educational justice requires educational public policies that are adequate for rendering everyone politically capable of participating effectively as an equal citizen within democratic decision making. Although this idea of democratic educational adequacy might be thought to conflict with a basic commitment to equality, perhaps because it does not take its cue from one of the various principles of equality of opportunity, it actually remains committed to the idea of equality in the form of equal citizenship. 20 By drawing on Thomas Marshall’s (1977) work on citizenship, Satz defines equal citizenship as follows: Citizens are equal in terms of their status as full members, although they may be unequal along other dimensions such as income and wealth. As full members of society, citizens (1) have equal basic political rights and freedoms, including rights to speech and participation in the political process; (2) have equal rights and freedoms within civil society, including rights to own property and to justice; and (3) have equal rights to a threshold of economic welfare. (Satz 2007, 636)

Global democratic educational justice   65 Due to their emphasis on equal citizenship, Anderson and Satz align themselves with educational theorists such as John Dewey (1980 [1916]) and Amy Gutmann (1987) who have already defended the importance of democratically adequate education through schooling.21 Unlike Dewey and Gutmann, however, Anderson and Satz’s defense of democratic educational adequacy emerges from a critique of the sophisticated argumentation for equal educational opportunity that Brighouse and Swift have been developing lately. For this reason an appreciation of their critique of equal educational opportunity is crucial for grasping their particular conceptualization of educational justice in terms of democratic educational adequacy. Thus in the remainder of this section I will critically analyze five of Anderson and Satz’s objections for rejecting Brighouse and Swift’s principle of equal educational opportunity. These five objections are the misapplication objection, the natural aristocracy objection, the epistemic inaccessibility objection, the ­leveling down objection and the parental educational liberty violation objection. My analysis will show that these objections are not fatal for the equal educational opportunity principle, although they make clear that a conception of educational justice must not consist of that principle alone. The misapplication objection Anderson criticizes Brighouse and Swift’s conceptualization of equal educational opportunity for resulting from a misunderstanding of Rawls’s principle of fair equality of opportunity. She holds that the fair equality of opportunity principle applies merely to developed but not to natural talent. Therefore, she thinks that this principle cannot serve as basis for working out a conception of equal educational opportunity, as such a conception concerns the development of talent. Anderson puts this reasoning as follows: Equality of opportunity is a valid ideal for deciding who, among those with already developed talents and motivation, should have access to the best jobs in an exogenously given occupational hierarchy. It cannot guide us in the allocation of educational opportunities [within schools], where both the talent and motivation of those seeking education, and the structure of educational opportunities, are endogenous to the decision being made.22 (Anderson 2004, 101) Anderson thus holds that the principle of fair equality of opportunity applies solely to the allocation of public offices and professional positions at the age of maturity when persons have already exited primary and secondary institutions of education. She thinks the principle states that this allocation should be based solely on merit, understood as persons’ developed talents and motivation. When conceived in this manner, this principle implies that those with equal levels of developed talents and motivation should have equal prospects of accessing public offices and professional positions. Likewise, Satz (2007, 630) also notes

66   Global democratic educational justice “the merit that matters in the case of employment and university access is developed talent and ability, not innate talent and ability.” Anderson and Satz’s understanding of the fair equality of opportunity principle is peculiar, however, because the idea that the allocation of certain offices and positions should be based on merit is already inherent in the weaker principle of formal equality of opportunity or “careers open to talents.” That is, the idea that equally competent applicants should not be excluded from consideration for certain jobs simply because they belong to a certain class or group, whose characteristic features are irrelevant for the competent execution of certain offices and positions, is already captured by formal equality of opportunity. So formal equality of opportunity merely concentrates on how to allocate jobs among those whose talents are already developed, and neglects the inequalities of opportunities for talent development among those with equal natural talents and motivation. Fair equality of opportunity demands that those with equal natural talents and motivation should have equal chances of success, and thus that they should have equal opportunities of developing their talents. Hence Anderson and Satz’s misapplication objection therefore fails. The natural aristocracy objection Another problem that Satz (2007, 630) identifies in Brighouse and Swift’s principle of equal educational opportunity is that realizing this principle would give rise to a natural aristocracy. Here, their concern is that providing equal chances of talent development to those who are equally naturally talented will result in a situation in which the naturally most talented will have the greatest chances of being successful in terms of receiving the socio-­economic goods that are attached to the exercise of certain public offices and professional positions. Thereby the realization of equal educational opportunity will result in a social structure that is hierarchically ordered in conformity with the natural distribution of talents. This critique involves two problems. The first is that fair equal educational opportunity does not necessarily suggest that those with greater talents and motivation should have greater chances of reaching higher levels of educational achievement. This is because the principle does not say anything about the relative chances of success among those who do not possess equal natural talents and motivation. It focuses only on the relative chances of success of those with equal natural talents and motivation and claims that their chances of educational achievement should be equal. Thus it is conceivable that educational public policies that follow fair equal educational opportunity would favor supporting those with lower levels of natural talents and motivation. The chances of educational achievement of those who are supported in this manner would thereby be equalized vis-­à-vis those who possess greater natural talents and motivation. Indeed, Brighouse suggests that there are cases in which it seems mandatory to provide greater total – public and private – educational resources to those who have lesser natural talents. One particular case that he has in mind, and which I have already mentioned earlier, is that of students who are bodily disabled and

Global democratic educational justice   67 who should therefore receive more educational resources than those who are not bodily disabled. This endorsement of more public or private educational resources for those who have lesser natural talents highlights that Brighouse’s view of educational equality does not support a natural aristocracy. Confusingly, however, Brighouse and Swift (2009a, 16) state that it “would be expected on the meritocratic view” that “children born into different classes will themselves tend to have different levels of talent.” After all, it is compatible with the meritocratic conception that those with lesser natural talent receive greater amounts of “external” educational resources. This implies that the realization of Brighouse and Swift’s meritocratic conception need not result in a social class structure that will mirror differentials in natural talent. Finally, the conception of radical equal educational opportunity, which Brighouse and Swift also acknowledge, states explicitly that the chances of educational achievement should solely depend on individuals’ efforts rather than their natural talents. In this way the point of the radical conception is precisely to block any tendency of the social hierarchy to resemble peoples’ natural differences. Therefore Anderson and Satz’s objection that Brighouse and Swift’s conceptualization of equal educational opportunity would give rise to a natural aristocracy is ill founded. The epistemic inaccessibility objection It is a potential epistemic problem of both the fair and the radical conception that they rely on a certain notion of natural talent and motivation that suggest that it is possible to determine whether two given students possess the same levels of natural talent and motivation. This gives rise to the epistemic objection that, as Anderson (2004, 103–4) puts it, “[t]here is no valid standard of pre-­existing merit, in relation to which we can define a principle of equality of opportunity to develop merit.” This is an important critique of both the fair and the radical conception of equal educational opportunity, which both Brighouse and Swift do not address sufficiently. One response to this problem – which Swift considers, but ultimately rejects – is that educational opportunities should be allocated on the basis of the talent that students display when they enter into schools.23 This does not solve the problem, however, because even at this early age the identifiable talent of children will not be natural talent but rather the already developed talent that reflects the class of the students’ social background. Thereby this understanding will give a head start to those who grow up under circumstances that favor the development of natural talent. As Brighouse and Swift make this point: Whatever a child is born with, as it were, her class background – the resources (both material and cultural) at her parents’ disposal, the neighborhood she lives in, and many other class-­related factors – will immediately start to impact on its development.24 (Brighouse and Swift 2014a, 16)

68   Global democratic educational justice Consequently, Swift (2003, 38) denies that the partially developed talent at the time of entry into schools should be taken as proxy for the level of natural talent. Ultimately, however, neither Brighouse nor Swift (Brighouse and Swift 2014a,  16) suggests a method for determining students’ natural talent. To the contrary, they point out that social class impacts upon the unfolding of natural talents even before the child is born and hence highlight another problem for determining natural talent. More specifically, they even explain that “what a child is born with can be influenced by in utero development, which, in turn, is influenced by maternal health, which, is itself influenced by social class.” One way in which Brighouse and Swift could reply to this epistemic problem is by arguing that it is plausible to assume that natural talent and motivation is randomly distributed across all social classes. If that were the case, then under conditions of equal educational opportunity – along the lines that Brighouse and Swift conceptualize it – educational achievement should also be randomly distributed across all social classes. Thus, any actual distribution of educational achievement that significantly deviates from this random distribution would indicate a violation of equal educational opportunity. In this way, it would be possible to operationalize equal educational opportunity, even if it is not possible to measure precisely the relative level of students’ natural talent and motivation. This is (at least) one way in which it is possible to meet Anderson and Satz’s epistemic inaccessibility objection. The leveling down objection A further objection that Anderson and Satz put forward against the equal educational opportunity principle is that it would justify leveling down the welfare of some even if that would not be to anyone’s benefit.25 To that effect they point out that Brighouse and Swift would insist on equal educational opportunity even in a situation in which allowing inequality in educational opportunity among equally talented and motivated students would be to the benefit of the least well off. This situation could arise when the greater educational opportunities of some would increase productivity and thus the overall amount of resources available, as these resources could then be allocated to those who are worst off. According to Anderson and Satz, it is an implausible implication of the equal educational opportunity principle that it would not permit those inequalities, although they would benefit the least well off. In response, Brighouse and Swift have argued that the leveling down of welfare is not an implication of their overall view of educational justice, because the principle of equal educational opportunity is merely one among several principles of educational justice. Thus they have pointed out that they also recognize the prioritarian principle to which Satz appeals, and according to which benefitting someone matters more the worse off that person is.26 This principle can conflict with the principle of equal educational opportunity, because unequal educational opportunity can sometimes be to the benefit of the least well off. But Brighouse and Swift deny that in such a conflict they would necessarily ascribe greater value to

Global democratic educational justice   69 equal educational opportunity relative to the value of the prioritarian principle that calls for benefitting the least well off.27 So the leveling down objection does not apply to Brighouse and Swift’s understanding of educational justice. In addition, Brighouse and Swift (2014a, 20–3) highlight that under many circumstances it is not the case that unequal educational opportunities actually translate into benefits for the least well off. Indeed, students from well-­to-do families might have much greater educational opportunities than students with equal natural talents and motivation from less privileged families. One might think that the greater educational opportunities are acceptable if students use them in order to create additional economic value in a way that would ameliorate the absolute economic position of the least well off. In the real world, however, greater educational opportunities often times neither bring about additional economic value nor, if they do, does that value benefit the least well off. In these cases unequal educational opportunities simply benefit those with better educational opportunities. Hence it is questionable that Anderson and Satz’s leveling down objection captures an urgent concern. The parental liberty violation objection Finally, Anderson and Satz have also argued that bringing about equal educational opportunity would involve violating parental educational liberty. For if some parents invested more in the education of their children than other parents, then those children who receive less educational resources from their parents will have fewer educational opportunities although they might be equally talented and motivated (cf. Swift 2003, 18). Thus Anderson (2004, 104) and Satz (2007, 633–4) view it as an objectionable implication of Brighouse and Swift’s understanding of equal educational opportunity that it prohibits parents to educate their children in ways that they see fit. By contrast, Anderson and Satz maintain that their conception of educational justice as democratic educational adequacy would not interfere with parents’ educational liberty. For it is possible to ensure a democratically adequate education for all through public educational policies, even if some parents provide their children with more additional educational resources than others (cf. Anderson 2004, 101, 105). As long as all citizens reach the threshold of education that is necessary for exercising democratic agency, it is unproblematic in their conception if, as a result of inequalities in parentally provided education, some students have greater opportunities for educational achievement than others who are equally talented and motivated. Satz (2007, 634) notes, further, if the parents provide education driven by a concern for the intrinsic value of education, and not by a competitive motivation for their children to become better than others, then there would be nothing morally objectionable about the fact that such parental education gives some students a competitive advantage over others: “Many parents want better education for their children – including private lessons – because they believe that education is intrinsically valuable, not because they want their children to be wealthier

70   Global democratic educational justice or more advantaged than others.” Thus Anderson and Satz criticize, for example, Swift’s proposal that parents in the British school system should not send their children to private or selective public schools. In response, Brighouse and Swift defend equal educational opportunity by arguing, once again, that it is a misunderstanding to assume that equal educational opportunity is the only principle determining educational justice. On that basis they move on to explain that they also recognize the validity of a principle of parental liberty in educational justice. So Brighouse and Swift accept that moral intuitions might pull in different directions when, on the one hand, it seems adequate to grant parents a certain liberty to educate their children in the way that they see fit while, on the other hand, it also appears problematic that certain forms of parental education impede the realization of equal educational opportunity. They recognize that parental liberty also counts as an important aspect of educational justice. Nevertheless, however, Brighouse and Swift disagree with Anderson and Satz when it comes to the specific content of parental liberty. Brighouse and Swift do not believe that any parental behavior that happens to hinder the realization of equal educational opportunity should be accepted. Rather, they introduce a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate parental partiality so as to judge which parental behavior is legitimate. In order to draw such a distinction, Brighouse and Swift reconstruct the normative importance of familial relationships and argue that they can generate specific familial goods, goods which arise from the intimacy of familial relationships. Based on this conceptualization of familial relationships and goods Brighouse and Swift (2006b, 2009b, 2014b) argue that those forms of parental partiality are legitimate which promote familial goods, whereas those that do not promote familial goods are illegitimate. For example, they claim that reading bedtime stories to one’s offspring should count as a form of legitimate parental partiality, whereas purchasing education by paying children’s fees for private school should be regarded as illegitimate form of parental partiality. In reply, Satz (2007, 634) has insisted that parents have the right to transmit any values that they cherish and which are morally unobjectionable. Among these morally unobjectionable values is the value of education, Satz argues, even if the transmission of that value through private schools comes at the detriment of realizing equal educational opportunity. Brighouse and Swift (2014a, 26) acknowledge the importance of promoting values such as education, but highlight that it is possible to promote these values in impartial ways. Parents who value education can financially support non-­governmental organizations (NGOs) and other philanthropic organizations that initiate and uphold various kinds of educational programs. What is more, since it is possible to maintain and cultivate familial relationships and goods without having to invest partially in the education of one’s children in a way that results in unequal educational opportunities, such investment should count as an illegitimate form of parental partiality. This is a forceful rejoinder by Brighouse and Swift, but it nevertheless remains questionable that their distinction between legitimate and illegitimate

Global democratic educational justice   71 forms of parental partiality will be capable of properly balancing all sorts of conflicts that might arise between equal educational opportunity and parental liberty. Bilingual couples, for example, might want to speak to their children in two languages because they believe that this will render their family life richer and more exciting, although they recognize that their children will thereby gain considerable positional educational advantages. This suggests that there is a real tension between avoiding the violation of equal educational opportunity and allowing for a more permissive conception of parental liberty. Nonetheless, Anderson and Satz’s parental liberty objection also does not represent a fatal blow to Brighouse and Swift’s principle of equal educational opportunity.

4  Democratic educational justice Thus far I have laid out Brighouse and Swift’s conceptualization of equal educational opportunity and how they have replied to Anderson and Satz’s objections. I have thereby shown that there are good reasons to resist the idea that the misapplication objection, the natural aristocracy objection, the epistemic inaccessibility objection, the leveling down objection and the parental liberty violation objection undermine the validity of equal educational opportunity. One key argumentative strategy that Brighouse and Swift employ in their response to the criticisms of Anderson and Satz is that equal educational opportunity is just one among many principles of educational justice. It is this pluralism about educational justice that also allows Brighouse and Swift to acknowledge not only the validity of the principle of parental liberty but also the validity of the principle of democratic educational adequacy, both in addition to their principle of equal educational opportunity. But I will argue now that Brighouse and Swift’s understanding of democratic educational adequacy is highly problematic. I will do so by critically analyzing two specific ways in which Brighouse and Swift have problematized the ­principle of democratic educational adequacy in their defense of their principle of equal educational opportunity. The first of these two ways is their claim that the principle of democratic educational adequacy is incomplete, because it is incapable of determining the use of educational resources once that democratic educational adequacy has been realized. The second is their critique that democratic educational adequacy is implausible because it prioritizes the realization of a democratically adequate education over equal educational opportunity. I show in this section, however, that in both of these ways of arguing Brighouse and Swift fail to recognize fully the normative implications and appeal of the core idea of the principle of democratic educational adequacy. On the basis of this critique I develop a “complex” conception of democratic educational justice in which the principle of democratic educational adequacy is of fundamental importance. Brighouse and Swift (2014a, 27–30) criticize Anderson and Satz’s democratic conception of educational justice for being incomplete. To that effect they argue that in a situation in which all citizens’ democratic capabilities would have been

72   Global democratic educational justice adequately realized, Anderson and Satz’s democratic educational adequacy view would not be able to specify how additional educational resources should be spent. Brighouse and Swift argue that their pluralist account of educational justice would be capable of doing so, because it provided a normative basis for thinking that additional resources should be directed towards equal educational opportunity. In arguing in this manner, however, Brighouse and Swift overlook that the point of the democratic educational adequacy principle is to enable democratic decision making about educational public policy. Thus such decision making, at least if it is conceived in a deliberative fashion, enabled citizens to deliberate and decide democratically how to spend the additional resources.28 It is possible that citizens decide democratically that the additional resources should be spent on furthering equal educational opportunity. If they were to actually decide in this manner, then at least in practice this would narrow the opposition between equal educational opportunity and democratic educational adequacy. But of course it is also possible that citizens decided to spend the additional resources in other ways.29 For example, citizens might want to spend these resources on educational programs that promote more sustainable, frugal attitudes among their citizens, or aid other countries to improve their educational systems (cf. Zwarthoed 2015). Hence it is not the case that the democratic educational adequacy principle would be incapable of determining how the additional resources should be spent. In light of such an argument in favor of the principle of democratic educational adequacy, Brighouse and Swift might want to object that even if this argument shows that this principle is not incomplete, it renders it implausible. For it is wrong to believe, they might argue that whatever citizens decide democratically properly identifies the requirements of educational justice. For example, they might want to insist that as a matter of educational justice the additional resources should be spent on realizing further equal educational opportunity rather than on anything else. However, the existence of disagreement of how to use such additional educational resources seems to be a reasonable kind of disagreement that is best left to democratic publics to decide, due to what Rawls (2005, 54–8) calls the “burdens of judgment” concerning questions of justice. Thus democratic educational adequacy seems well equipped to deal with such conflicts, despite Brighouse and Swift’s critique that this view is incomplete.30 Another objection that Brighouse and Swift (2014a, 28–9) put forward against the democratic educational adequacy principle is that its strict preference for educational public policies that promote a democratically adequate education over other such policies that promote equal educational opportunity would be implausible. To that effect Brighouse and Swift (2014a, 28–9) discuss a case in which schools that are not socially integrated enable students from disadvantaged social backgrounds to reach higher educational achievements than other students from disadvantaged social backgrounds who learn at socially integrated schools.31 Their argument is that even if socially integrated schools are better in providing a democratically adequate education than socially disintegrated

Global democratic educational justice   73 schools, it might still sometimes be better to prefer socially disintegrated schools when they are more effective in realizing equal educational opportunity. But since the principle of democratic educational adequacy does not ascribe any weight to such considerations of equal educational opportunity, Brighouse and Swift conclude that democratic educational adequacy is implausible. Indeed, it does seem problematic, as Brighouse and Swift rightly point out, that students from disadvantaged social backgrounds might reach lower educational achievements when they attend schools that are socially integrated. Yet it is not clear that the negative impact that socially integrated schools might have on realizing equal educational opportunity necessarily justifies preferring socially disintegrated schools. That is, there is another intuition that speaks in favor of socially integrated schools because they are better in providing a democratically adequate education, even if their provision of such an education comes at the detriment of equal educational opportunity. My reference to such an intuition is not to suggest that socially integrated schools should definitely be viewed as intuitively clearly preferable. Rather, my point is that, different to what Brighouse and Swift suggest, it is intuitively not implausible to think that socially integrated schools that are better in cultivating democratic agents should be preferred even if that comes at the cost of equal educational opportunity. At first sight there simply seems to exist a reasonable disagreement about the requirements of educational justice in this case. Thus, it is not clearly implausible to give greater weight to the democratic educational adequacy principle rather than to the equal educational opportunity whenever they conflict. Thus far the results of my discussion in this section are, first, that although the incompleteness objection against the principle of democratic educational adequacy fails, the principle of equal educational opportunity is nevertheless valuable for determining the demands of educational justice. For once the democratic educational adequacy principle has been fully realized, and citizens fairly deliberate how to use public educational resources, the equal educational ­opportunity principle might correctly highlight morally important ways of allocating such resources. Hence Brighouse and Swift are right to insist that a conception of educational justice should consist of multiple principles. In addition, my discussion here has also shown that prioritizing the democratic educational adequacy principle over the equal educational opportunity principle is not clearly implausible, although, at least intuitively, it also does not seem to be implausible to prioritize in certain cases the equal educational opportunity principle over the democratic educational adequacy principle. This suggests that a pluralist conception of educational justice that consists of multiple principles must include a systematic reflection on how to think of the relation between these principles as well as the other principles of educational justice like, for example, parental educational liberty. However, thus far Brighouse and Swift have not offered any principled way of balancing the relative moral importance of these principles vis-­à-vis one another. This is why I will now provide such a reflection and by way of doing so articulate the basic ideas of a complex conception of democratic educational justice. One of the most

74   Global democratic educational justice important insights of this reflection, as I will explain below, is that the principle of democratic educational adequacy should enjoy priority over the equal educational opportunity principle. The basic idea of my complex conception of democratic educational justice is that it should be possible to regard the existing educational institutions as having resulted from an appropriately arranged deliberative process. This idea clearly grounds the importance of the principle of democratic educational adequacy, since it justifies why educational public policies must be adequate for democracy in the sense that they must equip all citizens with the democratic capabilities that are necessary for participating effectively in the collective determination of public policies. Yet this idea also refers to the way in which educational policies should be determined. It states that neither the government alone, nor families by themselves nor professional educational experts such as schoolteachers should possess the exclusive political authority of deciding which educational policies to implement. This is the idea of democratic education within democracy, for which the democratic and educational theorist Gutmann has forcefully argued, but which has been lost in debates about educational justice.32 What it means to take seriously this idea of democratic education within democracy is to refrain from attempting to determine conclusively, by way of philosophical argument, the relative importance of principles of educational justice other than that of democratic educational adequacy. This idea means that, unlike Anderson and Satz, one should not attempt to justify conclusively why parental educational liberty is more important than equal educational opportunity. For the relation between these principles of educational justice – other than that of democratic educational adequacy – should be determined within a certain form of democracy, namely through fair and inclusive democratic deliberation. This is why I suggest distinguishing between fundamental educational justice and full democratic educational justice. Fundamental democratic educational justice requires merely the realization of the principle of democratic educational adequacy, that is, the idea of democratic education for democracy. Once this principle is realized, then democratic processes of opinion and will formation should further determine how to properly balance and eventually trade-­off against each other the other principles of educational justice such as parental educational liberty or equal educational opportunity. Full educational justice obtains when not only such processes have taken place, but, in addition, the other principles of educational justice have been realized. Notably, this way of democratically conceiving educational justice is different from how Anderson and Satz have articulated their conception of educational justice in terms of the principle of democratic educational adequacy. Among other things, this is because my complex and democratic way of conceiving educational justice constrains the limits of parental educational liberty in two particular ways that Anderson and Satz would find difficult to accept. First, parents’ educational liberty ends wherever it threatens the viability of democratic decision making about educational public policy. Parental educational liberty is conditional on its compatibility with democratically adequate education and does

Global democratic educational justice   75 not have sufficient independent justificatory weight that justified prioritizing that liberty over democratically adequate education. That means that, contrary to what Anderson and Satz seem to believe, or at least fail to explicitly exclude, parents are not free to transmit just about any values that they cherish to their children.33 For example, parents should refrain from conveying an appreciation of materialist values if that rendered the realization of democratic arrangements difficult or impossible. The second way in which my complex conceptualization of educational justice differs from that of Anderson and Satz is that it is fundamentally committed to leaving questions about the relative importance of educational principles other than that of democratic educational adequacy to be decided democratically. In particular, the relative importance of parental liberty vis-­à-vis equal educational opportunity should be decided through democratic procedures and not through philosophical argument. Anderson and Satz, by contrast, seem to deny that this is the proper way of going about this conflict, since they explicitly defend forms of parental educational liberty that effectively impede the realization of equal educational opportunity. My conception of complex educational justice is therefore not subject to the incompleteness charge that Brighouse and Swift have directed at the democratic educational adequacy principle. This is because my conception is capable of dealing with the various principles that educational justice might contain. For example, if there is a conflict between realizing parental liberty and equal educational opportunity, my conception offers a way of dealing with this conflict. Likewise, if realizing equal educational opportunity conflicts with the prioritarian view that inequalities are acceptable as long as they benefit the least well off, then my conception also contains a systematic way of addressing this tension. In addition, my conception of educational justice also develops a novel way of understanding the importance of equal educational opportunity. This is because it justifies why, unlike what Brighouse and Swift believe, there are good reasons not to ascribe any importance to the principle of equal educational opportunity under conditions in which democratic arrangements do not yet exist. My reason for this view is that it is awkward to insist on the importance of the principle of equal educational opportunity under conditions in which most citizens are excluded from co-­determining how to understand this principle, although there are several open questions about this principle that have not been settled thus far. For example, it is not clear whether either the fair equal educational opportunity version of the equal educational opportunity principle, or the radical equal educational opportunity version or both, should be used. Furthermore, it is also unclear how exactly the epistemic inaccessibility objection should be met. Finally, it is also unclear which particular notion of success relative to which equal opportunities should be employed when determining the demands of equal educational opportunity. To elaborate on this last point, recall that the normative function of equality of opportunity is to provide a justification for the unequal shares of socio-­ economic goods that exist in market societies. This presumes that there is a

76   Global democratic educational justice shared understanding concerning the importance of socio-­economic goods whose unequal distribution constitutes a problem of justification to which the principle of equality of opportunity and also that of equal educational opportunity provide the solution. The principle of equality of opportunity thus takes for granted that the possession of socio-­economic goods counts as success. But in culturally highly diverse societies one should not take for granted that one particular standard of success will be necessarily shared by all. What is necessary in contemporary societies, therefore, is a democratic practice of contesting and re-­formulating the relevant understandings of success relative to which opportunities should be equalized. Yet this implies that democratic procedures must be in place allowing citizens to co-­determine their respective notion of success. In the absence of democratic procedures the social elites will more or less arbitrarily determine the dominant notion of success. But why should a notion of success that has been determined in that particular manner be viewed as definitive for how to conceptualize equality of opportunity and thus equal educational opportunity? To illustrate, consider that policy makers of the OECD often consider it problematic that students from certain social backgrounds are unable or have fewer chances of accessing higher education. They view this as problematic because they believe that access to higher education is normally a precondition for occupying public offices and professional positions to which relatively high salaries are attached.34 Hence they assume that earning a relatively high income should be considered as marker of success. They therefore neglect that there might be a considerable number of groups or individuals who would rather carry out jobs in which they have to exercise physical skills rather than those cognitive skills which are characteristic of those jobs for which degrees of higher education function as gateways. Thus what seems necessary, first of all, is a properly arranged public deliberation about how to conceptualize success within a highly diverse society rather than taking for granted one particular standard of success that is potentially cognitively and materialistically biased. An objection to this way of reasoning might be that in liberal societies there already exists an agreement to the effect that income and wealth count as the relevant markers of success. This objection might be correct in that de facto a great number of individuals and groups in such societies effectively subscribe to this understanding of success. It neglects, however, that the undemocratic conditions under which this consensus has emerged, if it actually exists, undermine the normative importance of this consensus. For under such conditions those who are socially more powerful can relatively easily disseminate their particular understanding of success throughout society, such that a consensus that arises in this way does not properly reflect the considered views of all those to which the specific understanding of equality of opportunity and equal educational opportunity will eventually apply. As long as democratic arrangements do not obtain, it therefore seems misplaced to ascribe considerable, if any, importance to realizing one particular understanding of equality of opportunity and hence to equal educational opportunity. This is why Brighouse and Swift are mistaken in believing that it is

Global democratic educational justice   77 implausible to ascribe greater importance to the principle of democratic educational adequacy than to the principle of equal educational opportunity.

5  A global conception of democratic educational justice The point of my discussion in the previous section was to properly situate the principle of democratic educational adequacy within a democratic conception of educational justice. Yet thus far this conception is still insufficiently informed by a global conception of democratic justice, which, as I argued in Chapter 2, constitutes the normative ground of educational public policy. For under conditions of globalization it is unacceptable to limit the scope of a conception of justice to the boundaries of the nation state. Accordingly, it is necessary to conceive educational justice in a way that reflects that considerations of justice must not be restricted to the relations among co-­citizens. Thus in this section I outline how to conceptualize a global conception of democratic educational justice. This conception is not merely informed by the complex understanding of democratic educational justice that I articulated in the previous section, but also by the conception of global democratic justice that I laid out in Chapter 2. Recall that the fundamental political requirement of my conception of global democratic justice is to build appropriately arranged basic structures of justification at the domestic and at the international levels. These structures must enable domestic, inter- and transnational political discourses that discursively determine further principles of global justice. When recognizing this conception as the normative ground of educational public policy, then the educational rights that constitute my global conception of democratic educational justice consists should have these two features. First, the scope of validity of the fundamental – or “primary” – rights to democratically adequate education must be viewed as global or universal. The rights to democratically adequate education must be fully realized within all states.35 Second, the content of these fundamental rights to democratically adequate education must not be limited to an education that is merely effective in facilitating participation in democratic decision making domestically. Rather, educational public policies must also enable citizens to participate in international decision making. This means, in particular, that such policies must contribute to the realization of citizens’ capabilities of partaking in transnational political discourses, since these discourses are one central mechanism through which citizens can shape international decision making. One way in which to emphasize this specific content of the rights to democratically adequate education is to differentiate between the right to domestically democratically adequate education and the right to internationally democratically adequate education. A global conception of democratic educational justice requires the realization of both of these rights. Yet in addition to these fundamental rights to democratically adequate education, my complex conception also includes further – “secondary” – rights to those kinds of education that are justified within properly arranged basic structures of justification. Thus a complex conception of global democratic educational justice

78   Global democratic educational justice also consists of these further rights to education that are justified within such structures of justification at the domestic as well as at the international levels. So relative to the particular way in which appropriately structured domestic, inter- and transnational deliberations justify further rights to education these specific further or secondary rights also constitute demands of (full) global democratic educational justice. These specific further or secondary rights might be certain rights to equal educational opportunity or rights to education that benefit the least well off. Since this conception of global democratic educational justice consists of fundamental – or primary – and further – or secondary – rights to education that must be realized not only domestically but within all states, the question arises of how to rank these rights in terms of their moral importance. In particular, the question arises as to whether a state, once that the fundamental rights to democratically adequate education have been entirely realized in this state, should pursue the domestic realization of further, secondary rights to education, or whether the state should rather aim at realizing the fundamental rights to education of citizens from other states.36 In my view, in such a case the fundamental rights to democratically adequate education of citizens from other states are in principle morally more important than the domestic realization of any further or secondary rights to education domestically. For example, consider a state in which democratically adequate education already has been achieved. Should the state now use additionally available educational resources for realizing equal educational opportunity domestically rather than at supporting the realization of fundamental rights to democratically adequate education in other states? My conception maintains that, other things being equal, the available educational resources should be employed for realizing the fundamental rights to democratically adequate education in other states rather than for realizing domestic equal educational opportunity.37 In practice, however, due to many complicating factors, the principled prioritization of the fundamental rights to democratically adequate education is not necessarily action guiding. Among other things, this is because it is very difficult to determine the likelihood of success of any particular educational public policy. In addition, even if such likelihood could be estimated with a reasonable degree of confidence, it would be still unclear how to weigh one educational public policy that has a high likelihood of achieving equal educational opportunity domestically relative to another educational public policy that has a low likelihood of realizing fundamental rights to democratically adequate education in other states. However, in cases where these likelihoods are equally high or equally low, and other conditions are also equal, then in my view those educational public policies that target the fundamental rights to democratically adequate education in other states should be prioritized. Finally, when it comes to determining in greater detail which agents should prioritize the realization of the fundamental rights to democratically adequate education that my global conception of democratic educational justice defends, my first answer is simply that those who can should. This first answer relies on what Rawls (1971, 115) calls the “natural duty of justice,” according to which

Global democratic educational justice   79 one should comply with the demands of just institutions and contribute to their creation where they do not yet exist. In the case of global democratic educational justice the relevant actors to which this duty applies are, among others, states as well as other public entities such as international organizations. Thus I claim that all states and the educationally relevant international organizations – such as, above all, the OECD, UNESCO and UNICEF – bear the moral responsibility of realizing the fundamental rights to democratically adequate education of all citizens within all states. But this first answer does not offer determinate replies to further questions about the moral responsibility for realizing the fundamental rights to democratically adequate education. These questions include: Are there any other reasons for ascribing responsibility to certain actors for realizing global educational justice – reasons other than the natural duty of justice? For example, do actors that benefit or contribute to educational injustices bear special moral responsibilities for reducing global educational injustices?38 How should the moral responsibility for achieving global democratic educational justice be divided among states? Are there any actors other than states that bear a similar kind of moral responsibility? If yes, how should the moral responsibility for global democratic educational justice be divided among these various kinds of actors? Although my first answer does not offer detailed replies to these questions, it offers a determinate approach for answering these questions. For the kind of basic structures of justification that it argues should be erected by those who can are also meant to facilitate democratic deliberation within domestic, international and transnational political discourses about how to allocate justly the responsibilities for achieving global democratic educational justice.39

6  Conclusion In this chapter I examined the question of how to conceive of educational justice if one recognizes a conception of global democratic justice as the normative ground of educational public policy. In answering this question I proceeded by way of discussing the two most dominant conceptions of educational justice in the contemporary liberal academic discourse. These are the conception of equal educational opportunity, defended by Brighouse and Swift, and the conception of democratic educational adequacy, defended by Anderson and Satz. The work of Brighouse and Swift has greatly contributed to a clearer understanding of the different meanings and the importance of equal educational opportunity. However, Anderson and Satz have strongly called into question equal educational opportunity by putting forward several objections. These objections concerned the applicability of the idea of equality of opportunity to the development of natural talents, the tendency of equal educational opportunity to reproduce a natural aristocracy, the epistemic presuppositions of equal educational opportunity as well as the problematic effects of equal educational opportunity on parental liberty and the least well off. By way of critically analyzing this debate about educational justice, I gained several important insights for articulating my conception of global democratic educational justice.

80   Global democratic educational justice One of these insights is that Brighouse and Swift emphasize correctly that a conception of educational justice need not consist of solely one single principle – either that of equal educational opportunity or that of democratic educational adequacy. This is why I also argue in favor of a conception of educational justice that consists of multiple principles, including the principle of equal educational opportunity and the principle of democratic educational adequacy. Another insight that emerged is that there is a reasonable disagreement between prioritizing either equal educational opportunity or parental educational liberty or the least well off or some other educational concern. Thus it is mandatory, I argued, to prioritize the realization of Anderson and Satz’s democratic educational adequacy principle so as to enable inclusive democratic deliberation about how to properly trade-­off against each other these distinct normative considerations about educational public policy. It is also through such democratic deliberation, I argued, that a context-­specific meaning of equality of opportunity should be justified by identifying the particular notion of success relative to which opportunities should be equalized. By implication, this means that as long as there are no democratic procedures in place for identifying this notion of success, equality of opportunity and thus equal educational opportunity are prone to reflect a notion of success that the socially most powerful groups and individuals have determined. Again, under such conditions one should therefore first of all focus on realizing democratic educational adequacy rather than equal educational opportunity, even if it is equal educational opportunity on which public debates on educational justice usually turn. Therefore I articulated a complex conception of educational justice, which recognizes the validity of various hierarchically structured principles of educational justice. My conception ascribes fundamental importance to the realization of rights to a democratically adequate education that enables all citizens to participate in deliberative democratic decision making, including decision making about educational public policies. Fundamental educational justice obtains when these democratic educational rights are fulfilled. In addition, however, other principles of educational justice, including equal educational opportunity, parental educational liberty and priority for the least well off need to be properly balanced within and through an inclusive democratic deliberation in order to determine the requirements of full educational justice. Based on this complex understanding of democratic educational justice I outlined a global conception of democratic educational justice. This global conception of democratic educational justice consists of fundamental rights to democratically adequate education that must be recognized within all states as well further, secondary rights to education that emerge from a democratic determination as to which educational public policies should be pursued. Yet what is distinct about this conception of global democratic educational justice is not just the universal scope of validity of the fundamental rights to democratically adequate education. Another distinctive feature concerns the content of the rights to democratically adequate education. This is because my conception recognizes not only rights to domestically democratically adequate education, but also rights

Global democratic educational justice   81 to internationally democratically adequate education. Accordingly, unlike Anderson’s and Satz’s exclusively domestic understanding of the principle of democratically adequate education, my understanding of this principle includes the right to that kind of education which is necessary for participating not only in  domestic but also in transnational political discourses so as to be able to ­co-­determine international decision making.

Notes   1 “Educational achievement” is an abbreviation of “formal educational achievement” by which I mean students’ relative performance in examinations in schools, that is, in primary and secondary institutions of formal education.   2 External educational resources include school buildings, textbooks, smart boards and media such as portable electronic devices. Resources like these are easily quantifiable in terms of their monetary costs. However, I do not mean to restrict the meaning of external educational resources to those that can be readily understood in terms of monetary inputs. Rather, the term “external educational resources” should be understood more broadly so as to include as well factors that determine educational achievement but which are not as easily quantifiable – for example, the composition of the student body and teachers’ attention. On problems of conceiving educational justice merely in terms of a just distribution of monetary resources among school districts, schools or students, see Stojanov (2011, ch. 1).   3 Jencks (1988, 522) calls this understanding weak humane justice, according to which “all students have an equal lifetime claim on educational resources.”   4 By “natural talents” I mean genetic characteristics that influence individuals’ capacity for educational achievement. This is, of course, an extremely limited understanding of “natural talents,” as individuals whose capacity for educational achievement might be relatively low can be “talented” with regard to other domains such as the arts, athletics, community building or the rearing of animals.   5 Jencks’ null hypothesis is similar to liberal-­egalitarian theorists of distributive justice like Gosepath (2001, 2004) who employ the presumption that in the absence of conclusive reasons for distributing justice-­relevant goods unequally, everyone is entitled to an equal share of these goods.   6 I hereby allude to Walzer’s (1983) conception of “complex equality” only in the limited sense that I argue that there is a plurality of hierarchically structured principles that constitute educational justice. I do not mean to suggest, however, that the principles of democratic educational adequacy and equal educational opportunity should be conceived autonomously relative to the particular kinds of goods that they regulate. As I will explain throughout this chapter, I believe that there is a legitimate form of “dominance” in the sense that it is acceptable if the particular meaning of equal educational opportunity is contingent upon the way in which democratic agency, which a democratically adequate education is meant to ensure, is exercised.   7 See Sen (1997 [1980]) for a similar critique of resource-­based metrics of distributive justice.   8 See Pogge (2010) for a similar critique of the vagueness of the capability-­based measure of justice.   9 Socioeconomic inequality does not, of course, derive solely from the exercise of different kinds of public offices and professional positions, but also, among other things, from the accumulation of wealth through inheritance and capital gains. According to Piketty (2014) there is a historical trend that the growth of capital gains exceeds the growth of salary-­based incomes. If his empirical analysis is correct, then

82   Global democratic educational justice that means that socioeconomic inequality is primarily driven by the relative growth of capital gains. This means that the relevance of equal educational opportunity is fairly limited in terms of its potential to justify socio-­economic inequality. 10 See also Gutmann 1987, 127. 11 In the following I will simply speak of “motivation” or “effort” when I mean the motivation or effort to use one’s talents for educational achievement. 12 As Rawls (2001, 42) puts it, such “success” refers to “social and economic inequalities” that are “attached to offices and positions.” 13 Brighouse and Swift (2014a, 15) regard “income, wealth, status, positions in the occupational structure and the opportunities for self-­exploration and fulfillment that come with them” as the socially determined benefits to which education is a gateway. 14 See also Roemer 2000. 15 This is the understanding of equal educational opportunity that Jencks (1988, 520) endorses and which Satz (2007, 628) refers to as “horizontal equity.” 16 As Brighouse (2000, 128) points out, this principle “fails to comment on the relationship between the prospects for attainment of children with different levels of talent.” 17 Thus Brighouse and Swift should substitute the term meritocratic conception with that of equal development of potentials and use Satz’s (2007, 628–34) valuable distinction between “meritocratic equality of opportunity” and “equal development of potentials.” 18 It is also questionable whether one should ascribe responsibility to students for their demonstrated levels of effort given that they have not yet reached adulthood and that the very point of schooling might be to create responsible agents. This is the central reason why Stojanov (2011) rejects the idea that the allocation of publicly provided educational resources should proceed in ways so as to realize equal educational opportunity. Walzer (1983, 203) also questions that educational achievement should necessarily depend on students’ responsible choice given that “the goal of the reading teacher is not to produce equal chances, but to achieve equal results.” Gosepath (2014) suggests differentiating between distinct notions of educational justice depending on the particular phase of schooling in which students are situated. 19 See Satz (2007, 624) for this characterization of their account. 20 The central claim of Satz (2007) is precisely that democratic educational adequacy relies on egalitarian normative foundations that play an important role when interpreting the requirements of democratic educational adequacy. 21 Likewise, theorists such as Curren (1994), White (1994) and Liu (2006) have also argued that the central aim of educational public policy is to ensure that all citizens reach a minimum or adequate educational threshold. 22 See also Satz (2007, 630) who highlights that “the creation of merit is highly endogenous to the distribution of educational resources that we choose.” 23 This suggestion is not far fetched, as in Singapore children used to be asked to take an IQ test at the age of nine. I am thankful to Caleb Yong for pointing this out to me. 24 Brighouse and Swift (2014a, 16). 25 Satz (2007, 632) argues that “[i]t makes no sense to object to unequal talent development simply because one’s own relative position is worsened.” Likewise, Anderson (2004, 105) objects to this way of reasoning that it expresses envy: [Equal educational opportunity] conceives of the development of others’ talents as an injury to oneself. This is the essence of envy. People who care more about education must not be allowed to put their greater concern into action, lest those who care less be put at a competitive disadvantage. 26 See Parfit (1997) for this understanding of prioritarianism. 27 This means that pace Rawls, not only Anderson and Satz but also Brighouse and Swift (2006a, 2009a, 2014a) argue that Rawls’s difference principle should enjoy lexical priority vis-­à-vis the fair equality of opportunity principle. They thus follow

Global democratic educational justice   83 Arneson (1999) and Clayton (2001) who defend the same view. For Rawls’ uncertainty about the relative importance of these principles, see Rawls (2001, 163). 28 This is not to say, however, that any way of deciding how to spend the additional resources would be morally acceptable. Citizens must not decide to use these resources in ways that would undermine democratic relations among citizen. 29 An objection to this claim that citizens could also decide to spend the additional resources otherwise could be that realizing equal educational opportunity is necessary for realizing the kind of democratic equality that fundamental democratic justice requires. I agree that this is the case if by democratic equality we understand the conception of justice as fairness that is encapsulated in Rawls’s two principles of justice as fairness. In my view, however, democratic equality is achievable without realizing the two principles of justice as fairness. I also believe that this view is compatible with the view of the late Rawls who holds that justice as fairness is only one among several of a family of reasonable political liberal conceptions of justice. 30 Notably, it is questionable whether the principle of equal educational opportunity satisfies a completeness criterion. For this principle does not even determine whether the educational opportunities of those who are unequal in their natural talents and motivation or merely unequal in their effort should be equal or, if they should not be equal, how unequal the educational opportunities may be. 31 Whatever the mechanisms might be that generate these inequalities in educational achievement between these students from disadvantaged social backgrounds, there is empirical evidence to the effect that such a case is not just a hypothetical one but in certain contexts actually reflects school reality. See Jacob, Stone and Roderick (2004), Nagaoka and Roderick (2004). 32 The distinction of democratic education within and democratic education for democracy is taken from Levinson (2011), but the ideas are clearly already present in Gutmann (1987). 33 Brighouse and Swift (2014a, 23–7) also criticize the way in which Anderson and Satz conceive parental educational liberty. 34 Nida-­Rümelin (2014, 29–82) maintains that it is a logical fallacy to believe that the  presently positive correlation between high salaries and academic degrees will continue to obtain once that the number of each cohort who possesses an academic degree has massively increased. 35 This means, indeed, that my conception of democratic education has a cosmopolitan character. Nevertheless I deliberately refrain from dubbing my conception “cosmopolitan.” This is because my conception allows that different national discourses about educational public policy will justify different kinds of (secondary) rights to education. Hence, in my view, the specific educational rights to which human beings are entitled differ depending which particular citizenship they have. So my view is different from a cosmopolitan view that holds that all human beings have equal rights to education regardless of their citizenship. 36 Of course one can question whether states should be entitled to realize first the rights to democratic education of their citizens, before attempting to realize the rights to democratic education of citizens from other states. There are two reasons that strongly suggest that states are entitled to do so. The first reason is the consideration that the most efficient way for realizing all rights to democratic education is to ascribe primary responsibility for realizing citizens’ rights to democratic education to their respective states. Another reason is that using a state’s resources to realize in a particular manner rights to democratic education elsewhere cannot be legitimately decided unless that state’s citizens already enjoy democratic rights. 37 To clarify, by arguing philosophically for the moral primacy of rights to democratic education I do not mean to suggest that the political discourses about (democratic) educational public policy will become superfluous. One reason for this is that my view is indeterminate and requires further context-­specific concretization – both philosophically and

84   Global democratic educational justice politically. For example, it is necessary to spell out in greater detail what is meant by a right to democratic education that is “adequate.” Another reason is that even my abstract position is contested within the philosophical discourses and hence could not be viewed as representing the consensus of the scholarly community. In addition, even if there were unanimous agreement within the philosophical community on the validity of my view, I would not assume that this agreement would be necessarily accepted unanimously within the relevant political discourses. The philosophical discourse might suffer from certain blind spots that render its views in certain respects problematic in practice. In addition, the participants of the political discourses might not be capable of recognizing the validity of the philosophical arguments. 38 In Culp (2014, 2016) I follow Pogge (2002, 23, 50, 197) and acknowledge – in addition to the capacity for reducing injustice – the contribution to injustices and the benefit from injustice as further reasons for ascribing moral responsibility for reducing injustice. 39 See Culp (2016) for my way of reasoning why this is an adequate way of how to allocate responsibility for global justice.

References Anderson, Elizabeth. 2004. “Rethinking Equality of Opportunity: Comment on Adam Swift’s How Not to Be a Hypocrite.” Theory and Research in Education 2/2, 99–110. Anderson, Elizabeth. 2007. “Fair Opportunity in Education: A Democratic Equality Perspective.” Ethics 117/4, 595–622. Arneson, Richard. 1999. “Against Rawlsian Equality of Opportunity.” Philosophical Studies 93, 77–112. Brighouse, Harry. 2000. School Choice and Social Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brighouse, Harry and Adam Swift. 2006a. “Equality, Priority, and Positional Goods.” Ethics 116/3, 471–97. Brighouse, Harry and Adam Swift. 2006b. “Parents’ Rights and the Value of the Family.” Ethics 117/1, 80–108. Brighouse, Harry and Adam Swift. 2009a. “Educational Equality versus Educational Adequacy: A Critique of Anderson and Satz.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 26/2, 117–28. Brighouse, Harry and Adam Swift. 2009b. “Legitimate Parental Partiality.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 37/1, 43–80. Brighouse, Harry and Adam Swift. 2014a. “The Place of Educational Equality in Educational Justice.” In Meyer, Kirsten (ed.). Education, Justice and the Human Good. Fairness and Equality in the Educational System London: Routledge, 14–33. Brighouse, Harry and Adam Swift. 2014b. Family Values. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cohen, G. A. 2008. Rescuing Justice and Equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Clayton, Matthew. 2001. “Rawls and Natural Aristocracy.” Croatian Journal of Philosophy 1, 239–59. Culp, Julian. 2014. “Rising Powers’ Responsibility for Reducing Global Distributive Injustice.” The Journal of Global Ethics 10/3, 274–82. Culp, Julian. 2016. “How Irresponsible Are Rising Powers?” Third World Quarterly 37/9, 1525–36.

Global democratic educational justice   85 Curren, Randall. 1994. “Justice and the Threshold of Educational Equality.” In Katz, Michael (ed.). Philosophy of Education. Urbana: Philosophy of Education Society, 239–48. Dewey, J. 1980 [1916]. Democracy and Education. In Boydston, J. A. (ed.) The Middle Works, 1899–1924, Vol. 9, of The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882–1953. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dworkin, Ronald. 2000. Sovereign Virtue. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gosepath, Stefan. 2001. “The Global Scope of Justice.” Metaphilosophy 32/1–2, 135–59. Gosepath, Stefan. 2004. Gleiche Gerechtigkeit. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. Gosepath, Stefan. 2014. “What Does Equality in Education Mean?” In Meyer, Kirsten (ed.). Education, Justice and the Human Good. Fairness and Equality in the Educational System. London: Routledge, 100–13. Gutmann, Amy. 1987. Democratic Education. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jacob, Robin, Susan Stone and Melissa Roderick. 2004. Ending Social Promotion. The Response of Teachers and Students. Available online via ccsr.uchicago.edu/publications/p68.pdf. Jencks, Christopher. 1988. “Whom Must We Treat Equally for Educational Opportunity to Be Equal?” Ethics 98, 518–33. Kozol, Jonathan. 1991. Savage Inequalities. Children in America’s Schools. New York: Harper Perennial. Kozol, Jonathan. 2005. The Shame of the Nation. The Restoration of Apartheid in America. New York: Crown. Levinson, Meira. 2011. “Democracy, Accountability, and Education.” Theory and Research in Education 9/2, 125–44. Liu, Goodwin. 2006. “Education, Equality and National Citizenship.” Yale Law Journal 116, 330–411. Marshall, Thomas. 1977. “Citizenship and Social Class.” In Class, Citizenship, and Social Development: Essays by T. H. Marshall. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 71–134. Mason, Andrew. 2001. “Equality of Opportunity: Old and New.” Ethics 111, 760–81. Nagaoka, Jenny and Melissa Roderick. 2004. Ending Social Promotion. The Effects of Retention. Available online via ccsr.uchicago.edu/publications/p70.pdf. Nida-­Rümelin, Julian. 2014. Der Akademisierungswahn: Zur Krise beruflicher und akademischer Bildung. Hamburg: edition Körber-Stiftung. Parfit, Derek. 1997. “Equality or Priority.” Ratio 10/3, 202–21. Pogge, Thomas. 2002. World Poverty and Human Rights. Cambridge: Polity Press. Pogge, Thomas. 2010. “A Critique of the Capability Approach.” In Brighouse, Harry and Ingrid Robeyns (eds.). Measuring Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 17–60. Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Raffray, Saarah. 2014. “International Women’s Day: How to Empower Female Students in School.” Guardian, March 8, 2014. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John. 2001. Justice as Fairness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John. 2005 [1993]. Political Liberalism. Expanded paperback edition. New York: Columbia University Press. Roemer, John. 2000. “Equality of Opportunity.” In Arrow, Ken, Samuel Bowles and Steven Durlauf (eds.). Meritocracy and Economic Inequality. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 17–32.

86   Global democratic educational justice Satz, Debra. 2007. “Equality, Adequacy, and Education for Citizenship“. Ethics 117, 623–48. Satz, Debra. 2012. “Unequal Chances: Race, Class and Schooling.” Theory and Research in Education 10, 155–70. Sen, Amartya. 1997 [1980]. “Equality of What?” In Choice, Welfare, and Measurement. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 353–72. Spiewak, Martin. 2017. “Mehr Ungleichheit, bitte!” Die Zeit 52, December 13, 2017. Stifterverand für die Deutsche Wissenschaft. 2017. Hochschulbildungsbericht. Essen. Stojanov, Krassimir. 2011. Bildungsgerechtigkeit. Rekonstruktionen eines umkämpften Begriffs. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Swift, Adam. 2003. How Not to Be a Hypocrite: School Choice for the Morally Perplexed Parent. New York: Routledge. Walzer, Michael. 1983. Spheres of Justice. Basic Books: New York. White, John. 1994. “The Dishwasher’s Child – Education and the End of Egalitarianism.” Journal of Philosophy of Education 28, 173–82. Zwarthoed, Danielle. 2015. “Creating Frugal Citizens. The Liberal Egalitarian Case for Teaching Frugality.” Theory and Research in Education 13, 286–307.

4 Global democratic citizenship education

1  Introduction Under the heading of “citizenship education” or “education for citizenship” philosophers of education discuss educational public policies that affect citizens’ political attitudes, knowledge and skills (cf. Callan 2004; Crittenden and Levinson 2016). Educational philosophers thus consider which educational public policies the state should implement for the sake of, as Eamonn Callan (1997) has put it, “creating citizens.” More specifically, such academic discussions address the ends, processes and practical constraints of the educational public policies that states pursue (cf. Callan 2004; Brighouse 2009). These public policies are not limited to, although they also include, normative debates of how to design courses of civic education. But courses of civic education are only one of several processes through which a particular conception of the ends of citizenship education can be achieved. Other such processes include the design of national school systems, schools’ language policies and a legal duty of minors to attend school up to a certain age. So educational philosophers adopt a relatively wide-­ ranging perspective when discussing citizenship education. Several theorists of citizenship education argue that the end of citizenship education is to educate citizens in ways so that they acquire and maintain the attitudes, knowledge and skills necessary for creating and upholding democratic arrangements inside states (cf. Lange 2010; Lange and Himmelmann 2007; Engartner 2010). Some theorists characterize this end more narrowly by reference to the concept of democratic consciousness. Dirk Lange (2010, 209; trans. J.  C.), for example, explains that “civic education influences the formation of political consciousness with the goal of creating a democratic consciousness.” In this way such courses are meant to shape the mental states through which an individual represents herself as situated within her political environment. Curiously, the pertinent literature on democratic citizenship education focuses almost exclusively on the formation of democratic consciousness within the nation state. For it either assumes that the creation of democratic consciousness is restricted to a single society, or simply fails to discuss the scope of such consciousness. This domestic bias seems to be a problematic feature of Lange’s (2010, 206, my emphasis; trans. J. C.) account, for example, he explains that the

88   Global democratic citizenship education “structures of the political consciousness produce the political meaning that provide the individual with orientation and enable action within society.” It seems obvious, however, that under conditions of globalization the political consciousness that citizenship education should contribute to creating should be – at least in certain respects – of a global kind. For even if we understand politics quite narrowly, as Lange (2010, 207) does, as collectively binding decision-­ making processes that determine how to deal with a plurality of potentially conflicting individual interests, then we can still observe political relations outside the borders of the nation state. For neither are the collectively binding norms restricted in their scope to these borders, nor is the origin of collectively binding norms solely that of the nation state.1 So in Sections 2 and 3 I present and criticize the exclusively domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education, which argue that educational public policies should nurture those attitudes, knowledge and skills that are necessary for maintaining domestic democratic political arrangements. I argue that these conceptions suffer from a domestic bias, and that this bias renders them inadequate as conceptions of the ends of citizenship education under conditions of globalization. In addition to that in Section 4 I also articulate and defend a global conception of democratic citizenship education. Such a conception maintains that educational public policies should nurture those attitudes, knowledge and skills that are necessary for acting and thinking democratically not only within national but also within inter-, supra- and transnational contexts. This is because, as I argue in this chapter, the recent and ongoing processes of transnationalization and globalization give rise to the imperative of rendering political affairs beyond states more democratic. And this, in turn, demands forms of citizenship education that effectively promote this kind of democratization. This is why citizenship education should not just envision the creation and eventual realization of a domestic but also of a transnational democratic consciousness. Section 5 concludes this chapter.

2  Domestic democratic citizenship education The conceptions of democratic citizenship education that have been of particular prominence in recent debate are those of Amy Gutmann (1987) as well as of Elizabeth Anderson (2007) and Debra Satz (2007). Gutmann (1987, 11) takes the existence of disagreement as to which education is best in terms of promoting human flourishing or social justice as her point of departure. She argues that because of a shared commitment to democratic principles within democratic societies, democratic citizenship education must enable all citizens to democratically address this disagreement. Similarly, Anderson (2004, 2007) and Satz (2007) argue for a domestic conception of democratic citizenship education that would nurture the kind of democratic culture on which democratic procedures have to rely. They defend the importance of such democratic procedures – and thus of a democratic culture that supports them – on the basis of a relational interpretation of the basic moral idea of human equality.

Global democratic citizenship education   89 In these ways Gutmann as well as Anderson and Satz have successfully established appealing alternatives to the previously and also historically relatively influential perfectionist liberal conceptions of citizenship education. Thus they avoid the pitfalls of the perfectionist liberal conceptions of citizenship education that take their cue from Mill and Raz, which I have critically discussed in Chapter 2. In that chapter I have shown, more specifically, that it is a defining and problematic feature of these perfectionist liberal conceptions that they vindicate forms of democratic citizenship education by reference to the idea that the exercise of personal autonomy constitutes the highest form of human flourishing. The alternative, democratic conceptions of democratic education nevertheless share a common problem, however, because they all suffer from a domestic bias. They have as their sole subject matter a democratic society and do not ascribe any importance to considerations that concern cultural, economic, social and political phenomena beyond that society. In the case of Gutmann the reason for this is that her core idea of conscious social reproduction refers solely to domestic democratic decision making. Thus in her (1987, 39) characterization of that idea she says that “[a]s citizens, we aspire to a set of educational practices and authorities of which the following can be said: these are the practices and authorities to which we, acting collectively as a society, have consciously agreed.” In the case of Anderson and Satz, by contrast, the domestic bias arises because they argue merely that the proper, relational interpretation of moral equality is that persons should enjoy an equal civic status as democratic agents inside a democratic state. They do not argue, that is, that realizing relational equality would require an equal civic status among persons who are not members of the same state.2 In this way neither Gutmann nor Anderson and Satz give proper weight to political and economic processes of transnationalization and globalization and entirely fail to consider the ways in which their conceptions of democratic citizenship education would have to be extended in order to respond to potential moral challenges that these processes pose. But before I specify these challenges and discuss how they bear on democratic citizenship education, I first of all outline briefly the conceptions of Gutmann as well as Anderson and Satz. Gutmann Gutmann presents an immanent justification for democratic citizenship education in her magisterial Democratic Education of 1987. Her justification proceeds in two steps. First, she interprets prevalent social practices within democratic societies as being constituted by democratic norms. Second, she argues that a full realization of these norms requires a certain kind of democratic citizenship education. By this way of proceeding Gutmann purportedly appeals solely to those normative ideas that the members of existing democratic practices already share. In laying out such an immanent justification, Gutmann builds on the observation that in democratic societies there is a lasting and irresolvable disagreement

90   Global democratic citizenship education between alternative theories and practices of education. There is a plurality of rivaling understandings as to what makes an education good or just, none of which is capable of fully convincing all citizens. Moreover, there is an ongoing debate within democracies as to which kind of educational policy should be implemented. Such debate, she argues, reflects the normative self-­understanding of members of democracies that it is impermissible to enforce or impose a certain educational policy upon all citizens regardless of whether they themselves accept that policy.3 This is why democratic decision-­making processes such as public deliberation, voting and referenda must help determining those policies that all citizens can accept as binding and enforceable by law. Gutmann’s (1987, 39) point is that this democratic way of addressing the plurality of rivaling accounts of educational policy expresses a certain ideal of education, which she dubs “conscious social reproduction.”4 In this way, as Gutmann (1987, 11) puts it, “[t]he most distinctive feature of a democratic theory of education is that it makes a democratic virtue out of our inevitable disagreement over educational problems.” In Gutmann’s (1987, 39) view, conscious social reproduction represents the “core commitment” of democratic societies.5 Thus, she (1987, 39) argues that because members of a democratic society are “committed to collectively re-­creating the society,” educational ­policies should be determined through democratic processes. This is the meaning of the ideal of democratic education within democracy, which Gutmann (1987, 45) expresses by the principle of nonrepression, which “prevents the state, and any other group within it, from using education to restrict rational deliberation of competing conceptions of the good life and the good society.” So neither the government alone, nor families by themselves nor professional educational experts such as schoolteachers should possess the exclusive political authority of deciding which educational policies to implement. The second meaning of this educational ideal is that of democratic education for democracy, which according to Gutmann (1987, 45) says “a society that supports conscious social reproduction must educate all educable children to be capable of participating in collectively sharing their society.” Thus it is necessary to enable all members of a democratic order through education to participate in the social and political decision-­making processes. This requirement reflects Gutmann’s (1987, 45) principle of nondiscrimination, which says that “all educable children must be educated,” as every citizen is meant to be part of conscious social reproduction. Anderson and Satz Another influential conception of democratic citizenship education is that of Anderson and Satz. Their conception relies on a relational interpretation of the kind of moral equality that should obtain among co-­citizens. This interpretation of equality says that co-­citizens must enjoy an equal civic status as democratic agents, and hence expresses an idea of democratic justice. For democratic

Global democratic citizenship education   91 justice, Anderson (2004, 105) holds, means that people are “entitled to opportunities sufficient to enable them to function as equal citizens in a democratic state.” This relational understanding of moral equality among co-­citizens stands in opposition to distributive understandings of moral equality that focus narrowly on how much of which goods citizens should receive.6 Nevertheless, relational egalitarians like Anderson and Satz have good reasons to defend a strongly egalitarian distribution of economic goods. For economic inequalities must not translate into political domination or unjustifiable social hierarchies that are detrimental to citizens’ self-­respect, which, in turn, is key for developing and maintaining, as Samuel Scheffler (2003, 24), another relational egalitarian theorist, has put it, “a sense of themselves as free and effective agents.” In addition to these economic rights, Satz (2007) also highlights the importance of certain civic rights – such as due process rights and the right to private property – and certain political rights – such as freedom of speech and freedom of association – for the full enjoyment of an equal civic status.7 However, even if all citizens enjoyed such economic, political and civic rights, their equal civic status as democratic agents would nevertheless remain unfulfilled unless the societal culture would be properly democratic. Along these lines Anderson (2004, 107) argues “formally democratic procedures are substantively democratic only when the cultural context in which they are enacted is democratic.” This is precisely where the importance of democratic citizenship education for securing citizens’ equal civic status in a democratic society comes in, since it must help bringing about the kind of democratic culture that is necessary for all citizens to function as democratic equals. More specifically, Anderson and Satz focus on certain attitudes, knowledge and skills that the democratic citizenship education must convey in order to foster such a democratic culture within a democratic state. Among the relevant democratic attitudes Anderson and Satz highlight the importance of respect, solidarity, tolerance and understanding. Satz (2007, 637) views all of these attitudes as group achievements, since they are “best accomplished through the presence of diverse individuals” – different from other competencies like numeracy, literacy or historical knowledge. Respect and understanding, for example, cannot properly emerge in educational settings in which members of different groups are isolated from one another and do not interact with each other as peers in the pursuit of shared goals. In addition, Anderson (2004, 108) claims “communitarian solidarity … is … not a mere option that citizens of a democracy can take or leave. It is a constitutive condition of their being citizens of a fully realized democracy.” If citizens were to lack such communitarian solidarity, Anderson (2004, 108) believes, then those who occupy positions of power would not feel properly responsive and accountable to those who are less advantaged. With regard to the democratic knowledge that a democratic culture requires, Anderson (2007, 596) points out that educational public policies must help overcoming certain cognitive deficits among those who hold positions of political authority, and which prevent them from developing an “awareness of the interests and problems of people from all sectors and … [the] technical knowledge of

92   Global democratic citizenship education how to advance their interests.” Such deficits, argues Anderson (2007, 108), derive from “the alienation of the educated elite from the perspectives and interests of the rest of their fellow citizens.” Such deficits have two aspects. One is the sheer lack of knowledge of the democratic elites regarding those in whose interest they are meant to govern (cf. Anderson 2007, 600–4). The other is an elitist information bias that manifests itself in group stereotypes, that is, specific schemas for making inferences about the nature of a certain citizen once the citizen has been recognized as a member of a particular group (cf. Fiske 1998). These schemas can distort information in a number of ways. They can suggest a higher degree of group homogeneity than is actually the case; they can give rise to feelings of discomfort and antipathy in the presence of members from disadvantaged groups; and they can lead to inappropriate ascriptions of causal or moral responsibility such as when these schema systematically characterize members of certain groups as lucky whenever they succeed and as deserving whenever they fail (cf. Anderson 2007, 604–6). Finally, Anderson (2007, 596) mentions the need to develop and nurture democratic skills that are related to “competence in respectful interaction with people from all sectors.” This competence involves citizens’ social capital of possessing a pool of acquaintances and contacts from all walks of life as well as their cultural capital of being able to connect with them in ways that ensure an effective communication.8 Such social and cultural capital can only be generated through appropriately integrated institutions of formal education. For it is only in this way that future democratic elites will learn the cultural codes and habits that are necessary for cooperating respectfully with the members from other social sectors.

3  Deficits of domestic democratic citizenship education Having outlined the basic ideas of two conceptions of democratic citizenship education, I will now critically discuss them in this section by pointing out four distinct deficits that these conceptions of democratic citizenship education have due to their domestic bias. The deficits of these conceptions are (i) their inapplicability within (severely) undemocratic societies; (ii) their inapplicability within undemocratic inter-, trans- and supranational contexts; (iii) their counterproductivity for achieving democratic arrangements domestically; and (iv) their counterproductivity for achieving democratic arrangements in inter-, supra- and transnational contexts. The inapplicability within undemocratic domestic contexts Gutmann’s conception of democratic citizenship education does not apply in societies without a democratic self-­understanding. Gutmann views democratic citizenship education as practical necessity solely within societies whose social and political practices rely on or express a commitment to the idea of conscious social reproduction. The flip side of this is that in societies in which there is no

Global democratic citizenship education   93 such commitment, it is not the case that her conception would regard democratic citizenship education as a practical necessity. Thus precisely in contexts in which democratic citizenship education might be sorely needed, Gutmann’s conception is unable to furnish a justification for its importance. The situation is different in the case of Anderson and Satz, given that they do not rule out the importance of democratic citizenship education under conditions in which a society does not display a commitment to democratic principles. Again, Anderson and Satz’s justification of democratic citizenship education rests on a relational interpretation of the demands of the basic moral idea of human equality inside the state. It does not deny that democratic citizenship education is needed in a society in which there is no fundamental commitment to democratic principles. In reply to my objection, Gutmann might hold that she recognizes that several democratic societies often times fail to realize the democratic commitments that are inherent in the normative principles that underlie their basic structure. Yet such a failure, she might go on to argue, does not invalidate her normative justification for the importance of democratic citizenship education. As long as the normative principles that are underlying a society’s basic structure are democratic and thereby express a democratic commitment, this suffices to justify demands for democratic citizenship education. In light of this reply, my objection needs to be further specified. As long as a society’s basic structure still displays a commitment to democratic principles, I cannot object that Gutmann’s vindication of her conception of democratic citizenship education is problematic for internal reasons. However, in societies in which the basic structure no longer displays a democratic commitment, the justification of democratic citizenship education that Gutmann supplies no longer applies. Although this revised objection applies merely to a narrower set of cases, it is still quite serious for Gutmann’s conception. For in fundamentally undemocratic societies educational public policy that is oriented towards promoting democracy can be one important mechanism for achieving democracy. Yet Gutmann’s conception cannot ground the relevance of democratic citizenship education in such societies. To this revised and more specific objection, Gutmann might respond that it is unclear whether certain agents could possibly be deemed entitled to carry out democratic citizenship education in societies in which there is no fundamental commitment to democratic principles. After all, in the absence of social and political structures that would reflect at least a minimal commitment to democratic principles, isolated efforts would anyway be pointless. For if students would encounter democratic ideas solely within formal settings of democratic citizenship education – e.g., in specifically designed courses of civic education – but would not be able to relate these ideas to their experience outside these settings, then it is very unlikely that these students would eventually come to fully recognize the validity of these ideas. I recognize that this practical consideration is important, but it is insufficient to conclude from this consideration that democratic citizenship education is necessarily bound to fail within undemocratic contexts. That is, even if in most

94   Global democratic citizenship education cases the practice of democratic citizenship education will be unsuccessful in contexts in which the societal basic structure does not reflect any democratic commitment, one must not conclude from this that in all cases endeavors of democratic citizenship education will be futile in undemocratic contexts. Hence it is a problematic feature of Gutmann’s conception of democratic citizenship education that it does not apply at all in contexts in which there is no discernible social commitment to democratic principles. The inapplicability within undemocratic inter-, trans- and supranational contexts Another, similar problem of the existing conceptions of democratic citizenship education is that due to their domestic bias they do not apply within inter-, transand supranational contexts that are undemocratic. Intuitively, this inapplicability of the existing conceptions of democratic citizenship education within undemocratic inter-, trans- and supranational contexts seems problematic. For under conditions of political and economic globalization it seems inadequate to restrict the validity of democratic principles to inside the borders of states. Instead, these conditions seem to call for the democratization of inter-, supra- and transnational contexts, which, in turn, render conceptions of democratic citizenship education that are inapplicable within such contexts unsatisfactory. To elaborate, consider first how various processes of political transnationalization, by which I mean inter- and supranational organizations and regimes that exercise political power, call directly for democratizing inter-, supra- and transnational political contexts.9 There is a proliferation of international organizations and regimes that constrain or influence national sovereignty (cf. Rittberger 1995; Sarooshi 2005; Plagemann 2015, ch. 2). International organizations on the global and regional levels limit governments’ national sovereignty by imposing certain standards and inducing the development of common policies and norms. This has given rise not just to the idea, but also to the reality of global governance (cf. Rosenau and Czempiel 1992; Avant et al. 2010). These political organizations and regimes include the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Trade Organization, the European Union (EU) and the norms governing the regulation of the effects of anthropocentric climate change (cf., respectively, Woods 2006; Mitchell and Sheargold 2009; Habermas 2013; UNFCCC 1992). The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) regulation, for example, profoundly affects its members’ trade policies. In addition, regional agendas within Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas involve forms of regional cooperation that go along with national sovereignty-­compromising norms even if in all of them but the EU inter-­governmentalism is their modus operandi. The limitation of national decision making has also become a defining feature of states’ foreign policy, because power has been diffused to a variety of new actors, including line ministries, civil society organizations (CSOs), inter- or supranational institutions and subnational governments (cf. Slaughter 2004). These institutions and regimes represent spheres of political power that affect quite significantly how citizens’ lives fare. But in most cases the citizens of the

Global democratic citizenship education   95 various states that are subject to this power are not in a position to influence the way in which this power is exercised. The further democratization of the interand supranational organizations and regimes would thus have to consist in enabling citizens to co-­determine the exercise of this power. For in the absence of the possibility of such co-­determination, the exercise of political power at this level cannot at all be plausibly justified. At least, this follows from the point of view of democratic justice, for which I have been arguing in Chapter 2, and which emphasizes that every human being should be able to co-­determine politically his or her social environments (cf. also Forst 2017, ch. 10). Indeed, representatives of states have shaped and continue to influence the contours and policies of most inter- and supranational organizations and regimes. And, at least in the case of some reasonably democratic countries, citizens were and are able to influence state representatives and hold them accountable. However, given that in the meantime these organizations and regimes have already developed lives of their own, so to speak, this indirect form of democratic legitimation that they have once received via the consent of representatives of reasonably democratic states no longer suffices.10 It thus seems mandatory to democratize inter-, supra- and transnational political contexts in ways that afford greater power to groups and individuals of various countries. Second, there are also processes of economic transnationalization that call for the democratization of political affairs beyond states, albeit in a more indirect manner. Here, the basic idea is that these processes engender a great many side effects that are in need of a form of inter- or supranational regulation that has to be democratic in order to count as acceptable from my perspective of democratic justice. This need for such regulation means that not only the existing international and supranational institutions must be further democratized along the lines already mentioned. It also means that additional institutions of this sort might have to be created in order to ensure that the effects that economic transactions generate can be deemed acceptable (cf. Ronzoni 2009). To illustrate this possibility, consider the way in which the economic liberalization of international capital markets has put states into a competition for capital investments (cf. Habermas 2001; Mosley 2003; Dietsch and Rixen 2014). This competition puts pressure on states to lower their tax rates, because such lowering renders investments more attractive. Thus states lower their tax rates in order to create economically favorable conditions for investors. Similarly, states also avoid deficit spending, because investors perceive such spending as a sign of economic or political instability that increases the risk of an investment. Likewise, environmental, labor, tax and other policies are to a certain extent already predetermined through the competition among states for capital and no longer subject to democratic control (cf. Rodrik 2011, 190–200). In light of these various ways in which economic globalization in the form of international capital liberalization undermines the effective exercise of sovereignty at the level of the nation state, Thomas Friedman (1999, 104–6) has argued globalization imposes a “Golden Straightjacket” on nation states.

96   Global democratic citizenship education Arguably, this erosion of national sovereignty is unacceptable since it deprives members of nation states of the opportunity to co-­determine the way in which they want to live together. However, under conditions of globalization, it is unconceivable to re-­claim national sovereignty without addressing the pressures of international competition that lead to the erosion of national sovereignty in the first place. Consequently, political programs that aim at pursuing national political projects in isolation from inter- and supranational institutions such as the European Union are, in effect, useless. What seems necessary, therefore, is to build up appropriate political institutions that enable exercising sovereignty at the inter- and supranational levels. That means that strengthening national democracy can require establishing inter- and supranational institutions that would help states in coordinating their policies. Such coordination, for example in the area of tax policy, could help states to avoid the downward regulatory pressure to which they would be otherwise subject. Rodrik (2011, xix) refers to these forms of coordination as “smart globalization.” Therefore the idea of exclusively national democratic sovereignty is infeasible under conditions of globalization. This is because in order to achieve democratic sovereignty, political authority will have to be shared among multiple levels of governance, ranging from the supranational, to the international, national, regional and municipal level. Clinging to the ideas of civic equality and conscious social reproduction merely at the domestic level is doomed to lead to frustration and disillusion, because “taking back control” over national politics will remain infeasible in the foreseeable future. In these ways political and economic processes of transnationalization and globalization, such as tax competition between states brought about by permitting the free movement of capital, have undermined the functioning of national democracies and created the need to build international institutions. Therefore several democratic and political theorists compellingly argue that the existence of transnational political power and the effects of economic globalization give rise to the need to democratize political affairs beyond the state, because otherwise the exercise of political power of these institutions would not be justifiable.11 Yet in order to achieve this kind of democratization, it is not enough to simply reform the existing inter- or supranational institutions or to build up institutions that could properly govern these effects. Undoubtedly, the greater democratization of inter-, supra- and transnational political contexts will require institutional reform and innovation at regional, inter- and supranational levels. For example, it is conceivable that within the International Monetary Fund (IMF ) the borrowing countries should receive greater weight in the decision-­making processes relative to the lending countries. But in addition to that, rendering such institutions more democratic will also require developing novel kinds of educational public policies so that those who exercise power respect the demands of accountability and that those over whom such power is exercised have a proper sense of entitlement that such power must be exercised in justifiable ways (cf. Peters 2007, ch. 3; Lennard 2010, 2012, 2014).

Global democratic citizenship education   97 More specifically, such educational public policies must influence those who occupy positions of political power so that they will be more sensitive as to whether certain policies are justifiable to those who are subject to their political power. Moreover, whether or not they are sensitive in this way, those who are subject to exercises of political power across borders have to be more eager to hold those in political offices accountable for their behavior. They must develop a sense of entitlement to reasonably democratic ways of policy making across, between and beyond state. Hence it is a weighty deficit of the existing conceptions of democratic citizenship education that they are inapplicable to the undemocratic conditions that can be found at the inter-, trans- and supranational levels. It is possible that the defenders of the domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education will argue that they recognize that their conceptions are incomplete. They may concede, that is, that their conceptions do not contain an account of how educational public policy should respond to and influence political and economic processes that cut across or occur beyond states. They might insist, however, that their conceptions nevertheless possess validity for the domestic case. In the next two sub-­sections, however, I will show that the exclusive focus on the domestic case is not as innocuous as this possible rejoinder might suggest. For the neglect of the importance of democratizing political affairs across, between and beyond states also represents a serious obstacle for achieving democratic arrangements on the domestic level. Thus I will argue that an extension of the domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education is also necessary in order to achieve democratic arrangements domestically. The counterproductivity for domestic democracy By exclusively aiming at fostering a democratic culture inside democratic states under conditions that inhibit the realization of democratic national sovereignty, democratic citizenship education necessarily breeds disappointment about and frustration with the allegedly democratic institutions of national decision making. In order to lay out this problem in greater detail, I will also explain why the idea of national democratic sovereignty is increasingly infeasible under conditions of globalization by reference to processes of legal transnationalization. There are very significant legal processes that undermine the capacity of national sovereign decision making. For example, transnationalization through legal processes occurs because citizens and CSOs make use of international courts and international human rights law when they ground demands on governments in a global legal language. Ethnological fieldwork on the “globalization from below” and the “juridification of protest” reports a transformation of political practices on the local level and across states toward common transnational legal principles. Indian tribal activists, for example, strive to defend themselves from state intrusion by referring to the international legal human right to culture. Furthermore, South African women alter male-­dominated local institutions via references to the fundamental right of gender equality (cf. De

98   Global democratic citizenship education Sousa Santos and Rodríguez-Garavito 2005; Eckert 2006; Williams 2010). Likewise, the international legal human right to health was a key discursive resource in the struggle for affordable antiretroviral HIV/Aids medication in India, Brazil and South Africa (cf. Hein and Moon 2013). In addition, the increased recognition of autonomous legal spheres limits freedom in domestic legislation (cf. Stepan et al. 2011). Ostensibly, legal fragmentation and the “invention of tradition” (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1992) via sub- and transnational identity politics are truly global phenomena (cf. Teubner 1997; von Benda-­Beckmann and Benda-­Beckmann 2006). Under such conditions, exclusively domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education are bound to lead to frustration. They instill in the younger generation the belief that achieving democratic arrangements solely domestically is possible and thus create inadequate expectations that will necessarily be disappointed.12 Governments of allegedly democratic states are subject to transnational legal transformations as well as to economic pressures and the exercise of political power of inter- and supranational institutions. Thus an exclusively domestic democratic citizenship education is counterproductive, as it gives rise to an unrealistic expectation about the feasibility of democratic affairs insides states, which is bound to lead to frustration concerning democratic politics.13 The counterproductivity for inter-, supra- and transnational democracy Another important limitation of the exclusively domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education is that they are potentially detrimental for the promotion of more democratic arrangements across, between and beyond states. The reason for this is that these exclusively domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education may excessively emphasize the ways in which co-­citizens possess special obligations vis-­à-vis each other that arise due to the bonds of their shared citizenship. I say “excessively” because there is no principled problem if practices of democratic citizenship education highlight special obligations amongst co-­citizens. But the emphasis of the special obligations among co-­ citizens in practices of democratic citizenship education becomes problematic whenever the emphasis on special obligations among co-­citizens renders it too difficult or perhaps even impossible to cultivate in citizens the recognition that they are also bound in morally important ways towards those who reside outside their state. And since the exclusively domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education do not mention at all the importance of creating a sense of moral or democratic consciousness among citizens from different states, it does not seem altogether implausible to assume that the realization of these conditions would have the practical consequence of making it too burdensome to create a sense of democratic responsibility among those who are not members of the same state. This objection is similar to that which cosmopolitan theorists of education have put forward against certain kinds of civic-­nationalist or patriotic conceptions

Global democratic citizenship education   99 of education that predominantly conceive of citizenship education as the project of nation-­building (cf. Nussbaum 1996, 1997; Brighouse 2006, ch.  6).14 The cosmopolitan theorists’ objection maintains that civic-­nationalist or patriotic education is an obstacle to the cultivation of moral cosmopolitan attitudes because its emphasis on partiality among co-­citizens comes at the detriment of a cosmopolitan sense of moral responsibility or solidarity.15 This is why Callan (2004), for example, has claimed that civic-­nationalist or patriotic education can be perceived as arbitrary moral tribalism in the eyes of cosmopolitan educational theorists. Thus cosmopolitans claim that even if civic-­nationalists, different from ethno-­nationalists, do not ground the national partiality on a shared national language or culture, they are nevertheless prone to endorse practical conclusions that are similar to those that defend the essentialist moral-­political theory of ethno-­nationalism. The potential problem of such “moral tribalism” becomes apparent, for example, in Sigal Ben-­Porath’s (2012, 383) characterization of national citizenship, according to which “citizenship denotes an in-­group that carries some shared dimensions, and those dimensions are expected to mitigate other subnational or international relations.”16 Defenders of patriotism reply to the charge that patriotic education pays insufficient attention to moral cosmopolitan obligations by clarifying that the validity of this charge depends on the particular content of patriotic education. For example, it is compatible with patriotic education to cultivate a civic-­ nationalist identity that recognizes the validity of certain moral cosmopolitan principles (cf. Nussbaum 1996, 2013). If it is part of the civic-­nationalist identity of a particular state – Canada, perhaps – to embrace moral cosmopolitan principles such as those which say that all human beings are entitled to a minimal threshold level of flourishing, then patriotic citizenship education in that state not only permits but even requires teaching such principles. As Nussbaum (1996, 14–15) remarks, the question is how to love whatever one loves – although she concedes that patriotism can be chauvinist. By analogy, the defenders of the exclusively domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education might argue that domestic democratic citizenship education need not rule out that citizenship education also involves teaching those attitudes, knowledge and skills that are necessary for creating and maintaining democratic arrangements across, between and beyond states. More ­specifically, they can, for example, adopt the shared fate conception of citizenship developed by Melissa Williams (2003, 2009), and argue that establishing a domestic democratic culture is of special importance because the fates of co-­ citizens are so closely intertwined, but that this does not rule out the educational and political relevance of other relationships through which their fate is connected to that of others. Along these lines Ben-­Porath (2012, 392), for one, argues that “patriotism is democratically defensible when understood as a consequence of shared fate and when viewed as a relational good rather than merely as identity feature.”17 Thus what matters is the actual shape of the relations among co-­citizens as well as those among citizens from different states, rather than an abstract notion of

100   Global democratic citizenship education ­civic-­national identity that is detached from how the fates of co-­citizens and citizens from different states are actually intertwined. So the dynamic character of the shared fate account of citizenship requires of citizenship education that it takes into consideration processes of transnationalization and globalization. Such an education must prepare future citizens for the fact that due to these ongoing processes democratic agency also needs to be exercised transnationally, for example, in the pursuit of influencing inter- and supranational organizations’ agendas through transnational political mobilization. This is an important reply to the objection that the domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education do not properly recognize the moral challenges brought about by globalization. However, this reply already recognizes that democratic citizenship education must not focus solely on developing those democratic attitudes, knowledge and skills that are necessary for cultivating a democratic culture domestically. Yet since the existing conceptions of democratic citizenship education are exclusively focused on the domestic case, it seems as though they are unable to convincingly fend off the critique that they are excessively domestically biased in this manner.

4  A global conception of democratic citizenship education My discussions in the previous sections have shown that the existing conceptions of democratic citizenship education suffer from a domestic bias. Due to this bias, I have argued, problems arise both for the realization of democratic arrangements domestically as well as for the realization of democratic arrangements across, between and beyond states. On reflection, the reason for the domestic bias of the conceptions of democratic citizenship education is that their respective normative grounds are also domestically biased. In the case of Gutmann, her basic normative idea of conscious social reproduction is conceived solely in domestic terms. Similarly, in the case of Anderson and Satz, their interpretation of moral equality as relational civic equality, which is at the core of their conception of democratic justice, is also limited to the boundaries of the state. Hence it is a consequence of the domestic bias of their respective normative grounds of citizenship education that their conceptions of democratic citizenship education suffer from a domestic bias, which, in turn, renders their conceptions of democratic citizenship education unsatisfactory under conditions of globalization and transnationalization. Therefore the argumentative strategy that I will pursue in this section in order to outline a more compelling conception of democratic citizenship education is to identify a normative ground that does not suffer from such a domestic bias. This normative ground is a global conception of democratic justice, which I have outlined in Chapter 2. This conception is internationalist in the sense that it calls for a democratic restructuring of the internationalist system of states and requires establishing appropriately arranged domestic and international basic structures of justification that enable inclusive domestic and transnational deliberation. Based on this normative ground I determine the basic principles of a global

Global democratic citizenship education   101 c­ onception of democratic citizenship education as well as the agents that bear responsibility for realizing these principles. When recognizing a global conception of democratic justice as the normative ground of educational public policy, a fundamental revision of the exclusively domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education is necessary. I speak merely of a “revision” because I do not suggest that it is necessary to entirely give up domestic democratic citizenship education. For the domestic level of politics will and should remain an important site of democratic decision making. Thus one principle of my conception of democratic citizenship education is indeed that citizenship education contributes to enabling all citizens of all states to participate in the domestic decision-­making procedures by way of cultivating domestic democratic consciousness in all states. However, due to the processes of political and economic transnationalization and globalization that I have described above, this principle alone is insufficient. Global political and economic injustice will continue to exist unless political affairs across, between and beyond states are further democratized. What is therefore necessary, according to my internationalist conception of global democratic justice, is the establishment of basic structures of justification at the international level. Hence a second principle of democratic citizenship education demands that educational public policy must prepare citizens of all states to participate in meaningful ways in domestic as well as transnational political discourses that influence international decision making. Thus democratic citizenship education should not only aim at cultivating and maintaining democratic consciousness domestically, but also transnationally among citizens from different states. It is because of this distinct requirement of this global conception of democratic citizenship education that I will later also refer to it as “transnational democratic conscientization.” As I have argued above in this chapter, under present political and economic circumstances it is difficult if not impossible to realize the first principle of democratic citizenship education as long as the second principle remains unfulfilled. This is because, for reasons already mentioned, under conditions of political and economic globalization and transnationalization citizens are unable to exercise democratic control domestically, because national governments themselves are subjected to the power which derives from various kinds of inter-, supra- and transnational economic and political processes. Consequently, focusing solely on the realization of democratic citizenship education domestically is prone to lead to disappointment and frustration, because its aim is out of reach under present economic and political conditions. Therefore it is necessary to add the said second principle of democratic citizenship education. This principle expresses the requirement to build up appropriately arranged basic structures of justification at the international level, in which citizens from all states should be able to influence international decision making by developing political power within and through transnational political discourses. This requires, in turn, that democratic citizenship education is modeled in ways so that citizens from all states cultivate and nurture a

102   Global democratic citizenship education t­ransnational democratic consciousness. Hence democratic citizenship education must also contribute to the formation of those attitudes, knowledge and skills that are necessary for the realization of such a transnational consciousness. The specific ways in which such democratic citizenship education should proceed in order to do so is the topic of the next chapter. Before moving on to this discussion, however, it is also important to consider how to conceive of the moral responsibility for realizing these two principles of democratic citizenship education. Regarding the moral responsibility for realizing these two principles, it seems apt, analogous to the case of global democratic educational justice, to hold that the respective government of each state has a duty to realize both principles of democratic citizenship education. Thus states should not only be engaged in cultivating domestic democratic consciousness, but also transnational democratic consciousness among their citizenries. In addition to that, however, governments should also consider how, if at all, they can contribute to the realization of both domestic and transnational democratic consciousness abroad. Moreover, other powerful international actors in the domain of education – including, in particular, international organizations such as the OECD, UNICEF or UNESCO – should also be deemed responsible for realizing the two principles of democratic citizenship education by way of contributing to the realization of domestic and transnational democratic consciousness. My reasoning for ascribing responsibility in this manner to these actors is the idea that “with great power comes with great responsibility,” which means that those who are capable of contributing to the realization of justice have a responsibility to do so.18 One important upshot of this way of conceiving the moral responsibility for democratic citizenship education is that the domestic deliberations regarding which educational public policies should be implemented must be much broader than they currently are. In particular, they do not only require balancing a particular understanding of domestic equal educational opportunity vis-­à-vis providing a democratically adequate education among co-­citizens. Rather, these deliberations must also include, among other things, weighting supporting equal educational opportunity vis-­à-vis supporting democratic citizenship education abroad. Under certain circumstances there might not be any feasible educational public policies for the sake of promoting democratic citizenship education abroad. In such a situation the best choice could consist of attempting to further realize a particular understanding of domestic equal educational opportunity. Yet if there are reasonably effective policies available for furthering either domestic or transnational democratic consciousness abroad, then choosing these policies rather than those that would domestically improve equal educational opportunity would be the best political choice all things considered. Indeed, under these circumstances it would be problematic to promote equal educational opportunity domestically rather than to support the realization of domestic or transnational democratic consciousness elsewhere, given that the latter concerns matters of fundamental democratic justice.

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5  Conclusion In this chapter I addressed the question of how to conceive citizenship education when recognizing global democratic justice as the normative ground of educational public policy. In answering this question I critically examined the existing conceptions of democratic citizenship education. This examination revealed, first, that these conceptions are domestically biased, as they focus exclusively on how to support the formation of domestic democratic consciousness among the citizens of a single (democratic) state. Second, the examination also showed that under conditions of economic and political globalization such a domestic bias is highly problematic in several respects. One problem, which seems quite obvious indeed, is that an exclusively domestic democratic citizenship education neglects the formation of transnational democratic consciousness among citizens from various states. Thereby the existing conceptions of democratic citizenship education do not live up to the requirements of global democratic justice, which demands the formation of a transnational democratic consciousness. For such transnational consciousness is necessary in order to shape in appropriate ways not only the domestic but also the international basic structures of justification through which the further principles of global justice are to be justified. Another problem of these exclusively domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship, which is perhaps less obvious, is that such conceptions are under contemporary conditions counterproductive for creating or maintaining domestic democratic arrangements. For as a consequence of the globalization of economic and political life, I argued, it is no longer possible to achieve national democratic sovereignty. As I explained in greater detail in this chapter, under current conditions national decision making is affected by inter-, trans- and supranational processes and phenomena such as, for example, tax competition, international legal human rights norms and the effects of climate change. Thereby exclusively domestic democratic citizenship education generates unsatisfiable expectations, since it suggests that the exercise of national democratic control among the co-­citizens of a single state is feasible, although it is not. As these expectations are disappointed, such kind of democratic citizenship education tends to lead to frustration vis-­à-vis the existing domestic arrangements that are supposedly democratic. Due to these problems, I proposed in this chapter to substitute these domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education with a global conception of ­citizenship education which would not only require the cultivation of a domestic but also of a transnational democratic consciousness. So the practical requirements of a global conception of democratic citizenship education are that citizens should not only cultivate those attitudes, knowledge and skills that are necessary in order to create a democratic consciousness domestically, but also those that are necessary to bring about democratic consciousness transnationally. Consequently, one needs to bring into view the problem of how to devise educational public policies that are effective in creating or sustaining such domestic and transnational consciousness within all states. In the next chapter I will characterize in greater detail such transnational democratic conscientization by identifying the

104   Global democratic citizenship education specific attitudes, knowledge and skills democratic citizenship education should convey.

Notes   1 I defend these empirical claims in Culp (2014a, ch. 2).   2 See Satz (1999, 2005) for the way in which she justifies why she thinks that the requirements of equality differ between co-­citizens on the one hand and citizens who do not belong to the same state on the other hand.   3 As Gutmann (1987, 14) explains, “the enforcement of any moral ideal of education, whether it be liberal or conservative, without the consent of citizens subverts democracy.”   4 Gutmann 1987, 39.   5 Gutmann 1987, 39.   6 See also Young (1990, ch. 1), Anderson (1999), Scheffler (2003), Schemmel (2011) and Forst (2012, ch. 8, 2014, ch. 1).   7 In this justification of these three sets of rights Satz relies on Marshall (1977).   8 See Bourdieu (1986) for the distinctions between cultural, social and economic capital.   9 This paragraph draws on Culp (2018, 178). 10 See Christiano (2010), Follesdal (2011, 60) and Culp (2014a, ch. 5) for the view that international agreements must be deemed unfair unless power asymmetries between states are significantly reduced. 11 See Held (1995) and Archibugi (2008) for cosmopolitan or global democratic theorists, and Bohman (2007), Dryzek (2006), Forst (2012, ch.  12, 2017, ch.  10) and Fraser (2008, 2014) for transnational democratic theorists; cf. also Thompson (1999) on democratic theory beyond states. 12 See Crouch (2005) for an acute analysis of the shortcomings of democratic institutions. 13 Along these lines Thierse (2017, 6; trans. J. C.) characterizes the political climate in Germany in 2017: “Many experience globalization as a threat, as the loss of the primacy of democratic politics vis-­à-vis markets and financial power.… A feeling of lack of control over one’s own fate, one own future, is diffusing rapidly.” 14 For a defense of civic nationalism, see D. Miller (1995). 15 It is an essential element of nationalism that partiality among, or priority towards, fellow nationals is a fundamental moral requirement. Members of one nation ought to show more concern towards those who are part of their nation than towards those who are not; cf. Blake (2008). 16 Ben-­Porath highlights that the relation among co-­citizens can “mitigate,” that is, cancel out or suppress, the development or maintenance of special, morally significant relationships within subnational or international contexts. By saying merely that “moral tribalism” becomes apparent in this quotation I recognize, however, that Ben-­Porath’s characterization by itself does not claim that morally significant (and democratic) relationships between co-­citizens necessarily rule out the possibility of morally significant (and democratic) relationships between citizens who do not belong to the same state. 17 See also Ben-­Porath (2013) for a more detailed characterization of the practical implications that the shared fate account of citizenship has in schools. 18 This justification for ascribing responsibility relies, in turn, on what Rawls (1971, 115) calls the natural duty of justice to comply with just institutions and to support their realization where they do not yet exist. In Culp (2014b, 2016) I follow Pogge (2002, 23, 50, 197) and acknowledge – in addition to the capacity for reducing injustice – the contribution to injustices and the benefit from injustice as further reasons for ascribing moral responsibility for reducing injustice.

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106   Global democratic citizenship education Eckert, Julia. 2006. “From Subjects to Citizens: Legalism from Below and the Homogenisation of the Legal Sphere.” Journal of Legal Pluralism 53–4, 45–75. Engartner, Tim. 2010. Didaktik des Ökonomie- und Politikunterrichts. Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh. Fiske, Susan. 1998. “Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination.” In Gilbert, Daniel, Susan Fiske and Gardner Lindzey (eds.). Handbook of Social Psychology. New York: McGraw-­Hill, 357–411. Follesdal, Andreas. 2011. “The Distributive Justice of a Global Basic Structure: A Category Mistake?” Politics, Philosophy and Economics 10, 46–65. Forst, Rainer. 2012. The Right to Justification: Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice. New York: Columbia University Press. Forst, Rainer. 2014. Justification and Critique. Cambridge: Polity Press. Forst, Rainer. 2017. Normativity and Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fraser, Nancy. 2008. Scales of Justice. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fraser, Nancy. 2014. “Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World.” In Nash, Kate (ed.). Transnationalizing the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Polity Press , 8–42. Friedman, Thomas. 1999. The Lexus and the Olive Tree. New York: Anchor Books. Gutmann, Amy. 1987. Democratic Education. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 2001. The Postnational Constellation. Cambridge: Polity Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 2013. The Crisis of the European Union. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hein, Wolfgang and Suerie Moon. 2013. Informal Norms in Global Governance. Human Rights, Intellectual Property Rules and Access to Medicines. Farnham: Ashgate. Held, David. 1995. Democracy and the Global Order. From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger. 1992. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lange, Dirk. 2010. “Einleitung,” “Politik im Alltag” and “Politikbewusstsein und Politische Bildung.” In Konzeptionen politischer Bildung. Basiswissen politische Bildung. Vol. 1. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Hohengehren, 1–6, 108–14, 205–13. Lange, Dirk and Gerhard Himmelmann. 2007. “Demokratisches Bewusstsein und Politische Bildung.” In Lange, Dirk and Gerhard Himmelmann (eds.). Demokratiebewusstsein. Eine interdisziplinäre Annäherung an die politische Bildung. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 15–25. Lenard, Patti. 2010. “Motivating Cosmopolitanism: A Sceptical View.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 7/3, 346–71. Lenard, Patti. 2012. “Creating Cosmopolitans.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 15/5, 613–30. Lenard, Patti. 2014. “Special Relationships, Motivation and the Pursuit of Global Egalitarianism.” The Ethics Forum 8/2, 74–83. Marshall, Thomas. 1977. “Citizenship and Social Class.” In Class, Citizenship, and Social  Development: Essays by T.  H. Marshall. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 71–134. Miller, David. 1995. On Nationality. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mitchell, Andrew and Elizabeth Sheargold. 2009. “Global Governance: The World Trade Organization’s Contribution.” Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works 386. Available online via http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/386. Mosley, Layna. 2003. Global Capital and National Governments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Global democratic citizenship education   107 Nussbaum, Martha. 1996. “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism.” In Cohen, Joshua (ed.). For Love of Country. Boston: Beacon Press, 3–20. Nussbaum, Martha. 1997. Cultivating Humanity. A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 2013. Political Emotions. Why Love Matters for Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Peters, Bernhard. 2007. Public Deliberation and Public Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Plagemann, Johannes. 2015. Cosmopolitanism in a Multipolar World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pogge, Thomas. 2002. World Poverty and Human Rights. Cambridge: Polity Press. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rittberger, Volker. 1995. Regime Theory and International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rodrik, Daniel. 2011. The Globalization Paradox. New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company. Ronzoni, Miriam. 2009. “The Global Order – A Case of Background Injustice?” Philosophy & Public Affairs 37/3, 229–56. Rosenau, J. and E.-O. Czempiel (eds.). 1992. Governance without Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sarooshi, Dan. 2005. International Organizations and their Exercises of Sovereign Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Satz, Debra. 1999. “Equality of What among Whom?” In Shapiro, Ian and Lea Brilmeyer (eds.). Nomos 41: Global Justice. New York: New York University Press, 67–85. Satz, Debra. 2005. “International Economic Justice.” In LaFollette, Hugh (ed.). Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 620–42. Satz, Debra. 2007. “Equality, Adequacy, and Education for Citizenship“. Ethics 117, 623–48. Scheffler, Samuel. 2003. “What is Egalitarianism?” Philosophy & Public Affairs 31/1, 5–39. Schemmel, Christian. 2011. “Why Relational Egalitarians Should Care About Distributions.” Social Theory and Practice 37/3, 265–90. Slaughter, Anne-­Marie. 2004. A New World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Stepan, Alfred, Juan J. Linz and Yogendra Yadav. 2011. Crafting State-­Nations: India and Other Multinational Democracies. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Teubner, Gunther. 1997. “Global Bukowina: Legal Pluralism in the World Society.” In Teubner, Gunther (ed.). Global Law Without a State. Aldershot: Dartmouth, 3–28. Thierse, Wolfgang. 2017. “Bundestagswahl 2017 – worum es wirklich geht.” Neue Gesellschaft Frankfurter Hefte 9, 5–9. Thompson, Dennis. 1999. “Democratic Theory and Global Society.” Journal of Political Philosophy 7/2, 111–25. UNFCCC 1992. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Available online via https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf. Von Benda-­Beckmann, Franz and Keebet von Benda-­Beckmann. 2006. “The Dynamics of Change and Continuity in Plural Legal Orders.” Journal of Legal Pluralism 53–4, 1–44. Williams, Melissa. 2003. “Citizenship as Identity, Citizenship as Shared Fate, and the Functions of Multicultural Education.” In Feinberg, Walter and Kevin McDonough (eds.). Citizenship and Education in Liberal-­Democratic Societies. Teaching for

108   Global democratic citizenship education Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 208–47. Williams, Melissa. 2009. “Citizenship as Agency within Communities of Shared Fate.” In Bernstein, Steven and William Coleman (eds.). Unsettled Legitimacy. Political Community, Power, and Authority in the Global Era. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 33–52. Williams, J. Michael. 2010. Chieftaincy, the State and Democracy: Political Legitimacy in Post-­Apartheid South Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Woods, Ngaire. 2006. The Globalizers: the IMF, the World Bank and their Borrowers. Cornell University Press. Young, Iris. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

5 Global citizenship education as transnational democratic conscientization

1  Introduction In his masterpiece Democracy and Education John Dewey (1980 [1916], ch. 4) describes education as growth. By that he means that education is a process through which learners adopt habits that enable them to deal effectively with the tasks arising in their social environments. Consciously adopting such habits not only involves deliberately developing new capacities for given tasks, but also reflectively applying existing capacities to new tasks. Dewey (1980 [1916], 341) generalizes this growth-­based understanding of education when he defines philosophy of education as “only an explicit formulation of the problems of the ­formation of right mental and moral habitudes in respect to the difficulties of contemporary social life.” Thus he holds that education must prepare children and youth for the challenges with which they already are and can be confronted in life. From such a Deweyian perspective it follows that in an era of globalization citizenship education must be – at least in a certain sense – global. Education must reflect the fact that our social world, including its cultural, economic and political aspects, has been globalized, as globalization generates a whole array of tasks in various walks of life. Hence it should not come as a surprise that the recent literatures in educational policy, educational philosophy and educational science include wide-­ranging discussions on learning in and for a global era.1 OECD educational policy makers, for example, emphasize the following distinctive features of globalization: within a globalized economy production shifts frequently from one place to another, highly skilled knowledge-­based labor is rewarded at a premium, technological change requires continuous skill adaptation and the work force is culturally diverse (cf. Levy and Murnane 2007). Therefore, they argue that education must concentrate on developing cognitive skills, flexibility, intercultural communication competencies and life-­long learning (cf. Hugonnier 2007; Cheng 2007). The existence of this literature on globalization and citizenship education is a much-­needed recent development. After all, still in 2004 leading educational scholars (Suárez-Orozco and Qin-­Hilliard 2004b, 6) reported that “there is virtually no scholarship on globalization and precollegiate education.”

110   Global citizenship education This recent scholarly development on “global learning” is highly relevant given that in most countries schools still do not properly prepare their students for the tasks that they face in a globalized world. As Suárez-Orozco and Carolyn Sattin (2007, 2) analyze in the context of the United States, “the schooling of youth today is largely out of sync with the realities of a global world” (cf. also Suárez-Orozco and Qin-­Hilliard 2004b, 2). Problematically, however, as I will show in this chapter, the existing conceptions of global citizenship education – either in the form of education for global consciousness or in the form of moral cosmopolitan education – are insufficiently democratic. Therefore I develop in this chapter the basic ideas of a novel conception of global citizenship education that I dub transnational democratic conscientization. In line with my argumentation in the previous chapter, this conception maintains that educational public policies should be conducive to promoting democratic arrangements not only domestically but also at the inter-, trans- and supranational levels. Thereby I will further concretize my global conception of democratic citizenship education by way of specifying and defending certain individual attitudes, knowledge and skills that I deem crucial for transnational democratic conscientization. More specifically, this chapter argues that the attitudes of self-­respect and respect vis-­ à-vis others, knowledge of pertinent political facts and certain hermeneutic skills should be recognized as the ends of educational public policies of global citizenship education. In addition to that, this chapter will also suggest a few ways in which such attitudes, knowledge and skills can be promoted through particular processes of citizenship education. My argumentation in this chapter unfolds as follows. In Section 2 I discuss two conceptions of global citizenship education. First, I analyze the conception that views the formation of global consciousness as end of citizenship education. Although this conception properly recognizes the centrality of globalization for theorizing citizenship education, I argue that it is unsatisfactory because it mainly calls for a functional adaptation to certain kinds of economic pressures that globalization has brought about. Therefore I also assess Martha Nussbaum’s decidedly normative conception of global citizenship education. This conception emphasizes the need for creating cosmopolitan moral consciousness through citizenship education in order to fulfill certain universal human entitlements. While I applaud this conception for emphasizing the need to cultivate a moral consciousness that is truly global, I criticize it for being too determinate as to which moral requirements have universal scope. Thus I develop a distinct conception of global citizenship education as transnational democratic conscientization in Section 3, which builds on my global conception of democratic citizenship education that I have articulated in the previous chapter. My conception of transnational democratic conscientization recognizes the importance of nurturing global moral consciousness, but is committed to a democratic interpretation of what that means. Accordingly, the central claim of my conception is that educational public policies should further democratic consciousness not only within but also beyond states. In that manner it draws on the democratic orientation of the domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education, but extends it in

Global citizenship education   111 response to several dynamics of globalization that call for democratizing political arrangements beyond states. I specify in greater detail some ends and processes of transnational democratic conscientization in the remainder of this section, before Section 4 summarizes my argumentation and concludes.

2  The formation of global consciousness Several educational scholars argue that citizenship education should pursue the formation of “global consciousness” (cf. Mansilla and Gardner 2007; Allen and Parham 2015). Similar to political consciousness, global consciousness refers to a mental state that represents the way in which one situates oneself within one’s environment, and of how the items belonging to this environment hang together.2 In the case of citizenship education for global consciousness, however, this environment is not restricted to the domestic political domain. Rather, some educational scholars (Mansilla and Gardner 2007, 48) define it, quite opaquely, as “a mindful way of being in the world today” (cf. also Dill 2015, ch. 3). Such mindfulness is meant to enable students to see the ways in which local events, phenomena and processes are related to other phenomena and processes beyond national borders. On the one hand, such consciousness is primarily epistemically relevant for determining the subjective reality of an individual. For example, a bottle of orange juice should be recognized as the product of a transnational division of labor and international agreements regarding trade and consumer safety standards (cf. Mansilla and Gardner 2007, 49).3 Thereby the cultivation of global consciousness is meant to instill in students, as Mansilla and Gardner (2007, 56) argue, “a disposition to place their immediate experience in the broader matrix of developments that shape life worldwide, to construct their identities as members of world societies.”4 On the other hand, it also has the practical importance of structuring and determining possible ways of action of an individual. As Lange (2010, 205; trans. J.  C.) puts it, through “consciousness the human being reduces societal complexity. He [sic] constructs models that have an epistemological and a practical function.” In this way the point of building global consciousness is to help students in orienting themselves in a globalized world. It consists of, following Mansilla and Gardner (2007, 58) “sensitivity toward objects in our environment” and “the competency of [their] organization.” Thereby, as they (2007, 63, 58) go on to explain, citizenship education for global consciousness is meant “to give coherence to otherwise fragmented experience” and “places the self along an axis of contemporary space in ways comparable to the way historical consciousness places it along an axis of time.” The problem of this conception of global citizenship education for global consciousness, however, is that it lacks any normative grounding. Instead, this conception merely refers to the idea that in a globalized world agency requires an understanding of the ways in which phenomena are related to each other across borders. One consequence of this is that citizenship education for global consciousness is not oriented towards promoting or facilitating a particular kind of

112   Global citizenship education morally required action. The directedness of cultivating global consciousness is left open. Because of this lack of a normative ground the conception of citizenship education for global consciousness is unable to prioritize concrete educational goals that relate to the formation of global consciousness. For example, it is not clear how important multicultural learning is relative to learning information technology (IT) skills. Is it more important to enable students to empathize and sympathize with individuals of a different cultural background or to render them technically competent in understanding and using a transnational communicative infrastructure? Educational scholars arguing for global consciousness tend to leave questions like these unanswered. Indeed, many conceptions of citizenship education that contain a clear normative orientation are pitched at a very high level of abstraction. Thus even if these conceptions rely on an explicit normative ground they will not necessarily be useful for determining the relative importance of concrete educational public policies. But in certain cases the inclusion of such a normative ground will make a practical difference. For example, consider the decision whether the school ethos should be more democratic or more competitive. The decision in favor of “democratic” rather than “competitive” seems only clear when a normative ground points toward democratic consciousness. Hence the failure to substantiate the normative ground of creating global consciousness means that this conception of global consciousness will often times remain underspecified in practical terms. In addition, by failing to devise a more determinate, normatively grounded conception of citizenship education, citizenship education for global consciousness is not only insufficiently action guiding but also status quo biased. This is because scholars writing on globalization and education tend to focus on the skills necessary to thrive in a globalized economy. For example, they emphasize that meta-­learning competencies, soft skills, mobility and flexibility are of special importance in post-­industrial advanced economies (cf. Cheng 2007). In addition, such educational scholars emphasize that the importance of learning the capacity for cultural perspective taking is not a moral ideal, but rather a competency for securing material and other individual benefits. Suárez-Orozco and Sattin argue along these lines: Transcultural communication, understanding, empathy, and collaboration are no longer abstract ideals but now have a premium. It is not as simple as the one-­way assimilation and accommodation models according to which ethnic, racial, linguistic, and religious minorities learn the codes of the majority to get along and get ahead. Much more is needed: majority children, too, will benefit by mastering other cultural sensibilities and codes. (Suárez-Orozco and Sattin 2007, 18–19) Thus the upshot of the status quo bias of the conception of education for global consciousness is that it tends to reflect a functionalist conception of education. Such an education merely reproduces the given social order irrespective of whether the guiding principles that underlie this order withstand critical

Global citizenship education   113 scrutiny. Therefore scholars that favor the global consciousness conception of citizenship education are prone to view the current predominance of economic globalization as given, and fail to consider how education should respond to this phenomenon in a creative and empowering manner that would denaturalize the current forms of global economic integration.6 This would not just mean to question the unavoidability of the particular shape that economic globalization has taken so far. It would also mean to question the apparently dominant scheme of valuation that underlies and reinforces this process. Finally, an additional problem from which citizenship education for global consciousness suffers is “empirical parochialism.” By this kind of parochialism I mean the problematic view that processes of globalization would lead to cultural, economic and political homogenization according to Western patterns. Some educational scholars express such a view when they conceive education in terms of a one-­dimensional linear process of modernization that will eventually transform all societies according to one particular pattern. Thus they subscribe to a naïve conception of globalization, which regards it as a unilinear, homogenizing and all-­encompassing process.7 In this vein, Suárez-Orozco and Sattin (2007, 18) explain that “[w]hat happens … when immigrants from, for example, Somalia immigrate to Sweden … it is like traveling two hundred years in time for them,” as if it was the case that in the not so distant future the Somalian society would turn into a society akin to the Swedish one (cf. also Gunesch 2004; Fail et al. 2004). Similarly, this homogenizing view of globalization is also endorsed in Suárez-Orozco and Qin-­ Hilliard’s (2004b, 6) “convergence hypothesis,” according to which “globalization is de-­territorializing the skills and competencies it rewards, thereby generating powerful centripetal forces on what students the world over need to know.” This empirical parochialism is problematic because it fails to account for the fact that due to the lasting plurality of schemes of cultural interpretation, ­globalization takes on very distinct forms in differing social contexts and regions (cf. Pollock et al. 2000). In sum, the global consciousness conception of global citizenship education remains ultimately unconvincing, although it does not suffer from the domestic bias of the domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education that I have analyzed in the previous chapter. It does however suffer from a lack of normative grounding, from status quo bias and from empirical parochialism. In this way the global consciousness conception is problematic in normative as well as empirical respects. In the next section I therefore discuss another conception of global citizenship education which also avoids the domestic bias of the domestic conceptions of citizenship education, but which in addition to that also represents a decidedly normative conception of global citizenship education. 5

3  Moral cosmopolitan education A few philosophers and educational scholars argue in favor of moral cosmopolitan education as end of global citizenship education. The basic idea that a moral

114   Global citizenship education cosmopolitan education aims to convey is that there are certain moral norms that hold among all human beings irrespective of their national, familial, ethnic or economic characteristics (cf. Pogge 1992, 48). Thereby moral cosmopolitan citizenship education does not suffer from the deficits of the previously discussed conceptions of citizenship education. For different from the domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education that I discussed in Chapter 4, the moral cosmopolitan conceptions of citizenship education are not limited to moral concerns that occur inside the nation-­state. Furthermore, different from the conception of citizenship education for global consciousness that I analyzed in the last section, the moral cosmopolitan conception neither lacks determinate normative grounding nor is it status quo biased. It is important to emphasize this essentially moral idea of this kind of education, because otherwise one might confound it with the ideas of cultural or political cosmopolitanism and corresponding forms of cosmopolitan education.8 To elaborate, a cultural cosmopolitan education would involve passing on attitudes, knowledge and skills that enable understanding, engaging and interacting with a vast array of the presently existing cultures. It is true that doing so might be helpful for furthering the appreciation the validity of certain universal moral norms. After all, the immersion in and exposure to a diversity of cultures might enable identifying a certain core set of distinctively human characteristics – such as, perhaps, certain universally shared needs and aspirations. And these characteristics, in turn, might be thought to lend support to the validity of universal moral norms. But in and of itself cultural cosmopolitan education does not necessarily rest on a particular normative ground. Political cosmopolitan education, by contrast, would consist of promoting the creation and maintenance of a global political association through education. The present-­day United Nations is an example of such an association, but other forms of global political association are also imaginable – a world state with a single government, for example.9 Political cosmopolitan education would attempt inoculating the attitudes, skills and knowledge necessary for such an association. Thereby it might differ from moral cosmopolitan education, because recognizing the validity of certain moral norms with global scope need not entail building up and sustaining a global political association (cf. Pogge 1992; Beitz 1994). Nussbaum has developed the perhaps most prominent moral cosmopolitan conception of citizenship education, for which she draws on her capability-­based theory of basic justice.10 This basic theory of justice articulates demands of justice in terms of a list of ten central capabilities, that is, ten effective opportunities to do certain things or enjoy certain states of being. According to Nussbaum (2011, 33–4), these demands represent necessary elements of a life worthy of human dignity, which is an idea that she regards as cross-­culturally valid. These ten central capabilities are life; bodily health; bodily integrity; sense, imagination and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation; contact with other species; play; and control over one’s environment. Nussbaum maintains that these central capabilities should be fulfilled in every society and protected by

Global citizenship education   115 constitutional means. More specifically, Nussbaum holds that in different states these entitlements must be interpreted in different ways depending on the situation at hand and the cultural specificities in place. She argues that this interpretation should be carried out through national democratic processes of opinion and will-­formation. This is why she (2000, 101–5, 2006, 78–9, 2011, 74–5) recognizes the creation of democratic consciousness as an end of citizenship education within all states. Nussbaum (1997, 65, 68) argues for a cosmopolitan kind of democratic citizenship education that puts great weight on multicultural learning, because she regards this kind of learning as necessary in order to promote domestically a democratic consciousness despite cultural pluralism. Multicultural education, by which she means what I have earlier referred to as cultural cosmopolitan education, serves the purpose of creating mutual understanding and appreciation among members of different cultural groups.11 Such understanding is constitutive of empathy, which is key for the constant democratic task of putting oneself in others’ shoes and considering the soundness of their claims and underlying argumentation.12 Furthermore, multicultural education can also stimulate sympathy among the members of diverse cultural groups. One way in which it achieves this is by presenting particular aspects of a certain culture, such as its dominant religious beliefs or artistic excellence, and uncovering their underlying rationales or narratives. Some will happen to find these rationales or narratives appealing, and this will encourage them to start sympathizing with members of other cultural groups. Nussbaum (1997, 69, 83) argues that another way in which multicultural education is able to generate sympathy is by showing how different cultural groups find ­differing solutions to a shared set of common problems. By highlighting that these  groups share certain problems in common – such as their need to produce food, to maintain social reproduction and to provide spaces and time for recreation – multicultural education can foster sympathy on the basis of an appreciation of the similarity of their human existence. What is more, Nussbaum’s conception of global citizenship education is not particularly status quo biased, as it aims at quite drastic transformations of the consciousness of populations around the globe. So far the populations of several countries have neither domestic democratic consciousness nor global moral consciousness. In addition, Nussbaum’s conception of citizenship education does not suffer from the domestic bias of the domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education. Indeed, it is a central point of her moral and political theory that every single capability that is part of her list of central human capabilities is a matter of moral concern for every other human being, no matter where that human being may reside. While she (2006, 316) specifies further that each nation state is the primary bearer of moral responsibility for realizing the ten central capabilities of its population, international actors – such as nation states, multinational corporations, international organizations and non-­governmental institutions – carry a remedial responsibility. Accordingly, citizenship education must develop the requisite kind of moral concern such that persons who are members of different states are willing to

116   Global citizenship education take on this kind of remedial responsibility whenever the political community of a particular state fails to realize the central capabilities of all citizens within that state. Nussbaum (1996, 12–14) believes that in practical terms the recognition of such responsibility means that citizenship education must aim at fostering a sufficient, albeit relatively limited, degree of sympathy vis-­à-vis foreigners. Likewise, the behavior of states and other international actors should not be such that they undermine the realization of the ten central capabilities in any country. For that purpose, too, citizenship education needs to be designed in a way that ensures that citizens of various countries monitor the behavior of their governments and of international actors. Yet Nussbaum does not view it as necessary that this particular division of moral labor would be further specified and determined in a democratic manner. The remedial responsibility that states and other international actors have for realizing the ten fundamental capabilities do not in any way require democratizing international affairs. According to Nussbaum (1996, 12, 2006, 294) neither the justification nor the implementation of the ten central capabilities call for such democratization. Indeed, she acknowledges the importance of “global dialogue” and an “ongoing cross-­national debate” about global problems such as climate change or the level of legitimate socio-­economic inequalities between states. But she does not call for the establishment of those democratic arrangements that would facilitate democratic processes of opinion and will formation across, between and beyond states in the first place. That is, she does not demand a democratic ordering of such debate and dialogue. As a result of this, from the point of view of her moral cosmopolitan conception of citizenship education there is no need to create a transnational democratic consciousness among citizens of different states. But in order to enjoy the political capability that Nussbaum (2011, 34) describes as the freedom of “being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one’s life,” it is inadequate to prepare citizens merely for democratic decision making inside their states – at least under current circumstances. As I have already maintained in the previous chapter, the reason for this is that citizens cannot exercise control over all the decisions that determine their lives through domestic democratic processes alone. Again, as several social scientific analyses document, the recent and ongoing transformation of state sovereignty involves the spread of decision-­making powers beyond states (cf. Hurrelmann et al. 2007; Genschel and Zangl 2008). There is a proliferation of international organizations and regimes that constrain or influence national decision-­making processes (Sarooshi 2005; Rittberger 1995). This has given rise not just to the idea, but also to the reality of global governance (cf. Rosenau and Czempiel 1992; Avant et al. 2010). All of these international organizations and regimes represent spheres of political power that affect in significant ways how people’s lives fare. Yet unless these organizations and regimes are further democratized in context-­specific ways, it will not be possible for the citizens of different states to have at least a minimal influence on the decisions that are taken at this international level.

Global citizenship education   117 Hence from a perspective that is internal to Nussbaum’s capability-­based theory of justice, and which emphasizes that every human being should be able to co-­ determine politically his or her social environments, it seems mandatory to democratize inter-, supra- and transnational affairs. While a democratization of this sort will most certainly have to consider the institutional design of these organizations and regimes, it will also have to involve the development of a transnational democratic consciousness of the populations that constitute them (cf. Peters 2007, ch. 3; Lennard 2010, 2012, 2014; Allen and Parham 2015). And since such consciousness will not arise simply by accident, but will have to be promoted, among other things, through carefully crafted educational public policies, it is a severe deficit of Nussbaum’s conception of citizenship education that it fails to prepare citizens to democratically influence inter-, supra- and transnational decision making.

4  Transnational democratic conscientization In the remainder of this section I therefore further substantiate my global conception of democratic citizenship education by way of conceiving this conception in terms of transnational democratic conscientization. More specifically, I begin by a methodological reflection of how to determine specific ends and processes of citizenship education on the basis of global democratic justice as the normative ground of educational public policy. Rawls (2001, 56, 147–8) determines the ends and processes of citizenship education by identifying the characteristics that citizens would have to possess in order to effectively maintain ideally just political arrangements and by showing the ways in which citizens living under such arrangements would come to adopt these characteristics. In this way a certain understanding of an ideal citizen, and of how an ideal citizen comes to develop his or her defining characteristics as a ­participant within ideally just social institutions, is the joint that connects Rawls’s political philosophy to a particular conception of citizenship education – at least in a broad sense of that term, which does not refer to educational public policies in particular. Different from Rawls, in this section I pursue the aim of determining the ends and processes of citizenship education that are appropriate for conditions in which social and political arrangements are unjust. That is, rather than attempting to identify those ends and processes that are useful for maintaining ideally just political arrangements once such arrangements have been put in place, I concentrate on those ends and processes that would render political arrangements more rather than ideally just.13 Victoria Costa (2011, 57–9) has also drawn her attention to this kind of endeavor and argued that educational public policies are of much greater importance when political arrangements are not fully just. For under such conditions the socializing effects of political arrangements will not necessarily be conducive to developing those individual characteristics of citizens that would be effective in bringing about greater political justice. What is more, conceptions of citizenship education that are specifically modeled for

118   Global citizenship education unjust conditions have to aim at determining the ends and processes that would motivate citizens to create rather than merely maintain just institutions. So conceived a conception of citizenship education is not based on an account of ideally just institutions and a corresponding characterization of citizens living under and upholding such institutions. Instead, it relies on a particular understanding as to which injustices presently exist, and on that basis determines the individual characteristics that citizens should possess in order to be appropriately equipped for fighting injustices, and devises the educational public policies that would be effective in generating such characteristics. Consider, in particular, how such an approach differs from an ideal approach in terms of how it deals with the socializing effects of social and political institutions. In an ideally just world the socializing effects of ideally just political arrangements would suffice in order to instill in individuals the attitudes, knowledge and skills necessary for maintaining such institutions over time. But in an unjust world, by contrast, citizenship education must fight, so to speak, the potentially very problematic socializing effects of unjust institutions that sustain injustice. For example, children and youth living under undemocratic conditions might simply be incapable of believing that they themselves and others could eventually maintain just institutions over time, given that the citizens of which they know from their day-­to-day experience act unjustly. Therefore processes of citizenship education that presented children and youth only with the individual characteristics that citizens possess under an ideally just political arrangement could be pointless. What is more, under undemocratic conditions courses of citizenship education might also further consolidate and reproduce injustices. This is because they might cover up injustices by suggesting that the existing political and social institutions already serve justice, although this is not the case. Thus “talk” of political justice and the way in which citizens are effectively capable as free and equals to participate in the democratic institutions within courses of civic education might be ideological. The upshot of this is that such a conception of citizenship education must contain an explanation of how it is able to avoid reproducing the existing injustices and how it is able to fulfill its promise of contributing to the reduction of injustices.14 It follows from this approach that citizenship education should consist of those educational public policies that would be effective in diminishing injustices. In this chapter I do not, however, argue for a particular conception of injustice to which such an approach is connected. Rather, I simply rely, once again, on my conception of global democratic justice that I have already developed in Chapter 2. Thereby this chapter recognizes as valid a democratic conception of justice that maintains that the most fundamental requirement of justice is to bring about democratic conditions under which citizens are capable to justify in a deliberative fashion further requirements of justice. Given my approach to citizenship education, it is not necessary to flesh out which institutional arrangements would perfectly realize democratic justice. Arguably, this is an advantage of this approach, especially once we recognize, as

Global citizenship education   119 we should, that there are not only domestic but also international principles of justice that citizens and representatives of states the world over have to realize. This is because we might not be able to specify which features citizens would have to possess in order to uphold ideally just global arrangements over time.15 After all, we might not be able to determine with clarity and precision what would be involved in ideally just global arrangements (Banai et al. 2011; Buchanan 2004b, ch. 1). But on my approach to conceptualizing citizenship education one need not determine which features citizens would have to possess in a perfectly just international political order. All that this approach requires is offering an account of the democratic injustices that currently exist, and to infer from this consideration which educational policies would be effective in opposing these injustices. For example, we can observe that the present inter- and supranational organizations as well as transnational corporations currently exercise a significant amount of political power without affording citizens from different states hardly any say in their decision making. From the point of view of my conception of democratic justice, undemocratic political arrangements of this kind constitute core injustices of our contemporary world. Hence one important aim of citizenship education is raising transnational democratic consciousness and empowering citizens across, between and beyond states to build up political agency beyond the state so as to exercise some control over such entities beyond the state. In this way my conception of citizenship education is deliberately conceived in terms of developing those attitudes, knowledge and skills that are effective in rendering inter- and transnational affairs more democratic. Indeed, the basic idea is that in order to build such democratic institutions within and beyond states, it is indispensable that citizens within and across states relate to each other in democratic ways, which is to say that they must possess and be connected amongst each other through a democratic consciousness. Thus citizenship education is best understood dynamically in terms of transnational democratic conscientization.16 For the educational public policies of which it is comprised are meant to serve the development of those individual characteristics that promise to be effective in terms of forming democratic consciousness within as well as across, between and beyond states.17 In this way this chapter links the more abstract philosophical principles of the global conception of democratic citizenship education and the idea of transnational democratic consciousness that I have developed in the previous chapter to an identification of rather specific individual characteristics that educational public policies should promote. What is more, in the course of outlining these individual characteristics I will also point at some of the processes that are especially promising in realizing these characteristics. For I will determine the individual attitudes, knowledge and skills that citizenship education ought to promote and suggest concrete ways in which these individual characteristics can be realized. But before I further determine these characteristics it is important to recognize that the distinctions between an attitude and knowledge, an attitude and a

120   Global citizenship education skill and a skill and knowledge, are not clear cut. Some attitudes, for example the one which I will refer to as self-­respect below, might be said to reflect a certain knowledge of oneself as an end in itself, by which I mean the knowledge of oneself as an agent that is capable of selecting and adhering to certain norms of conduct. Moreover, it is also possible to argue that in order to possess the attitude of self-­respect it is necessary to exercise it continuously. That is, one might think that only if one is effectively capable of demonstrating one’s self-­respect whenever others challenge it does one truly possess the attitude of self-­respect. And this demonstration of self-­respect to oneself, in turn, could also be conceived as a particular skill, which reflects the attitude of self-­ respect. After all, it might involve mastering feelings such as anger or fear, stopping certain trains of thought and avoiding particular kinds of imagination. And the exercise of such skills, in turn, might require knowledge of the effects of their exercise, because otherwise one would not be able to motivate oneself to exercise these skills. So the point of distinguishing between these categories is not strictly analytic or philosophical. Rather, the use of these categories serves primarily the practical purpose of conceptualizing transnational democratic conscientization in a way that renders it more easily applicable in educational contexts. Attitudes for transnational democratic conscientization In line with the enlightenment motto Sapere aude!, it is correct to emphasize the importance of individuals’ courage to think for themselves, be it in their personal lives or in political affairs. Courage of this kind presupposes that individuals respect themselves as beings that enjoy the status of persons to whom a justification is owed as to why they are treated in a particular manner. As Honneth explains by reference to Kant: [For Kant] self-­respect (and also self-­esteem) was the most important end of public education: Everything that such educational processes are meant to impart – first, mechanical skills; second, pragmatic prudence; third, moral autonomy – is subordinate, in Kant’s view, to the goal of creating within the individual a corresponding number of layers of self-­respect and self-­esteem, which taken together allow him to act with self-­confidence as citizen of a republic.18 (Honneth 2015, 25) So educational processes must build up self-­respect, as a person who deserves an appropriate justification for the way in which she is treated must view herself as an equal to anyone else in her justificatory authority. Therefore she must not defer to anyone’s reasoning simply due to her particular kind of social, political or economic status. Furthermore, it is necessary to respect others as beings that equally possess normative authority regarding how to lead their own lives and how to arrange

Global citizenship education   121 social and political institutions, regardless as to whether they are co-­citizens of the same state. I agree with Gutmann (1995, 561) that this includes “a reciprocal positive regard among citizens who pursue ways of life that are consistent with honoring the basic liberties and opportunities of others,” but I maintain that such “positive regard” must be extended to those who are not co-­citizens. Although members of different groups, whose members might stem from different states, endorse perhaps even radically different conceptions of the good, they nevertheless must affirm each other positively as equal normative authorities regarding the justification of the values of their personal lives and the principles that should be regarded as valid in political affairs. This is necessary in order to avoid imposing one’s own views regarding personal and public affairs on others. It is imperative to take seriously the various normative ideas which individuals and groups recognize, and to assess carefully whether or not their distinct views of the good or just society withstand critical scrutiny. Importantly, the recognition of the other as a justificatory authority requires the capacity for critical self-­ examination, because one must be willing to revise one’s way of thinking and behaving in light of the reasons that the other person puts forward. Therefore, persons must be “reasonable,” which means that they must be able to understand, apply and be motivated by norms of justice that are justified by reference to a criterion of reciprocity. They must be capable of proposing as well as complying with reciprocally justifiable principles of justice.19 Such reasonability involves the capacity to put oneself into the perspective of someone else in order to test whether a particular proposal for a principle of justice passes the test of reciprocity, or unduly favors the particular interest of some individual or other. Costa (2011, 67) thus argues: “Reasonability requires … the capacity for reciprocity, which involves being capable of making proposals that one considers fair, and being willing to listen and discuss others’ proposals, all of which requires understanding the others’ points’ of views.” This, in turn, means that persons must possess a certain kind of hermeneutic sensibility that enables them to hypothetically take up another person’s perspective and to assess a certain principle of justice relative to that particular viewpoint. Callan argues along similar lines when he states: [O]nly through empathic identification with your viewpoint can I appreciate what reason might commend in what you say. For if I am to weigh your claims as a matter of fairness rather than a rhetorically camouflaged expression of sheer selfishness, I must provisionally suspend the thought that you are simply wrong and enter imaginatively into the moral perspective you occupy. (Callan 1997, 26) Costa (2011, 66) also seems to point toward the importance of a certain kind of hermeneutic sensibility when she argues that “given the plurality of comprehensive doctrines that citizens endorse, it is also necessary to encourage attitudes of understanding [and] mental openness.”

122   Global citizenship education Yet in addition to such a sensibility, which is an important skill on which I will further elaborate below, Costa also refers in this quote to the idea of “mental openness.” Such openness appears to be of fundamental relevance, because a corollary of respect vis-­à-vis others is conceiving political orders, not only the domestic one, but also inter-, supra- and transnational ones, as the self-­creation of all its members, rather than as natural or (God-)given. There are various ways in which schools can contribute to the development of respect vis-­à-vis others and a critical stance vis-­à-vis the principles underlying the existing social and political institutions domestically as well as across, between and beyond states. If we follow Dewey’s dictum learning by doing, then it seems apt to think that students will acquire the capacity for critical reflection and argumentation by practicing critique (cf. Laden 2013). Students can engage with each other’s reasoning in classroom discussions, they can debate with their teachers or they can examine the positions of politicians, civil society actors or intellectuals. While dialogue and debate might be very useful to experience the plurality of points of view and the way in which arguments are confronted with counter-­arguments, profoundly structured texts that present certain positions can be at least equally helpful to acquire a sense of the potential complexity of a certain debate. Such debates in which students critique and challenge each other’s view will help them realize that there are various ways in which a particular claim can be supported and that claims that are opposed to each other can nevertheless be based on good reasons. This, in turn, will eventually lead students to realize that their own views are fallible and subject to continuous revision on the basis of reasons that they have not known or fully recognized so far. Thus students should come to question any statements that claim that certain social, political, economic or legal norms are just normal and beyond critique. Being able to adopt such a critical stance is crucial for deliberative democratic arrangements, because these arrangements are meant to express the idea that they are self-­created rather than a mere representation of how things are normally or naturally. In addition, a cosmopolitan sort of education that engages with a variety of (“Western” and “non-­Western”) cultures also has the goal of teaching individuals and groups to de-­naturalize their own ways of life. Through the encounter with ways of life very different from their own, individuals and groups can learn that there is nothing natural about their ways of living. This, in turn, enables them to recognize the artificiality and thus changeability of their forms of life, which matters fundamentally for deliberating upon certain choices and eventually realizing social cooperation under conditions of cultural diversity. Nussbaum expresses this thought as follows: The education of the kosmou polites is thus closely connected to Socratic inquiry and the goal of examined life. For attaining membership in the world community entails a willingness to doubt the goodness of one’s own way and to enter into the give-­and-take of critical argument about ethical and political choices. (Nussbaum 1997, 62)

Global citizenship education   123 To emphasize, this means that cosmopolitan education does not exclusively or primarily have the goal of gaining a better understanding of someone else or of another culture, but rather a better understanding of oneself and one’s own culture. Hence through cosmopolitan education students would come to develop, first and foremost, an awareness of what is special about their way of life and thereby an awareness of its contingency. Achieving this goal of this particular kind of (greater) self-­understanding is valuable for dialogue about normative questions, because it creates the openness that participants of  such a dialogue must display if the dialogue is meant to be at all constructive.20 Knowledge for transnational democratic conscientization Regarding the political knowledge for transnational democratic conscientization, it is not enough to learn merely the ways in which inter-, trans- and supranational organizations and institutions might support or hinder the realization of certain core moral entitlements or of domestic democracy.21 This would only suffice if the goal of citizenship education were merely to facilitate the realization of certain core moral entitlements within all states, but not the establishment of democratic arrangements beyond states. For example, it would be sufficient to know how to access services of the World Food Programme in situations of duress, or how to support this organization so as to effectively discharge one’s moral obligations of aid vis-­à-vis other countries. However, in order to further democratize inter-, supra- and transnational affairs one also needs to know, among other things, the distribution of power within such an organization, in which ways, if at all, the organization provides access to civil society actors, and to what extent, if at all, that organization is open for reform. So democratic ­conscientization that is not limited to relations among co-­citizens, but includes relations among citizens from different states, also requires conveying additional bodies of political knowledge. To put this point about the epistemic presuppositions of transnational democratic conscientization more abstractly, it is necessary to inform and teach citizens about the multiple points of reference that are in play when taking decisions across, between and beyond states. It is not enough to possess only knowledge of one’s domestic political affairs and of how inter-, supra- and transnational organizations can affect them. Rather, it is also mandatory to have a solid understanding to what extent such organizations themselves fail to comply with certain democratic standards. However, in addition to learning specific information, it is also important, and perhaps even more important, to convey general epistemic competencies that enable individuals to collect and evaluate relevant empirical information. These capacities involve the identification, collection and structuring of relevant information within a reasonable amount of time, as well as the ability to assess the reliability and statistical significance of information (cf. Allen and Parham 2015).

124   Global citizenship education Another general decisive epistemic competency is that of appropriate epistemic modesty. It clearly is an indispensable virtue of democratically conscious persons if they acknowledge the limits of what they know – in terms of both the scope and the certainty of their knowledge. Those individuals that concede and embrace these limits will refrain from enforcing or imposing particular policies on the presumption that they know the relevant information with certainty. Epistemic modesty should usually result not only in an engagement with a variety of sources about a particular question, but will also encourage those who are epistemically modest to engage in dialogue with others whom they deem as competent and expect to hold beliefs that are very different from their own (cf. Nussbaum 1997, ch. 4; Mill 1859, ch. 2). Since social practices frame the epistemic capacities of any given individual, it is of particular importance to consider how the way in which educational practices are arranged affect the beliefs of those who participate in these practices.22 One reason for this is the phenomenon of peer group pressure or groupthink. In relatively homogeneous groups in which criticisms of the dominant views of the group are suppressed, people tend to adopt and follow these views uncritically (cf. Janis 1972). Groupthink thereby counteracts individuals’ critical and epistemic virtues, whereby individuals are prone to think and act on the basis of inaccurate information. The phenomenon of groupthink is common in groups that are hierarchically structured. For in such kinds of groups individuals tend to defer their judgment to the authority without assessing the legitimacy of the authority, because the power asymmetries between themselves and the authority leads them to regard the authority as infallible. This is because the existing power asymmetries lead individuals to believe that they possess an inferior epistemic status (cf. Freire 1970, ch.  1). So ideally educational practices should display flat structures of responsibility in which individuals are incentivized and asked to come up with their own judgments. Skills for transnational democratic conscientization Hermeneutic skills refer to the capacity to interpret properly the meaning of what persons intend to communicate through their utterings.23 These skills appear to be central for transnational democratic conscientization (cf. Gärdenfors 2007; Süssmuth 2007). This is because on the deliberative understanding of democracy that I have presented in Chapter 2, hermeneutic skills are necessary in order to “step in the others’ shoes” and to reconstruct as best as possible others’ reasoning (cf. Piaget 1936; Vandamme 2013). These skills are not only of importance for the state representatives that participate directly in international political discourses, but also for everyone else who should be able to influence and challenge these representatives, for example as activists within transnational social and political movements. Of course such hermeneutic skills are also of importance for socially diverse domestic political orders that aspire to be reasonably democratic. Yet in the context of transnational political discourses education for the mastery of these

Global citizenship education   125 skills requires special attention due to the simple fact that in most areas of the world nation states continue constituting relevant frames for the self-­ understanding of individuals and groups (cf. Calhoun 2007). Thereby nation states represent important points of reference for ways in which groups of diverse cultural backgrounds can interact effectively with one another. Accordingly, interactions among those who share a certain national political context are at least in one respect less prone to cultural misunderstandings relative to interactions among those who do not share such a context. Within inter-, supra and transnational contexts, by contrast, there are not necessarily comparable points of reference on the basis of which mutual understanding could be facilitated. Consequently it is imperative that democratic citizenship education aims at supporting the development of hermeneutic skills.24 Multicultural education can serve this purpose. In order to do so, it need not consist of teaching in detail a great many cultures (Nussbaum 1997, 65, 68). Rather, what matters more is teaching the meta-­skill of how to go about understanding other cultures, which is a challenging accomplishment due to the complexity of cultures. In order to acquire this meta-­skill of being able to grasp a particular cultural perspective the following points seem relevant. First, cultures are pluralistic in the sense that whatever one might think of as a single culture in fact contains a plurality of cultures. German culture, for one, can be subdivided into various cultures that characterize the Northern, Eastern, Southern and Western regions of Germany. Moreover, there are examples of German cultures outside the territory of Germany like those inside German schools throughout the entire world or in towns or neighborhoods populated by (descendants of ) German migrants. So “talk” of German culture in the singular is therefore vague and confusing, because there are several cultures that form part of “the” German culture. Second, any harmonious view of any given culture must be resisted because it betrays the fact of opposition to the dominant norms of a culture. Consequently not all who belong to a certain culture affirm its norms and values to the same degree, and it is possible that those norms and values that are now dominant will no longer be so soon. Describing South Amer­ican cultures such as the Brazilian one as patriarchal, for example, neglects the way in which this patriarchy is subject to severe forms of feminist critique and contestation that are currently ongoing. It also neglects that in certain segments of Brazilian society, for example within indigenous communities like the Guaraní, gender norms might be far less patriarchal than in the other parts of society. This is related to a third fact about cultures, namely that they consist of various domains of thought and action, such that what might be an adequate description of one particular domain might not be so with regard to another domain. In the case of gender hierarchies, it may or may not be the case that the economic domain is as patriarchal as that of familial relations. Of course, these domains are related to one another such that, say, women’s inferior status in economic life also translates into a greater vulnerability in familial relations or intimate relationships. But still, any generalizing statement to the effect that a

126   Global citizenship education particular culture is so-­and-so with regard to gender norms neglects the ways in which these norms can play out differently in different social domains. Fourth, one must also bear in mind that what is known about certain cultures is often the product of intellectual and artistic work of cultural elites and therefore will often reflect these elites’ distinct social situation and understanding of society as a whole. A case in point is the well-­known fact that the perception and representation of European medieval culture is highly influenced by those who have held offices within or collaborated with the Roman Catholic Church. Finally, another feature of cultures is their historicity. Cultures are dynamic and change over time. This is evidenced, for example, by the fact that citizens of European descent no longer represent the majority of the population of the United States. Keeping these general facts about cultures in mind will help avoiding two common mistakes. The first mistake is that of chauvinism, which consists in noting merely those aspects of a particular culture that are similar to one’s own culture. So, for example, Germans might perceive Brazilians predominantly as soccer fanatics and beach lovers, simply because these are affinities that Germans tend to share with Brazilians. Or, to use another example, since literary works such as novels play an important role in the self-­understanding of most European cultures, one might think that it is necessary to study another culture through the literary works of that culture, and thereby neglect that in other cultural contexts performance, plays or narration might be much more important media for cultural expression. The flip side of chauvinism is the mistake of romanticism, which consists of reconstructing a culture solely on the basis of those aspects that are very distinct from what one is familiar with in one’s own culture. Hence many Westerners that travel through India might perceive Indian culture as highly spiritual and perhaps even resistant to rational or logical thinking, simply because the vivid and public display of spiritual beliefs in India might strike many as exotic and noteworthy. The upshot of romanticism in this particular case is the neglect of a highly developed tradition of logical thinking and innovation in the fields of mathematics and, more recently, computer science, which are also key features of Indian culture (cf. Nussbaum 1997, ch. 4). Finally, other particularly salient skills for transnational democratic conscientization within and especially across borders are linguistic competencies.25 While achieving democracy domestically might be possible if all citizens learn to speak one language well, a transnational political discourse is very unlikely to be effective if its members can communicate within one language only. A single language – English, say – favors the native speakers of that language in a way that is deeply problematic for such discourses. For one, the entrenched asymmetry in the communicative capacities might create resentment and fear. After all, this asymmetry can in principle always be used in order to strike a political bargain in a one-­sided manner.26 In international business and transnational academia this might be less of a problem because these areas allow for selective access criteria. After all, their

Global citizenship education   127 distinct, functional pursuits of the goals of profit and knowledge, respectively, do not necessarily require a very inclusive stance vis-­à-vis their potential members – at least not in all fields of profit making and truth seeking. By contrast, profound and lasting political change is only possible if that change is supported by a very wide array of political actors. This might mean that transnational political mobilization must be able to rely on a plurality of languages, all of which must be equally recognized as “official” ways of communication within transnational social and political movements. But this demand would be highly idealistic. Those languages that only very few command – such as Norwegian, for example – are likely to be marginalized since communication via these languages will almost always require translation for nearly all others who do not command that language. By contrast, speakers of widely known languages such as Chinese, English, French or Spanish will be in a better position to articulate and convey the intended meanings of their utterances clearly. Thus there is no easy solution to the problem that differential linguistic competencies correlate with communicative power asymmetries given that some languages have a greater audience than other languages. One way in which one might want to confront this impasse is by developing a critical awareness of the political power imbalances brought about by differentials in linguistic competencies. Even if such awareness is incapable of erasing these power imbalances, it might be effective in ameliorating or reducing them. For it enables and may even encourage political subjects to point to these imbalances within concrete situations of communicative exchange. They can thereby put in check those with greater communicative power by laying bare that some of their advantages are due to the morally arbitrary fact of their linguistic competency rather than legitimate moral claims.

5  Conclusion In the previous chapter I criticized the domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education for their domestic bias that blinds them vis-­à-vis national border transcending phenomena and processes. I therefore argued that democratic citizenship education must also envision the creation and maintenance of democratic consciousness among citizens from different states. Citizens should not only be concerned as to whether political structures, institutions and policies satisfy democratic standards within the boundaries of their respective states. They must also consider whether they satisfy such standards across states. In this chapter I therefore asked the question of how to conceive the ends and processes of global democratic citizenship education. The way in which I developed an answer to this question was by critically discussing the already existing conceptions of global citizenship education. These conceptions emphasize either the formation of global consciousness or the promotion of moral cosmopolitanism as the end of global citizenship education. My critique of viewing the formation of global consciousness as such an end is that it is insufficient for the creation of a transnational democratic consciousness.

128   Global citizenship education This is because the aim of forming global consciousness is merely to gain a better empirical understanding of globalization. Indeed, such a better empirical understanding of globalization is important, because being knowledgeable of globalization can in principle support the development of transnational democratic consciousness. However, unless the formation of transnational democratic consciousness is the end that orients which particular aspects of globalization are learned in which ways, a better empirical understanding of globalization can also simply serve the functionalist purpose of reproducing the already given normative orders. For example, it is insufficient to understand the way in which an orange juice is the product of a global division of labor. It is also necessary to consider whether the international rules that structure and regulate that division of labor can be properly regarded as the outcome of a democratic deliberation. So in this case the exercise of transnational democratic consciousness consists of considering to what extent workers were able to co-­determine the labor regulations that apply to them. It includes analyzing to what extent international trade regulation governing the supply and demand of orange juice satisfy democratic standards. Accordingly, the conception of global citizenship education that merely has the formation of global consciousness as its end is potentially affected by a status quo bias, which is a normatively problematic bias as long as injustices exist. By contrast, Nussbaum defends a morally progressive kind of global citizenship education that posits the development of a global moral cosmopolitan mindset as educational end. Recall that this conception holds that there are certain core moral entitlements, the universal recognition of which should be the end of global citizenship education. Thereby this conception morally calls into question the status quo on the ground that there is no such global moral consciousness. The problem that I identify with this conception, however, is that it is insufficiently democratic. Indeed, Nussbaum recognizes the importance of a political capability to influence domestic decision-­making processes. However, she does not call for that kind of citizenship education that was necessary for achieving more democratic arrangements across, between and beyond states by creating a transnational democratic consciousness. But such citizenship education is crucial, I argue, in order to build those kinds of domestic and international basic structures of justification that are needed in order to discursively put into question the validity of any moral principle that claims universal validity, including the principles of global citizenship education. Based on this analysis of these two conceptions of global citizenship education, I articulated a novel conception of global citizenship education as transnational democratic conscientization. Like Nussbaum’s conception of global citizenship education, my conception also avoids being status quo biased. This is because the end of my conception of global citizenship education is to aid in the formation of transnational democratic consciousness. So it clearly does not have the reproduction of the already given normative orders as its end. Furthermore, due to this focus on the development of a transnational democratic consciousness it does not confront the problem of Nussbaum’s conception of citizenship

Global citizenship education   129 education. For rather than merely postulating that there are certain core moral entitlements that must be universally met, the conception of global citizenship education as transnational democratic conscientization emphasizes the need to create the deliberative kind of conditions that facilitate questioning any norms or entitlements that claim universal validity. After having differentiated my conception of global citizenship education from the other two such conceptions, I specified particular ends and processes of transnational democratic conscientization. I categorized the ends into certain attitudes, knowledge and skills. The attitudes that I determined are self-­respect and respect vis-­à-vis others. I emphasized especially that the respect that is owed to others as equal normative authorities must not be limited to co-­citizens, but must include all individuals no matter where they reside and which citizenship they have. The knowledge that I argued is necessary for transnational democratic consciousness is information about inter-, trans- and supranational affairs, as this kind of information is necessary for engaging effectively with citizens from other states. This is particularly so because the lifeworlds of those who come from different states – despite some homogenizing effects of globalization – are substantively different. I also referred to some processes that would be conducive for their realization. These processes included cosmopolitan and multicultural education, as well as, more generally, educational practices with relatively flat hierarchy structures that avoid groupthink and peer group pressure, both of which are epistemically pernicious. A potential objection to my conception of global citizenship education as transnational democratic conscientization is that it is relatively abstract and does not include a great many specific proposals on how to realize this conception. The way in which I reply to this objection is to point out, first, that on the democratic conception of justice that I defend, the particular kinds of educational public policies that should eventually be implemented must ultimately be justified through political discourses. Hence while philosophy is capable of making this sort of normative claim about the necessity of certain kinds of discourses for justifying educational public policies, it cannot preempt the eventual – and always merely preliminary and fallible – result of appropriately structured political discourses as to which educational public policies are truly justifiable. Hence on the kind of democratic conception of justice that I defend there is a built-­in limitation regarding the potential contribution of philosophy to the justification of concrete educational public policies. Second, Chapters 6 and 7 of this book focus on the particular kinds of normative problems that arise in the realization of my global conception of democratic citizenship education. As I will explain in greater detail in these chapters, these problems are certain ideological and normalizing tendencies as well as certain epistemic deficiencies and hubris from which global democratic citizenship education potentially suffers. Thus this book discusses in considerable detail certain practical normative problems of the particular kinds of educational processes that my conception of global citizenship education envisions.

130   Global citizenship education

Notes   1 Literature in educational philosophy includes Nussbaum (1996, 1997), Cohen (1996), Görgens et al. (2001); literature in educational policy includes UNESCO (2005, 2015); literature in educational science includes Suárez-Orozco and Qin-­Hilliard (2004a), Suárez-Orozco (2007), Suárez-Orozco and Sattin-­Bajaj (2010), Mannion et al. (2011), Sander and Scheunpflug (2011), Dill (2015), Gaudelli (2016) and Terozzi and Torres (2016).   2 As Lange (2010, 205; trans. J. C.) explains, “[p]olitical consciousness is the mental place where the human being creates subjective conceptions of [political] reality. It contains the subjective conceptions of political reality.”   3 The point of global consciousness is thus that of avoiding explanatory or methodological nationalism, according to which the differences between states, for example, regarding their levels of extreme income poverty, are explainable solely by reference to national factors; cf. also Pogge (2002, 139–44) and Beck (2008) on this point.   4 I presume the meaning of “world societies” is that of societies that are shaped by processes of globalization.   5 See Chapter 2 of this book for a discussion of functionalism.   6 See Mannion et al. (2011, 450) and Evans et al. (2009, 23 and 29) for Canada.   7 See Lepenies (2014) for the roots of this understanding in the European history of art.   8 See also Appiah (2007), Plagemann (2015) and Leist (2018) on cosmopolitanism.   9 For defenses of world government, cf. Cabrera (2011). 10 The remainder of this section relies on Culp (2018). Nussbaum (1996) argues in depth for her moral cosmopolitanism in her essay “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism.” Her monograph on cosmopolitan education, Cultivating Humanity (1997), focuses predominantly on collegiate education. It does not represent a conception of citizenship education that is meant to inform all educational policies of a state and is addressed to all citizens. It concerns institutions of higher education and those who participate in the practices of these institutions. 11 See also Gutmann (1993, 1995) and Macedo (2000) on multicultural education. 12 See also Vandamme (2013) on the importance of empathy. 13 See Levinson (2012, ch. 1) for a similar strategy. 14 In Chapter 6 of this book I defend the conception of citizenship education that I develop below against this kind of ideology critique. 15 It would be possible, of course, to speculate or theorize as best as possible how such ideally just global arrangements would look like. From the point of view of a democratic theory of justice, however, this is a problematic way of proceeding because the realization of just institutions should be an autonomous achievement of political agents themselves. And since there are multiple conceivable and potentially also unforeseen ways in which global democratic justice can be realized, theorists cannot properly ground their account of citizenship education on any single of these possible institutional realizations of global justice. 16 According to Freire (1970, 19), conscientization involves “developing a critical awareness – so that individuals can take action against the oppressive elements of reality.” 17 Therefore the characterization of the specific ends of citizenship education in terms of attitudes, knowledge and skills, that is, in terms of characteristics of individuals, must not cover up that the point of cultivating these individual characteristics are meant to realize particular kinds of social relationships. See also Biesta (2007) who emphasizes that the focus on individual competencies carries the danger of neglecting the relational dimensions of democracy. 18 See also Kant (1960 [1803]) and also Rawls (1971, 440–6). 19 In Rawls’s theory of justice, in which the idea of fair cooperation is among the most basic normative ideas, this means that citizens must be capable of proposing and

Global citizenship education   131 c­ omplying with fair conditions of social cooperation. Thus, according to Rawls (2001, 156–7) education should “encourage the political virtues so that they [i.e., the citizens] want to honor the fair terms of social cooperation in their relations with the rest of society.” 20 Recognizing the artificiality or contingency of one’s identity and of cultures does not imply, however, that one must conceive of one’s own identity and of cultures in an entirely constructive manner. It is possible to recognize their contingency while at the same time recognizing the fundamental importance of one’s own personal as well as one’s culture’s history for making sense of individual and group identity. See also Reichenbach (2002) for the importance of both “demos-” and “ethnos-­orientation” in democratic education. 21 This and the next paragraph rely on cf. Culp (2018, 185). 22 See Buchanan (2015) on the relevance of social moral epistemology for education, and Buchanan (2002, 2004a, 2010) on the importance of social moral epistemology more generally. 23 This and the next paragraph rely on Culp (2018, 184). These skills are crucial to avoid what Fricker (2007) calls epistemic injustices. Fricker distinguishes two different kinds of these injustices: testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustices obtain where listeners attribute lower levels of confidence to the veracity of the statements of speakers who are members of certain groups simply due to their group membership. Hermeneutic injustices, by contrast, exist when speakers are unable to communicate properly a certain experience due to the lack of an appropriate, commonly understood terminology for that experience. The example that Fricker gives for a hermeneutic injustice is being subject to sexual harassment in a social context in which there exists no concept that expresses this phenomenon. 24 See Habermas (1981) and Heath (2001, 2008) on models of communicative action in which shared understandings play a fundamental role for coordinating behavior. 25 The remainder of this section relies on Culp (2018, 184). 26 Van Parijs (2002, 2007), by contrast, argues that English should become a lingua franca that is spoken by all in border crossing communication. Thereby English would constitute a public good from which everyone would benefit. Native speakers of the English language, van Parijs claims, should compensate (in monetary terms) the non-­native speakers for the opportunity costs that they accrue when learning English. This proposal strikes me as problematic because I believe that power asymmetries between native and non-­native speakers of English will necessarily persist and cannot properly be compensated (in monetary terms).

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132   Global citizenship education Biesta, Gert. 2007. “Education and the Democratic Person. Towards a Political Understanding of Democratic Education.” Teachers College Record 109/3, 740–69. Buchanan, Allen. 2002. “Social Moral Epistemology.” Social Philosophy and Policy 19/2, 126–52. Buchanan, Allen. 2004a. “Political Liberalism and Social Epistemology.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 32/2, 95–130. Buchanan, Allen. 2004b. Justice, Legitimacy and Self-­Determination. New York: Oxford University Press. Buchanan, Allen. 2010. “Social Moral Epistemology and the Tasks of Ethics.” In Davis, Ann, Richard Keshen and Jeff McMahan (eds.). Ethics and Humanity. Themes from the Philosophy of Jonathan Glover. New York: Oxford University Press, 105–25. Buchanan, Allen. 2015. “Education and Social Moral Epistemology.” In Brighouse, Harry and Michael McPherson (eds.). The Aims of Higher Education. Problems of Morality and Justice. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 91–112. Cabrera, Luis (ed.). 2011. Global Governance, Global Government. Institutional Visions for an Evolving World System. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Calhoun, Craig. 2007. Nations Matter. London: Routledge. Callan, Eamonn. 1997. Creating Citizens. Political Education and Liberal Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cheng, Kai-­ming. 2007. “The Postindustrial Workplace and Challenges to Education.” In Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo (ed.). Learning in the Global Era. Berkeley: University of California Press, 175–94. Cohen, Joshua (ed.). 1996. For Love of Country. Boston: Beacon Press. Costa, Victoria. 2011. Rawls, Citizenship, and Education. London: Routledge. Culp, Julian. 2018. “Internationalizing Nussbaum’s Model of Cosmopolitan Democratic Education.” Ethics and Education 13/2, 172–90. Dewey, J. 1980 [1916]. Democracy and Education. In J. A. Boydston (ed.). The Middle Works, 1899–1924, Vol.  9, of The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882–1953. ­Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dill, Jeffrey. 2015. The Longings and Limits of Global Citizenship Education. London: Routledge. Evans, M., L. A. Ingram, A. MacDonald and N. Weber. 2009. “Mapping the ‘Global Dimension’ of Citizenship Education in Canada: The Complex Interplay of Theory, Practice, and Context.” Citizenship, Teaching and Learning 52 (2), 16–34. Fail, Helen, Jeff Thompson and George Walker. 2004. “Belonging, Identity and Third Culture Kids.” Journal of Research in International Education 3/3, 319–38 Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gärdenfors, Peter. 2007. “Understanding Cultural Patterns.” In Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo (ed.). Learning in the Global Era. International Perspectives on Globalization and Education. Berkeley: University of California Press, 67–84. Gaudelli, William. 2016. Global Citizenship Education. Everyday Transcendence. London: Routledge. Genschel, Peter and Bernhard Zangl. 2008. “Metamorphosen des Staats – vom Herrschaftsmonopolisten zum Herrschaftsmanager.” Leviathan 36, 430–54. Görgens, Sigrid, Annette Scheunpflug and Krassimir Stojanov (eds.). 2001. Universalistische Moral und weltbürgerliche Erziehung. Karben: IKO–Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation.

Global citizenship education   133 Gunesch, Konrad. 2004. “Education for Cosmopolitanism – Cosmopolitanism as a Personal Cultural Identity Model to and within International Education.” Journal of Research in International Education 3/3, 251–75. Gutmann, Amy. 1993. “The Challenge of Multiculturalism in Political Ethics.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 22/3, 171–96. Gutmann, Amy. 1995. “Civic Education and Social Diversity.” Ethics 105, 557–79. Habermas, Jürgen. 1981. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Vol.  1. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. Heath, Joseph. 2001. Communicative Action and Rational Choice. Cambridge: MIT Press. Heath, Joseph. 2008. Following the Rules. New York: Oxford University Press. Honneth, Axel. 2015. “Education and the Democratic Public Sphere – A Neglected Chapter of Political Philosophy.” In Jakobsen, Jonas and Odin Lysaker (eds.). Recognition and Freedom: Axel Honneth’s Political Thought. Leiden: Brill, 17–32. Hugonnier, Bernard. 2007. “Globalization and Education: Can the World Meet the Challenge?” In Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo (ed.). Learning in the Global Era. Berkeley: University of California Press, 137–57. Hurrelmann, Achim, Leibfried Stephan, Kerstin Martens and Peter Mayer (eds.). 2007. Transforming the Golden-­Age Nation State. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Janis, Irving. 1972. Victims of Groupthink. Boston: Houghton. Kant, Immanuel. 1960 [1803]. Education. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Laden, Simon. 2013. “Learning to Be Equal. Just Schools as Schools of Justice.” In Allen, Danielle and Rob Reich (eds.). Education, Justice and Democracy. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 62–79. Lange, Dirk. 2010. “Einleitung,” “Politik im Alltag” and “Politikbewusstsein und Politische Bildung.” In Konzeptionen politischer Bildung. Basiswissen politische Bildung. Vol. 1. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Hohengehren, 1–6, 108–14, 205–13. Leist, Anton. 2018. “Cosmopolitanism, the Range of Sympathy, and Coetzee.” In Mehigan, Tim and Christian Moser (eds.). The Intellectual Landscape in the Works of J. M. Coetzee. Rochester: Camden House, 311–32. Lenard, Patti. 2010. “Motivating Cosmopolitanism: A Sceptical View.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 7/3, 346–71. Lenard, Patti. 2012. “Creating Cosmopolitans.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 15/5, 613–30. Lenard, Patti. 2014. “Special Relationships, Motivation and the Pursuit of Global Egalitarianism.” The Ethics Forum 8/2, 74–83. Lepenies, Philipp. 2014. Art, Politics and Development. How Linear Perspective shaped Policies in the Western World. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Levinson, Meira. 2012. No Citizen Left Behind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Levy, Frank and Richard Murnane. 2007. “How Computerized Work and Globalization Shape Human Skill Demand.” In Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo (ed.). Learning in the Global Era. International Perspectives on Globalization and Education. Berkeley: University of California Press, 158–74. Macedo, Stephen. 2000. Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in Multicultural Democracy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Mannion, Greg, Gert Biesta, Mark Priestley and Hamish Ross. 2011. “The Global Dimension in Education and Education for Global Citizenship: Genealogy and Critique.” Globalisation, Societies and Education 9/3–4, 443–56.

134   Global citizenship education Mansilla, Veronica Boix und Howard Gardner. 2007. “From Teaching Globalization to Nurturing Global Consciousness.” In Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo (ed.). Learning in the Global Era. Berkeley: University of California Press, 47–66. Mill, John Stuart. 1859. On Liberty. Available online via www.oll.libertyfund.org. Nussbaum, Martha. 1996. “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism.” In Cohen, Joshua (ed.). For Love of Country. Boston: Beacon Press, 3–20. Nussbaum, Martha. 1997. Cultivating Humanity. A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 2000. Women and Human Development. The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 2006. Frontiers of Justice. Disability, Nationality, and Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 2011. Creating Capabilities. The Human Development Approach. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Peters, Bernhard. 2007. Public Deliberation and Public Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Piaget, Jean. 1936. Origins of Intelligence in the Child. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Pogge, Thomas. 1992. “Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty.” Ethics 103, 48–75. Pogge, Thomas. 2002. World Poverty and Human Rights. Cambridge: Polity Press. Pollock, Sheldon, Homi Bhabha, Carol Breckenridge and Dipesh Chakrabarty. 2000. “Cosmopolitanisms.” Public Culture 12/3, 577–89. Plagemann, Johannes. 2015. Cosmopolitanism in a Multipolar World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John. 2001. Justice as Fairness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reichenbach, Roland. 2002. “Die Bildung des demokratischen Kopfes. Zwischen Demosorientierung und Ethnosorientierung.” Revue Suisse des Sciences de L’Éducation 24/3, 383–99. Rittberger, Volker. 1995. Regime Theory and International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosenau, J. and E.-­O. Czempiel (eds.). 1992. Governance without Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sander, Wolfgang and Anette Scheunpflug (eds.). 2011. Politische Bildung in der Weltgesellschaft. Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung. Sarooshi, Dan. 2005. International Organizations and their Exercises of Sovereign Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo (ed.). 2007. Learning in the Global Era: International Perspectives on Globalization and Education. Berkeley: University of California Press. Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo and Desirée Baolina Qin-­Hilliard (eds.). 2004a. Globalization. Culture and Education in the New Millennium. Berkley: University of California Press. Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo and Desirée Baolian Qin-­Hilliard. 2004b. “Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium.” In Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo and Desirée Baolian Qin-Hilliard (eds.). Globalization. Culture and Education in the New Millennium. Berkley: University of California Press, 1–37. Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo and Carolyn Sattin. 2007. “Introduction: Learning in the Global Era: International Perspectives on Globalization and Education.” In Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo (ed.). Learning in the Global Era: International Perspectives on Globalization and Education. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1–43.

Global citizenship education   135 Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo and Carolyn Sattin-­Bajaj (eds.). 2010. Educating the Whole Child for the Whole World: The Ross School Model and Education for the Global Era. New York: New York University Press. Süssmuth, Rita. 2007. “Intercultural Skills.” In Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo (ed.). Learning in the Global Era – International Perspectives on Globalization and Education. Berkeley: University of California Press, 195–212. Tarozzi, Massimiliano and Carlos Alberto Torres. 2016. Global Citizenship Education and the Crisis of Multiculturalism. London: Routledge. UNESCO. 2005. Education for All. Literacy for life. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO. 2015. Global Citizenship Education. Topics and Learning Objectives. Paris: UNESCO. Vandamme, Pierre-­Etienne. 2013. “Quels Fondements Philosophiques pour l’Enseignement de la Morale Laïque? Pour une Éducation au Décentrement.” Revue Française de Pédagogie 182, 107–16. Van Parijs, Philippe. 2002. “Linguistic Justice.” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 1(1), 59–74. Van Parijs, Philippe. 2007. “Tackling the Anglophones’ Free Ride. Fair Linguistic Cooperation with a Global Lingua Franca.” AILA Review 20, 72–86.

6 Critiques of autonomy and of education for autonomy1

1  Introduction My first academic article (Culp 2017a) in the area of philosophy of education dealt with peace education in the context of the Israeli-­Palestine as well as other intractable conflicts. In this article, which I presented at Al-­Quds University’s Abu Dis campus on the West Bank, I argued that peace education could be an apt instrument for aiding in the resolution of intractable conflicts, at least in the long run. Peace education, I maintained, could help cultivate in the younger generation virtues such as tolerance and forgiveness – virtues that would be helpful for resolving conflicts like that between Israel and Palestine. I considered my argument to be so obvious that the only objection that I expected to receive was that the argument did not contain anything counter-­intuitive. However, the reactions from the audience, the great majority of which were Palestinians, were extremely critical of my argument, and – to my surprise – precisely because they found my argument to be counter-­intuitive.2 Rather than viewing peace education as the obvious solution to an intractable conflict, several scholars criticized my view on the ground that such an education would actually keep the conflict going. They argued that peace education would be an  ideology that helped covering up the further entrenchment of the Israeli–­ Palestinian conflict. Their critique was that peace education prevented the concerned parties from taking truly effective steps toward addressing the conflict. For by being taught that peace will come about soon, the conflicting parties would fail to decry properly the injustice of the status quo. If normative theorizing about education were at all appropriate under the highly non-­ideal condition of an occupation that has lasted for over half a century, then education for resistance would be the only suitable candidate. In other words, in an unjust society justice-­promoting education must teach opposing the values or norms that the socio-­political order affirms. But peace education allegedly fails in this regard, because it suggests that the existing socio-­political values instantiate a just or peaceful order that is legitimate and which should not be resisted. Thereby the (normative-­theoretical) promotion of peace education under unjust socio-­political conditions overlooks the authoritarian threat of education as indoctrination, which, in its most extreme version,

Autonomy and education for autonomy   137 takes on the formation of a character that uncritically complies with the given norms of a socio-­political order. Whatever the merits of this critique against my argument in defense of peace education, it certainly has triggered in me a suspicion of simple-­minded accounts of education as a panacea for existing social problems.3 In particular, it occurred to me that not only peace education, but also education for autonomy, could potentially be self-­undermining. That is, even an apparently innocuous education for autonomy may involve or engender a certain type of authoritarian indoctrination, despite its explicit and decided claims to the contrary. If education for autonomy suffered from this problem, then this would be quite remarkable. The capacity for autonomy is not only widely considered to be a core characteristic of the self-­understanding of members of liberal societies (cf. Taylor 1985, 1991). Ever since the Enlightenment period, education for autonomy has also been regarded as one of the most important, if not the most important, normative end of education. Therefore, if it turned out that the actual practices of education for autonomy had certain side effects that undermined rather than promoted the realization of autonomy, then this would be a very serious challenge to many of the educational practices of liberal societies. In my search for philosophical reflections on such side effects, I eventually encountered several works of educational scholars who publish almost exclusively in German. These scholars critically reflect upon the practices of autonomy education and, indeed, primarily regard them as problems for the realization of autonomy.4 These scholars include Nicole Balzer (2007), Käte Meyer-­Drawe (1990, 1996a, 1996b), Suzanne Marchanne (1997), Jan Masschelein (2003) and Roland Reichenbach (2000, 2001).5 Subsequently, I will refer to them merely as “educational scholars.” In this chapter I pursue the aim of distilling the constructive insights that can be gleaned from these educational scholars’ arguments against autonomy and against education for autonomy as well as assess their impact on my democratic conceptions of educational justice and citizenship education. In Section 2 I ­consider their criticisms of conceptions of autonomy and in Sections 3 and 4 I assess their criticisms of education for autonomy. More specifically, in Section 2 I present their critiques that conceptions of autonomy mistakenly presuppose a transparent self, a unitary self or an independent self. I argue that the critiques of the conceptions of autonomy do not critically affect my conceptions of democratic educational justice and citizenship education, although these conceptions recognize the moral importance of personal moral autonomy and public autonomy. In Sections 3 and 4 I discuss two problematic ways in which autonomy education can miss its target and undermine rather than promote autonomy. In Section 3 I discuss the problem of normalization, which is the concern that education for autonomy can render mandatory a certain way of relating to oneself and to the world. Thereby, the critics argue, education for autonomy coerces individuals to understand themselves in particular ways, and fails to achieve its actual point of enabling individuals to decide for themselves how to conceive of their personal identity. In Section 4

138   Autonomy and education for autonomy I  examine the further problem that education for autonomy can become an ideology, namely by inoculating false beliefs about socio-­political reality in the younger generation. As such, so the critical argument goes, education for autonomy can function as an instrument to further the interests of the powerful. Section 5 concludes my findings.

2  The illusions of autonomy6 In this section I discuss the various ways in which certain theorists criticize the idea of autonomy as an illusion. This critique is only an indirect critique of education for autonomy, because it does not criticize directly this kind of education, but rather calls into question the very aim of that education, to wit, autonomy. It is only in Sections 3 and 4 that I address problems of education for autonomy proper. Unfortunately, in their critique of autonomy the educational theorists are not always clear which particular conception of autonomy they are criticizing. That is, they do not distinguish clearly between positive, negative and other conceptions of autonomy, such as freedom as non-­ domination.7 This is problematic because the weights that their arguments have often depends upon the specific conception of autonomy that is the target of their critique. One way of dealing with this lack of clarity would be to consider every aspect of their critiques in terms of how compelling they are regarding the differing, most dominant conceptions of autonomy that are available in the literature. However, I will pursue a far more narrow approach and examine whether their critiques affect my democratic conceptions of educational justice and citizenship education, which recognize the moral importance of personal moral autonomy and public autonomy. In addition, I will also at times consider how far their critiques affect the conception of personal ethical autonomy, according to which individuals lead flourishing lives if they follow a conception of the good that they have individually articulated. Moving on to my more detailed discussion of the various ways in which educational scholars criticize autonomy as an illusion, it is useful to differentiate three different versions of this critique. One version attacks the idea of a transparent self, another the idea of a unitary self and a third version the idea of an independent self. The transparent self Some educational scholars argue that autonomy is an illusion because it seemingly presupposes that individuals are capable of determining who they want to be. Such a presupposition, the educational scholars argue, fails to recognize that individuals are not transparent, but rather a puzzle or riddle to themselves. Balzer (2007), for example, claims that individuals are unable to weigh the alternative ends that they might want to pursue. Individuals are incapable of establishing a complete and transitive ordering of their desires or preferences. An idea of autonomy that presupposes such a capacity is an illusion.8

Autonomy and education for autonomy   139 At first glance, the critique that the transparent self is an illusion seems applicable to the idea of personal ethical autonomy, according to which individuals exercise autonomy in virtue of pursuing that particular conception of the good that expresses best their individual identity. For if individuals are truly not transparent to themselves, then they are unable to determine which conception of the good expresses best their identity. However, the educational scholars’ critique of the conception of personal ethical autonomy seems somewhat beside the target when one considers more carefully how this conception is usually construed. This is because this conception does not rest on the idea that individuals are constantly fully transparent to themselves. It usually involves the idea that individuals revise their conceptions of the good throughout the course of their lives (cf. Buchanan 1975). Therefore, individuals might either gradually improve their self-­understandings or simply continuously change their self-­understandings without asserting at any point that they ascertain who they “really” are. In the first case, individuals might concede that they think that they can become more and more transparent to themselves throughout their lives, but insist that they also recognize that they will never actually know for sure what their core identity is, or whether they even have a core identity. Likewise, in the second case, individuals also recognize that they are never fully transparent to themselves and that they therefore need to change their self-­understandings relative to how they conceive themselves in particular points in time. Yet my democratic conceptions of educational justice and citizenship education, which are based on my conception of global democratic justice, do not embrace personal ethical autonomy as an educational end, but personal moral autonomy. The point of personal moral autonomy is a deontological one, according to which every person has a moral right to determine how she wants to lead her life. But whether or not a person exercises this right in a way that realizes, or attempts to realize, autonomy in terms of personal ethical autonomy, and whether or not individual or overall human welfare is thereby increased or not is irrelevant for my justification of that right. My justification of the right to personal moral autonomy does not rely on the moral importance of personal ethical autonomy, which might be thought to consist of personal ethical autonomy’s beneficial effects on human welfare. Rather, as I laid out in greater detail in Chapter 2, I defend personal moral autonomy on the deontological ground that nobody has a right to determine for others how they should conceive of their conception of the good. Everyone has a duty to refrain from imposing on another person a certain understanding of what a good life involves. This duty corresponds to a right to decide for oneself which particular conception of the good to embrace. Yet that right is not grounded on the idea that deciding for oneself as to how one should live is the best or only true conception of what the good life consists. So the point of personal moral autonomy, rather, is that individuals are capable of opposing or vetoing those actions and policies that affect them in ways that are not reciprocally justifiable to them. What is more, in order to realize this idea of personal moral autonomy, individuals need not be fully

140   Autonomy and education for autonomy c­ ognizant of their individual identity. At most, the realization of moral personal autonomy presupposes a self-­understanding of who one is not. Thereby the idea of personal moral autonomy does not rest on any claim to the effect that ­individuals can only live autonomously if they identify clearly what their individual identity is. The self-­identical and unitary self Another critique of autonomy as an illusion is that autonomy presupposes a unitary self. Educational scholars object to such a presupposition on two grounds. One is that individuals are constituted by a multitude of “masquerades” – or simply masks – rather than one encompassing understanding of who they are (which would determine which “masquerade” is relevant in which situation). Another one is that the personality of an individual is never just the conception that the individual has of herself. Instead, her personality is always also the reflection of the specific conception that other persons have of her. Along these lines Meyer-­Drawe argues as follows: By speaking of illusions of autonomy we allude to the fact that an “I” that could completely rest in itself is regarded as irreal. The “I” rather constitutes itself in mirrors and masquerades that can be grasped by a way of thinking that recognizes that the development of the I [i.e. the self] does not come to an end [erstarrt] in any particular mask, but realizes itself in continuous masquerades and configurations of the self and others. (Meyer-­Drawe 1990, 20; trans. J. C.) Thus the educational scholars argue that an individual must live up to various expectations that go along with the different roles that she occupies. Her identity is parceled into the various social contexts of her life in which the subject wears different masks. Yet the individual is neither in control of these various social contexts nor of the particular roles that the individual is required to carry out within these contexts. Thus, there is no way in which the individual could plausibly be thought of as being capable of determining what her one identity is. Hence an individual cannot be completely in sync, so to speak, with her own identity. This is why Meyer-­Drawe (ibid.) refers to the idea of being identical with oneself as pathological self-­understandings of the subject. It is pathological because the realization of such a self-­understanding is unrealizable, and hence it necessarily breeds despair. Adorno problematizes in a similar manner the understanding of an individual that is identical with itself. He emphasizes that those who live according to one specific conception of who they are also suffer from heteronomy, because they must force themselves to live in the particular manner that the conceptions of their selves require of them. They must suppress all those desires that are incompatible with their conceptions of themselves, and this also renders them

Autonomy and education for autonomy   141 unfree. Following their desires, by contrast, would render them free because it liberated them from the coercion that their own conception of themselves imposes on them. He argues: According to the Kantian model, subjects are free to the extent that they are conscious of and identical with themselves; and in such identities they are also unfree, because they are subject to their identities’ coercion and perpetuate it. They are unfree as non-­identical, as diffuse nature, and yet they are also free in that nature, because through the impulses that overwhelm them – which just is the non-­identity of the subject with itself – they do away with the coercive character of their identity. Personality is the caricature of freedom. (Adorno 2003 [1966], 294; trans. J. C.) Adorno’s critique of the unitary self suggests that such an understanding of autonomy generates heteronomy, as it means giving weight to only some but not all of the different aspects of one’s subjectivity. In Reichenbach’s (2000, 181) interpretation, this accentuation of one specific mask means to possess a “slavish mind,” which consists of the inability to express the values and live up to the demands that go along with the various masks that one carries. This is not just because there is a multiplicity of masks at each particular point in time, but also because throughout time new masks emerge and every mask continuously changes its defining characteristics. Before moving on to assess this critique of the idea of the unitary self, consider first which positive account educational scholars offer to describe subjectivity. This positive account consists of the idea that the individual is capable of differentiating between the multiple aspects, the various masquerades that are associated with her identity. The self of the individual is identifiable in the difference between her multiple differing selves, but not in a single identity (cf. Reichenbach 2000, 182). There is no overarching or Archimedean point of view relative to which any individual is capable of unifying these various aspects of her identity into one unitary self-­understanding. Accordingly, Reichenbach (2000, 183; trans. J.  C.) argues that given the “the absence of a subject that is identical with itself,” all educational processes are “in principle unfinishable.” An education that aspires to achieve a state in which the individual rests in herself is an unrealizable goal. One upshot of this could simply be that the ideal of autonomy merely refers to the importance of the search for autonomy, understood in the sense of a unitary identity, rather than the importance of actually achieving such an identity. Autonomy in the sense of a unitary identity would simply play the role of a regulative idea in this process. Another, different result of “the absence of a subject that is identical with itself,” by contrast, would be to acknowledge that one has no coherent conception of oneself, and that one arbitrarily gives priority to one or the other mask that one carries in various types of social contexts. Yet this would not be a

142   Autonomy and education for autonomy problem, because there would not be an overarching point of view from which one could judge this, potentially mutual, domination of different masks as incoherent or problematic. Individuals, argues Masschelein (2003, 139), must let go of themselves and give up the desire to be and remain the same. In response to the critiques of the self-­identical or unitary self, it is important to note that a conception of autonomy can make room for the idea that in differing social contexts individuals carry different masks. After all, the particular kinds of reasons that persons may refer to in an attempt to ground or justify their actions may differ according to the specific situation or normative context in which they find themselves.9 The idea that reason is diverse, so to speak, is based on a pragmatic theory of meaning according to which we understand propositions by acknowledging the specific type of reasons that would have to be provided in order to redeem the validity claims that these propositions raise (cf. Habermas 1981, 168–9, 400). The three major validity claims – leaving aside major qualifications – are truth, rightness and truthfulness (cf. Habermas 1981, 410–12). Truth claims concern claims about objects in the world, rightness claims refer to permissible or mandatory human behavior and truthfulness claims are expressions of individual or collective valuation. Following Habermas (1993), practical reason employs these three types of claims in different ways, and is thereby distinguishable into a pragmatic, moral and ethical use. The pragmatic, or instrumental, use of practical reason determines the most efficient means for achieving a particular set of given ends, or, alternately, the effective usage of a limited pool of resources for the achievement of a specific goal to the greatest extent possible. The community of all human beings constitutes the context of the moral use of reasons. In this context, individuals, in their capacity as moral persons, have to be able to justify their norms and actions to every human being by reference to a criterion of reciprocity.10 In ethical contexts persons ask themselves individually and collectively what is good for them – both on an individual and on a collective level (cf. Habermas 1993; Forst 2002, 258–60). This process of formulating and revising such plans and projects involves the creative, hermeneutical task of interpreting one’s life as an individual or as a group in a way that integrates one’s past experiences with one’s future aspirations in a way that builds an integral whole. This task requires of individuals to exercise their personal ethical autonomy in giving their own, personal answers to ethical questions. Thus, such an understanding of autonomy implies recognizing that there are indeed multiple practical selves, so to speak, which need to respond adequately to the demands of reason within specific types of practical situations. So there is a sense in which it is the case that individuals have differing masks and must play by the rules of the context-­specific normative grammar of alternative practical contexts. To this reply the educational scholars might object, however, that at least within ethical contexts I am nevertheless assuming the existence of a unitary self. After all, personal ethical autonomy consists in determining what is good for me on the basis of the idea that there is an “I” relative to which this

Autonomy and education for autonomy   143 question could be answered. Hence there remains a sense in which the illusionary idea of an autonomous ethical individual that decides how to go about addressing this sort of incompatibility is necessary so as to render the conception of personal ethical autonomy plausible. Yet again, one way of answering to this objection is to point out that it is unproblematic if the counterfactual idea of ­personal ethical autonomy is an illusion as long as this idea plausibly can be employed as a regulative idea that can effectively orient individuals’ thought and action. In addition, as mentioned earlier, recognizing the fallible character of most attempts to articulate one’s identity also might help to salvage the plausibility of personal ethical autonomy. For one need not rely on the idea of a unitary self that one determines once and for all. It suffices to determine one’s identity for a limited duration only, say until the end of one’s apprenticeship or the end of one’s working life. But still, some will object that they find the idea of a unitary self as coercive no matter how short or long the time span is for which this idea claims validity. An individual’s experience might simply be such that she keeps changing “masquerades” and following the expectation of different mirror images in an ad hoc manner without any underlying principle. The ethical use of reason for the sake of determining such a unified identity may simply reflect the subjective experiences of some individuals, but it is not necessarily shared or shareable by others. This is a powerful objection to personal ethical autonomy, but I need not take any stance concerning the validity of this objection in order to defend my democratic conceptions of educational justice and citizenship education. For these conceptions merely recognize the moral importance of personal moral autonomy and public autonomy. So I am neither committed to the general viability of personal ethical autonomy, nor to any particular view of its moral importance. This is because, as I have argued in Chapter 2, I do not justify the moral importance of personal moral autonomy on the basis of the idea that exploring and unfolding one’s individuality is of such importance for human flourishing that it justifies the implementation of educational public policies for the sake of its promotion. My justification of personal moral autonomy relies on the idea that nobody has the right to impose on anybody else a particular conception of how to lead her life. Thus I need not commit myself as to whether the educational scholars have a point when they criticize the idea of a unitary self as a general understanding of how to conceive oneself. The independent self Finally, educational scholars criticize the assumption of an independent self, that is, a self that would be in a certain sense conceivable as separate from social relationships. Individuals, the educational scholars argue, can never escape entirely or conceive themselves apart from the social relations in which they happen to find themselves. More specifically, they argue that social structures pervade processes of subjectivation and that this conditions individuals’ exercise

144   Autonomy and education for autonomy of agency. This is why educational scholars oppose the “ontologization of the individual.” Along these lines, Meyer-­Drawe, for example, argues: Our perceptions realize themselves through the acknowledgment of events that are noteworthy or deviant within a field of things that we discover, and whose symbolic order does not depend on the individual, but is formed through complex experiences of destiny. (Meyer-­Drawe 1990, 15; trans. J. C.) This view of the lack of individual agency suggests that, although the possibility of individual agency remains, there are multiple ways in which social structures influence individual decision making and thereby undermine the idea that agents are able to act fully independently. So individual agency must not represent itself in the guise of a completely independent agency. As Meyer-­Drawe (1990, 18; trans. J.  C.) argues, “the depth of the concrete situation, in which we are immersed, does not allow that we present ourselves as sovereigns.” We must, she (1996b, 49) insists, recognize our dependencies on others and the limits of our capacity to do things by ourselves. We are always both subjugated and sovereign or independent. This critique points out correctly that the idea of an independent self that stands above or beyond social relations is an illusion. The idea of an atomistic subject that takes decisions irrespective of the social relations in which it finds itself is mistaken. Persons’ lifeworlds are intersubjectively and socially constituted. This intersubjective social constitution of a person’s lifeworlds has multiple dimensions.11 One dimension is that of care, which feminists are correct to emphasize. Persons do not only require care at the beginning and end of their lives. Throughout all stages of their lives persons require others’ bodily and emotional support, which is why persons cannot become fully independent, neither in a physical nor in a psychological meaning of that term (cf. Gilligan 1982). Another dimension are the particular meanings that individuals ascribe to  particular activities or things that are dependent upon “cultural schemes” (cf.  Walzer 1983). They acquire these schemes through the interactions within different kinds of human communities. Finally, another dimension of individuals’ social constitution is social power. Social power pervades social relationships and influences individuals to behave in one particular way rather than another. On one understanding of how to conceptualize power, this means that powerful individuals are capable of providing other individuals with reasons for action and do not rely on the use of force or coercion in order to achieve that (cf.  Forst 2015). Since individuals are situated within various relationships in which they are subject to relations of power in which others give them reasons for action – e.g., by offering a reward or telling a story about the actual meaning of life – it is indeed the case that the idea of an independent self which would be free of such influences is an illusion. Thus there is a lot to be said in favor of the way educational scholars criticize the idea of an independent self. Nevertheless, it is also of importance to

Autonomy and education for autonomy   145 r­ ecognize the limitations of this critique. First, the ways in which autonomy is conditioned and conditional upon relations of care, cultural schemes of understanding and certain structures of power point towards re-­conceptualizing rather than abandoning the conception of autonomy. It is important to recognize that autonomy has social preconditions such as the kind of care that feminists emphasize, adequate cultural schemes that enable individuals to conceive of themselves as autonomous, and structures of social power that empower individuals to have a sense of agency.12 Yet, recognizing these social conditions of autonomy, and the ways in which they undermine or, at least, qualify the idea of an independent self, does not imply that it is necessary to abandon altogether the idea of autonomy. The second limitation of the critique of the idea of an independent self is that it fails to recognize the critical roles that such an idea is able to play in the analysis of the way in which several conditions frame the capacity for and the exercise of autonomy. For by denying the soundness of a normative conception of autonomy, the educational scholars lose an important tool for differentiating between acceptable and unacceptable forms of structuring the capacity for and the exercise of autonomy. Once we accept that there is space for individual agency, and that the way in which this space is structured is subject to social change, a normative conception of autonomy can be used in order to determine when certain relations of care, cultural self-­understandings or structures of power are acceptable or not. Along the lines of my democratic conception of justice, we should ask as to whether these conditioning factors of autonomy respect or violate personal moral autonomy and public autonomy. In the case of personal moral autonomy, this means testing whether relations of care, cultural self-­understandings and structures of power allow individuals to oppose conceptions of the good that they object. Since I do not defend the moral importance of an ethical understanding of personal autonomy, I do not claim that relations of care, cultural self-­understandings and structures of power must promote the actual exercise of personal ethical autonomy or that either the capability of this exercise or the actual exercise promotes human flourishing. What is necessary instead is that relations of care, cultural self-­understandings and structures of power do not undermine personal moral autonomy. This requires that individuals should be in a position to reject the imposition of a particular conception of the good. Individuals should enjoy this particular kind of independence, although relations of care, cultural self-­understandings and structures of power might effectively deny individuals this standing. Problematically, however, the educational scholars do not make this normative claim, because they do not distinguish between morally problematic and morally unproblematic ways of conditioning individual agency. In the case of public autonomy, by contrast, relations of care, cultural self-­ understandings and structures of power must be such that they enable everyone to co-­determine the principles that govern their particular political contexts. Otherwise individuals would not be properly respected as valid sources of normative claims in the political realm. Saying this, however, does not imply that

146   Autonomy and education for autonomy relations of care, cultural self-­understanding and relations of power do not shape individuals. Yet it means upholding the normative claim that individuals should be able to assess critically through collective deliberation whether these ways of shaping their lives are acceptable or not.

3  Normalization through education for autonomy Education for autonomy in the way it has been conceived by Enlightenment thinkers is meant to be a liberating practice. The Enlightenment motto “sapere aude” – according to which one should have the courage to think by oneself – expresses the idea that individuals should not subject themselves unreflectedly to others’ normative authority.13 Individuals should become able to consider for themselves whether claims regarding what constitutes a good life, what is morally right and which empirical facts hold true withstand their own critical scrutiny. This does not exclude the possibility that within certain circumstances individuals can and perhaps even should defer their judgment to certain authorities.14 The epistemic ideal does mean, however, that the reference to the mere fact that a certain belief forms part of a certain tradition of belief – be it religious, scientific or moral – is by itself insufficient to ground the normative validity of that claim. Hence education for autonomy pursues the purpose of enabling individuals to think for themselves. Some educational scholars argue, however, that despite its emancipatory goal, education for autonomy can have certain normalizing effects that undermine the realization of autonomy. On a descriptive level, the normalizing effects refer to the fact that education for autonomy presents the autonomous life as the “normal” or “standard” way of leading one’s life. That is, the preparation for an “autonomous life” suggests that this way of living is “right,” “correct” or “best.” In particular, it regards the self as one that is confronted with the unavoidable choice of determining the relative value of her personal ends. Education for autonomy, thus, has the effect of rendering other ways of life that are not autonomous in this sense as “wrong,” “incorrect” or “suboptimal.” Thereby, paradoxically, education for autonomy unfolds a heteronomous pressure to lead an autonomous life. This heteronomy results from the fact that through such education individuals learn – as if it were a matter of fact – that they must lead autonomous lives. They have no choice but to think of their ideal individual personalities as ones that they have autonomously chosen. Masschelein (2003, 130; trans. J. C.) therefore argues that autonomy education is not the “anti-­thesis of domination,” but rather the “most advanced form of social power.”15 Education for autonomy contributes to a form of social power that is exercised not through force, but through the diffusion of a certain normative idea – namely that of autonomy – as to how individuals should behave.16 In this way, education for autonomy represents, Ludwig Pongratz (1990, 305; trans. J.  C.) argues a “soft disciplining” that has the goal of transforming as early as possible “external into internal regulation.” Thus educational public policies represent dispositives of power for governing individuals.

Autonomy and education for autonomy   147 This critique is compelling to the extent that education for personal ethical autonomy puts pressure on individuals to accept the idea that an individually chosen life plan is both possible and of intrinsic value for leading a flourishing life. Some members of liberal societies, however, might not want to ascribe eudemonistic value to a way of life on the ground that it has been individually chosen. This is why the late Rawls (2001, 156), for example, argues that citizenship education should not involve this particular understanding of individual autonomy, to which I refer to as personal ethical autonomy. I agree with Rawls that there is indeed a convincing case against this kind of autonomy education to be made. After all, why should everyone have to lead an autonomous life in order to render their lives flourishing ones? Consider that some individuals of a “traditional” cultural background embrace a conception of the good according to which their flourishing does not consist of striving to realize their individually selected, personal ends. Rather than pursuing the ends that individuals associate with the core of their personal identity, individuals may want to pursue those ends that they already find developed in their religious community, their family or in some other group. Alasdair MacIntyre (1981, 205), for example, argues that such an individual might hold that “the story of my life … is always embedded in the story of those communities from which I derive my identity.” While individuals that reason like this endorse their ends on reflection, they also recognize the contingency of embracing these particular ends rather than others. Yet they do not believe that this contingency implies that they have to choose individually between these and some other ends. As Michael Sandel (1982, 52) puts it, they do not “choose” or “invent” their identity – they “discover” their identity. They acknowledge that rather than trying to articulate an individual conception of the good themselves, they simply recognize as valid that particular conception of the good to which they already have found themselves being committed by virtue of their membership within their particular, “traditional” communities. MacIntyre explains that an individual that ascribes special value to such traditional communities may reason: I am someone’s son or daughter, someone else’s cousin or uncle; I am citizen of this or that city, a member of this or that guild or profession; I belong to this clan, that tribe, this nation. Hence what is good for me has to be good for someone who inhabits these roles. As such, I inhabit from the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my nation, a variety of debts, inheritances, rightful expectations and obligations. (MacIntyre 1981, 204−5) If education for autonomy engendered a kind of normalization that deprived individuals of the liberty of such a traditional way of life, then, indeed, this would provide a good reason for questioning this sort of education for autonomy.17 This is because, I maintain, thinking otherwise would constitute a certain kind of autonomy perfectionism, according to which there is an objective value in pursuing an individually chosen way of life that involves distancing oneself from traditional or

148   Autonomy and education for autonomy communal values.18 But such a perfectionist view would thereby downgrade those conceptions of the good that do not consist of such a distancing. Therefore it is incompatible with the recognition of what Rawls (2005, xvii) has called the “fact of reasonable pluralism” about the good life. In this way I follow John Christman, who also emphasizes the importance of endorsing a conception of autonomy that is not excessively critical of traditional or communal values: Liberation from oppression must be undertaken within a normative framework that leaves the most room for disparate voices, even those who endorse traditional and authoritarian value systems, for it must be accepted, in principle at least, that many women and marginalized people will embrace traditional conceptions of social life and cultural roles that offend western, liberal ideals of individual self-­sufficiency. (Christman 2004, 152) Hence I agree with the educational scholars that criticize autonomy education on the ground that it is based on a contested, highly individualistic understanding of the good life that identifies the highest form of human flourishing in the pursuit of individually chosen life plans. But there is an important difference between criticizing this particular form of education for personal ethical autonomy, and criticizing the practice of autonomy education in general, whatever the particular understanding of autonomy is that it aims at realizing. For if education for autonomy has the realization of personal moral autonomy as its goal, then the normalizing effects of this kind of education can no longer be criticized in the way that they can when education aims at facilitating personal ethical autonomy. This is because this form of normalization merely prepares individuals to recognize their moral status and to act morally. Such preparation is necessary for avoiding arbitrary interpersonal interference in their own and other individuals’ lives. Therefore, the normalization that results from this sort of education for personal moral autonomy does not require individuals to follow an individually chosen conception of the good. It does not demand of individuals to conceive of themselves in a way such that they have to come up with individualistically developed conceptions of the good life. Since education for personal moral autonomy does not involve normalization of this sort, but, by contrast, is meant to enable individuals to exercise their moral autonomy in a way that allows them to resist the imposition of such a self-­understanding, this kind of autonomy education does not suffer from this deficiency. In response to this way of reasoning, however, some educational scholars might want to object that any form of normalization is problematic simply because it involves the setting of a particular norm with which all are expected to comply. It is very questionable, however, whether it makes sense to criticize an educational public policy simply on the ground that it has such a normalizing effect. Consider, for example, an educational public policy that effectively taught everyone to be honest. If being honest thereby turned out to become the default norm, would that be something problematic? Indeed, as the default

Autonomy and education for autonomy   149 norm it would restrict individuals’ liberty by putting justificatory pressure on them whenever they are or would like to be dishonest. But is it problematic to restrict in this manner individuals’ liberty of being dishonest? And wouldn’t allowing this kind of liberty also imply accepting those restrictions of liberty that resulted from individuals’ dishonest behavior? Assuming that widespread dishonest behavior would result in cooperation and coordination failures, it seems clear that failing to promote honesty through education would also limit individual liberties in profound ways. The upshot of this is that a restriction of certain liberties through the normalization that education involves is not per se problematic. Of course educational scholars, along with some communitarian thinkers, could question that the norm of honesty should override family or other traditional values. Under certain circumstances they might want to argue that the violation of an honesty norm is permissible in order to protect or promote certain family values. They might be right. But that could simply mean that, under certain conditions, there is a universal right to pursue certain personal prerogatives regarding one’s family by violating an honesty norm. It need not imply that traditional values of the kind associated with the family are always more important than the norm of being honest. Accordingly, an education that would have the normalizing effect of socially institutionalizing this norm in a way that allowed for certain discretions in cases of conflict with family or traditional values should be unproblematic. Thus, since normalization per se is not necessarily problematic, the question for those who support education for personal ethical autonomy is whether the restriction of the liberty not to lead an individually chosen life can be rightfully criticized as being unjustifiable. As I have argued above, there are good reasons for criticizing the restriction of such a liberty. However, education for personal moral autonomy cannot be criticized in a similar manner. Hence it is wrong to regard education for autonomy in general, rather than merely the particular form of education for an individualistically conceived form of personal ethical autonomy as problematic.

4  The ideology of education for autonomy A further critique of some educational scholars is that the theory and practice of education for autonomy are ideological. According to this critique, the theory and practice of education for autonomy serve the reproduction of a false social understanding of the actual functioning of socio-­political practices. They promote the de facto or sociological legitimacy of such an illegitimate socio-­ political order by supporting a false perception of that order in light of which it appears legitimate. Several theorists and practitioners of education for autonomy might themselves act in good faith and believe that education for autonomy supports a legitimate socio-­political order (cf. Marchanne 1997, 337, 340). Yet it is precisely this belief that prevents them from reflecting self-­critically about the ways in which they themselves are entangled in forms of exercising power that

150   Autonomy and education for autonomy reproduce the sociological legitimacy of a normatively illegitimate socio-­ political order. Meyer-­Drawe (1996a, 656–7; trans. J.  C.) puts this point as follows: “The failure to problematize relations of power covers the pedagogical focus on self-­determination with the thrust of humanism, … which prevents a thoroughgoing critique of the dominant dispositives of power.” One example of this critique of the theory and practice of education for autonomy concerns the role that education for autonomy might play in schools in courses such as history or civic education. In these courses, the past and present of socio-­political institutions might be presented in a way that suggests that autonomy already has been realized to a considerable degree, or that this is about to happen soon. By representing socio-­political history through the lens of a progressive account of the continuous fulfillment of autonomy, the younger generation is led to view the current socio-­political order as legitimate. Education for autonomy thereby becomes an instrument of power, as it skews the students’ perception of the actual lack of autonomy that several individuals have to suffer due to economic hardships, political exclusion or social marginalization. This failure to notice the ways in which autonomy is curtailed and constrained means that, as Meyer-­Drawe (1990, 90; trans. J. C.) puts it, “the claim for autonomy … has lost its oppositional force.” This loss, as she goes on to argue, is not grounded in the fact that the self-­determination of the members of … society has grown to a satisfactory degree; rather, it is intelligible due to the fact that the heteronomous influences have become less transparent and have thereby lost their provocation. Another example of the way in which education for autonomy functions as ideology is through its contribution to privatizing responsibility (cf. Leist 2017). The privatization of responsibility occurs when education for autonomy intensifies “processes of autonomization,” which are processes that disseminate the idea that individuals themselves are morally entirely responsible for how well their lives are going. Indeed, personal ethical autonomy refers to the different idea that individuals should choose for themselves the ends that they want to pursue. Yet, the practice of furthering personal ethical autonomy, this argument says, leads to more and more demands that the moral responsibility for the ability to enjoy certain goods should be privatized. Consider that politicians maintain that retirement benefits should depend to a lesser extent on collective insurance schemes, and should, instead, stem from individual efforts of investing and saving. Likewise, they hold that individual claims to health care benefits should reflect to a greater extent the individual contributions to insurances. Moreover, in cases of unemployment, individuals’ failure to behave properly by showing sufficient initiative is said to be the cause of the unemployment, rather than the logic of capitalism itself. This focus on the “individual possibilities for action and responsibilities carries the danger,” Meyer-­Drawe (1990, 38–9; trans. J. C.) holds, “to belittle the insurmountable social restrictions of the individual for the sake of lowering the burdens of the otherwise accountable

Autonomy and education for autonomy   151 institutions at the cost of the already disadvantaged societal members.” In a similar manner, Norbert Ricken and Markus Rieger-­Ladich (2004b, 12; trans. J. C.) point towards such problematic forms of processes of autonomization through education for autonomy when they argue that “neoliberal discourses on school development that employ a rhetoric of self-­learning and autonomy are the tool of a flexible control society, … which confronts students with the logic of competition.” Now, the point of the educational scholars’ critique of education for autonomy is that this kind of privatizing of responsibility is realizable precisely because it occurs under the banner of the ideal of autonomy. After all, this banner veils the ways in which such privatization nourishes distributive injustices by engendering, so the argument goes, the improvement of the well-­to-do and the worsening of the disadvantaged. Thereby, according to this critique, education for autonomy helps legitimizing a development that favors the more privileged much more than the less well off. Balzer thus suggests pursuing deconstructive analyses of the current and historical forms of the theory and practice of autonomy education: [What is needed is a] view that is critical of ideology, by enabling the deconstruction of the history of pedagogy as progressive and emancipatory processes, and by highlighting that and how pedagogy has been complicit in the implementation of disciplinary power and has gained its particular meaning through that disciplinary power. (Balzer 2004, 19–20; trans. J. C.) This critique of education for autonomy as ideology is a powerful one. It is hard to deny that teaching moral progressive accounts of the historical development of socio-­political institutions idealize the actually existing societal status quo and thereby cover up socio-­political injustices. Likewise, education for personal ethical autonomy can indeed support the legitimacy and intensify the privatization of responsibility that has potentially problematic distributive effects. However, the critique of education for autonomy seems to throw out the baby with the bath water, so to speak, when it claims that any kind of education for autonomy has this ideological aspect. Teaching society’s historical development in a critical manner that emphasizes the violations of autonomy in the past and present, for one, seems an apt way of avoiding autonomy education’s potential to become an instrument of ideology.19 Therefore, this ideology critique can also be turned into a constructive one, one that encourages distinguishing between those modes of education for autonomy that are ideological and those that are not. Thus, what I am suggesting is that theorists and practitioners of education for autonomy can critically reflect upon the problem that autonomy education can become ideological, and then pursue strategies through which this problem can be avoided or lessened. Arguably, this does not imply that critical self-­reflection will succeed in determining an emancipatory educational theory or practice. Within particular educational contexts, such as schools, the situation might be such that avoiding the

152   Autonomy and education for autonomy ideological aspects of autonomy education is impossible. Consider, for example, teachers who are assigned to teach courses in civic education with a particular textbook. Possibly this textbook contains mostly idealizing and hardly any critical content. Even if teachers tried to offer a critical perspective on such content, they might still be unable to prevent the ideological effects that education for autonomy can have in such cases. What is more, realizing that education for autonomy confronts these problems, teachers may come to realize that education for autonomy plays only a minor role in realizing autonomy. For example, it might be the case that unless changes in the economy occur, the efforts at bringing about more autonomy through education in schools might be insufficient, no matter how these efforts are carried out. As long as the economy does not offer sufficient employment, for example, autonomy might not be realizable. This insight can be a relieving one for teachers, because it can help and encourage them to give up the individual pursuit of an ideal of autonomy that they cannot achieve by themselves.20 In addition, understanding that under certain conditions autonomy cannot be achieved through education might encourage scholars and educators to bring about the economic and other conditions that an effective education for autonomy must presuppose. Thus the ideology critique might be helpful in recognizing the importance of certain social conditions that need to be in place in order for education for autonomy to succeed. When confronted with these constructive responses to the ideology critique, however, the educational scholars could reply that power asymmetries necessarily reproduce themselves and that due to the existence of such asymmetries the attempts to pursue liberating forms of education for autonomy are bound to fail. After all, the reproduction of power asymmetries occurs at a structural level – behind people’s backs, so to speak. Negative deconstruction, Balzer (2004, 20; trans. J.  C.) remarks, “is tempted to point towards allegedly ‘buried’ ideals of (humanistic) pedagogy as well as better aspects and intentions of pedagogy and school, while being unable to recover their power-­theoretical [problems].” Despite their best intentions, those who possess powerful positions cannot help but act in ways that re-­enforce such asymmetries. The educators’ and scholars’ self-­understandings, according to which they are capable of challenging the existing asymmetries through education, are illusions. More specifically, the educational theorists might argue that there are motivational and epistemic limitations that hinder efforts of this kind.21 A motivational limitation, for example, could consist of the fact that conceiving a truly emancipatory education for autonomy requires regarding as possible that the more powerful would change the power structures in ways that are detrimental to their interests. Among other things, such a loss of power would mean that the more powerful would be less capable of having their interests fulfilled. Therefore, so the motivational objection goes, it seems questionable that those who are more powerful are capable of promoting such changes on a long-­term basis. The epistemic limitation concerns the limited understanding of the more powerful of the ways in which the autonomy of those who are less powerful are constrained. Due

Autonomy and education for autonomy   153 to the differing epistemic standpoints of those who are more and those who are less powerful, those who are more powerful may be incapable of providing an education that would effectively help realizing autonomy.22 The problem with the objection that refers to the motivational limitation, however, is that it presupposes an anthropology according to which individuals possess a permanently dominant motive of preserving or perhaps even expanding their power. Yet both the past and present of domestic and transnational politics provides us with several examples in which individuals have acted out of a moral concern for greater justice, although their success in that regard did not result in an increase of their political power. A case in point is perhaps Angela Merkel’s decision in September 2015 not to close the German borders to those refugees that have not yet been registered in other EU countries. It is widely believed that Merkel decided on the basis of her conscience and that she was cognizant that her choice would lessen her political power, at least inside Germany. Moreover, once one recognizes the shortcoming of the reply to my objection that relies on the motivational limitation, the other reply that relies on the idea of an epistemic limitation also loses its force. For once the powerful are recognized as motivationally capable of giving up some of their power, they can pursue policies of social integration in order to overcome the epistemic limitation of the more powerful.23 For this reason, it seems plausible to assume that emancipatory uses of power exist and that power need not necessarily involve the reproduction of power asymmetries. In addition, consider the following internal argument for why those who put forward the ideology critique must not regard it as a social necessity that asymmetrical power relations reproduce themselves. As a critical reflection upon the practice of autonomy education, a critique of this practice must presuppose itself that its own claims do not simply reflect instances of power through which power asymmetries are maintained. For if that were the case, then the critique would lose its character as a critique of the way in which autonomy education – despite its intention to the contrary – maintains an illegitimate socio-­political status quo. This is because if proponents of this critique would have to concede that their critique ultimately also serves the reproduction of the existing power structures, then they could not convincingly be criticizing the theory and practice of education for autonomy for doing just that, too. If the theorists insisted that there is no way of avoiding to reproduce the given structures of domination, then their contribution would also lose its critical edge. It would end up merely describing social reality. But perhaps, from an even more abstract point of view, the analysis of the ideology critique that I have proposed so far might misinterpret the very point that the educational scholars are making. My analysis, after all, argues that the understanding of socio-­political reality on which the positive legitimacy assessments of that reality rely, must not represent a false consciousness. Thereby this analysis implies that there is a true account of that reality. This presupposition, however, involves a truth claim of a universal kind about the actual socio-­ political order that said educational scholars might want to reject. What is more,

154   Autonomy and education for autonomy the point of uncovering an ideology is to identify how an illegitimate socio-­ political order reproduces itself over time, which also seems to imply the possibility of differentiating between legitimate and illegitimate socio-­political orders. But if the educational scholars want to deny the possibility of an account of normative rightness, these educational theorists seem to be incapable of drawing such a distinction.

5  Conclusion I began this chapter by considering some educational scholars’ critiques of certain conceptions of autonomy in Section 2. These critiques argue that individuals are neither fully transparent to themselves, nor do they necessarily possess or want to possess a unitary understanding of their identity nor are they entirely independent from their social environments. In reply to these criticisms, I conceded that it would be problematic if a certain conception of autonomy actually postulated that individuals effectively are fully transparent to themselves, in possession of a unitary or integrated identity and entirely independent from their social environment. But in what I view as the most compelling conception of personal ethical autonomy, the ideas of transparent and unitary selves are regulative ideas of how to represent individuals rather than actual descriptions of individuals or perfectly realizable ideals. Thereby I expressed certain reservations about said critiques when applied to the understanding of autonomy as personal ethical autonomy. However, I did not explore these reservations in any depth, because whatever the merits of these criticisms are when they attack the particular conception of personal ethical autonomy, they do not critically affect my democratic conceptions of educational justice and citizenship education. This is because my conceptions ascribe moral importance merely to the conceptions of personal moral autonomy and public autonomy. The guiding normative ideas of these conceptions of autonomy, however, are not that individuals should be capable of determining who they truly are. Rather, the conceptions of personal moral autonomy and public autonomy subscribe to the different idea that in their private lives as well as in political life individuals should be capable of resisting whenever others attempt to impose on them certain understandings of who they truly are. What is more, neither do my democratic conceptions of educational justice and citizenship education regard individuals as beings who are entirely independent from their social environments. It is indeed the case that relations of care, cultural self-­understandings and structures of social power influence the way in which individuals conceive themselves and determine what opportunities for action individuals effectively have. But although I recognize all of this, I also maintain that the idea of an independent self continues to play an important normative role that the critique of the educational scholars fails to appreciate. This normative role consists of the consideration that each and every individual should be regarded as an independent normative source of

Autonomy and education for autonomy   155 claims concerning, among other things, how relations of care, structures of power and schemes of cultural reproduction should be arranged. While individuals cannot avoid being embedded in these relations of care, structures of power and schemes of cultural self-­understanding, it is important to grant every individual the status as a valid normative authority as to how she and others should be embedded in such relations. To afford individuals such a standing is an appropriate and necessary expression of the idea that individuals should enjoy a certain kind of independence from their social environments, as such environments must not pre-­determine their place within these environments. In addition, in Sections 3 and 4 I also confronted my conception of democratic citizenship education with the critiques that such education has normalizing and ideological effects. In response to these critiques, I acknowledged that normalization unavoidably occurs through any educational practice, but questioned that normalization is necessarily problematic. For if normalization merely refers to the idea that those who receive a certain kind of education will end up endorsing and behaving in conformity with certain norms or principles, then it is unclear why this is necessarily problematic. For why should the general endorsement and conformity with morally acceptable or mandatory norms be morally problematic? In other words, while it is correct to point out that education is a form of social power that influences individuals’ behavior, it is inadequate to suggest that any exercise of social power would necessarily be unjustifiable. Thus recognizing the normalization that occurs through education for autonomy is necessary for understanding properly the social power that is exercised through this educational practice. Yet this recognition does not entail that education for autonomy is necessarily morally problematic, since there are also justifiable uses of social power. In Section 4 I critically analyzed what I dub the ideology critique of education for autonomy. My analysis revealed that it is indeed crucial for practitioners and theorists of education to reflect self-­critically on the ways in which they might reproduce rather than help overcome an illegitimate socio-­political order. The point of such a self-­critical reflection, I argued, should be to find ways of responding properly to the potential danger of contributing to the maintenance of such an order. While I conceded that education for autonomy could have ideological effects, I maintained that it does not necessarily have them. In order to avoid such effects, I argued that, among other things, the particular practice of education for autonomy in courses such as civic education must be pursued in a critical manner that points at the failures of realizing autonomy in the past and present. Besides, educational public policies must not be pursued in isolation, but in combination with other policies in other domains such as the economy or the family. Furthermore, recognizing that educational public policies alone might be ineffective in order to achieve the aims of democratic educational justice and democratic citizenship education can be psychologically valuable so as to calibrate aspirations properly. Hence, it is correct to point out that education for autonomy can have ideological effects. But, since theorists and practitioners of

156   Autonomy and education for autonomy education for autonomy can reflect upon and find ways of avoiding them, autonomy education is not necessarily ideological. Thus the most important conclusions that this chapter has generated are: First, the conception of personal moral autonomy cannot be plausibly subjected to the critique that it assumes that individuals actually possess transparent and unitary selves. Second, while it is inadequate to construe individuals as being entirely independent from their social relationships, it is important to maintain that individuals should in a certain normative sense remain independent from these relationships. Third, recognizing the normalization that occurs through education for autonomy is necessary for understanding properly the social power that is exercised through this educational practice. Yet, this recognition does not entail that education for autonomy is necessarily morally problematic, since there are not only unjustifiable but also justifiable uses of social power. Finally, educational scholars are correct to point out that education for autonomy – as a form of social power – can have ideological effects. However, the practice of education for autonomy need not be ideological. Therefore these potential effects are no refutation of education for autonomy.

Notes   1 This text was already published in Culp (2017b). The text was slightly revised for this chapter.   2 Among these scholars were Samuel Fleischacker (University of Illinois), George Giacaman (Birzeit University), Mudar Kassis (Birzeit University), Muhammad Ali Khalidi (York University/Canada), Anton Leist (University of Zurich), Sari Nusseibeh (Al-­Quds University) and Said Zeedani (Al-­Quds University).   3 The problem of inflated expectations about educational public policy’s potential to solve societal problems is a familiar one, in particular in educational studies in the German language; cf. Bollenbeck (1996).   4 These scholars also find the very idea and conceptualization of autonomy problematic, but in this article I focus on the ways in which they criticize the practices of autonomy education.   5 See also Brinkmann (1999), Rieger-­Ladich (2002) and Ricken (2006). Further articles that articulate this kind of critique can be found in the volumes Marotzki and Sünker (1992), Koch et al. (1995), Ricken and Rieger-­Ladich (2004a) and Ricken and Balzer (2012). For an overview of the quite limited reception of “postmodern” theorizing in Anglophone philosophy of education, see Burbules (2009).   6 The section title is drawn from Meyer-­Drawe’s book (1990) with the same title.   7 See Miller (1991) for an overview of alternative conceptions of freedom.   8 This may be the case, for example, because individuals are unconscious of their (actually motivating) desires or preferences. But to the best of my knowledge scholars like Balzer do not explicitly draw on Freud’s or others’ theory of the unconscious.   9 I here refer to the core meaning of the concept of autonomy, according to which autonomy consists of thinking and acting on the basis of reasons. See Macedo (1990, 269), Gutmann (1995, 563), Brighouse (1998, 728), Forst (2012, 129), Weithman (2015, 57). 10 The criterion of reciprocity can be defined more concretely by distinguishing between the reciprocity of content and the reciprocity of reasons. Reciprocity of reasons requires fulfilling the specific claims that one also expects others to meet. Reciprocity of content forbids stipulating that others endorse the same interests and values one

Autonomy and education for autonomy   157 acknowledges oneself as well as postulating some objective ethical truth that is in fact not intersubjectively accepted. See Forst (2002, 39; 2012, 6, 20, 49). 11 See Nedelsky (1989), Baumann (2008), Christman (2015) on the social dimensions of autonomy; for a profound, Hegelian notion of social autonomy, according to which individuals intentions must be “interlaced” for social autonomy to emerge, cf. Honneth (2014, 125). 12 See Gilligan (1982), Walzer (1983), Nedelsky (1987), Christman (2015) and Forst (2017, ch. 2) on these conditioning factors of autonomy. 13 See Kant (1996 [1784]) who relies on Horace’s saying in the Book of Epodes. 14 The conditions as to when such deference is justified or mandatory concern the so-­ called novice-­expert problem in social epistemology. 15 In light of this “social power,” says Masschelein (2003, 130; trans. J. C.), it is necessary to think of a “practical attitude that allows retrieving oneself from the imperative to relate oneself in a particular way to oneself and to others.” 16 On the way in which power is exercised through the articulation and diffusion of reasons, cf. Forst (2015). 17 If, as is often the case, certain traditional forms of life reproduce certain injustices however, then it is indeed problematic not to object from a normative point of view to individuals’ adherence to such traditional values or norms. For example, traditional forms of life might maintain a certain division of labor along gender lines that women – and men – have reason to object. But in such a case the critique should concentrate on the specific problem of unjustifiably imposing an objectionable form of life upon women. The fact that some individuals embrace the ends of their traditions instead of developing anew their individual conception of the good is not objectionable per se. It is an impermissible inference to maintain that all traditional forms of life are objectionable simply because some of them are. 18 By “perfectionism” I mean a view that includes the idea that values (about the good life) can be (objectively) valid for a person irrespective of the judgment of that person about these values. For this understanding, cf. Christman (2004, 152) who refers to Hurka (1993, 3). 19 See Brighouse (2006, ch. 6) for a critique of teaching patriotism in an uncritical manner in schools; cf. also Espíndola (2016) on the importance of teaching historical injustices. 20 For the difficulty of determining an adequate level of aspiration, see Nussbaum (2015). 21 Freire (1970) argues that because of these limitations social change occurs only bottom up. 22 Anderson (2007) makes this point by arguing that the political elite cannot serve the interests of those it governs unless this elite is sufficiently socially integrated. Unless it is socially integrated, the political elite lacks the social and cultural capital necessary to identify and express properly the needs of those it is meant to govern. 23 See Anderson (2007) for concrete proposals of social integration within higher education in the United States for the sake of reducing the political elite’s epistemic limitations.

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Autonomy and education for autonomy   159 Leist, Anton. 2017. “Die Arbeitsgesellschaft erhalten – Elemente der Lohngerechtigkeit.” Ms. Macedo, Stephen. 1990. Liberal Virtues. Citizenship, Virtue and Community. Oxford: Clarendon Press. MacIntyre, Alasdair 1981. After Virtue. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press. Marchanne, Suzanne. 1997. “Foucault, die moderne Individualität und die Geschichte der humanisitischen Bildung.” In Mergel, Thomas and Welskopp, Thomas (eds.). Geschichte zwischen Kultur und Gesellschaft. Beiträge zur Theoriedebatte. Munich: Beck, 323–48. Marotzki, Winfried and Heinz Sünker (eds.). 1992. Kritische Erziehungswissenschaft – Moderne – Postmoderne. Weinheim: Deutscher Studienverlag. Masschelein. 2003. “Trivialisierung von Kritik. Kritische Erziehungswissenschaft weiterdenken.” Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 46, 121–41. Meyer-­Drawe, Käte. 1990. Illussionen von Autonomie. Diesseits von Ohnmacht und Allmacht des Ich. Munich: Kirchheim. Meyer-­Drawe. 1996a. “Versuch einer Archäologie des pädagogischen Blicks.” Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 42, 655–64. Meyer-­Drawe 1996b. “Tod des Subjekts – Ende der Erziehung? Zur Bedeutung ‘postmoderner’ Kritik für Theorien der Erziehung.” Pädagogik 48/7–8, 48–57. Miller, David (ed.). 1991. The Liberty Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nedelsky, Jennifer. 1989. “Reconceiving Autonomy – Sources, Thoughts and Possibilities.” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 1, 7–36. Nussbaum, Martha. 2015. “Aspiration and the Capabilities List.” Ms. presented at Georgetown University. Pongratz, Ludwig. 1990. “Schule als Dispositiv der Macht – pädagogische Reflexionen im Anschluß an Michel Foucault.” Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Pädagogik 66, 289–308. Rawls, John. 2001. Justice as Fairness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John. 2005 [1993]. Political Liberalism. Expanded paperback edition. New York: Columbia University Press. Reichenbach, Roland. 2000. “Die Tiefe der Oberfläche: Michel Foucault zur Selbstorge und über die Ethik der Transformation.” Vierteljahresschrift für wissenschaftliche Pädagogik 76, 177–89. Reichenbach, Thomas. 2001. Demokratisches Selbst und dilettantisches Subjekt. Münster: Waxmann. Ricken, Norbert. 2006. Die Ordnung der Bildung. Beiträge zu einer Genealogie der Bildung. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Ricken, Norbert and Nicole Balzer (eds.). 2012. Judith Butler. Pädagogische Lektüren. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Ricken, Norbert and Markus Rieger-­Ladich (eds.). 2004a. Michel Foucault. Pädagogische Lektüren. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Ricken, Norbert and Markus Rieger-­Ladich. 2004b. “Michel Foucault: Pädagogische Lektüren – Eine Einleitung.” In Ricken, Norbert and Markus Rieger-Ladich (eds.). Michel Foucault. Pädagogische Lektüren. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 7–13. Rieger-­Ladich, Markus. 2002. Mündigkeit als Pathosformel. Beobachtungen zur pädagogischen Semantik. Konstanz: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft. Sandel, Michael. 1982. The Limits of Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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7 Postcolonial critiques of democratic education

1  Introduction The beginnings of postcolonial theory were located within literary studies, where it emerged through a critique of the nearly exclusive focus on European, and in particular British, writers within the curricula of English Departments in formerly colonized societies.1 The theorists referred to as “postcolonial theorists” – Thiong’o (1995, 441), for example – criticized this focus which prevented members of the colonized societies from reflecting critically upon their lifeworlds through literature. But now postcolonial theory has become also a part of disciplines such as anthropology, history, political science and philosophy. Its subject matter is the critical analysis of the enduring effects of colonialism. These effects concern the contemporary social relations within both the formerly colonized and the formerly colonizing societies, as well as the current relations between and across these societies. Most importantly, it is a basic assumption of postcolonial theorists that presently existing “neo-­colonial” practices characterize these relations and re-­produce socio-­political injustices, although these practices have a different appearance than the previous colonial practices which they have replaced (cf. Kerner 2012). In this chapter I discuss two criticisms which postcolonial theorists would potentially put forward against my global conceptions of democratic educational justice and democratic citizenship education. The first criticism has to do with the use of a universal normative standard relative to which educational public policies are to be assessed. This criticism says that such a standard is parochial, because it involves an arbitrary extrapolation of the democratic principles from the Western to the non-­Western contexts.2 The second criticism targets my conception of global democratic citizenship education and argues that transnational practices of democratic citizenship education suffer from hubris and epistemic deficiencies. Therefore, despite the probably good intentions of those who are engaged in such practices – such as, perhaps, public officials at UNESCO – their endeavors are not only morally problematic on their own terms, but also unlikely to help the realization of the ends of democratic citizenship education.3 I will discuss the first criticism in Section 3, and the second criticism in Sections 4, 5 and 6.4 But prior to that I begin by clarifying the key aspects of postcolonial

162   Postcolonial critiques of education theory, since this will further explain why the postcolonial theorists are particularly prone to find my global and democratic conceptions of educational justice and citizenship education problematic.

2  Postcolonial theory As in the case of other theoretical paradigms such as liberalism, Marxism or feminism, scholars tend to disagree on how to define postcolonial theory. The relatively broad, albeit unspecific, definition which I use is that postcolonial theory critically analyzes the enduring effects of colonialism within, between and across formerly colonized and formerly colonizing societies. A major problem of this definition is that it hardly excludes anything, since in one way or another every presently existing phenomenon can be regarded as an effect of colonialism. Yet once we use this definition more narrowly and include among the effects of colonialism only those which have been caused to a considerably large degree by colonialism, then it no longer appears to be too extensive. For example, certain prejudices regarding migrants from formerly colonized societies within the formerly colonizing societies should certainly be regarded as proper subject matter of postcolonial theory. But by contrast, the relatively low birth rates within some economically advanced societies should probably not be considered as pertaining to the subject matter of postcolonial theory. It is, of course, possible to construe even the latter phenomenon as an indirect effect of colonialism. For the economic development and accompanying materialism to which colonialism has contributed may be regarded as the major causes for low birth rates in the economically advanced societies. Yet different from the prejudices vis-­à-vis migrants in the previous example, it is not only controversial to what extent present-­day economic prosperity and materialism are resulting from colonialism, but also to what extent they, in turn, are responsible for the low birth rates. So, on my understanding, relatively low birth rates do not fall within the domain of postcolonial theory. Therefore following this definition, the prefix “post” in postcolonial theory is not meant to suggest that ever since the formal end of colonialism the socio-­ political injustices that had emerged within, across and between formerly colonized and formerly colonizing societies have disappeared. To the contrary, postcolonial theory assumes that these injustices have enduring effects that persist even once that colonialism has officially been terminated. Thereby postcolonial theory has the study of enduring injustice within, between and across formerly colonized and formerly colonizing societies as its subject matter. Accordingly, this chapter deals with potential problems of my conceptions of democratic educational justice and democratic citizenship education that might arise due to the enduring effects of colonialism’s injustices that continue to structure social arrangements within, between and across formerly colonizing and formerly colonized societies. There are two reasons why it seems more reasonable to conduct this discussion through the normative lens provided by postcolonial theory, rather than by engaging with recent works in liberal political theory which also have enduring

Postcolonial critiques of education   163 or historical injustice as their subject matter.5 The first reason is that the postcolonial theorists pay special attention to educational policies, because these policies have become instruments which have exercised and legitimized colonial power. Gauri Vlswanathan (1995, 432), for example, explains the choice of liberal education as an instrument of colonial power due to the need to keep in check the power of the Christian clergy, while at the same time having to rely on non-­coercive means for exercising colonial control: British colonial administrators, provoked by missionaries on the one hand and fears of native insubordination on the other, discovered an ally in English literature to support them in maintaining control of the natives under the guise of a liberal education. In addition, the very contents of the materials used in colonial education were presented as being superior to those of the non-­Western societies.6 Ashcroft et al. (1995, 425) therefore argue that European-­style colonial education “whether state or missionary, primary or secondary (and later tertiary) was a massive canon in the artillerie of empire.” With regard to its effectiveness they explain: [A] knowledge of English literature, for instance, was required for entry into the civil service and the legal professions. Education is thus a conquest of another kind of territory – it is the foundation of colonialist power and consolidates this power through legal and administrative apparatuses. (Ashcroft et al. 1995, 425) Thereby, through the use of European-­style education the colonial powers not only disseminated the idea that the colonial powers were superior and thus the legitimate rulers of the colonized societies, but they also gave concrete expression to this idea by making the knowledge of the European-­style education a prerequisite for accessing positions of power. Today, postcolonial theorists like Ashcroft et al. (1995, 425) hold that “[e]ducation is perhaps the most insidious and in some ways the most cryptic of colonialist survivals, older systems now passing, sometimes imperceptibly, into neo-­colonialist configurations.” Educational policies, Ashcroft et al. (1995, 427) argue, far from being just the phenomenon that gave rise to postcolonial theory, “remains one of the most powerful discourses within the complex of colonialism and neo-­colonialism.” Another reason for engaging with the arguments of postcolonial theorists is that they will often contain a non-­Western perspective. Indeed, some postcolonial writers like Frantz Fanon (2004, 236) explicitly oppose any references to works within the Western tradition. And even other writers like Gayatri Spivak (1995) or Homi Bhaba (1995) who criticize such an approach as essentialist, rely to a considerable extent on non-­Western thinkers within their hybrid approach which blends non-­Western and Western theorizing. Now, the reason why including non-­Western normative theories matters is that if normative

164   Postcolonial critiques of education t­heories claim universal validity and are not restricted in their validity to the Western context, then their validity depends upon their acceptability from a non-­ Western point of view (cf. Williams and Warren 2014). Thus it would be straightforwardly parochial to conduct a philosophical discussion about principles of educational public policy that claim universal validity solely from within the confines of liberal or Western thinking.7 Therefore it is appropriate to consider potential postcolonial critiques of my global and democratic conceptions of educational justice and citizenship education, and to revise them in light of these critiques, if at all possible, in ways that render them better justified. This way of using postcolonial theory is in itself an exercise in postcolonial theory, since that theory is not necessarily aporetic or simply negative. Rather, many postcolonial theorists recognize the possibility of emancipation and liberation, and do in fact appeal to universal standards themselves when vindicating the need for such emancipation and liberation. Thus Anthony Kwame Appiah distinguishes postcolonial from postmodern theory: Postcoloniality, … like postmodernism’s, is also a post that challenges earlier legitimating narratives. And it challenges them in the name of the suffering victims.… But it challenges them in the name of the ethical universal; in the name of humanism, “la gloire pour l’homme.” And on that ground it is not an ally for Western postmodernism but an agonist. (Appiah 1995, 123; cf. also Brydon 1995, 137.) Hence the point of this chapter is not that of rejecting the postcolonial critiques of my global and democratic conceptions of educational justice and citizenship education, but rather to further develop these conceptions in light of the insights that can be gained from the critical analyses of these critiques. In this way I view postcolonial theory as an ally to my conceptions of democratic education that are based on considerations of global justice.

3  Western parochialism The basic idea behind the Western parochialism objection to my conception of global democratic educational justice is that it involves an arbitrary extrapolation of normative standards from one social context to another. It says that even if rights to democratic education might be an appropriate normative standard for assessing educational public policies in Western societies, they are an inadequate standard for non-­Western societies. The presumption of the universality of such rights is flawed, because due to non-­Western societies’ distinct features a different standard is needed in this case. Thereby my conception of democratic educational justice follows the normative logic of the colonial educational practice, which consisted of an analogous arbitrary extrapolation. By way of illustration consider that in the case of colonial India, as Ashcroft et al. (1995, 55) point out, “the ‘universal’ discourse of English literature

Postcolonial critiques of education   165 … was consciously adopted as the vehicle for educating the Indian élites in tenets of civilized morality.” Therefore the colonial educational policies relied on the idea of the universal validity of Western education in order to justify its use within non-­Western contexts. The allegedly universal character of Western education isolated the colonial educational practice from critique, since it supposedly did not pursue any particularistic agenda. By contrast, the non-­ Western education was regarded as particularistic, and could therefore not meet the “universal” standards of Western education. Thereby the use of Western education in non-­Western societies implies that a “fixing” or “positioning” of the non-­Western societies within an inferior position. As Edward Said (1995, 90) points out in his seminal study of the Western construction of “the Orient,” the West has achieved what he describes as “flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing the relative upper hand.” Along similar lines Helen Tiffin argues: [T]he very texts which facilitated such material and psychic capture were those which the imposed European education systems foisted on the colonized as the “great” literature which dealt with “universals”; ones whose culturally specific imperial terms were to be accepted as axiomatic at the colonial margins.8 (Tiffin 1995, 97) Moreover, the colonial powers could justify the Western societies’ educational achievements as being the best or as world leading relative to this standard that they themselves have articulated. Thomas Macaulay, for example, pointed this out in his Minute on Indian Education in 1835, in which he underlined the importance of teaching the English language: The claims of our own [English language] it is hardly necessary to recapitulate.… It abounds with works of imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us; with models of every species of eloquence; with historical compositions, which, considered as vehicles of ethical and political instruction, have never been equaled; with just and lively representations of human life and human nature; with the most profound speculations on metaphysics, morals, government, jurisprudence, and trade; with full and correct information respecting every experimental science which tends to preserve the health, to increase the comfort, or to expand the intellect of man. Whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth, which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations. It may safely be said, that the literature now extant in that language is of far greater value than all the literature which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together. (Macaulay 1995, 428)

166   Postcolonial critiques of education The flipside of the alleged universality and superiority of English and Western education was, of course, the downgrading of the non-­Western literary works and scholarly productions.9 And this, in turn, implied regarding the non-­Western cultures and its members as inferior, since they have not been able to produce comparable works that would be worthwhile to learn and teach. As John Docker (1995, 443) argues, “[t]he white colonizing society removes the indigenous culture to an inferior level by virtue of the superiority of the metropolitan culture it is establishing.” Hence, according to Vlswanathan (1995, 436), the selected “method of overwhelming opposition was to demonstrate that the achieved material position of the Englishman was derived from the knowledge contained in English literary, philosophical and scientific texts,” and to clarify that it represents “a knowledge accessible to any who chose to seek it.” The objection against my global conception of democratic educational justice that can be gleaned from the postcolonial critiques of European-­style education is hence that its assertion of universal validity entails an unjustifiable hiearchization of Western above non-­Western education, which is used for upholding asymmetrical relations of power. My first response to this objection is that the mere fact that principles of global democratic educational justice emerged in Western contexts does not render them inapplicable to non-­Western contexts. This is because principles that have emerged in the West should not be regarded as principles constitutive of the West, since these principles are contested within the West itself.10 Therefore it is inadequate to hold that they should not apply to non-­Western contexts simply on the basis that they represent Western principles. One way in which to view more clearly this characterization of allegedly Western principles is to observe that even within the West principles of education do not emerge all of a sudden and are then generally recognized by all  within the West. Rather, principles of educational justice arise within ­particular social constellations of the West before they then eventually “travel” throughout the West and find their adherents. But even if the normative principles of democratic educational justice eventually found the support of a considerably large share of the Western population, they would still continue to be held in contention by a good number of those who themselves belong to the West. This indicates that it is inadequate to believe that the principles of democratic educational justice represent the empirically valid normative principles of education in the West. A contrary point of view would imply endorsing an excessively simplistic picture of Western culture, and perhaps even of culture in general, according to which all members of a culture endorsed the same normative beliefs.11 So it is too simple to regard principles of democratic educational justice as principles that effectively govern Western societies, and which therefore must not be applied to non-­Western contexts. Second, it is questionable – also on empirical grounds – that basic ideas of democratic educational justice pertain exclusively to the West. As Sen (2006) demonstrated in The Argumentative Indian, a considerable number of Indian

Postcolonial critiques of education   167 theorists also articulate and defend democratic political ideas (cf. also Sen 2003). In order to properly perceive this, however, it is necessary to move beyond the idea that voting is the most defining feature of democracy and recognize instead the vital importance that public reasoning has for democratic arrangements. For the practice of voting may not have been particularly prevalent in the Indian and other non-­Western contexts throughout long stretches of history. But it is nevertheless the case that relatively rich traditions of public reasoning can be found there. Sen (2006, 13) can therefore argue “that democracy is intimately connected with public discussion and interactive reasoning [, both of which] exist across the world, not just in the West.” Regarding the particular case of India Sen (2006, 15) mentions that as early as the fourth century bce the “Buddhist councils” already had regarded dialogue as an instrument for resolving conflicts and advancing knowledge. Likewise, in the third century bce India’s Buddhist emperor Ashoka emphasized as well the importance of tolerating other religions: [A] person must not do reverence to his own sect or disparage the beliefs of another without reason. […] [F]or he who does reverence to his own sect while disparaging the sects of others wholly from attachment to his own sect, in reality inflicts, by such conduct, the severest injury on his own sect. (Smith, 1909, 170–1, cited from Sen 2006, 18) In addition, in the sixteenth century the Moghul Akbar (Smith, 1917, 257, cited from Sen 2006, 18) defended the idea that “no man should be interfered with on account of religion, and anyone is to be allowed to go over to a religion that pleases him.” Finally, in the early twentieth century the Indian poet and pedagogist Radindrantah Tagore characterizes in Gitanjali the democratic features of the country that he wishes India to be: Where the mind is without fear and head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; … Where the clear steam of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; … Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. (Tagore 2013) By drawing on these multiple sources of democratic ideas in India, Sen (2006, 12) concludes that “the tradition of argument … shapes our culture. It has helped to make heterodoxy the natural state of affairs in India.… [P]ersistent arguments are an important part of our public life.” Yet the existence of non-­Western democratic ideas is not limited to the Indian context. In the South African context, for example, Nelson Mandela points to the

168   Postcolonial critiques of education prevalence of a democratic culture by recalling the local meetings that were held in the regent’s house in Mqhekezweni: Everyone who wanted to speak did so. It was democracy in its purest form. There may have been a hierarchy of importance among the speakers, but everyone was heard, chief and subject, warrior and medicine man, shopkeeper and farmer, landowner and laborer.… The foundation of self-­ government was that all men [sic] were free to voice their opinions and equal in their value as citizens. (Mandela 1994, 21) In a similar fashion, Julius Nyerere (cited from Mutiso and Rohio 1975, 478), Tansania’s former president states that “the traditional method for regulating public life in African societies is the free discussion,” and, similarly, the former president of Sambia, Kenneth Kaunda (cited from Mutiso and Rohio 1975, 478), holds that conventionally “an issue was discussed in a serious get-­together until consensus was reached.” Kwasi Wiredu (1998) also emphasizes the latter focus on achieving consensus through public reasoning as central mode of operation of traditional African politics. Likewise, there are cases of twentieth century Latin Amer­ican philosophers such as Paulo Freire that defend democratic ideas, and even apply them to the particular case of education. What is especially interesting to observe in cases like these, however, is that the simplistic binary between Western and non-­Western thinkers collapses, given that the references used by Freire are to a large extent of Western provenience.12 Therefore he stands for a certain kind of hybridity as he draws on both Western and non-­Western sources. But it would be a mistake to consider such hybridity as a phenomenon that pertains solely to non-­Western thinkers, since several Western thinkers themselves have adopted the ideas of non-­Western thinkers. Martha Nussbaum’s work, for example, is nurtured by an immersion into the writings of non-­Western thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi or Tagore.13

4  Transnational practices of democratic citizenship education Transnational practices involve actors from different states, at least one of which is a non-­state agent.14 For example, the relation between activists of the NGO Save the Rainforest and the local indigenous community in the Peruvian rainforest is a good transnational example. In the field of education, a transnational practice could involve a non-­state actor from one country – such as an NGO – which attempts influencing educational policies in another country. Other concrete examples include international organizations such as UNESCO or private educational initiatives such as the World Economic Forum’s Global Education Initiative (2011) that set up specific educational curricula, introduce particular teaching methods and propagate a particular ethos of good education in a number of non-­Western countries. These actors do not necessarily, however, engage in

Postcolonial critiques of education   169 democratic citizenship education. Instead, they often times focus on other objectives such as human capital formation and the realization of human rights (cf. Coomans 2007 and Smith 2014). Yet it might still be helpful to have in mind powerful actors such as these when reflecting upon the dangers of transnational practices of democratic citizenship education. The reason why postcolonial critiques target these practices is the historical legacy that colonialism has had in accounting for their existence. This historical legacy manifests itself in the fact that some of the (international) actors involved in transnational educational practices have emerged directly, as it were, from the colonial structures. This is especially the case for the actors involved in practices of so-­called development cooperation, which arose as a part of the United Nations system in the aftermath of World War  II.15 Prior to the emergence of these practices, the colonial powers’ development endeavors within their colonies were mainly directed at securing the economic exploitation of natural resources (cf. Arndt 1981, 462–3).16 In the second half of the last century national development ministries, both within the formerly colonizing and the formerly colonized societies, would often originate from their former colonial administrative offices. Many of these ministries play an important role in the formulation of national and international educational policies today (cf. Deutsche UNESCO-­Kommission and Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung 2017). Given this continuity between colonialism and so-­called development cooperation, it is not surprising that transnational educational practices, some of which are carried out by development agencies, share structural features of the colonial educational practice. Philip Altbach emphasizes this: [E]ducational neocolonialism […] can be quite open and obvious, such as the distribution of foreign textbooks in the schools of a developing country. It is, however, generally more subtle and includes the use of foreign technical advisors on matters of policy and the continuation of foreign administrative models and curricular patterns for schools. […] Political independence changed relatively little educationally in most developing countries. Few countries […] made sharp breaks with the educational past. (Altbach 1995, 452−4) The colonial legacy of transnational educational practices is also reflected in the remaining power asymmetry between the Western and the non-­Western actors and as well in the belief on the part of the former that they possess the effective agency to advance the situation of the latter. This characterization requires further qualification, however, because ever since the rise of non-­Western emerging democratic powers such as Brazil, South Africa and India, it is no longer just Western actors who think they can improve certain societies in the non-­Western world.17 Even if so-­called South-­South cooperation does not necessarily focus on democratic citizenship education, it is easily possible to imagine that the emerging democratic powers could participate

170   Postcolonial critiques of education in transnational practices of democratic citizenship education. Brazil, for example, pursues a strategy of external democracy promotion in countries like Guinea-­Bissau. The Brazilian agency for development cooperation ABC, in cooperation with the Brazilian Superior Electoral Court and the Brazilian Bar Association, promotes Brazilian digital voting machine technology in African states (cf. Abdenur and Neto 2013; Stuenkel 2013). Therefore transnational practices of democratic citizenship education need not necessarily involve Western actors on the one hand and non-­Western actors on the other hand. Nevertheless a considerable part of such practices continues to be constituted by these kinds of actors stemming from the formerly colonizing and the formerly colonized societies, respectively. Thus it seems necessary to consider how these practices should be modified in light of the critiques that postcolonial scholars are likely to put forward against them. Different from the previous section, involving the problematic features of a conception of democratic educational justice that claims to be of universal scope, in the following two sections I discuss two objections that address problematic aspects of transnational practices of democratic citizenship education. The first objection holds that transnational practices of democratic citizenship education involve hubris on the part of those who aspire teaching public autonomy. The other maintains that due to epistemic limitations such practices cannot effectively achieve their goal of realizing democratic consciousness. In light of these objections I will argue that it is mandatory to take adequate cautionary measures that can prevent, or at least to a certain extent limit the problems of hubris and of epistemic deficiencies. Transnational practices of “reflexive democratic citizenship education” must be devised that strive to enhance democratic citizenship education in a self-­critical way and thus exhibit an awareness of their potential problems.18 Under certain conditions, however, such reflexive measures will be insufficient to prevent transnational practices of democratic citizenship education from becoming morally deeply problematic. If that is the case, then the most advisable strategy is to avoid such practices altogether.

5  Hubris19 One charge against the transnational practices of democratic citizenship education is simply that they involve hubris. Those who aim at educating others to become democratic agents may have an excessively inflated self-­understanding and mistakenly consider those who are in need of democratic citizenship education to be of lesser worth. This problem may arise in the particular case of political conscientization. According to Freire (1970, 19), conscientization involves “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions – developing a critical awareness – so that individuals can take action against the oppressive elements of reality.” In the case of domestic democratic citizenship education, political conscientization aims at creating critical awareness among people about the domestic democratic rights to which they are entitled as a matter of justice.

Postcolonial critiques of education   171 This awareness can in turn make them cognizant of the “contradiction” arising from the recognition of the moral validity of democratic rights, on the one hand, and the absence of socially effective legal rights to democratic participation, on the other. The case for political conscientization thus starts out with the idea that citizens are not aware of their democratic rights, and that they therefore need to be taught about these rights in order to struggle for their realization. Transnational practices of democratic citizenship education may engage in political conscientization and “spread the word” about individuals’ democratic rights, rights that entitle them to be co-­authors of the socio-­political institutions that impact pervasively upon their lives and even force them to act in particular ways. Democratic citizenship education may involve attempts to upgrade in a democratic fashion the curricula of schools as well as – beyond schools – endeavors to publish and disseminate books, journals and videos that explain the rights that democratic politics presupposes.20 Problematically, this type of democratic citizenship education may involve hubris, because it seemingly presupposes an asymmetrical epistemic standing between those who already know about democratic rights and those who do not know these rights.21 Democratic citizenship education in this particular form of political conscientization may therefore create and reflect a distance between those “mature” persons who are already acquainted with the practical exigencies of morality and those other “immature” persons who still must learn about their democratic rights. Yet the presumption of such an asymmetrical relationship seems to run counter to the basic moral idea of democratic justice that all persons are equal moral authorities when it comes to justifying and determining public policies. Therefore democratic citizenship education in the form of political conscientization – which seems to affirm implicitly that persons are not such equal moral authorities – actually belies democratic justice’s basic moral idea and thereby undermines in practice its own aspirations. I contend in response that agents engaging in the reflexive form of political conscientization should simply “lay their cards on the table.” They should concede that they believe in fact that people who do not come to view themselves as morally entitled to co-­determine the basic rules that shape their socio-­political orders commit a moral mistake. Views that deny that all persons are entitled to have a say in how to arrange the socio-­political orders of which they are members are beyond what a justification-­based understanding of moral respect and a deliberative understanding of democracy, which I have articulated in Chapter 2, can reasonably accept as a position about what morality requires. In addition, defenders of this reflexive mode of democratic citizenship education can attempt revealing to their critics that they themselves accept implicitly the same moral foundation of democratic justice. Such a moral foundation claims that those who are the addressees of the rules of socio-­political orders count equally as moral authorities regarding the context-­specific justification of these rules. This is because once the critics of this reflexive mode of democratic citizenship education argue that it is wrong to assume that people possess unequal moral competencies, they accept that all persons are equally entitled to decide about the normative

172   Postcolonial critiques of education p­ rinciples of their socio-­political order. By claiming that it is wrong to attribute the moral competency to understand what morality fundamentally requires only to some persons, the critics acknowledge that all persons are to determine autonomously what they consider to be involved within the exigencies of morality. Hence the critics actually endorse the moral foundation of democratic justice – namely, that every individual counts as an equal normative authority when it comes to ­justifying the fundamental principles of a social-­political order.

6  Epistemic deficiencies The transnational forms of advocacy and empowerment do not have as their primary goal that citizens become conscious of their democratic rights. In this way they differ from practices of political conscientization. Rather, these forms of transnational democratic citizenship education focus on the social conditions hindering citizens from participating in democratic decision making about educational policy. Transnational advocacy and empowerment aim to facilitate the inclusion of all citizens’ perspectives into the formulation of the prevailing educational public policies. Transnational practices of democratic citizenship education should either advocate the interests of those excluded from the political process or empower them so they can speak for themselves. Both of these forms of transnational citizenship education could, however, have the potential to undermine the very point of improving the democratic quality of political arrangements. The major reason for this concerns an inadequate understanding of local circumstances, since the actors engaging in transnational practices of education fail to give sufficient weight to the local priorities regarding how democratic arrangements ought to be advanced. This objection is compelling, because epistemic deficiencies abound in transnational contexts in which there are fewer reference points of a shared lifeworld that facilitate constructive dialogue and public reasoning. Even within national contexts in which there often exists a shared language and – at least to a certain degree – lifeworld, epistemic deficiencies are pervasive and can limit profoundly democratic citizenship education (cf. Anderson 2007). However, notice that this epistemic objection is itself based upon a normative premise that is shared by those who make the case for the transnational practices of democratic citizenship education (cf. Culp 2014, ch. 7). Again, one key argument for the importance of democratic citizenship education is precisely that enabling every citizen to contribute to the political decision making is necessary, because otherwise political decisions will not be supported by a supply of pertinent information. Hence the case for transnational democratic citizenship education rests upon the same normative concern that motivates the typical objection against the transnational practices of democratic citizenship education. Yet this objection still leaves open the question as to whether the transnational practices of democratic citizenship education is in practice necessarily insufficiently informed by the relevant local considerations. This is mainly an empirical question that cannot be solved in a purely abstract, theoretical manner.

Postcolonial critiques of education   173 But it does seem strange to claim that the potential problems of transnational democratic citizenship education that arise because of epistemic deficiencies will always outweigh the potential benefits that transnational democratic citizenship education might be able to bring about. So what is necessary is a more contextualized critical analysis of the transnational practices of democratic citizenship education. In the case of advocacy there exists a danger that powerful agents can misconstrue and consequently misrepresent the interests of those on whose behalf they are intervening in the political decision-­making processes. They may suppose, for example, that their conception of the good life is universally shared and represent the less powerful on the basis of that allegedly universal conception of the good life. Such a case may evolve when the members of international organizations such as UNESCO advocate educational policies oriented towards greater economic efficiency or the avoidance of adolescent parenthood, even though such policies might not necessarily be those that the less powerful members of society favor. Thus advocacy can fail to achieve its goal by not acknowledging that those viewed as politically marginalized do not only differ in terms of their relative political power, but also in terms of what they endorse as valuable in life. But even if the more powerful acknowledge that the claims of politically marginalized groups may be based on conceptions of the good life that differ radically from their own, the hermeneutic problem as to how to understand and to interpret properly the claims of politically marginalized groups remains an intricate and problematic one.22 Therefore the actual attempt to integrate the claims of politically marginalized group into the political process might involve the injustice of misrepresentation. In light of the ways in which advocacy can give rise to such misrepresentation, a preferable approach to improving the democratic quality of political arrangements consists of empowering those who are not participating in political procedures so that they eventually speak for themselves (cf. Goulet 1989). Political empowerment strives to change socio-­economic and political conditions so that the less powerful are in a better position to voice their concern. The strategy to empower people, therefore, may be said to already instantiate a reflexive kind of democratic citizenship education, since it acknowledges that certain ways of fostering more democratic citizenship education, like advocacy, can be detrimental to realizing the ends of democratic citizenship education. Political strategies to empower individuals and groups that one presumes to be excluded also nevertheless carry the danger of undermining the goal of realizing democratic citizenship education. This is because the kinds of socio-­political institutions that are established for the sake of this purpose may themselves differ substantially from how they would be designed if all citizens were already fully capable of co-­determining them. As a concrete example consider that some initiatives attempt to politically empower groups through a political decentralization.23 Such a modification in a country’s political structure may indeed permit more groups to engage more

174   Postcolonial critiques of education effectively in the formal political decision-­making processes. It may nevertheless still not represent the kind of political system for deliberating educational and other policies that the citizens would choose if they were already fully integrated into the decision-­making processes. The opportunity for effective political participation need not necessarily be secured through decentralized political institutions. Even in a centralized political system the democratic inclusion of all citizens can be fully ensured through independent and high-­quality media and civil society groups that attempt integrating all citizens.24 That could mean, however, that it is still unclear which institutional configuration ought to be implemented to secure the rights to democratic participation for everyone as long as significant portions of a polity are still not participating. The institutional scheme that those who want to promote democratic citizenship education may choose can be very different from the kind of institutional scheme that those who should ultimately uphold this scheme would want to choose. So it may seem that transnational practices of democratic citizenship education carry the risk of imposing an institutional scheme that blocks rather than supports the democratic determination of public policies. But taking seriously the possibility that such political empowerment may involve an undemocratic imposition of a certain institutional scheme does not necessarily mean that one has to abandon entirely the idea of political empowerment. Because whenever one aims at facilitating the political inclusion of individuals and groups by changing existing or creating new political institutions, one can modify or build these institutions in such a way that allows and foresees their later reconfiguration. Consequently, the reflexive transnational efforts that aim at democratizing political arrangements by enabling people to speak for themselves must only create institutions that are open for later revision.

7  Conclusion This chapter has set itself the task of examining postcolonial critiques of my global and democratic conceptions of educational justice and citizenship education. I explained the importance of these critiques in the educational context by way of recalling the origins of postcolonial theory and the way in which postcolonial theorists have called into question conceptions and practices of education that claim universal validity. Therefore I have subjected my global and democratic conception of educational justice to the critique that it is parochial in Section 3. This section showed that the criticism of Western parochialism thrown against my global conception of democratic educational justice is ill founded. Such criticism does not realize that as soon as one recognizes that public reasoning is part and parcel of democracy, it no longer holds true that democratic ideas can only be found in the history and present of Western political thought. Furthermore, it is problematic to regard democratic ideas as exclusively Western, because these ideas are not shared equally among all those who belong to the West. In light of this fact it is merely too simple to regard them as pertaining exclusively to the Western domain.

Postcolonial critiques of education   175 In Section 4 I defined the term transnational practices of democratic citizenship education and explained how colonial legacies affect these practices, especially through the formation of the practices of development cooperation in the second half of the twentieth century. In the previous two sections – Sections 5 and 6 – I then responded to certain critiques that argue that these transnational practices of democratic citizenship education are counterproductive. For due to the present inter- and transnational economic and political asymmetries that have their origin in colonialism, these critiques say, transnational practices of democratic citizenship education suffer from hubris and epistemic deficiencies. So despite the probably good intentions of those who are engaged in such practices, they neither promote domestic nor transnational democratic consciousness. In response I have argued that the development of an awareness of the concomitant problems of the transnational practices of democratic citizenship education will help to avoid the predicament of becoming self-­destructive. Political conscientization can avoid creating a distance between some who are knowledgeable of morality and others who are not by clarifying that those who ­challenge the legitimacy of political conscientization recognize themselves the importance of fundamental democratic principles such as persons’ equal normative authority. In addition, strategies of political empowerment that create or change political institutions so as to allow citizens themselves to voice their demands are promising for overcoming certain epistemic limitations, especially of a hermeneutic type, that the transnational practices of democratic citizenship education would otherwise have. Yet in order for these strategies to work well, I argued in this chapter, the institutions that are set up with that particular purpose in mind should allow for considerable changes over time, since they must remain responsive to citizens’ continuously shifting perspectives. There are other potential postcolonial critiques of my conceptions of global democratic educational justice and of global democratic citizenship education that I did not discuss in this chapter. For example, another objection claims that it is insufficient to show merely that democratic ideas exist in some non-­Western contexts like that of India, on which I concentrated especially in this chapter. Instead, in order to justify appropriately my conception of educational justice I must demonstrate that democratic ideas exist in all non-­Western contexts. So I have to explain in how far, if at all, democratic ideas are also present in contexts like that of China. I concede that considering more non-­Western contexts in an attempt to distill to what extent democratic ideas can be found in them would be relevant for my justification. However, it is questionable that any single work from a single author in philosophy could possibly fulfill the daunting task of determining which democratic ideas, if any, can be found in all non-­Western contexts.25 Furthermore, even if in some of these contexts no democratic ideas could be found, it would not necessarily follow that my conception of global educational justice is therefore invalid. Rather, the absence of democratic ideas in certain non-­Western contexts required coming up with an account that explained why democratic ideas have not emerged in this context until today. For if such an account was able to show

176   Postcolonial critiques of education that the absence of democratic ideas is the result of social and political structures that systematically suppress the emergence of these ideas, then the absence of these ideas would be no reason to view the infiltration of these non-­Western contexts with democratic ideas through transnational practices of democratic citizenship education as unjustifiable.

Notes   1 One key text that expresses this critique is Thiong’o (1995).   2 In the following I differentiate between Western and non-­Western contexts and theories or between European and non-­European contexts and theories. While the former distinction is of greater relevance for the analysis of postcolonial relations, the latter distinction is more important for the analysis of colonial relations. However, since I agree with the postcolonial theorists that there is a certain continuity between colonial and postcolonial relations, I do not ascribe special significance to using either the one or the other terminology, and use the two distinctions interchangeably.   3 See Harber and Mncube (2012) on the ambivalent role of practices of democratic education in schools in non-­Western, economically poor countries. They point out that in many poor countries formal education in practice often time follows a highly authoritarian model of education.   4 Yet another potential postcolonial critique of my democratic conception of education is that it primarily serves Western countries by way of promoting the acceptance of globalization. See Lingard (2009) for such a critique of education for global citizenship from a postcolonial perspective. See also Gough (2002, 1228) for the similar view that adding a global dimension in education amounts to “epistemological imperialism.”   5 This topic is currently of great interest to several analytic, liberal political philosophers, including Lu (2011), Spinner-­Havel (2012) and Amighetti and Nuti (2015).   6 On traces of such hubris in Enlightenment thinkers like Mill, cf. McCarthy (2009) and Muthu (2003).   7 On the importance of non-­Western normative theories for justifying conceptions of global justice, in particular, cf. Flikschuh (2014) and Okeja (2017).   8 More specifically, by reference to the work of Robinson Crusoe, Tiffin (1995, 98) argues that the study of a canonical text at the colonial periphery also becomes an important part of material imperial practice, in that, through educational … institutions, it continually displays and repeats for the colonized subject … the processes of its annihilation, marginalization, or naturalization as if this were axiomatic, culturally ungrounded, “universal”, natural.   9 In a similar vein, Achebe (1995, 59) argues as follows: In the nature of things the work of a Western writer is automatically informed by universality. It is only others who must strain to achieve it. As though universality were some distant bend in the road which you may take if you travel out far enough in the direction of Europe or America, if you put adequate distance between yourself and your home. 10 The fact that the very principles that are supposedly constitutive of “the West” are themselves contested within “the West” means that there is no uncontroversial way of defining “the West.” In the main text I nevertheless use the terms “the West”, “Western” and “non-­Western contexts” without quotation marks for the sake of better readability.

Postcolonial critiques of education   177 11 Adopting Walzer’s reconstructive interpretive method to educational philosophy, Gutmann (1987) regards democratic education as constitutive of the US-­Amer­ican self-­understanding. However, it is certainly not implausible to argue that economic efficiency is the distinctive normative ideal of the US-­Amer­ican society, which is an example that shows that normative educational principles are contested within the West itself. 12 Freire draws especially on works of mid-­twentieth century critical theory. Similarly, Latin Amer­ican liberation theologists like Leonardo Boff, Gustavo Guitierrez and Jon Sobrino are well versed in twentieth century European – especially German and French – theology. 13 I am unable to assess how peculiar this phenomenon is to the late 20th and the early twenty-first century, relative to earlier engagement of Western thinkers with non-­Western scholars. In the early twentieth century, in any case, there seems to have been a quite serious engagement with non-­Western literature by writers such as Hermann Hesse. 14 There are also international practices of democratic education that do not fall directly under the category of transnational practices of democratic education. These are practices where the governments of two countries cooperate for the sake of improving democratic education in one or both of these countries. However, since the citizens that international practices of this kind address are non-­state agents and are also constitutive members of such practices, it is plausible to label even these practices as transnational practices. 15 For critical analyses of the concept of development and the international development practice see Culp (2014, chs. 6 and 7, 2015, 2016, 2018). 16 Concerning the global dimension of the post-­World War II development project see also Fischer et al. (2008, 15) and Lepenies (2009). 17 On the potential positive impact of democratic emerging powers from the Global South for concerns of global justice, see Culp and Plagemann (2014). 18 In Culp (2011, 2016) I also argue in favor of such reflexivity on the basis of the coherentist justification method of reflect equilibrium, which requires normative theorists to consider the foreseeable social practices that would result from attempts to implement the normative principles that they regard as justified. 19 The text of this and the next section was already published in Culp (2013). The text was slightly revised for this chapter. 20 In Germany, the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung) carries out these latter activities. 21 This objection is only of relevance in adult democratic education, however. The asymmetrical epistemic standing between teachers and students is a general characteristic of teacher-­student relationships within institutions of primary and secondary education. But it would be absurd to maintain that teachers within these institutions suffer from hubris simply because they stand in this kind of relationship to their students. 22 Rahnema (2010) makes this point with reference to how different people understand the notion of poverty differently. 23 For a critical description of attempts of international development agencies to decentralize the formal political decision-­making processes in order to improve the democratic quality of the political institutions in Mozambique, see Plagemann (2009). 24 This is not meant to suggest that it would not be a good idea to attempt to decentralize the formal political decision-­making structures in contexts in which these are highly centralized and in which there are very few prospects that media and civil society would eventually become effective in channeling political demands from the margins of a political unit to its center. The important point is simply that one must leave open the possibility that circumstances may change and that a properly

178   Postcolonial critiques of education f­ unctioning democracy may emerge that concentrates formal political decision making at its center. 25 For an empirical exploration of recent rhetoric and practice of democratic education in mostly non-­Western countries, with a special emphasis on South Africa, cf. Harber and Mncube (2012).

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Postcolonial critiques of education   179 Culp, Julian. 2018. “Global and Social Justice in Development.” In Drydyk, Jay and Lori Keleher (eds.). Handbook of Development Ethics. London: Routledge. Culp, Julian and Johannes Plagemann. 2014. “Hooray for Global Justice? Emerging Democracies in a Multipolar World.” Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric 7, 39–66. Deutsche UNESCO–Kommission and Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung. 2017. Verantwortung für Bildung: Unsere Verpflichtungen erfüllen. Bonn: UNESCO. Docker, John. 1995. “The Neocolonial Assumption in University Teaching of English.” In Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (eds.). The Post-­Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 443–6. Fanon, Franz. 2004 [1961]. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Fischer, Karin, Gerald Hödl and Wiebke Sievers. 2008. Klassiker der Entwicklungstheorie. Vienna: Mandelbaum. Flikschuh, Katrin. 2014. “The Idea of Philosophical Fieldwork: Global Justice, Moral Ignorance and Intellectural Attitudes.” The Journal of Political Philosophy 22/1, 1–26. Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Gough, N. 2002. “Thinking/Acting Locally/Globally: Western Science and Environmental Education in a Global Knowledge Economy.” International Journal of Science Education 24 (11), 1217–37. Goulet, Denis. 1989. “Participation in Development – New Avenues.” World Development 17/2, 165–78. Gutmann, Amy. 1987. Democratic Education. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Harber, Clive and Vusi Mncube. 2012. Education, Democracy and Development – Does Education Contribute to Democratization in Developing Countries? Oxford: Symposium Books. Kerner, Ina. 2012. Postkoloniale Theorie zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius. Lepenies, Philipp. 2009. “Lernen vom Besserwisser.” In Hubertus Büschel and Daniel Speich (eds.). Entwicklungswelten. Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 33–59. Lingard, B. 2009. “Researching Education Policy in a Globalized World: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations.” Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education 108/2, 226–46 Lu, Catherine. 2011. “Colonialism as Structural Injustice: Historical Responsibility and Contemporary Redress.” The Journal of Political Philosophy 19/3, 261–81. McCarthy, Thomas. 2009. The Idea of a Critical Theory of Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Macaulay, Thomas. 1995. “Minute on Indian Education.” In Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (eds.). The Post-­Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 428–30. Mandela, Nelson. 1994. Long Walk to Freedom. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. Muthu, Sanhar. 2003. Enlightenment Against Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mutiso, Gideon-­Cyrus and S. W. Rohio (eds.). 1975. Readings in African Political Thought. London: Heinemann Educational. Okeja, Uchenna. 2017. “Introduction: Globalizing or Transcending Global Justice.” Philosophical Papers 46/1, 1–11. Plagemann, Johannes. 2009. “Reformprojekt ‘Dezentralisierung in Afrika’ – zum Scheitern verurteilt? Das Beispiel Mosambik.” GIGA Focus 11, 1–8. Rahnema, Majid. 2010. “Poverty.” In Sachs, Wolfgang (ed.). The Development Dictionary. 2nd edn. London: Zed Books, 158–76. Said, Edward. 1995. “Orientalism.” In Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (eds.). The Post-­Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 87–91.

180   Postcolonial critiques of education Sen, Amartya. 2003. “Democracy and Its Global Roots. Why Democratization is not the Same as Westernization.” New Republic October 6, 28–35. Sen, Amartya. 2006. The Argumentative Indian. Writings on Indian Culture, History and Identity. London: Penguin Books. Smith, Rhona. 2014. “The Right to Education and Human Rights Education.” In Smith, Rhona (ed.). Textbook on International Human Rights. 6th edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 333–46. Smith, Vincent. 1909. Asoka. Buddhist Emperor of India. Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press. Smith, Vincent. 1917. Akbar. The Great Mogul. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Spinner-­Halev, Jeff. 2012. Enduring Injustice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spivak, Gayatri. 1995. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (eds.). The Post-­Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 24–8. Stuenkel, Oliver. 2013. “Rising Powers and the Future of Democracy Promotion: The Case of Brazil and India.” Third World Quarterly 34/2, 339–55. Tagore, Rabindranath. 1913. Gitanjali. London: Macmillan. Thiong’o, Ngugi wa. 1995. “On the Abolition of the English Department.” In Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (eds.). The Post-­Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 438–42. Tiffin, Helen. 1995. “Post-­colonial Literatures and Counter-­Discourse.” In Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (eds.). The Post-­Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 95–98. Vlswanathan, Gauri. 1995. “The Beginnings of English Literary Study in British India.” In Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (eds.). The Post-­Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 431–7. Williams, Melissa and Mark Warren. 2014. “A Democratic Case for Comparative Political Theory.” Political Theory 42/1, 26–57. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1998. “Demokratie und Konsensus in Traditioneller Afrikanischer Politik.” Poylog. Zeitschrift für interkulturelles Philosophieren 2, 12–21. World Economic Forum. 2011. Global Education Initiative. Available online via www. weforum.org/reports/global-­education-initiative-­retrospective-partnerships-­educationdevelopment-­2003–2011.

8 Conclusion

1  Introduction The three major aims of this book were to argue for a conception of global democratic justice as the normative ground of educational public policy, to defend a global democratic conception of educational justice and to vindicate a global democratic conception of citizenship education. According to my conception of global democratic justice, the fundamental political requirement of justice is to build up appropriately arranged domestic and international basic structures of justification that will permit citizens and state representatives to participate in the domestic, inter- and transnational processes of opinion and will formation. The recognition of such a conception as the normative ground of educational public policies means that these policies should be justified relative to how efficient or effective they are in realizing this fundamental political requirement of global justice. Yet I have argued in this book that such a normative justification of educational public policies should not proceed directly on the basis of such a conception of global democratic justice. Rather, I have maintained that such a justification should occur on the basis of conceptions of educational justice and citizenship education – conceptions that, in turn, should be justified on the basis of the conception of global democratic justice. Therefore, in order to further substantiate a normative conception of educational public policy that is based on considerations of global justice, this book also articulated and vindicated specific conceptions of global democratic educational justice and global democratic citizenship education. In this way this book bridges political philosophy and philosophy of education and fills a gap in the literature, since there currently exists neither a (democratic) conception of global educational justice nor a conception global citizenship education that is based on considerations of global (democratic) justice. This is curious, because political philosophy and philosophy of education are, at least with regard to theorizing justice, systematically related to one another. Political philosophers defend normative conceptions of justice that assume that citizens can be guided by certain ideas of these conceptions, which requires showing how citizens could become able to orient themselves normatively in this way through certain educational processes. Thus political

182   Conclusion p­ hilosophers need to rely on a certain philosophy of education so as to show how through the realization of certain rights to education and a certain kind of ­citizenship education citizens would form such a normative orientation. Yet bridging these two areas of philosophy is not only an idle academic exercise. Rather, there are several real world problems that can be neither properly grasped nor adequately resolved without engaging in the kind of political philosophy of education and philosophy of political education that I have pursued in this book. In the remainder of this concluding chapter I will show this by pointing at several normative and practical implications of this book, which result from the three core claims that this book defended in the pursuit of its three major aims.1 These claims are that a conception of global democratic justice constitutes the normative ground of educational public policy, that citizens of all states are entitled to democratically adequate education as a matter of global educational justice and that global democratic citizenship education must facilitate the creation of both domestic and transnational democratic consciousness.

2  Global democratic justice as the normative ground of educational public policy In this book I followed Rawls’s (1971, 3) dictum that “[j]ustice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought,”2 and argued that social institutions like those that are comprised of primary and secondary institutions of formal education should be justified relative to a particular conception of (global democratic) justice. At the beginning of this book I have already argued that unless educational public policy is justified relative to such a compelling normative ground, then it is prone to succumb to functionalism, which means that it merely reproduces the status quo and thereby reinforces rather than helps resolving the existing social and political problems (cf. Nida-­Rümelin 2013, 9–17). Traces of such a functionalism can be found in the economization of schooling (and higher education), whereby schools (and universities) are instrumentalized to reproduce the national and transnational social elites by serving as the key justifications for legitimizing economic, social and political inequalities. In Germany, for example, this is evidenced by the recent increase of private schools, which, at least to some degree, reflects the government’s as well as the parents’ lack of appreciation of the democratic importance of (public) schools (cf. Engartner and Heinbach 2015). This is why it matters to engage in discussing and taking seriously the normative grounds of educational public policy, because otherwise, as this case shows, the educational domain is doomed to be “colonized” by the more powerful social domains like the economic one.3 Therefore institutions of primary and secondary education should be assessed by reference to the democratic principles of educational justice and citizenship education that this book has developed. Thus these institutions

Conclusion   183 should be evaluated in terms of their contribution to realizing the rights to a democratically adequate education as well as in terms of their contribution to democratic consciousness. So, for example, the use of standardized tests that has become more and more common ever since the beginning of PISA should be examined relative to its effects on democratic attitudes, knowledge and skills, rather than on whether they are conducive to students’ employability and economic growth. In addition, since democratic justice is meant to replace not only human capital formation but also personal ethical autonomy as the normative ground of educational public policy, educational public policy should not actively promote the capacity for individual self-­realization. Thus different from liberal perfectionist educational public policies, the educational public policies that I defend must not have as their end the facilitation of students’ pursuit of original experiments of living. Nevertheless educational public policies should enable students to think for themselves as to whether they can authentically endorse the particular conceptions of the good life into which they have been socialized. So they should aim at cultivating in students a particular kind of self-­respect as a normative authority that is capable of rejecting certain norms and values that do not meet the relevant criteria of justification. This is why philosophers must emphasize in academic and public discourse the distinction between a Millian perfectionist liberal education on the one hand, and a Rawlsian political liberal education on the other hand. Otherwise the educational public policies that are directed at facilitating autonomy will be perceived as highly individualistic and thus as an idiosyncratic attempt to impose a liberal perfectionist understanding of the good life. Yet such an understanding conflicts not only with communitarian, religious and spiritual understandings of the good life, but is also in tension with – for lack of a better term – “postmodern” understandings of what it means to live well that emphasize the relevance of being different, hybrid and non-­identical. Finally, the rejection of liberal perfectionist education also implies that the point of multicultural education, which this book identifies as core component of citizenship education, is not that such an education is best in order to facilitate the choice as to which way of life is most fitting for a student’s individual constitution. Rather, multicultural education must help students to appreciate the contingency and thus artificiality of their own culture, as well as facilitate empathy among those who do not share the same culture. Such an understanding of oneself and others is crucial for democratic decision making, because it is unlikely that in its absence students will consider revising as future citizens their own views in light of the demands and requests from their co-­citizens or from citizens of other states. Therefore multicultural education should promote the capacity of being able to familiarize oneself with one’s own culture as well as with other cultures by way of teaching certain general features of cultures such as their heterogeneity, historicity and changeability.

184   Conclusion

3  Global democratic educational justice My global conception of democratic educational justice holds that rights to democratically adequate education must be recognized in all states. Only once that these rights are realized as a matter of fundamental democratic educational justice should educational public policies be targeted at other educational concerns such as equal educational opportunity. But, as I also maintained, not only must states be concerned with the realization of these rights domestically. Rather, states should also understand themselves, together with other powerful international actors, as being morally responsible for realizing these rights of citizens from other states. One general normative implication of my global conception of democratic educational justice is simply that it radically challenges the conventional thinking about educational justice. This general normative implication has two specific aspects. The first aspect concerns the tendency of public discourse about educational justice to equate educational justice with some understanding of equal educational opportunity (cf. Stiftervband 2017). For if my conception of democratic educational justice is correct, then considerations of equal educational opportunity only begin to matter at the point where educational public policies are already democratically adequate. But since, at least presently, such policies tend to be democratically inadequate, concerns of equal educational opportunity should not figure prominently in discussion about educational justice. Instead, the question as to whether educational public policies are effective in securing the rights to a democratically adequate education should be at the center of the public debates involving educational justice. Consider the discussions on whether hiring teachers from groups that have attained relatively low educational achievements thus far improves the educational achievements of those students that belong to these groups (cf. Spiewak 2017). In Germany, for example, this discussion concerns the question of whether the presence of teachers with a migration background improves the ­academic achievement of students with a migration background. This discussion is driven by a concern for equal educational opportunity, because it assesses educational public policies in terms of whether they mitigate the influence of certain factors on educational achievement for which students cannot be held responsible, such as whether a student possesses a migration background. What this discussion neglects, however, is the concern for democratically adequate education, which should urge agents in public discourse to examine educational public policies in terms of their impact on rights to democratically adequate education. Thus in the case at hand, the pertinent question to ask is whether the presence of teachers from groups that thus far have not participated effectively in public discourse will improve the future democratic participation of those students who belong to these groups. Moreover, when answering this question, it no longer suffices to focus solely on the effects that such teacher

Conclusion   185 hiring practices have on students who belong to democratically disadvantaged groups – for example, by investigating whether such students thereby gain in self-­respect. In addition, it is also important to consider whether, and if so, how, such teaching hiring practices change the democratic attitudes of those who do not belong to these groups from which these teachers stem. Considerations like these should become the focus of the public deliberation about educational justice as long as it is the case that educational public policies are democratically inadequate. Another reason why such a focus is important is that otherwise the public discourse on equal educational opportunity suggests that a particular notion of success relative to which (educational) opportunities should be equalized already has been established democratically. But as long as political procedures are not properly democratic, the use of any particular notion of success, for example income and wealth, reflects merely the idiosyncratic understandings of success of those who currently dominate the public discourse. Thus, under undemocratic conditions, the political defense of a particular understanding of the principle of equal educational opportunity fulfills an ideological function. For by suggesting the presence of a democratic consensus about the particular notion of success relative to which educational opportunity should be equalized, the political defense of this principle covers up the fact that such a consensus does not exist. Thereby, whenever such a consensus does not exist, the use of a particular notion of success in order to specify the meaning of equal educational opportunity and to regulate educational public policies accordingly reflects a subtle exercise of social domination. Hence conceiving educational justice in terms of democratic educational justice can help to detect certain “Thrasymachusean” formulations of educational justice, which merely serve the interests of the more powerful.4 The second aspect of the way in which my democratic conception of global educational justice challenges conventional moral thinking about educational justice is that it requires viewing the realization of the rights to democratically adequate education of citizens from other states as concerns of justice rather than as considerations of charity or humanity.5 Thus, one must not think of such democratic education solely as the objective of charitable action that is supererogatory, or as a matter of preventing great human suffering at small cost. Instead, the claim that rights to democratically adequate education are indeed the concern of global educational justice means, among other things, that their realization should enjoy priority over other educational objectives that cannot be justified in this way by considerations of justice. So, for example, educational public policies that merely strive at rendering its population more competitive in examinations like that of PISA are unjustifiable if the rights to democratically adequate education of citizens from other states could be effectively realized by designing educational public policies differently.

186   Conclusion

4  Global democratic citizenship education Finally, my conception of global democratic citizenship education permits us to analyze more accurately the recent proliferation of nationalist and populist political parties. For the way in which this book vindicates this conception suggests that the exclusively domestic conceptions of democratic citizenship education have facilitated the rise of these nationalist political parties in the first place.6 This is because these conceptions have possibly contributed to generating the expectation that exclusively national democratic decision making is feasible, although processes of economic, legal and political globalization have rendered such decision making much more difficult and even impossible to attain. These processes include, for example, tax competition, the formulation and implementation of international legal human rights norms and the regulation of the effects of climate change. Thereby, due to the failure to properly incorporate these globalizing processes within the theory and practice of democratic citizenship education, expectations about the feasibility of democratic decision making are raised and subsequently unfulfilled. This creates a disappointment which breeds an anger or frustration vis-­à-vis the allegedly democratic national arrangements of political decision making, which, in turn, supports the nationalist and populist parties that promise to “take back control” (cf. Müller (2016) and Lilla (2017)). It thus appears to be a desirable development that within several societies as well as at the inter-­and transnational levels there are already many initiatives under way that promote global citizenship education (cf. UNESCO 2015). My analysis suggests that a much earlier and wholehearted implementation of global democratic citizenship education could have avoided the rise of the nationalist parties in two ways: first, by lowering the expectations as to how many and which kind of problems can be effectively dealt with democratically on the domestic level; and second, by forming a transnational democratic consciousness that facilitated the democratic resolutions of various problems at the inter-, trans- and supranational levels. Therefore, like other scholars who defend conceptions of global citizenship education, I have also come to claim that global as opposed to merely domestic citizenship education should receive a much greater attention in the schools. Such an education must, among other things, build the moral consciousness that recognizes that it is unacceptable to arbitrarily prioritize national concerns such as the relative national economic standing over global concerns such as eradicating severe economic poverty. In addition, a global citizenship education will also render obsolete ethno-­nationalist conceptions of citizenship that lead to marginalization among co-­citizens. Yet different from the other conceptions of global citizenship education, my conception is fundamentally committed to democratic norms and principles at the domestic and at the inter- and transnational levels. One implication of this is that norms which claim to have a universal validity, including and in particular those that underlie global democratic citizenship education, must themselves be

Conclusion   187 the potential subject matter of a democratic debate. Another implication is that global citizenship education must not remain exclusive and address merely those who belong to the social, economic and political elites of their respective societies – even if these elites possessed a global moral consciousness. Thus, such education must be part and parcel of the public policies of education that are meant to include every student within all states. For unless such global citizenship education is fully inclusive in its scope and not restricted in its accessibility, it will instead further contribute to social polarization and exacerbate the national and transnational social, economic and political inequalities. A second implication of my commitment to a democratic form of global citizenship education is that educational public policies of citizenship education must be conceived in a critical or reflexive manner. They must be informed by the potentially problematic normalizing and ideological effects that they can have. What is therefore necessary in educational policy making is an ethics of responsibility. Such an ethics is not simply based on the motivation to reduce injustices, but in addition to this also requires carefully analyzing the foreseeable effects of particular policies in a self-­critical manner. Such an ethics of responsibility in educational public policy making will require situating educational public policies within the ongoing societal as well as inter- and transnational developments. For example, certain courses of civic education must not present a society’s political past and present in an excessively favorable manner. They must instead acknowledge that despite the long history of educational and political attempts to realize public autonomy, most citizens in most societies do not possess such autonomy. Another case in point is that one should question to what extent a transnational democratic consciousness can be effectively cultivated in schools when, among other things, the global order of schooling has ever since its inception been structured along nationalist lines. Thus, even if courses in civic education emphasized the importance of transnational democratic deliberation, it is unclear whether that becomes effective as long as these courses consist of students who are co-­ nationals. So probably it is necessary that processes of global democratic citizenship education partially transcend the nationally structured school systems. After all, at least within the European and North Amer­ican contexts, these systems have been put in place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for the very purpose of creating a common national consciousness among all citizens from different classes and regions. Therefore one should consider delegating certain parts of the  authority over educational public policy making to inter- and supranational organizations. This would allow these organizations to arrange supplementary forms of transnational schooling that promoted more effectively transnational democratic conscientization.

Notes 1 These practical implications must not be conceived as blueprints for action. Instead, they should be understood as philosophical contributions to democratic deliberation.

188   Conclusion They represent programmatic ideas for a different kind of democratic education that should be implemented if they found democratic support. Notably, though, education for global citizenship is not an abstract philosophical idea but a reality in educational policy, especially in Western countries (cf. Mannion et al. 2011). 2 Similarly, Forst (2012, 1) claims that justice is “[t]he most important normative concept” that applies to “norms and institutions” that claim to be justified. 3 Walzer (1983, ch. 7) speaks of the “domination” of the educational sphere. 4 See Bourdieu and Passeron (1971) for a similar kind of analysis of the ideology of talent inherent in the conception of equal educational opportunity. 5 In Culp (2014, 2016, 2018) I explain in greater detail the distinctions between acting on the basis of considerations of humanity or of justice or of charity; on these distinctions, cf. also Barry (1982), Beitz (1999, 128), Pogge (2004) and Forst (2014, ch. 1). 6 By this I do not mean to claim, however, that the national bias in democratic citizenship education is the most important or even the only factor that explains the rise of populist and nationalist parties. I only claim that this national bias is one among many factors, the relative importance of which I am unable to assess.

References Barry, Brian. 1982. “Humanity and Justice in Global Perspective.” In Pennock, Roland and John W. Chapman (eds.). Nomos 24: Ethics, Economics and the Law. New York: New York University Press, 219–52. Beitz, Charles. 1999 [1979]. Political Theory and International Relations. 2nd edn. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre and Jean-­Claude Passeron. 1971. Die Illusion der Chancengleichheit. Untersuchungen zur Soziologie des Bildungswesens am Beispiel Frankreich. Stuttgart: Klett. Culp, Julian. 2014. Global Justice and Development. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Culp, Julian. 2016. “Toward Another Development Practice.” In Barcelos, Paulo and Gabriele de Angelis (eds.). International Development and Humanitarian Aid. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 79–107. Culp, Julian. 2018. “Global and Social Justice in Development.” In Drydyk, Jay and Lori Keleher (eds.). Handbook of Development Ethics. London: Routledge. Engartner, Tim and Gesa Heinbach. 2015. “Geschäftsmodell Privatschule.” Blätter für Deutsche und Internationale Politik 11, 111–21. Forst, Rainer. 2012. The Right to Justification: Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice. New York: Columbia University Press. Forst, Rainer. 2014. Justification and Critique. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lilla, Mark. 2017. The Once and Future Liberal. New York: Harper Collins. Mannion, Greg, Gert Biesta, Mark Priestley and Hamish Ross. 2011. “The Global Dimension in Education and Education for Global Citizenship: Genealogy and Critique.” Globalisation, Societies and Education 9/3–4, 443–56. Müller, Jan-­Werner. 2016. What is Populism? Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Nida-­Rümelin, Julian. 2013. Philosophie einer humanen Bildung. Hamburg: edition Körber-Stiftung. Pogge, Thomas. 2004. “ ‘Assisting’ the Global Poor.” In Chatterjee, Deen (ed.). The Ethics of Assistance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 260–88. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Conclusion   189 Spiewak, Martin. 2017. “Lehrer mit Migrationshintergrund: Die Überschätzten.” Die Zeit 38. Stifterverand für die Deutsche Wissenschaft. 2017. Hochschulbildungsbericht. Essen: SDW. UNESCO. 2015. Global Citizenship Education. Topics and Learning Objectives.  Paris: UNESCO. Walzer, Michael. 1983. Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic Books.

Index

academic education 54

Burtt, Shelley 46

Balzer, Nicole 138, 152 belief 8, 26, 27, 45, 115, 124, 126, 138, 146, 149 Ben-Porath, Sigal 99, 104 Bhaba , Homi 163 Böckenförde, Wolfgang 26 Bourdieu, Pierre 45 Brazil 54, 170 Bretton Woods institutions 94 Brighouse, Harry 11, 56–61, 63–7, 71 Buchanan, Allen 47 Buddhist councils 167

Calhoun, Craig 18 Callan, Eamonn 5, 87, 99 capital investments 95 Christman, John 148 citizenship education 109, 118, 181; conceptions of 9, 112, 116, 117–18, 181; ends and processes of 87, 117; global conceptions of 10; for global consciousness 111–12; goal of 123; moral cosmopolitan conception of 114; shared fate conception of 7 civic-national identity 99–100 climate change 1 Cohen, G.A. 17, 46 colonial education 163; European-style 163; policies 165; practice 164, 169 colonialism 161, 169; effects of 162; end of 162 communitarian solidarity 91 complex equality 81 contemporary political philosophers 3–6 contemporary social relations 161 contemporary space 111 contradiction 170–1 convergence hypothesis 113 cosmopolitan education 114, 123 cosmopolitanism 18, 114 Costa, Victoria 43, 117, 121–2 creating citizens 87 critical reflection 122 Culp, Julian 46, 84, 131, 177 cultural diversity, conditions of 122 cultural groups 6, 115 cultural pluralism 115 cultural self-determination 6 cultures 125–6 curriculum 27

Achebe, Chinua 176 Adorno, Theodor 140–1 advocacy 173; transnational forms of 172 Al-Quds University 136 Altbach, Philip 169 Anderson, Elizabeth 11, 56, 57, 64, 65, 69, 88–91, 93, 157 anti-thesis of domination 146 Apel, Karl-Otto 36 Appiah, Anthony Kwame 164 Aristotle 34 Arneson, Richard 35 Ashcroft, Bill 163, 164–5 authoritarian indoctrination 137 autonomization 151 autonomy 30, 31, 45; capacity for 137; conception of 138, 142, 145, 148, 156; education for 137, 138, 146, 150–3; ideology of 149–54; illusions of 138; independent self 143–5; normalization through education 146–9; normative conception of 145; realization of 137, 146; search for 141; self-identical and unitary self 140–3; social dimensions of 157; transparent self 138–40

Index   191 deliberative democratic theory 38–9 Democracy and Education (Dewey) 109 democratic citizenship education 110, 115; conceptions of 161, 162; domestic conceptions of 98, 100–1, 110–11, 113; influential conception of 90; moral responsibility for 102; practice of 93–4; principles of 102; reflexive mode of 171; transnational practices of 169–72 democratic conception of justice 33, 118, 129, 145 democratic conscientization 119–20, 123; transnational see transnational democratic conscientization democratic consciousness 119; concept of 87; creation of 87, 115; domestic 101, 102, 115; formation of 87, 119; sense of 98; transnational 101–2, 116, 117, 119, 127, 128, 175 democratic culture 88, 99, 100, 9197 democratic decision making 41, 48, 64, 72, 74, 77, 80, 89, 101, 116, 183, 186 democratic deliberation 74, 79, 80, 184, 187–8 democratic education 83; conceptions of 42, 89, 164; international practices of 177; in schools 176 democratic educational adequacy 56–7, 64–5, 71–2; defense of 65; epistemic inaccessibility objection 67–8; leveling down objection 68–9; misapplication objection 65–6; natural aristocracy objection 66–7; parental liberty violation objection 69–71 democratic educational justice 184; conception of 73–4, 166, 170; conceptions of 162; global 77, 161, 184–5; principles of 166 democratic equality 83 democratic international system 48 democratic justice 41; conception of 119; global conception of 39–40, 101; moral foundation of 172 democratic legitimation 95 democratic principles 34; arbitrary extrapolation of 15, 161; commitment to 93–4; validity of 94 democratic theory of justice 130 development cooperation 169–70, 175 Dewey, John 65, 109, 122 digitalization 4 discourse 47–8; theory of justice 47; theory of morality 36 Docker, John 166

domestic bias 2, 11, 24, 87–9, 94, 100, 103, 113 domestic conceptions of justice 24 domestic democracy, counterproductivity for 97–8 domestic democratic citizenship education 170 domestic equal educational opportunity 102 domestic justice 2, 11; consciousness for 1 Dworkin, Ronald 31 ecological degradation 4 ecological sustainability 10 economic globalization 94–6, 101 economic transnationalization 95, 101 education: cosmopolitan sort of 122; mutual dependence of 7–13; philosophy of 109; political philosophy of 6–7; practices of 90; West principles of 166 educational achievement 81; inequalities in 54 educational justice 75; conceptions of 2, 11, 12, 56, 64, 71–2, 181; demands of 73; fundamental requirement of 56; principles of 56, 71 educational neocolonialism 169 educational perspectives, global problems from 1–3 educational philosophers 87 educational philosophy 87, 109, 177; literature in 130 educational practices 14–16, 34, 60, 124, 129, 137, 155, 156 educational public policy 3, 9, 10–11, 16, 24–7, 29, 30, 40, 82, 91, 97, 117, 119, 148, 181; economization of 5; functionalism 26–7; global democratic justice 33–44; human capital formation 27–9; liberal perfectionist education 29–33; neglected issues of 7; normative ground of 25, 182–3; normative questions of 3 educational resources 12, 55; “external” 55, 62; inequalities in 55; private/public 55, 63, 67; publicly funded 57–8; statefunded 56; use of 71 educational scholars 44, 109, 111–12, 138–40, 148–9, 153–4; on autonomy education 118; critique of 149–50; philosophers and 113–14; works of 137 educational systems 72 empirical parochialism 113

192   Index empowerment 173–5; transnational forms of 172 English: language 165; universality and superiority of 166 epistemic inaccessibility objection 67–8 epistemic injustices 131, 132 epistemic limitations 152–3, 170, 175 epistemic modesty 14, 124 equal citizenship: defined 64; emphasis on 65 equal development of potentials 82 equal educational opportunity 54–6, 70, 76, 82, 184; conceptualization of 71; considerations of 73; determination and justification of 59; detriment of 73; educational resources for 78; from equal moral respect to 58–9; “extreme” conception of 64; formal 59–61; importance of 58, 75; interpretation of 55, 60; plural meanings of 55; practical implications for 58; principle of 56–7, 65, 75, 83, 185; radical 62–5, 67; understanding of 58; validity of 71; violation of 70 ethics of responsibility 187 ethno-nationalism 99 EU see European Union (EU) European political consciousness 8–9 European Union (EU) 8, 94, 96, 108 external educational resources 55, 62, 81 facilitate autonomy 31 fair cooperation 130–1 fair equal educational opportunity 61–2 Fanon, Frantz 163 feminism 162 flourishing 32 formal education 92 formal educational achievement 11–12, 81 formal equal educational opportunity 59–61 formal equality of opportunity 60–1 Forst, Rainer 36, 37, 42, 45–7 freedom-centered theory of justice 46 Freire, Paulo 168, 170, 177 Fricker, Miranda 131 Friedman, Thomas 95 functionalism 26–7, 182 functionalist conception of education 112 fundamental democratic educational justice 74 Gandhi, Mahatma 168 Gardner, Howard 111

gender equality 97–8 generality 36–8, 47 Germany 10, 26, 54; cultures in 125 global citizenship education 1, 9–10, 113–14, 186; conceptions of 10, 110, 111; issues of 2; normative conception of 110; principles of 2 global consciousness 111; citizenship education for 111–12; conception of citizenship education 113; formation of 111–13 global democratic citizenship education 88–9, 186–7; Anderson and Satz 90–2; deficits of 92–100; global conception of 100–2; Gutmann 89–90 global democratic educational justice 54–7, 184–5; democratic educational adequacy 64–71; democratic educational justice 71–7; equal educational opportunity 57–64; global conception of 77–9 global democratic justice 33–44, 181, 182–3; conception of 40, 118 global economic integration 4, 113 global educational justice 1–2, 12–14, 24, 79, 181–2, 185 globalization 88, 109; centrality of 110; citizenship 109; conditions of 88; economic 94–6, 101; homogenizing view of 113; processes of 100 global justice 176; conceptions of 7–8, 11, 13, 16; considerations of 164; implications of 17–18; literature on 13; mutual dependence of 7–13; obligations of 9; perspectives of 1; realization of 9 global learning 110 global legal language 97 global problems 1 Gosepath, Stefan 63 group homogeneity 92 groupthink, phenomenon of 124 Gutmann, Amy 33, 49, 65, 88–90, 121, 177; conception of democratic citizenship education 92–4 Habermas, Jürgen 36, 42, 46, 142; theory of communicative action 48 hermeneutic injustices 131 hermeneutic sensibility 121 hermeneutic skills 110; development of 124–5 historicity 126, 183 Honneth, Axel 3, 4, 7, 16, 24, 46, 120 hubris 170–2

Index   193 human capital conception of education 4 human capital formation 24, 27–9, 183 human equality 88, 93 human flourishing 43 human rights, realization of 169 ideology 138, 151 IMF see International Monetary Fund (IMF) independent self 143–5 India 164–5; spiritual beliefs in 126 individual agency 144 individual self-realization 183 institutionalism 8 “institutionalist” approach 9 institutions 182–3 instrumental reasoning 46 international capital liberalization 95 international capital markets 95 international competition, pressures of 96 international decision making 77, 101 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 96 international organizations 94 international political discourses 39–40 international political order 119 international principles of justice 119 international trade 7, 128; liberalization of 10 intrinsic value of education 58 Israel 136 Israeli–Palestinian conflict 136 Jencks, Christopher 55–7, 61, 81; limitations of conception 58 joint authorship 48 Justice and the Politics of Difference (Young) 35 justice, international principles of 119 justification: democratic justice 35–9; deontological 42; of economic growth 28; for global democratic justice 34; immanent 34; legitimacy of private property 26; micro-level 27–8; of personal autonomy 31, 40; for public policies of education 33; structures of 38, 40; system-level 27 justificatory authority 121 Kantian model 141 Kant, Immanuel 5, 120 Kukathas, Chandran 35 Lange, Dirk 87–8, 111 leveling down objection 68–9

liberal education: choice of 163; contemporary theories of 25; for personal ethical autonomy 44 liberal-egalitarian theory of justice 58 liberal idea of neutrality 42 liberalism 162 liberalization of international trade 10 liberal perfectionist education 29–33, 183 liberal political philosophy 56 liberal political theory 162–3 liberty 148 Macedo, Stephen 6 MacIntyre, Alasdair 147 Mandela, Nelson 167–8 Mansilla, Veronica Boix 111 Marshall, Thomas 64 Marxism 162 Masschelein, Jan 142, 146 material goods 28 mental openness 121–2 meritocratic conception 61–2 meritocratic equality of opportunity 82 meta-skill of being 125 Meyer-Drawe, Käte 140, 144, 150 Mill, John Stuart 29 misapplication objection 65–6 modernization 113 moral cosmopolitan education 113–17 moral development 26 moral motivation 26–7 moral personal autonomy 139–40 moral-political theory 99 moral responsibility 99, 102 moral tribalism 99, 104 motivational limitation 152–3 multicultural education 115, 125, 183 national decision-making process 116 nationalism 104 national political communities 40 national sovereignty 95 natural aristocracy objection 66–7 natural talents 81 “neo-colonial” practices 161 neutrality 31, 44; liberal idea of 42 NGOs see non-governmental organizations (NGOs) nondiscrimination, principle of 90 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 70 nonrepression, principle of 90 normalization 137, 148

194   Index Nussbaum, Martha 3, 17, 24, 28, 47, 99, 110, 114–16, 122, 168; capability-based theory 117; citizenship education 117; conception of global citizenship education 115–16 Nyerere, Julius 168 OECD see Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) opportunity principle 66 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 5, 102 Oxford Handbook of Political Theory (Rawls) 35 Palestine 136 parental educational liberty 73, 74–5 parental liberty violation objection 69–71 parental partiality 70–1 Parijs, Van 131 Passeron, Jean-Claude 45 patriotism 99 peace education 136; defense of 137 perfectionism 157 perfectionist liberalism 29 personal autonomy 24, 27, 32–3; education for 46 personal ethical autonomy 139, 142–3, 147, 183; conception of 139; education for 148 personal moral autonomy 40–4, 139, 143, 145; realization of 148 Peters, Bernhard 47–8 philosophy of education 17 Piketty, Thomas 81–2 Plato 5; conception of justice 9 Pogge, Thomas 84 political authority 96 political conscientization 170–2 political cosmopolitan education 114 political decentralization 173 political discourses 39, 48 political education, philosophy of 6–7 political empowerment 173, 174 political philosophers 181 political philosophy 17 political power 94–5, 97, 127 political transnationalization 94 Pongratz, Ludwig 146 positive self-determination 49 postcolonial critiques of democratic education 161–2; epistemic deficiencies 172–4; hubris 170–2; postcolonial theory 162–4; transnational practices

of 168–70; Western parochialism 164–8 postcolonial relations, analysis of 176 postcolonial theorists 161; assumption of 161 postcolonial theory 161, 164; defined 162; domain of 162 postmodern theory 164 poverty 1 power: problematize relations of 150; selfunderstanding and relations of 145–6 pragmatic theory of meaning 142 primary education 60, 182–3 principle of justification 36–7 private schools 60 processes of autonomization 150 promote autonomy 31 public autonomy 40–4, 145, 170, 187 public educational resources 55 public policies of education 33 public reasoning 172 radical equal educational opportunity 62–5, 67 Rahnema, Majid 177 Rawls, John 17, 25, 31, 35, 61, 82–3, 104, 117, 147, 148, 182; political philosophy 48; theory of justice 48 Raz, Joseph 29–30 reasonable pluralism 41 reciprocity 36–8, 47; criterion of 156–7 recognition-based conception of justice 18 reflexive democratic citizenship education 170 Reichenbach, Roland 141 relational interpretation 90 religions 167 religious doctrines 46 Ricken, Norbert 151 Rieger-Ladich, Markus 151 romanticism 126 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 5 Said, Edward 165 Sandel, Michael 147 Sattin, Carolyn 110, 112, 113 Satz, Debra 11, 56–7, 60, 64–6, 69, 82, 88, 89, 91, 93 Scheffler, Samuel 91 schools/schooling 60; democratic importance of 182; language policies 87 secondary education 60, 182–3 self-creation 30, 46 self-identical and unitary self 140–3

Index   195 self-reflection 151–2 self-respect 120 Sen, Amartya 28, 166–7 smart globalization 96 social autonomy, Hegelian notion of 157 social conditions 145, 152, 172 social contexts 113, 140–2, 164 social cooperation 122, 130–1 social integration 153, 157 social justice 1, 11, 13, 88 social-ontological critique 6 social order 13, 24–8, 34, 44, 112 social power 144, 157; structures of 145 social practices 89, 124 social relations 143–4 social relationships 130 socio-economic goods 59–61, 66 socio-economic inequalities 58–9, 81–2, 116 socio-political order 150; principles of 171–2 socio-political orders 38, 136–7, 149–50, 154, 171–2 socio-political practices 149 socio-political reality 138, 153 solidarity 91, 99 South American cultures 125 spiritual beliefs in India 126 Spivak, Gayatri 163 Stojanov, Krassimir 82 Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo 110, 112–13 subjectivation 143–4 subjective reality of individual 111 supranational contexts 94–7 Swift, Adam 56–61, 63–5, 67, 71 system-level justifications of education 27 Tagore, Radindrantah 167 Taylor, Charles 46 tertiary education policy 17 Thiong’o, Ngugi wa 161 “Thrasymachusean” formulations of educational justice 185 Tiffin, Helen 165, 176 trade policies 94 traditional communities 147 transcultural communication 112 transnational advocacy 172 transnational citizenship education, forms of 172

transnational consciousness 102 transnational democracy 98–100 transnational democratic conscientization 101, 109–11, 117–20; attitudes for 120–3; epistemic presuppositions of 123; formation of global consciousness 111–13; knowledge for 123–4; moral cosmopolitan education 113–17; skills for 124–7; terms of 117 transnational democratic consciousness 101–2, 116, 117, 119, 127, 128, 175 transnational democratic deliberation 187 transnational educational practices 169 transnationalization 88, 101; political and economic processes of 96; processes of 100 transnational political discourses education 124–5 transnational political mobilization 127 transnational social movements 48 transparent self 138–40 undemocratic domestic contexts 92–4 unequal educational opportunities 68–70 UNESCO 102, 161, 168, 173 UNICEF 102 unitary self 140–3 United Kingdom 54 Viswanathan, Gauri 163, 166 von Humboldt, Wilhelm 29 Waldron, Jeremy 17 Walzer, Michael 81, 82, 177 West Bank 136 Western education: universality and superiority of 166; “universal” standards of 165; universal validity of 165 Western parochialism 164–8 Williams, Melissa 99 Wiredu, Kwasi 168 World Economic Forum 168 World Food Programme 123 World Trade Organization 94 Young, Iris 35, 47 Ypi, Lea 9