The odd malaise of democratic education: Horace Mann, Amy Gutmann and the inordinate influence of business

This article is the third of three on “Sources of Authority in Education.” All use the work of Amy Gutmann as a heuristic device to describe and explain the prevalence of market-based models of education reform in the US and the business-influenced Global Education Reform Movement. The other two are “Negating Amy Gutmann: Deliberative Democracy, Business Influence and Segmentation Strategies in Education” and “Neoliberalism and Four Spheres of Authority in American Education: Business, Class, Stratification and Intimations of Marketization.” All three are intended to be included together as chapters of my Democratic Education and Markets: Segmentation, Privatization and Sources of Authority in Education Reform. The “Negating Amy Gutmann” article looks primarily at deliberative democracy. The “Neoliberalism and Four Spheres of Authority” article, considers its main theme to be the promise of egalitarian democracy and how figures ‘such as Horace Mann, John Dewey and Gutmann’ have argued it is largely based on the promise of public education. It thus begins with a consideration of what might be called a partial historical materialist analysis – the growth of inequality in the US (and other countries) since the 1970s that correlates with much of the basis for changes in the justifications and substance of education reform. The present article, “The Odd Malaise of Democratic Education and the Inordinate Influence of Business,” continues the argument by offering some historical background and comparisons and ends by considering what happens to the philosophy of education when democracy and capitalism are at odds. It thus starts with recent history, looking at how the content and context of educational policy have changed in the US since Gutmann wrote in the 1980s. Specifically, it concerns itself with the increasing prevalence of twin notions: that our system of education must be reformed because of global competition and that the educational system should emulate the market. The article then goes back a little bit further, to the origins of the common school in the 1600s and Horace Mann’s articulation of the principles behind public education, which are shown to be in stark contrast to Education Reform. The narrative describes how the standards movement, variously, coalesced around George H. W. Bush’s America 2000 and Bill Clinton’s Goals 2000 programs, was reflected in a ‘21st-century schools’ discourse, found programmatic form in George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and it’s offspring, Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top. All of the preceding were, to a shocking degree, based on misleading and selective statistical analysis and sets goals that are unreachable even in the best of all possible worlds. The article concludes by considering paradigm change in education and its causes; I draw on both Peter Hall’s exposition of social learning 1 and Antonio Gramsci’s conceptualization of hegemony. 2

Neoliberalism and four spheres of authority in American education: Business, class, stratification, and intimations of marketization

This is the second of three articles on “Sources of Authority in Education”. All use the work of Amy Gutmann as a heuristic device to describe and explain the prevalence of market-based models of Education Reform in the United States as part of what Pasi Sahlberg terms the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM). This movement is based on neoliberal tenets and encourages the enterance of private business and the adoption of business practices and challenges long standing notions of democratic education. The first article is “Negating Amy Gutmann: Deliberative Democracy, Education and Business Influence” (to be published in Democracy and Education) and the third is “The Odd Malaise of Democratic Education and the Inordinate Influence of Business” (to be published in Policy Futures in Education). My intent is to include them, along with a fourth article, “Profit, Innovation and the Cult of the Entrepreneur: Civics and Economic Citizenship,” as chapters of a proposed volume, Democratic Education and Markets: Segmentation, Privatization and Sources of Authority in Education Reform. The “Negating Amy” article looks primarily at Deliberative Democracy. The present article considers the promise of Egalitarian Democracy and how figures such as Horace Mann, John Dewey, and Gutmann have argued it is based largely on the promise of public education. “The Odd Malaise” article begins by offering some historical background, from the origins of the common school in the 1600s to market emulation models, No Child Left Behind and how this is reflected in a “21st century schools” discourse; it ends by considering and underlying theme: what happens to the Philosophy of Education when Democracy and Capitalism are at odds. The “Profit, Innovation” article then looks at how ideological forces are popularized, considering Ayn Rand’s influence, the concept of Merit, Schumpeter’s concept of ‘creative destruction,’ and the ideal of the entrepreneur as related sources in a changing common sense, pointing out that the commonplace of identifying the innovator and the entrepreneur is misplaced. The present article accordingly begins to question business influence and suggest show we may outline its major features using Amy Gutmann’s work as a heuristic device to interpret business-influenced movements to reform public education. Originally the title was Turning Amy Gutmann on her Head. Consequently it returns to Gutmann’s Democratic Education and its three sources of authority, suggesting that the business community is a fourth source. As such, it is in a contest to supplant the systems of deliberative democracy for which Gutmann advocates. It continues with a consideration of what might be called a partial historical materialist analysis – the growth of inequality in the United States (and other countries) since the 1970s; this correlates with much of the basis for changes in the justifications and substance of Education reform. After casting this question in principal-agent terms, it then looks at both those who sought to create a public will for public education and recent reform movements that have sought to redirect public support from a unified education system and instead advocate a patchwork of charters, vouchers for private schools, on-line education, home schooling, virtual schools and public schools based on market emulation models. Drawing from other theories of education, especially Plato (and the Spartan model), Locke, and John Stuart Mill, it also suggests that it might be instructive to compare Gutmann’s three sources of authority to Abraham Kuyper’s concept of Sphere sovereignty. It concludes that ultimate authority for education is —or should be—, somewhat paradoxically, vested in the adult the child will become, creating practical problems regarding the education of the sovereign that are never fully resolved and which may, in fact, be unresolvable based on rational deliberation. Finally, it looks at one instrument of business, market segmentation, and its importance as a motivating factor for education reform.

Comissões da verdade e justiça de transição: problemas de fundações morais deliberativas para se pensar graves violações de direitos humanos massivamente praticadas

O presente artigo apresenta a teoria de Amy Gutmann e Dennis Thompson sobre as fundações morais das comissões da verdade, analisando-as a partir da relação entre a normatividade da justiça de transição e das teorias deliberativas da democracia. Defenderei que os requisitos democráticos deliberativos, por mais defensáveis que sejam do ponto de vista da democracia e da justiça e apesar de possuírem virtudes teóricas, não são adequados para se pensar contextos de transição para a democracia que lidam com legados de graves violações de direitos humanos.

Review Democratic Education by Amy Gutmann,

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Demokracja dyskursywna w myśleniu politycznym

The paper concerns one of the concepts of democracy. Each democracy assumes that the people who live together in society need certain procedures/institutions to make binding decisions that take into consideration everybody’s interests. The notion of a deliberative democracy is used to describe a system of political decisions based on the decision-making process perceived as a combination of consensus and representative democracy. Discursive democracy is a theoretical model of a political system propagated by Jurgen Habermas and Jon Elster, and also by Joshua Cohen, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson. The concept was used for the first time by Joseph M. Bessette in his work Deliberative Democracy: The Majority Principle in Republican Government in 1980, and later on in The Mild Voice of Reason in 1994. Public debate is a key aspect of the discursive concept which emphasizes the manner in which all arguments are presented in open discussion. Discursive democracy assumes a larger participation of citizens in the legislative process by means of institutionalized debates organized to complement the process of informal opinion shaping. Deliberative democracy will win an increasing number of proponents. This certainly is not only a matter of will but also of realistic opportunities to participate in the process of building a deliberative democracy.

Between conflict and consensus: Why democracy needs conflicts and why communities should delimit their intensity

The contemporary agonist thinker, Chantal Mouffe argues that conflicts are constitutive of politics. However, this position raises the question that concerns the survival of order and the proper types of conflicts in democracies. Although Mouffe is not consensus-oriented, consensus plays a role in her theory when the democratic order is at stake. This suggests that there is a theoretical terrain between the opposing poles of conflict and consensus. This can be discussed with the help of concepts and theories that seem to be standing between the two, namely compromise, debate and the borders of democracy. I will argue that we can reveal this position with the theoretical analysis of compromise in the works of F. R. Ankersmit on the historical origin of representative democracy, and Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson on the role of compromise in divided communities. J. S. Mill’s view of colliding opinions offers a moderate agonistic understanding of politics, while the concept of debate plays a similar role for Márton Szabó, a contemporary Hungarian political theorist. Finally, Mouffe’s position stands at the conflictual end of this spectrum, although conflicts are delimited on the normative ground of democracy.

Democracy, Religion, and American Education

The debate over religion in public schools in the United States since the 1960s has pitted two forces of democracy celebrated in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract against each other. The Supreme Court’s exclusion of sectarian prayer and Bible reading reflected democracy’s commitment to respect the rights of all. The politically engaged response of evangelical and conservative Christians has drawn upon democracy’s need for robust participation by ordinary citizens. While Rousseau believed that only an agreement upon a civil religion could reconcile these democratic forces, the results of a required world religions course in Modesto, California, suggests otherwise. The course enhanced students’ respect for religious liberty while allowing them to maintain their sectarian beliefs. Modesto’s course did not resolve all the dilemmas of democracy, however. The aversion to open-ended class discussions neglects the value of democratic deliberation that notable democratic theorists like Jurgen Habermas and Amy Gutmann celebrate.

Democratic Education at 30: An interview with Dr. Amy Gutmann

In this interview, Dr. Amy Gutmann discusses the legacy of her book Democratic Education after 30 years since it was first published. After presenting some of the main ideas from Democratic Education, Dr. Gutmann emphasises the importance of both democratic education and democratic deliberation as central elements of public education in a plurally diverse polity. She then discusses a range of other educational issues including access to education as key to individual opportunity and social development (from both personal and scholarly perspectives) and the civic minimum goals of education in a democracy. Throughout the interview, Dr. Gutmann also presents a number of examples of how ideas and ideals central to her teaching and scholarship have been put into practice during her tenure as President of the University of Pennsylvania. The interview concludes with a reflection on some of the most pressing challenges facing education today.

Legitimacy in bioethics: challenging the orthodoxy

Several prominent writers including Norman Daniels, James Sabin, Amy Gutmann, Dennis Thompson and Leonard Fleck advance a view of legitimacy according to which, roughly, policies are legitimate if and only if they result from democratic deliberation, which employs only public reasons that are publicised to stakeholders. Yet, the process described by this view contrasts with the actual processes involved in creating the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and in attempting to pass the Health Securities Act (HSA). Since the ACA seems to be legitimate, as the HSA would have been had it passed, there seem to be counterexamples to this view. In this essay, I clarify the concept of legitimacy as employed in bioethics discourse. I then use that clarification to develop these examples into a criticism of the orthodox view–that it implies that legitimacy requires counterintuitively large sacrifices of justice in cases where important advancement of healthcare rights depends on violations of publicity. Finally, I reply to three responses to this challenge: (1) that some revision to the orthodox view salvages its core commitments, (2) that its views of publicity and substantive considerations do not have the implications that I claim and (3) that arguments for it are strong enough to support even counterintuitive results. My arguments suggest a greater role for substantive considerations than the orthodox view allows.