Why (and How) Schools Should Engage in Political Education
(2023) Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis — Vol. 43, n° 2, p. 12-26 (2023)
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- To many people, the idea of a state-organized political education evokes indoctrination. Authoritarian states wanting to secure the obedience of their citizens indeed have a strong incentive to shape their political beliefs, and this is often what political education organized by public authorities has looked like in the past and may look like nowadays. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that a form of publicly organized political education is necessary in democratic contexts. Understood as the attempt by a political community to choose its laws while respecting the equal standing of each citizen, democracy can only succeed if citizens understand what is at stake in the decisions they have to make, are sufficiently informed about the options available to them, and show respect and concern for their fellow citizens. These democratic competencies are not innate. Currently, they are acquired mainly through family education and informal interactions in the private and professional spheres of people’s lives. My main claim in this article is that, in contexts of sufficient political pluralism, political education should more firmly be taken in charge by primary and secondary schools because it is an important and demanding collective good, unlikely to be appropriately secured without state intervention.
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Vandamme, P.-E. (2023). Why (and How) Schools Should Engage in Political Education. Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis, 43(2), 12-26. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/24972 (Original work published 2023)