Democracy and Education

Much has been written, critiquing the impact of neoliberal politics on education. Such critique is often accompanied by calls for a return to, or a renewal of, democracy in society, coupled with an advocacy of democratic education. Such calls, complex and problematic in themselves, are further complicated by the recent rise of populism and the growth of popular forms of extremism – arguably the fruits of a certain democracy. But these calls also raise questions about what we mean by democracy in the 21st century. How should we understand this highly charged, yet constitutionally complex, term? What is the nature of the relationship between forms of politics in wider society and education? Does democratic education require its subjects to submit to particular ‘democratic’ dispositions, and, if so, how might this be reconciled with the tensions and contradictions inhering in democracy between, for example, freedom and equality or between the demos and the necessary Other against whom it defines itself? Can some form of democratic education be compatible with expertise and authority or do the latter necessarily cause democratic education to implode, in practice, if not in theory? And what has democracy in the past and present, and what might it have in the future, to do with education, for better or worse?

This special issue engages critically and creatively with these fundamentally important social, political and educational issues, at a time when contemporary democracies are increasingly fraught and fragmented. Specifically, the papers in this special issue explore whether, and if so how, democracy could provide a template for rethinking and reworking the discourses, practices and organisational forms of education. Or is the question of democracy and education merely an irrelevance, a ‘hangover’ from a past century that has outlived any current purpose or future significance? And if so, what, if anything, should take its place?

Mendel analyses the spatial dimensions of democracy in a way that draws attention to the educational value of democratic commonality in order to advocate a pedagogy of ‘common places’. In an exploratory paper, Phelan and Rüsselbæk Hansen argue for the need to rethink the crisis in our democracy, within and beyond education, “by engaging students’ aesthetic sensibilities in multiple ways, playful schools both produce and provoke the dominant social order thereby fostering students’ taste for democracy”. Belas examines the curious case of English as a subject in English schools, in order to argue that English in England falls short of the standards of ‘powerful knowledge’ and of a democratic education conceived as social justice. Heggart and Flowers suggest that education needs to identify and define new models of citizenship education that focus, not only on strengthening capacity for active and participatory citizenship, but that also enhance students’ capacity for critical political analysis. Gamsjäger’s paper examines how depoliticised rhetoric of participation has the effect of imparting inadequate democratic competencies, including insufficient consideration of students’ perspectives, in ways that ultimately foreclose long-term possibilities for the redistribution of rights of disposal of social and economic goods. Finally, Nielsen asks whether radical student activism can be used as a ‘democratic’ means of disrupting and reshaping existing orders.