Education, Justice, and Democracy
Education is a contested topic, and not just politically. For years scholars have approached it from two different points of view: one empirical, focused on explanations for student and school success and failure, and the other philosophical, focused on education's value and purpose within the larger society. Rarely have these separate approaches been brought into the same conversation".Education, Justice, and Democracy" does just that, offering an intensive discussion by highly respected scholars across empirical and philosophical disciplines. The contributors explore how the institutions and practices of education can support democracy, by creating the conditions for equal citizenship and egalitarian empowerment, and how they can advance justice, by securing social mobility and cultivating the talents and interests of every individual. Then the authors evaluate constraints on achieving the goals of democracy and justice in the educational arena and identify strategies that we can employ to work through or around those constraints. More than a thorough compendium on a timely and contested topic, "Education, Justice, and Democracy" exhibits an entirely new, more deeply composed way of thinking about education as a whole and its importance to a good society.
About the Author
Danielle Allen is the UPS Foundation Professor of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She is author of "Why Plato Wrote", "The World of Prometheus", and "Talking to Strangers", the last published by the University of Chicago Press.
Rob Reich is associate professor of political science with courtesy appointments in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Education at Stanford University. He is co-editor of "Toward a Humanist Justice" and the author of "Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in American Education", the latter published by the University of Chicago Press.
Reviews
"In their introduction to this superb book, Danielle Allen and Rob Reich note that just about everything we do in education or say about it is freighted with assumptions about how our educational practice is related to the ideals of democracy and justice. Unfortunately, the pervasiveness of these assumptions is not matched by much rigorous and imaginative thought about their validity. One cause of the poverty of our educational thought is disciplinary fragmentation. The social scientists write about education with little understanding of its ethical meaning, and the philosophers write about it with blithe indifference to how our highest ideals are to be realized in an empirically complex world. What would our educational thinking look like if it captured the best social scientists and philosophers in real conversation with each other? If you want to know, then read this book. It will be an exhilarating and inspiring experience" – Eamonn Callan, Stanford University
"Danielle Allen and Rob Reich have assembled an outstanding collection of essays. Each chapter tackles essential normative and empirical questions about educational justice within a democracy: what it means, what it would look like, and how to make progress toward achieving it. These are important insights. The book's most significant accomplishment, though, emerges from reading it as a whole. It models ways of doing normatively engaged social science research, and empirically engaged political theory, that all students and scholars of justice, education, and democracy should immediately heed" – Meira Levinson, Harvard University
"'Education, Justice, and Democracy' is an important book. By bringing together a range of well-known scholars from different disciplines, it provides exceptionally thoughtful analyses of the limits and possibilities of an education that is connected to democratic egalitarianism. Danielle Allen and Rob Reich are to be commended for their fine efforts in putting a book such as this together" – Michael Apple, University of Wisconsin-Madison
