Klas Roth

Freedom of Choice, Community and Deliberation

Present arrangements for the control and administration of schools in Sweden foster freedom of choice and the interests of different value communities more than ideals such as democratic deliberation. I argue that children and young people should be given the opportunity to deliberate in ‘discourse ethics’ terms during their compulsory schooling, and I suggest that their right to engage in such deliberation is contained in the national curriculum. A discourse ethics approach to democratic deliberation pays attention to whether, and to what extent, individuals are free and able to participate in joint democratic deliberation.

A cosmopolitan design of teacher education and a progressive orientation towards the highest good

In this paper I discuss a Kantian conception of cosmopolitan education. It suggests that we pursue the highest good – an object of morality – in the world together, and requires that we acknowledge the value of freedom, render ourselves both efficacious and autonomous in practice, cultivate our judgment, and unselfishly co-operate in the co-ordination and fulfilment of our morally permissible ends. Now, such an accomplishment is one of the most difficult challenges, and may not be achieved in our time, if ever. In the first part of the paper I show that we, according to Kant, have to interact with each other, and comply with the moral law in the quest of general happiness, not merely personal happiness. In the second part, I argue that a cosmopolitan design of teacher education in Kantian terms can establish moral character, even though good moral character is ultimately the outcome of free choice. Such a design can do so by optimizing the freedom of those concerned to set and pursue their morally permissible ends, and to cultivate their judgment through the use of examples. This requires, inter alia, that they be enabled, and take responsibility, to think for themselves, in the position of everyone else, and consistently; and to strengthen their virtue or self-mastery to comply, in practice, with the moral law.

Good Will: Cosmopolitan education as a site for deliberation

Why should we deliberate? I discuss a Kantian response to this query and argue that we cannot as rational beings avoid deliberation in principle; and that we have good reasons to consider the value and strength of Kants philosophical investigations concerning fundamental moral issues and their relevance for the question of why we ought to deliberate. I also argue that deliberation is a wide duty. This means that it has to be set as an end, that it is meritorious, and that we cannot specify exactly what acts can be identified with it or are required for its realization. I begin by discussing why we cannot avoid deliberation in principle, that deliberation is a wide duty and why we ought to set it as an end. In the second part I argue how deliberation can be acknowledged in cosmopolitan education, and how we can inquire into the quality of communication in terms of deliberation in such an education or elsewhere.

The Role of Examples, Current Designs and Ideas for a Cosmopolitan Design of Education.

This paper discusses the value and importance of examples in Kantian terms, and how students can cultivate their moral disposition through the use of examples in education. It is argued that students should not just copy or imitate examples automatically, nor appraise them unreflectively and uncritically. They should instead be enabled to think for themselves in the position of the other and consistently, through the use of examples. This paper also discusses the extent to which students in teacher education programmes in Sweden were enabled to cultivate a moral disposition through the use of literature which unveils a design of education in national, European and cosmopolitan terms. However, since it seems that they lacked such opportunities it is argued that they were not enabled to cultivate their moral disposition through the use of the above-mentioned literature.

Article 26 : A Principled Statement on Education

In this paper I show how Article 26 of the Declaration of Human Rights developed from its earlier versions, including basic ideas for education, to aims and purposes, and its final adaptation incorporating further democratic ideals. I also show that the Declaration “as a common standard of achievement” heralded by the General Assembly of the United Nations is a principled statement of restriction on government intervention in education, on the one hand, and a principled positive statement that those affected by state-governed education should be able to choose education for their children on the other.

Education and a progressive orientation towards a cosmopolitan society

Robin Barrow claims in his ‘Moral educations modest agenda’ that ‘the task of moral education is to develop understanding, at the lowest level, of the expectations of society and, at the highest level, of the nature of morality … [that is, that moral education] should go on to develop understanding, not of a particular social code, but of the nature of morality – of the principles that provide the framework within which practical decisions have to be made’ [Barrow, R. 2006. Moral educations modest agenda. Ethics and Education 1, no. 1: 3–13.]. Barrows words are noteworthy not only because he sets out to define the ‘modest’ agenda of moral education in terms of principles, but also because he asserts that education is important for teaching students to understand morality in such terms. However, even though he is arguing that understanding morality is important in terms of principles, he says little about their function or status, or how we cultivate ourselves so that we act in agreement with and are motivated by the principles of practical reason. In this article I therefore discuss two distinctive features of human beings and offer a Kantian notion of morality as a response to Barrows development of an understanding of morality in terms of principles. I argue that the principles Kant suggests are constitutive of action, and that we both develop our understanding and also value our humanity when we act in agreement with and are motivated by the suggested principles, and cultivate our predispositions (technical, pragmatic and moral). Moreover, I argue that we reach the goal of ‘a progressive organization of citizens of the earth into and toward the species as a system that is cosmopolitically united’ [Kant, I. 2006b. Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view. Trans. Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.] when we, inter alia, value our humanity and comply with the principles of practical reason, in practice.

Principles of the Unification of our Agency

Do we need principles of the unification of our agency, our mode of acting? Immanuel Kant and Christine Korsgaard argue that the reflective structure of our mind forces us to have some conception of ourselves, others and the world—including our agency—and that it is through will and reason, and in particular principles of our agency, that we take upon ourselves to unify and test the way(s) in which we make our lives consistent. I argue that the principles suggested—the hypothetical imperative and the categorical imperative—function to unify our understanding of ourselves and others as agents as efficacious and autonomous and that the extent to which those concerned render themselves efficacious and autonomous in cosmopolitan education or elsewhere is due to the extent to which they act in accordance with and are motivated by the suggested principles and in particular the categorical one. I first discuss how the principles function to unify our agency and how the categorical imperative functions as a test of maxims for our actions, how the will is the source of our morality, and how we are forced to have practical identities. I end with some remarks on what it means to acknowledge the mentioned principles in cosmopolitan education.

Unifying Ourselves As Efficacious, Autonomous and Creative Beings – Kant on Moral Education As a Process Without Fixed Ends

It is argued with Immanuel Kant that we as human beings ought to unify ourselves as efficacious, autonomous and creative beings, and that moral education is an open-ended and never-ending process. It is also argued that we wilfully deviate from unifying ourselves in the terms mentioned above due to our imperfect rational nature. This, however, does not suggest that we should not be able to unify ourselves in the terms suggested. On the contrary, the efforts to render ourselves efficacious, autonomous and creative should remain. It seems, however, that education in present times influences children and young people to render themselves efficacious with regard to specific desired ends, as well as being loyal and morally committed to how things stand, instead of making it possible for them to unify themselves in the above-mentioned sense. Education is therefore not an open-ended and never-ending process in moral terms.

Introduction: the world and the teacher - prospects and challenges for teacher education in the age of globalization from a cosmopolitan perspective

In the age of globalization, policy texts in, inter alia, the European Union emphasize the value and importance of enabling human beings to render themselves not merely flexible, movable, employable, and competitive as citizens on the market in knowledge-based societies, but also loyal and morally committed to European Union citizenship through education. It has also become common to stress - for example, in policy texts issued by the United Nation and OECD - the importance of enabling human beings to cultivate their creative capacity through education in order to promote economic growth in the world. However, these policy texts do not necessarily emphasize the need and value of enabling students to become cosmopolitan citizens in, inter alia, moral educational terms. On the contrary, there is a lack of focus on responding responsibly to the challenges we face in terms of globalization from a cosmopolitan perspective. The response to globalization in policy texts is, or at least seems to be, to educate people chiefly for the job market, promoting economic growth and creating the conditions for education, including teacher education, so that students render themselves efficacious, flexible, movable and creative on the job market within policy defined territories. However, how students should be educated as cosmopolitan beings on earth in imaginative, reflective, critical and moral terms in societies at large is not clear. (Published: 16 January 2013) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 5, No. 4 , 2012, pp. 187-192. http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/egp.v5i4.20295

Deliberative Pedagogy and the Rationalization of Learning

The Swedish government seems to be telling us to believe that schools should ‘impart the more unvarying forms of knowledge that constitute the common frame of reference that all in society need’ (Lpo-94 1994, p. 5), that the ‘school has the important task of imparting, instilling and forming in pupils those fundamental values on which our society is based’ (ibid., p. 3), and that those should underlie the basic approaches of learning in a democratic pluralistic society. This rationalisation of learning seems to increase the student’s understanding, and to be a reason for the agent’s - that is, the student’s - action as an informed and responsible member of a democracy. However, public education is increasingly challenged by altered conditions in our post-national societies. Economic, technological and political issues are no longer exclusively a national-state matter, but a transnational and global one. Cultural homogeneity is being increasingly challenged by increasing recognition of difference. Should teachers then only impart ‘the more unvarying forms of knowledge’ to and instil the ‘fundamental values’ of our society in children and young people in order to educate them as informed and responsible citizens? Imparting and instilling do not self-sufficiently legitimise or rationalise learning in a deliberative sense. Democratic deliberation offers a more full-fledged view of learning in deliberative democratic and pluralistic societies or so I will argue.