Penny Enslin

Deliberative democracy, diversity and the challenges of citizenship education

For democracies to thrive, citizens have to be taught to be democrats. How do people learn to be democrats in circumstances of diversity and plurality? We address this question via a discussion of three models of deliberative democracy: public reason (as exemplified by Rawls), discursive democracy (as exemplified by Benhabib) and communicative democracy (as exemplified by Young). Each of the three theorists contributes to an account of how to educate citizens by teaching talk. Against a commonly held assumption that the protection of diversity in a pluralist democracy requires a thin conception of citizenship education, we defend a thick conception that simultaneously fosters autonomy and participation without sacrificing tolerance of diversity.

Can ubuntu provide a model for citizenship education in African democracies

Some proponents of Africanism argue that African traditional education and the principles of ubuntu should provide the framework for citizenship education. While conceding that understandable concerns lie behind defences of ubuntu as underpinning African democracy, we argue that the Africanist perspective faces various problems and makes substantial errors: political, moral, epistemic and educational. While democracy and democratic citizenship necessarily involve sensitivity to local context, their fundamental principles and tenets are universal. Failure to acknowledge this comes at a substantial price. Taking as its initial focus an analysis and critical evaluation of Malegapuru William Makgobas critique of liberal democracy, the paper questions the purported uniqueness of ubuntu and its value and efficiency as a practical guide to action and policy, as well as its capacity to indicate how conflict between its associate principles and values might be resolved, insofar as these principles and values are indeed morally worthy.

Citizenship Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa

How is citizenship understood in South Africa, a new democracy with a deeply divided past? This paper describes the approach to citizenship education in recent educational policy, and in curriculum developments. It does so against the background of a conceptualisation of citizenship based on both the participatory vision of the anti-apartheid struggle and on the citizen as presented in the new Constitution. The shifting nature of the divisions that still deeply divide this society is explored, together with tensions between what can be called the official conceptualisation of citizenship and a more popular interpretation of citizenship as access to socio economic rights. This tension poses potential problems in the democratic polity, as well as a challenge for citizenship education.

Representation, Identification and Trust: Towards an Ethics of Educational Research

Crudely put, educational research is unethical when it misrepresents or misidentifies—and so betrays—its putative beneficiaries or the goods and values they hold dear. How can researchers guard against these vulnerabilities? While acknowledging the vulnerabilities of educational research to abuses of trust and representation, and that there is no Archimedean point from which to approach research into people’s practices, we defend a universalist conception of research ethics in education. This universalist conception is developed via an examination of a central debate in feminism, contrasting Alcoff’s positionality, Caughie’s performative conception and Nussbaum’s universalist conception of feminism.

Educating for peace in the midst of violence: a South African experience

How do we educate for peace in a context of pervasive social violence? This paper explores this question as it presents the development and evaluation of a South African peace education programme at pre-school level. The programme comprised a pre-school curriculum and a teacher development course and was developed in conjunction with a team of pre-school teachers from diverse backgrounds working in a variety of settings within two South African provinces. The results of the evaluation provided strong evidence that the peace education programme resulted in a drop in aggressive behaviour among the children of the target population. The results also indicated that the teacher development course was well received by the teachers and facilitated their growth in a number of areas. Thus, the study indicated that peace education can have considerable positive impact in a country that is recovering from years of political and social violence.

Democracy, social justice and education: feminist strategies in a globalising world

Recognising the relevance of Iris Marion Youngs work to education, this article poses the question: given Iris Youngs commitment to both social justice and to recognition of the political and ethical significance of difference, to what extent does her position allow for transnational interventions in education to foster democracy? First, it explores some of Iris Youngs arguments on the relationship between democracy and social justice, with particular reference to their implications for education. Second, I argue that if her ideas are extended to the issue of global justice, the strategies which she offers should be extended, at least when it comes to educational intervention, to allow for a wider range of actions in support of global justice through education for democracy than Iris Youngs work so far seems to allow. The wider range of strategies which I propose call on western feminists and their governments to do more to promote democracy and social justice globally. This can be done in ways that are consistent with Iris Youngs stipulation that transnational interference is permissible if undertaken against dominative harm.

Multicultural education, gender and social justice: liberal feminist misgivings

This chapter argues the need to acknowledge the limitations of multiculturalism in approaching social justice in South African education, in the face of the understandable post-apartheid enthusiasm for multiculturalism. Examining policy documents and public discourse about the concept and implementation of multiculturalism as well as the concept of culture itself, the authors raises a tension between multiculturalism, on the one hand, and the frequently proclaimed policy goals of promoting a non-sexist order and of teaching critical thinking in a culture of human rights, on the other. Indeed, it is suggested that an uncritical enthrallment to multiculturalism is more likely to prejudice the education of girls by preventing a critique of oppressive practices that undermine their interests and rights. While the political liberalism that preoccupies political philosophy in the West offers little guidance on dealing with difference to countries like South Africa, the emergence of a liberal universalist feminism offers greater scope for educational intervention against oppressive practices wrongly defended in the name of multiculturalism.

International students, export earnings and the demands of global justice

Is it just to charge international students fees that are generally much higher than those paid by home and European Union students at UK universities? Exploring the ethical tension between universities’ avowed commitment to social justice on the one hand and selling education to foreign students at a premium on the other, we argue that increased global association and the reduced salience of the sovereign state make the education of international students an issue of global justice. If we view education as a global public good, the ethics of higher education provision call for reconsideration of both the current fee regime and of universities’ role in a competitive global economy.

Education and global citizenship

Darrel Moellendorf argues that duties of justice have global scope. We share Moellendorfs rejection of statism and his emphasis on duties of justice arising out of association in Cosmopolitan Justice. Building on Moellendorfs view that there are cosmopolitan duties of justice, we argue that in education they are both negative and positive, requiring redistribution of educational resources and transnational educational intervention. We suggest what kinds of intervention are justifiable and required, the kinds of international structures that could regulate them, and a conception of cosmopolitan citizenship to underpin education for global citizenship.

Rethinking the ‘Western Tradition’

Abstract In recent years, the ‘Western tradition’ has increasingly come under attack in anti-colonialist and postmodernist discourses. It is not difficult to sympathise with the concerns that underlie advocacy of historically marginalised traditions, and the West undoubtedly has a lot to answer for. Nonetheless, while arguing a qualified yes to the central question posed for this special issue, we question the assumption that the West can be neatly distinguished from alternative traditions of thought. We argue that there is fundamental implicit and explicit agreement across traditions about the most difficult of issues and on standards about how to reason about them and that the ‘West’ has demonstrably learned from within and without itself. But, we question the very viability under conditions of heightened globalisation and neo-colonialism of distinguishing between thought of the ‘West’ and thought outside the West. It is time to move beyond the reified assumptions that underlie the idea of ‘Western thought’, cast as an agent with a collective purpose.