Shirley Pendlebury

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.

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.

Transforming Teacher Education in South Africa: A Space -- Time Perspective.

Abstract> South Africas most urgent and difficult project is to reconstruct all spheres of public life so as to establish enabling conditions for a flourishing and peaceful democracy. A viable education system with committed, competent and confident teachers is a primary condition for accomplishing these ends. This article offers a critical account of current attempts to transform teacher education and development. Against a sketch of inherited ways of using time and space in teacher education in South Africa, the article assesses change in three ‘spaces‘‐‐public space, evaluative space and pedagogical space‐‐and related changes in time. A fourth space of change‐‐institutional space‐‐is mentioned in so far as it affects the other three. I argue that the main direction of change is from insulated space and interrupted time to porous space and continuous time. While this direction has promising possibilities, it is not without pitfalls.

Looking Others in the Eye: Rights and Gender in South African Education Policy

Through an examination of the concept of rights in emergent policy in South Africa, this article illustrates some of the ways in which philosophy can serve democratic policy in its pursuit of the public good. We argue that while the South African Schools Act establishes some of the institutional conditions for a rights-based educational system, inadequacies in the treatment of gender and rights in the new national curriculum threaten to undermine the vision of the public good in South Africas new Constitution. How might a philosophical perspective contribute to policy formulation, analysis and implementation? Emergent educational policy in South Africa provides an illuminating case. Not surprisingly, rights feature prominently in post-apartheid policy. Yet apart from appeals to the Bill of Rights in South Africas new Constitution (Republic of South Africa 1996a) and some legal discussions of rights in education, there has been little attempt to provide a coherent account of rights and their bearing on developing a better education system. This is a serious flaw because the concept of rights has a special status in policy: in South Africa at least, a proper treatment of rights is necessary for good policy. Inadequacies in the treatment of rights in post-apartheid education policy threaten to undermine the commitment of policy both to teaching rights and to rights-based educational practices. More seriously, the treatment of rights in some recent educational policy threatens to undermine the very vision it is aiming to realise - that is, the vision of educating citizens (women and men) for a flourishing democracy.

“What kinds of people are we?” – values education after apartheid

South Africa’s formal transition to democracy in 1994 was an inspiring moment. However, it would be naive to assume that the task of transforming so evil a social order as apartheid can be accomplished in a moment. Many practices of the apartheid era persist, as do age-old vices such as murder and incest. Add to these, widespread corruption at all levels of the public service and apparently new vices such as a shocking spate of baby-rapes, and there may be good reason for moral outrage if not despair. Values education would seem to be an obvious place to begin to overcome these ills. A central aim of this chapter is to describe and evaluate South Africa’s approach to values education for an emergent democracy built on the foundations of a corrupt and divided society. South Africa is a society which chose to come to terms with its violent and divided past with the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Stories that emerged in the TRC hearings may help us see more clearly some of what is required for the moral reconstruction of the society and what role values education might play in it. Take, for example, the story of Captain Jeffrey Benzien, notorious for his expertise in the torture of suspected political activists. He suffocated his victims by placing a wet bag over their heads. During a hearing of the TRC, Benzien demonstrated his method. Tony Yengeni, one of his victims and an activist who became a member of parliament, asked at the hearing:

Forest people, two countries and one continent: what empirical connections?

Studies have revealed that sub-Sahara African forest resources are decreasing at an alarming rate. Widely acknowledged too is a growing body of empirical evidence which suggests that understanding peoples views are important to forest conservation. But few are the current studies that capture cross-national perspectives. This study explores the knowledge, attitudes and practices related to forest resource conservation among rural inhabitants in Ogun State, Nigeria, and Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. Using both qualitative and quantitative approaches, results indicate that more similarities than differences exist across the two cultural contexts. Findings suggest a further need to invest in community-based conservation education programmes because this is a key strategy in the fight against the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources.

Political inclusion, democratic empowerment and lifelong learning

Recent trends in social and political philosophy recognise the importance of inclusion in the attention they have paid to community membership and collective deliberation. But there are many “grades” or “gradations” of democratic involvement, demanding more or less inclusiveness and empowerment, and making greater or lesser demands on the capacities of those who are included. At the very least, political inclusion and democratic empowerment require universal franchise.

Unsettling Notions of Participation: A View from South Africa

On the day of his release from prison in 1990, Nelson Mandela read Ingrid Jonker’s poem The child who was shot dead by soldiers in Nyanga to the crowds who welcomed him in Cape Town. In the poem, the child becomes a symbol of freedom and defies death through living on in others in the quest for freedom, a quest whose message travels without restriction throughout the world. It is a poem that demonstrates how children are part of all aspects of social life, a reality sometimes ignored in circumscribing the ‘proper’ place of children.