Presenter E

• In Event: 54.035 - Religion and Public Education in the United States: An Interdisciplinary Symposium

Abstract

1. Objectives or purposes. My work focuses on the rights of children to autonomy-facilitating education and the importance of toleration. My purpose in the symposium is to look at ways in which public education needs to prepare children for participation in a pluralistic democratic society in which religious diversity is important and can be a source of political division. My presentation develops an account of democratic education in which the cultivation of reasonableness is both compatible with religious liberty and essential toleration and autonomy.
2. Perspective(s) or theoretical framework. I am a philosopher who focuses on issues in contemporary moral, political and legal theory with a special focus on the following topics: distributive justice and equality; children, families and justice; and democratic ethics. In this symposium I draw upon and develop a conception of political legitimacy grounded in contemporary theories of deliberative democracy. At the heart of these theories is an ideal of public reason that helps citizens address each other in democratic discourse in ways that are mutually respectful. I explore how public reason can provide a non-sectarian basis for negotiating political disagreements but how it is also allows that religion can have a place in public education.
3. Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry. In this work I draw upon the methods of analysis standardly employed contemporary Anglo-American moral and political philosophy. This approach is supplemented with insights drawn from historical scholarship on the place of religion from American public education. In this way, the implications of abstract arguments from political philosophy are explored and situated in relation to real historical examples.
4. Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials. Some of the core philosophical ideas are drawn from recent work in political philosophy by influential figures such as John Rawls. Important legal cases that illustrate controversies about education, religion, and liberty are also considered.
5. Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view. I argue that public schools should work toward providing students with the knowledge, capacities and dispositions that facilitate thoughtful understanding and reflection on diverse perspectives on religious faith. Directly engaging with religious diversity helps to foster toleration and illuminates processes of reason-giving and reason-taking that are integral to democratic legitimacy. While public schools should not favor any religious (or non-religious) perspective, they should not seek to keep religion perspectives out of schools. Instead, schools should facilitate and encourage reasoned and respectful deliberation about diverse religious traditions and practices.
6. Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work. Although a great deal of recent political philosophy has explored the nature and importance of public reason to democracy, very little has considered the how an ideal of public reason applies to children and the education they receive in the face of the religious diversity that is characteristic of contemporary American society. This work contributes to a broader recent trend in political philosophy to address the distinctive rights and claims of children in a systematic fashion.

Author

• Colin MacLeod, University of Victoria