Reimagining and Internationalizing the Purpose of Civic Education: Deliberating Justice and Harmony

• In Event: 34.078 - Expanding Traditions of Civic Education and Social Cohesion: International Perspectives

Abstract

This paper argues for an extension of traditional goals of social education in order to form a more complete, and more internationally relevant, basis for curriculum content. It proceeds from a conceptual framework that sees social education as oriented toward preparing students for democratic civil participation, and particularly for deliberations of what Parker (2003) has characterized as the central citizenship question of our time: “How can we live together justly, in ways that are mutually satisfying, and which leave our differences, both individual and group, intact and our multiple identities recognized?” (p. 20) As a conceptual paper, it aims to lay out a new way of thinking about this preparation, one that moves beyond current formulation and is grounded in both Western political theory and East Asian perspectives on the role of Confucianism in democratic and multicultural societies.

The paper’s central argument is that both justice and harmony must play a role in preparing students for democratic deliberation. Even though most issues within democratic societies revolve around complex questions involving both these goals, social education in most national contexts do not accord equal emphasis to each dimension. For example, North American educators are likely to pay more attention to the development of individual students’ social and political competencies in order to address issues of justice (see e.g. Hess & McAvoy, 2015; Parker, 2003). In contrast, those in East Asian countries such as Singapore, China, and South Korea pay more attention to issues of harmony and social cohesion (see e.g. Ho, 2017; Ho, 2018). We argue that social education in East Asian societies would benefit from greater attention to issues of justice, particularly when the concept is expanded to include both distributive justice and issues of inclusion and recognition (e.g. Young, 2011), and that norms of civility in Confucian societies must include attention to the role of incivility in the political process as well (see e.g. Li, 2014; Kim, 2014). Western traditions of social education, meanwhile, would benefit from including harmony as an explicit goal of deliberation, as well civility as a dimension of political participation (e.g., Shils, 1991), rather than casting deliberation primarily in terms of controversy, conflict, and a win/lose dichotomy. This paper thus seeks to achieve a new synthesis of Western and Confucian traditions, in order to better prepare students—across national and cultural settings—for their role in democratic societies.

Authors

• Li-Ching Ho, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Keith C. Barton, Indiana University