"The Public" and Citzenship Education Today

• In Event: Democratic Conditions for Learning

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, I will problematize Dewey’s ideal of “the public” in The Public and Its Problems from the current perspective of a challenged democracy. Second, I will suggest a pragmatism view of knowledge, in terms of transactional realism. By problematizing both the definite article and the singular form in the concept of “the public,” I argue that “the public” should be viewed as both a space for pluralism and heterogeneous groups rather than a homogenous domain of “the people.” Based on a transactional realism view of knowledge, citizenship education can best be understood as an educational approach which opens up for the critical and the unforeseen in students’ experiences

Author

• Ninni Wahlstrom, Linnaeus University