Authors Meet Critics: Democratic Discord in Schools

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

In early 2017, many residents in a PA school district put up yard signs reading, “Hate Has No Home Here. Love Lives Here.” Teachers posted the same sign on the walls of their classrooms without incident. Some weeks later, a different yard sign popped up: “Love for God, Love for Country, Love for Constitution.” Given the area’s demographics, most of those who posted “Hate Has No Home Here” likely also felt love for God, country, and constitution; those who posted the “Love for God...” signs also presumably embraced love, not hate. Nonetheless, all residents understood how the “love” in each sign was intended to be read in relation to the other. Within days of the new signs’ appearing, the district school superintendent started fielding student complaints about teachers’ partisan bias. These students no longer read “Hate Has No Home Here” as a commitment to educational inclusion, but as excluding Trump supporters. Other students rallied behind the signs and the teachers who posted them. How should the superintendent respond?

Democratic Discord in Schools: Case Studies and Commentaries in Educational Ethics tackles cases like this to examine civic ethical dilemmas arising in classrooms, schools, and school systems across the US and around the world. As the normative case studies that anchor this book illuminate, discord in schools and districts has erupted in response to a wide range of often unintentional provocations: the language children use during free play or class discussion; student activism around school walkouts; teachers’ spontaneous responses to student questions about current events; a teacher’s choice to wear a Black Lives Matter pin; faculty disagreement over whether high school students should debate transgender bathroom access legislation; schools’ decisions to use digital surveillance techniques to monitor students for suicidal ideation, school shooting threats, and “violent extremism”; districts’ partnerships with law enforcement on anti-gang programs in areas with undocumented students; and families’ struggles over the impacts of inexperienced teachers’ incorporating explicit discussions of structural racism into a middle school history curriculum. Particularly in a moment characterized by populist uprisings and deep partisan discord, such incidents cry out for contextually-sensitive and engaged normative theorizing.

We propose an authors-meet-critics session to explore the ways in which liberal and democratic political theory can both inform, and be informed by, richly-described case studies in civic educational ethics such as the ones hinted at above. Democratic Discord in Schools features eight normative case studies, each followed by six commentaries by a range of scholars, educators, policy makers, and even students. Theorists who have contributed to the book include Zofia Stemplowska, Rogers Smith, Myisha Cherry, Juan Espindola, Michael Merry, Winston Thompson, Walter Parker, Bryan Warnick, Paula McAvoy, and Randall Curren. (The commentaries also include contributions from historians, political scientists, lawyers, school board members, superintendent, police chief, activists, and others.) Cherry, for example, argues that schools misunderstand their duties as civic and moral educators when they teach students to overlook ideological differences (such as when one child criticizes “criminal illegals” in conversation with her friend) and “gift” unconditional forgiveness in order to maintain friendships. Stemplowska argues that both sufficientarian and prioritarian theories of justice requires schools to disavow partnerships with law enforcement in order to protect their most vulnerable, undocumented students—even when such decisions risk increasing the threat of gang violence. Political theorists can also contribute powerfully in reflecting across the whole of the book to address the normative contours schooling in and for democracy in a time of civic upheaval.

Melissa Williams, Bernardo Zacka, David Knight, and Corey Brettshneider have generously offered to participate in this authors-meet-critics session. None has indicated what specifically they will talk about since the book is not yet out (April 2019). But we anticipate that they will offer a range of complementary perspectives on the issues, such as deparochializing political theory and rethinking democratic legitimacy (Williams), using case study methods to study the normative dimensions of public policy implementation (Zacka), addressing the intersections among race, ethnicity, immigration, and social movements in urban education (Knight), and clarifying public educational institutions’ roles in promoting both speech and equality (Brettschneider). Co-editors Meira Levinson and Jacob Fay will offer brief framing remarks and responses to the critics, leaving time for audience Q&A.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 3: Normative Political Theory

Chair

• Meira Levinson Harvard University

Presenters

• Melissa S. Williams University of Toronto

• Corey L. Brettschneider

• Bernardo Zacka Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• David Jonathan Knight University of Chicago

• Jacob Zadorozny Fay Harvard University