Extant conceptions of patriotism in social studies curricula are centered upon blind allegiance to the state or a belief in ideals of a liberal democracy. Yet these conceptions fail to account for the complex racial experiences that mediate citizenship and civic action, especially for Black persons. In this article, we advance a theory of Black…

Teaching history in schools can be a significant policy instrument for shaping the identities of future citizens. The Danish curriculum for teaching history of 2009 aims at strengthening a sense of "Danishness" which calls for theoretical analysis. Focusing on this particular case, the paper develops a political theoretical frame for…

Young citizens under the age of 25?years make up just under half of the world's population. Globally, they face new, interrelated problems of dangerous environmental change, including increasing incidence of severe storms associated with a changing climate, and related new threats to human security. Addressing the complex challenge of climate…

Government policies for teachers and schools in England promote values including tolerance of faiths and beliefs alongside law keeping, democracy, and respect. Tolerance of faiths has been highlighted as a key value but complexities around tolerance make interpretations and applications of the policy difficult. Policy documents in this area are…

Fred Clarke (1880-1952), an English educationist, emerged as a leading figure with his liberal approach alongside such key figures as R. H. Tawney and Cyril Norwood in the reform leading to the 1944 Education Act. Many of his reform proposals, which were provided by the new Act, reflected his ideals of liberal democracy. Nevertheless, his…

While discussions on validity, professional standards, and routines have become more challenging to many educators of journalism, these challenges are old news to communities of color whose experiences are often discounted or erased by information gathering practices taught in journalism schools. We argue that using the label…

We need homeschooling to save education in a liberal democracy from taking a religious form--what I call Democratic Education. Democratic Education emerges when the democratic identity and narrative become elevated to the highest priority when thinking about educating human beings. This elevation becomes particularly dangerous when other…

This essay by Suzanne Rosenblith and Benjamin Bindewald is motivated by the question of how do those who value civic liberalism give the religiously orthodox a reason to engage in pluralist democratic deliberations in a manner that does not allow intolerance to undermine the foundations of liberal democracy. Introducing the idea of tolerance as…

This article analyses "performance government" as an emergent form of rule in advanced liberal democracies. It discloses how teachers and school leaders in Australia are being governed by the practices of performance government which centre on the recently established Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) and…

In this paper, the authors focus on everyday narrations of the nation as they are taken up by educators "in schools" in the United States, Denmark and Spain. As the primary institutions within which children from im/migrant communities are incorporated into the nation-state, schools are the key sites within which young people learn the…

How can we understand the relationship between art, education and democracy in the contemporary Western political condition? The recent presidential elections in the USA showed that the classical model of liberal representative democracy is shaking on its foundations. The question is how can artists and education respond to this political…

This paper discusses the significance of passions in political education through the consideration of Chantal Mouffe's agonistic democracy. Mouffe points out the role of the passions that facilitate organizing political identities, and presents the risks of eliminating passions. The liberal interpretation of democracy intends to eliminate passions…

As a postsecondary educator with most of my experience teaching in colleges, but with some also in undergraduate and postgraduate studies both in Canada and the United States, I have been teaching politics and government for close to fifty years. That time has been spent not only undertaking empirical analyses of political behaviour and the…

As liberal democracies include increasingly diverse and multifaceted populations, the longstanding debate about the role of the state in religious education and the place of religion in public life seems imperative now more than ever. The maintenance of religious schools and the planning of religious education curricula raise a profound challenge.…

Publicly funded schools are supposed to serve everyone equally in egalitarian, liberal democracies. In this paper we claim that school music ensembles fail, on the whole, to adequately reflect current socio-demographic patterns in both Canada and the United States. From a postcolonial perspective we attempt to problematize, with reference to…