The Potential of Education for Creating Mutual Trust: Schools as sites for deliberation

Is it possible to look at schools as spaces for encounters? Could schools contribute to a deliberative mode of communication in a manner better suited to our own time and to areas where different cultures meet? Inspired primarily by classical (Dewey) and modern (Habermas) pragmatists, I turn to Seyl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Educational philosophy and theory 2011-04, Vol.43 (3), p.236-248
Main Author: Englund, Tomas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Communication
Communication (Thought Transfer)
Cosmopolitanism
Critical Thinking
Cultural Differences
Cultural Pluralism
Deliberative communication
Deliberative democracy
Dewey (J)
Education
Educational philosophy
Educational theory
Habermas (J)
interactive universalism
Interpretation
John Dewey
Jürgen Habermas
Moral development
Moral Values
Multiculturalism
Pedagogik
Perspective Taking
Philosophy
Politics
Pragmatism
Public sphere
Rationality
Role of education
School Role
Schools
schools as encounters
Seyla Benhabib
Social capital
Universalism
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Summary:Is it possible to look at schools as spaces for encounters? Could schools contribute to a deliberative mode of communication in a manner better suited to our own time and to areas where different cultures meet? Inspired primarily by classical (Dewey) and modern (Habermas) pragmatists, I turn to Seyla Benhabib, posing the question whether she supports the proposition that schools can be sites for deliberative communication. I argue that a school that engages in deliberative communication, with its stress on mutual communication between different moral perspectives, gives universalism a procedurally oriented meaning, serving as an arena for encounters that represents a weak public sphere. An interactive universalism of this kind attaches importance to developing an ability and willingness to reason on the basis of the views of others and to change perspectives. In that respect, the institutional arrangements of schools are potential parts of the political dimension of cosmopolitanism, as well as its moral dimension, in terms of the obligations and responsibilities we develop through our institutions and in our actions as human beings towards one another.
ISSN:0013-1857
1469-5812
1469-5812
DOI:10.1111/j.1469-5812.2009.00594.x