Course Description In this course, we will explore the question of the actual and potential connections between democracy and education. Our focus of attention will be placed on a critical examination of democratic theory and its implications for the civic education roles and contributions of teachers, adult educators, community development practitioners, and community organizers. We will survey and deal critically with a range of competing conceptions of democracy, variously described as classical, republican, liberal, radical, marxist, neomarxist, pragmatist, feminist, populist, pluralist, postmodern, and/or participatory. Using narrative inquiry as a means for illuminating and interpreting contemporary practice, we will analyze the implications of different conceptions of democracy for the practical work of civic education.

Democracy and education.

Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity

NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Penguin Books, 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7This book is best described formally as a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications. Informally, it is about how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society. It is paternalism in the sense that "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better", (p. 5) It is libertarian in that "people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so", (p. 5) The built-in possibility of opting out or making a different choice preserves freedom of choice even though people's behavior has been influenced by the nature of the presentation of the information or by the structure of the decisionmaking system. I had never heard of libertarian paternalism before reading this book, and I now find it fascinating.Written for a general audience, this book contains mostly social and behavioral science theory and models, but there is considerable discussion of structure and process that has roots in mathematical and quantitative modeling. One of the main applications of this social system is economic choice in investing, selecting and purchasing products and services, systems of taxes, banking (mortgages, borrowing, savings), and retirement systems. Other quantitative social choice systems discussed include environmental effects, health care plans, gambling, and organ donations. Softer issues that are also subject to a nudge-based approach are marriage, education, eating, drinking, smoking, influence, spread of information, and politics. There is something in this book for everyone.The basis for this libertarian paternalism concept is in the social theory called "science of choice", the study of the design and implementation of influence systems on various kinds of people. The terms Econs and Humans, are used to refer to people with either considerable or little rational decision-making talent, respectively. The various libertarian paternalism concepts and systems presented are tested and compared in light of these two types of people. Two foundational issues that this book has in common with another book, Network of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders, that was also reviewed for this issue of the Journal are that 1 ) there are two modes of thinking (or components of the brain) - an automatic (intuitive) process and a reflective (rational) process and 2) the need for conformity and the desire for imitation are powerful forces in human behavior. …

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Truth and method

Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy

Afterword: Radicalism revisited

A politics of emergency in the reign of Elizabeth I

This article surveys recent work in pragmatism and political theory. In doing so, it shows both how recent work on pragmatism has secured the view that at its core is a set of arguments about the c...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/14748851211050618

Spotlight: Pragmatism in contemporary political theory:

This essay critically examines various forms of the argument to the effect that a realistic account of cultural identity reveals that the latter cannot carry the normative weight assigned to it by proponents of multiculturalism. For this perspective, the arbitrary and contingent character of cultural identification means that it does not possess the kind of force in political deliberation that proponents of the normative claim on behalf of culture hope. The essay examines two versions of this scepticism, and in each case argue that it is ill-founded: first, a general attack on cultural identification as an ingredient in practical identity, and, second, the view that multicultural political arguments require an untenable account of identity. The guiding thought is that we need to be more cautious about the relationship posited between the ontology of culture and politics.

Matthew Festenstein

Papers

Afterword: Radicalism revisited

A politics of emergency in the reign of Elizabeth I

Spotlight: Pragmatism in contemporary political theory:

Naivety, Doubt and the Politics of Cultural Identification

Richard Overton and radicalism: the new intertext of the civic ethos in mid seventeenth-century England