Showing papers on "Democratic education published in 2004"

What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Educating for Democracy

Abstract: Educators and policymakers increasingly pursue programs that aim to strengthen democracy through civic education, service learning, and other pedagogies. Their underlying beliefs, however, differ. This article calls attention to the spectrum of ideas about what good citizenship is and what good citizens do that are embodied in democratic education programs. It offers analyses of a 2-year study of educational programs in the United States that aimed to promote democracy. Drawing on democratic theory and on findings from their study, the authors detail three conceptions of the “good” citizen—personally responsible, participatory, and justice oriented—that underscore political implications of education for democracy. The article demonstrates that the narrow and often ideologically conservative conception of citizenship embedded in many current efforts at teaching for democracy reflects not arbitrary choices but, rather, political choices with political consequences.

Controversies about Controversial Issues in Democratic Education

Abstract: I a recent study of Americans’ beliefs about how government should work, political scientists John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse (2002) painted a depressing picture of a populace that does not care much about political issues and policies. Contrary to the view that people yearn for greater and more meaningful involvement in self-governance, their research showed that the vast majority of Americans purposely avoid political participation, and that many actually recoil from a system they perceive as driven by narrow self-interest and rancorous conflict. Hibbing and Theiss-Morse are not the only researchers documenting the low level of political engagement in the United States. Their study is particularly important, though, because it links declines in political engagement to the views that many hold regarding conflict and controversy. They identified a vexing paradox: While Americans generally like conflict and controversy (e.g., their addiction to watching competitive sports and reality shows on television), they generally dislike contentious disputes about politics, policy issues, and governance. Hibbing and TheissMorse advocate teaching the populace to accept the inevitability, that there is “disagreement among Americans on how to resolve issues that are important to them and to accept that there is disagreement on which issues deserve to be on the political agenda in the first place” (2002, 223). One way they suggest changing Americans’ views toward political conflict is to revamp what students in elementary and secondary schools are taught about the nature of democracy and democratic participation. They advocate loading the civic education curriculum with hotly debated political issues in order to teach young people that controversy is not an unfortunate byproduct of democracy, but one of its core and vital elements. The idea that controversial political issues should be a central feature of a school-based democratic education program is not new. In an influential report about social studies issued in 1916, schools were encouraged to create “Problems of Democracy” courses that emphasized contemporary political issues (U.S. Bureau of Education). Enthusiasm for this approach continues today among some educators as evidenced by the recently released Civic Mission of the Schools Report (2002), which endorses covering political controversies in the curriculum. Specifically, it recommends that schools:

Citizenship and education

Abstract: � Abstract This paper surveys three sources of conflict about citizenship and education in contemporary normative political theory: the extent to which rival conceptions of citizenship differ in the ends they prescribe for civic education; disagreement about the educational processes needed to yield accepted civic educational ends and how some of those processes might best be institutionalized via schooling; and disagreement about how liberal legitimacy constrains state action undertaken for the sake of democratic education.

Student participation: a democratic education perspective—experience from the health‐promoting schools in Macedonia

Abstract: The paper addresses the issue of student participation from the perspective of the healthpromoting schools initiative. It draws on experience from the Macedonian Network of Health-Promoting Schools and its collaboration with the Danish as well as other country networks within the European Network of HealthPromoting Schools. Student participation is viewed as one of the main focal points of the conceptual framework and model of a healthpromoting school developed within the Macedonian context. This model and the model distinguishing between two different qualities of participation—genuine and token participation—are presented and discussed in the paper. Underpinning values that these models endorse as important for the processes of health promotion in schools include self-determination, participation, democracy, diversity and equity.

Challenging orthodoxy in special education : dissenting voices

Abstract: This book discusses some of the core philosophical concepts in special education and provides an in-depth look at future possibilities. Will the field function much as it does today or make coherent changes? How will the heated debates about full inclusion, labeling, and definitions of disabilities play out? How will the research on instructional practices and teacher preparation generate changes? "Challenging Orthodoxy in Special Education" will be of considerable interest to professionals and students in special education, disability studies, educational administration, curriculum, and policy studies. The expert authors offer perspectives on the problems facing special education and some of the possible solutions. They bring together the latest thinking in the philosophy of science, sociology, disability studies, and disciplines outside of special education. The audience for this book includes graduate students and teacher educators involved with graduate seminars centered on critical issues in education. The book helps readers to better understand the inclusion debates. It provides educators with tools to grasp the issues in special education for a more inclusive, equitable, and democratic education for all students. It blends engaging new ideas from experts in the field to understand the present and shape the future of special education. It also examines a constructivist perspective and the confusion between discovery and construction.

Schools or markets? : commercialism, privatization, and school-business partnerships

Abstract: Contents: A. Molnar, Foreword. Preface. C. VanderSchee, The Privatization of Food Services in Schools: Undermining Children's Health, Social Equity, and Democratic Education. L. Trammell, Measuring and Fixing, Filling and Drilling: The ExxonMobile Agenda for Education. R. Hewitt, Priming the Pump: "Educating" for Market Democracy. D.A. Breault, Jesus in the Temple: What Should Administrators Do When the Marketplace Comes to School? B. Weiss, Teachers, Unions, and Commercialization. J. Block, Children as Collateral Damage: The Innocents of Education's War for Reform. B. Baez, Private Knowledge, Public Domain: The Politics of Intellectual Property in Higher Education. G.A. Miller, The Two-Way Street of Higher Education Commodification. L. Stultz, Egocentrism in Professional Arts Education: Toward a Discipline-Based View of Work and World. L. Wilson, Controlling the Power Over Knowledge: Selling the Crisis for Self-Serving Gains. D. Boyles, The Exploiting Business: School Business Partnerships, Commercialization, and Students as Critically Transitive Citizens.

Undermining Democratic Education in the USA: the consequences of global capitalism and neo-liberal policies for education policies at the local, state and federal levels

Abstract: In the USA, many of the recent education reforms have been implemented in response to calls from neo-liberal and conservative policy makers to improve education efficiency and reduce public expenditures within an increasingly globalized economy. Consequently, local, state, and federal education policies increasingly employ curricular standards and high-stakes testing as a means of introducing competition and markets into education. Moreover, for some policy makers such reforms are the first step towards privatizing education through charter schools and vouchers programs. In this article the author analyzes the consequences such policies have had on the education system on three scales: the city of Chicago, the state of New York, and the US federal government. In particular, the reforms have shifted the control over education from the local to the state and federal levels. Further, the reforms have increased inequality between the advantaged middle-class and White students and the disadvantaged working-cla...

Private Learning, Public Needs: The Neoliberal Assault on Democratic Education

Abstract: Private Learning. Public Needs looks at the devastating effects neoliberal globalization continues to have on education, schooling, and literacy development in the United States. As a global phenomenon, neoliberalism's power lies in its ability to transcend national, regional, and local borders, and to « manufacture a discourse of needs, thus affecting how education, schooling, and literacy are theorized and practiced. From the effects of whole school reform and the ideological investment of positivism, to the economic reduction of schooling and literacy development, this book expresses how neoliberal globalization reinforces state power while undermining the power of the individual.

The Cultural Roots of British Devolution

Abstract: Preface 1. When was British Culture? 2. The First Scottish Renaissance 3. The Question of Democratic Education 4. Before Theory 5. EnglandWithout the 'Cricket Test' 6. Can the Sub-Briton Speak? 7. Reading the Empire State.

A Bucket of EELS: A Tripartite Approach to Renewing a Teacher Education Program

Abstract: This article describes a systematic overhaul of a teacher preparation program and presents outcomes based on studies of the program’s effectiveness in improving the knowledge and skills of teacher educators—university and PK-12 based—related to technology, diversity, and democratic education. The renewal program was peer designed and implemented over a 5-year cycle of 3 intact cohorts composed of education and arts & sciences university faculty and PK-12 colleagues simultaneously engaged in revising the scope, sequence, and content of a teacher education program. Presurveys and postsurveys indicate that nearly all of the instructional objectives were met and that participants made significant gains in their knowledge and skills related to the 3 target areas. Lessons learned in the process and implications for similar renewal efforts are offered.

Education in and for democracy and human rights: moving from Utopian ideals to grounded practices

Abstract: This thesis is set in the Western Australian education system and centres on the question of how primary schools can actively foster conditions conducive to creating and sustaining education in and for democracy and human rights. In Australia, as elsewhere, there is a widespread acceptance of the need for democratic education also referred to as civics and citizenship education. The perceived lack of public understanding of democratic principles and practices has, in the last decade, led various Australian governments to commit significant resources ($ 31.6 million) to civics and citizenship education programmes such as Discovering Democracy (DD). This thesis argues that political engagement and civic learning is most effective when schools commit themselves to deliberately embedding a set of democratic educational principles in everyday practices. In contrast to traditional approaches to citizenship education that tend to focus on the operational aspects of representative governments, institutions and history, this thesis argues that education for Democracy and Human Rights (DaHR) can be effectively achieved through the fostering of DaHR in education. In this task the thesis draws on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The CRC is rooted in a range of basic values about the treatment of children in schools and elsewhere, and encompasses basic rights to which children are entitled. The study empirically investigates through up close observations, interviews and surveys the efficacy of pedagogy for civic and citizenship learning in four schools identified as places of strong democratic practice. This study was able to identify particular commonalities between the four case study schools that were conducive to creating and sustaining democratic principles and practices. These schools, although very different in their composition, were lead by principals who shared the view that children under their care were subjects in the making with increasing rights and responsibilities rather than objects to be manipulated, controlled and protected. The findings suggest that experiencing democracy and human rights in daily school life in a variety of situations and on a number of different levels can effectively contribute to the learning of the meaning and advantages of democratic values such as the rule of law, participatory decision-making and due process. It also concludes that there may be a relationship between parental socio-economic background and the possibilities available for students to engage in effective civic learning and citizenship practices. The relationship between socio-economic background and other structural factors including gender and ethnicity in relation to possibilities of civic learning needs to be investigated in a larger study.

Heterogeneity: multilingualism and democracy

Abstract: Linguistic diversity and multilingualism on the part of individuals are a prerequisite and a constitutive condition of enabling people to live together in a world of growing heterogeneity. Foreign language teaching plays an important part in democratic education because it can be seen as a training in respecting otherness and developing an intercultural, non-ethnocentric perception and attitude. This is all the more important because of the necessity of integrating children from migrant families into school life. My article argues that language education policy has to take this perspective into account, i.e., of establishing a planned diversification so that pupils (and their parents) will not feel satisfied with learning English only, but also become motivated to learn languages of their own neighbourhood, such as migrant and minority languages. However, in order to make use of the linguistic resources in the classroom, relating it to the democratic impetus of foreign language education, it is necessary to revise existing language policies and to develop a multilingual perspective for all educational institutions.

Democratic Education across School Types: Evidence for the U.S. from NHES99.

Abstract: This article reports on the differences in democratic education across school types, using the US National Household Education Survey (NHES) of 1999. We replicate the estimation approach of Campbell (1998) and find a strongly positive effect from attendance at Catholic school or private independent schools on community service participation, civic skills, civic confidence, political knowledge and political tolerance. The results are reasonably robust to alternative specifications. We consider the implications of these results for policy.

Da construção de uma escola democrática:a experiência da Emef Amorim Lima

Abstract: The referred text narrates the limits and applicable possibilities of an intended democratic education. Firstly, it thematically discusses the differences between social and political concepts of the ideology of democracy. In the sequence, the text proposes a discussion about the demands in the process of structuring a democratic school, which presupposes distinct and, yet, complementary levels. Further on, it briefly presents an actual example of a democratic school: Escola da Ponte, in Portugal. Finally, the text describes the experiment of reorganization with emphasis on the democratic education within a public school, in Sao Paulo.

Com um lápis e um papel ... cria-se um novo texto: as representações de práticas democráticas nos colégios de aplicação

Abstract: This article has the intention of study in the social representations that the teachers of the Lower School of the Colegio de Aplicacao build over the democratic public school having as its research field the Colegio de Aplicacao of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the Colegio de Aplicacao of the State University of Rio de Janeiro. The main objective of the present study was to capture the dynamics of the representation construction of a democratic school, and at the same time to search for its historical and ideological motivations and the changes it suffered along the time; and also to understand the values, the rules, the behavior, the symbols and the resistances of the lower school teachers towards the democratization process of the contemporary pedagogical practices. The lower school teachers representations about the democratic school follow the present education project that is being developed at the CAps or the one that has been already applied in another historical moment. This project in itself becomes the reference of the public, democratic and the quality school. In the crossing of the speeches were born the analytical categories: alterity, power and resistance. It was concluded that the democratic education could not be based on any notion of non-history and transcendental truth or authority. The school democracy is a tension process born by the power relationship within the institution. Among the investigated group, were encountered representations that maintain the CAps' original selective and elitization function, and therefore reinforce the social exclusion; Other representations defend a differentiated formation in line with the CAp student original social class and a third group that reinforces the possibility of the implementation of an educational project that advances in the direction of the introduction and recognition of the lower class students into the school activities and daily life.

Beyond Guest Speakers: This Inaugural Column about Democracy Education Explains How to Involve Politicians, Political Activists, and Candidates in Interactive Lessons to Maximize Student Engagement and Learning

Abstract: WHEN I WAS TEACHING high school social studies I frequently invited political office holders, candidates, and political activists to speak to my classes. Exposing students to people working directly in the political system, I reasoned, would not only help my students learn more about democracy but it would help them critically evaluate its successes and failures. I also hoped it would enhance their interest in political and civic engagement and make it more likely that they would actually do something politically themselves. So I worked hard to set up visits by local, state, and federal office holders, their staff members, and political activists, such as lobbyists for interest and reform groups. During election years, I also invited candidates to speak to my students. Before the visits, I always explained the course and described the students to the guest speaker. I also made sure students knew who was coming in to class, why and that they had an opportunity, (or were required) to generate questions. Often the guest speaker would give a short speech and then respond to students' questions. Sometimes the speech took up most of the period and the time for questions was cut short. Given my own interest in the political world, I was invariably quite engaged by what the guest speakers had to say Some of my students were, too. But this was not always the case. I remember one student telling me that he didn't like listening to politicians any more than he liked listening to other adults. I also remember how embarrassed I was when a few students actually fell asleep when a member of Congress was speaking to them. While I had a gut sense that there was merit to bringing my students in contact with adults who were involved in the political system, I was concerned that there was something not quite right about how it was working in practice. Too few of my students were engaged by what the guest speakers were saying. More significantly, the class sessions with the guest speakers often lacked focus and depth. Because the students' questions were on so many topics, the guest speakers did not really have time to explain any one issue in detail. Another problem was that real dialogue between the students and the guests rarely occurred. I needed a new model for involving politicians and candidates in my classes--one that would serve the dual goals of exposing politicians to students (and vice versa) while utilizing the "best practices" of social studies education. Fortunately, such a model exists. In the 1980s, a number of democratic education organizations assessed the effects of law-related education on students' learning, attitudes, and self-reports of their behavior. The research showed that having outside resource people (such as politicians, lawyers, and police officers) involved in interactive lessons positively influenced what students learned about the political and legal systems, helping them develop attitudes that were more likely to lead to political engagement. (1) In contrast to the traditional guest speaker model that represents a transmission approach to teaching and learning, the interactive nature of the lessons with the outside resource people requires students to do more of the intellectual work themselves. And by actually working with the kids rather than talking at them, the resource person uses his or her expertise and experience to help students build knowledge and solve real or simulated community problems. Because the students were doing more than simply listening, their engagement levels were typically higher, the session was more focused, and the content coverage, more in-depth. An example of this model in action: A 9th grade government class is learning about the purposes and procedures of the city council by investigating a proposed ordinance on raising the minimum wage for workers in their community. The issue is authentic; that is, the city council is scheduled to make a decision about the proposed ordinance soon. …

The luckiest little high school: the possibilities and pangs of community democracy

Abstract: Introduction The rapid transformation of a secondary school from a bureaucratically regimented institution to a student-centered learning environment advocating democratic practices merits review. During its third year of progressive reform, this gem was discovered among the ashes of high-stakes assessment and corporate infiltration in public education. I will share my observations of what I have come to regard as the luckiest little high school, its achievements, contradictions, challenges, and promises. This study emphasizes the rapid revolution of a small rural school characterized by conformity and compliance to an artistically and democratically expressive student center for intellectual, emotional, and spiritual engagement. In Pursuit of Democratic Education My initial interest lay in the practices of school leaders who had forged major efforts to ensure democratic involvement for secondary students. American educational theorists have contributed a century of literature that grounds the focal tenets of a community democratic school. These include student ownership of curricular content and activities (Apple & Beane, 1995; Dewey, 1944; Giroux, 1997; Meier, 1995), the formation of a multicultural perspective (Apple & Beane, 1995; Calabrese & Barton, 1994; Denith, 1997; Dixon, 1998; Giroux, 1997; Kanpol, 1992; Maxcy, 1998), and structures of governance to gain critical community consciousness (Apple & Beane, 1995; Giroux, 2000; Giroux & McLaren, 1986; Johnson & Pajares, 1996; Rusch, 1994). These ideals are often muddied in the busy world of distracted administrators, constrained teachers, and hurried children. However it is my intent to appreciate the democratic reforms underway at the school of which I have become so enamored. While I will divulge the inconsistencies observed, analysis will concentrate on the source of its success. Hence I take liberty in ordaining the luckiest little high school. Research Inquiry The purpose of the research of which this study was a part was to engage secondary school administrators, who were responsible for disciplinary matters, in "critical conversations about democracy" within their local educational system (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003, p. 3). Pursuing qualitative inquiry as a non-participant observer (Creswell, 2002), I conducted observations and interviews in four schools in order to elucidate the underpinning philosophy that these deans of students put into practice. Utilizing Lewis and Maruna's (1994) concept of a "person as the unit of analysis" (p. 232), I shadowed each of the four professionals at work for a period of four to eight hours and thereafter conducted a standardized open-ended interview (Patton, 1990). In addition, the members of a standing student leadership committee or an adhoc group of active students chosen by the dean were interviewed. Finally, in three schools I observed a governance council which included students as participants in the decision-making process. The fourth school, though it practiced progressive teaching methods, did not maintain such as structure. While I engaged in the research design and analysis from a critical theoretical perspective, which ultimately focused my attention on an emerging community school democracy in one low-income district, I refrained from exploring the third level of this approach, which is taking action (Glesne, 1999). However, Moustakas (1994) suggests that phenomenological study requires the researcher to discover "a topic and question rooted in autobiographical meanings and values, as well as social meanings and significance" (p. 103). In this sense, I share the aspirations of the study participants; I hope to follow their example in becoming a school principal committed to the common good. My current charge was to learn from their leadership model, their views, and their practices. Not a consultant, I neither passed judgment nor attempted to solve problems. …

Review: Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope by bell hooks - eScholarship

Abstract: Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope by bell hooks. New York: Routledge, 2003. 200 pp. ISBN 0-415-96818-6 Following the success of Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994), bell hooks provides readers with yet another incredibly powerful text on the topic of education. In Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, bell hooks offers important lessons for how to create critical educational arenas that dismantle oppression and build community across racial, ethnic, gender, class, and national lines. She challenges the belief that education is confined to classrooms, where students are often viewed as empty vessels and lessons serve to prepare for a test rather than to teach relevant skills for creating better communities. Through autobiographical narratives and critical analysis, hooks provides readers with important insights in each chapter, covering numerous topics from democratic education to romantic relationships between professors and students. Taken as a whole, the text seeks to uncover mechanisms that perpetuate systems of oppression, highlight the efforts of individuals and groups to change these systems, and most importantly, mobilize educators and students to work toward building socially just communities. In Teaching Community, hooks reflects on the ways oppression, particularly an “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy,” is continuously perpetuated in our nation’s culture. In her third chapter, “Talking Race and Racism,” hooks contends that by refusing to acknowledge and talk about race and racism in their current manifestations, we leave racist attitudes and behaviors unchallenged. As a way of challenging the belief that oppressive attitudes and practices cannot be positively changed, hooks provides readers with several examples that show transformation is possible. In her first chapter, she briefly describes how Black Studies and Women’s Studies emerged to defy the indoctrination of racist and sexist ideologies in university classrooms and curricula across the country. Despite efforts to dismantle these new disciplines, both continue to provide counter-hegemonic spaces and challenge oppressive ideologies in higher education. Racist oppression is also perpetuated by the belief that White individuals are always inherently racist. In her fifth chapter, “What Happens When White People Change,” hooks argues that racism and other forms of oppression will not end until we believe that racist, classist, and sexist beliefs and values can be positively transformed in all people. To further explore this point, hooks includes a chapter that highlights her colleague and friend Ron Scapp, a White male professor who continuously engages in anti-racist work. His example serves to demonstrate that not all Whites are racist, as common stereotypes suggest, and that courage and radical openness are necessary for change.

The Meiklejohn Challenge

Abstract: Alexander Meiklejohn ranks on any short list of the most important U.S. theorists on the importance and necessity of democratic education of the past century. His commitment to informed self-government, to political equality, to establishing the institutional basis for making democracy viable is legendary. His numerous books and articles on the importance of liberal education in a democratic society elaborate upon this theme with an eloquence that is at times startling. In view of the centrality of democracy to the exercise of journalism and communication, it is obvious that Meiklejohn's work is of particular importance to those of us teaching in the area of media. But Meiklejohn's importance for journalism and media teachers goes beyond this, because he made a number of specific arguments concerning freedom of speech that logically can be extended to freedom of the press. These arguments articulate a critical vision of the dominant interpretation of freedom of speech and may well be Meiklejohn's greatest contribution. The spirit of Meiklejohn's arguments provides a direct challenge to how we engage in both research and teaching in journalism and media studies in U.S. universities. Indeed, in this article, I argue that a close reading of Meiklejohn demands that we rethink and alter much of our teaching concerning journalism and media in our classes. If we do not accept the Meiklejohn challenge, I fear our field of journalism and media studies may not survive, or at least deserve to survive. In this brief essay, I elaborate upon this theme. To draw on the famous saying, when higher education has a cold, media studies and journalism get pneumonia. For years the study and teaching of communication and journalism have existed somewhat anonymously on the margins of academia. The academic departments and schools devoted to communication play a necessary role in educating the large number of young people eager to pursue careers in the media professions. In terms of scholarly prestige, the field was clearly well down the academic pecking order. To this day, when one considers the intellectuals who have done the most important work concerning media, a striking number have little or nothing to do with the formal field of communication as practiced in U.S. universities. As our society faces several immense problems in the realm of media, our academicians in media studies seem to have precious little to contribute. They are irrelevant. And this irrelevance can only undermine the caliber of teaching; professional education degenerates into rote training for middle managers. The central issues of the role of the media system in society-in particular, though not exclusively, a self-governing society and/or a good society-fall from view except for periodic boilerplate rhetorical flourislios. It is boneath the ideals of a liberal university, or a free society. This is not a new development. What was most striking to me as I attended graduate seminars in communication at the University of Washington in the early 1980s was the obvious disconnect between the nature of the problems surrounding media and the causes of the problems. On the one hand, it bordered on self-evident that the media were far more an anti-democratic force than a democratic force in U.S. life. On the other hand, it was even clearer that a major source of the problem was that the media system was set up to serve the needs of media owners, to maximize profit. It did that very well, and unfortunately that often times was quite counterproductive from a democratic standpoint. Given the tremendous reluctance to make this connection-and, indeed, the obsession with pooh-poohing this point and elevating the importance of all sorts of other secondorder factors-the field of media studies or communication was at a loss to say much of importance about the issue of media in our society. The emperor's wardrobe was off-limits to discussion; the system worked. Not surprisingly, the dominant motif in the field was the endless elaboration of the idea that media have "limited effects," such that concerns about media being anti-democratic or who controlled the media were not especially significant. …

An Argument from Democracy Against School Choice: A Critique of Zelman v. Simmons-Harris

Abstract: The article is comprised of two parts: a theoretical part and a legal part. The first part addresses two questions: 1. Should a democracy act so as to ensure its continued existence? 2. What should a democracy do so as to ensure it continued existence? In this part we shall claim, firstly, that a democratic state has a right and even a duty to act to conserve the democratic form of government. Next we will argue that the most effective way of ensuring the existence of democracy is not the creation of legal or constitutional prohibitions against anti-democratic associations, but ensuring that amongst citizens there is widespread commitment to the values of equal liberty, tolerance and respect, as well as a capacity for critical thought. The most effective means of obtaining this goal is to develop such commitment and capacity in schools. At the end of the theoretical part we will discuss and refute four objections to our position that the state should educate for democratic values. In the second, legal part, we will present the Court's ruling in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris and a critique thereof. We will argue that the Court was mistaken in ignoring the detrimental effects which the permit it gave for the adoption of vouchers programs might have on the commitment of future citizens to democratic values. In contrast to the majority ruling, which assumes that the establishment clause permits neutrality between religious and secular outlooks, we argue, with Sullivan, that the establishment clause should be understood as taking a non-neutral stand in favor of the 'establishment' of a civil order for the resolution of public moral disputes. Therefore the state is forbidden to fund the activities of religious institutions even while it funds the activities of non-religious institutions. In order to illustrate the dangers which the funding of education in religious schools poses for democracy, we shall later describe the Israeli experience in breadth. In Israel funding was granted to religious education and this led to substantial erosion in education for democratic values. At the end of this part we will examine three possible courses of action that might be taken in an attempt to ensure education for democracy after Zelman: non-funding of private schools, funding of private schools conditioned on the fulfillment of a requirement to educate for democratic values, and the positing of a legal obligation requiring private schools to educate for democratic values (with or without a decision to fund such schools). We will evaluate each of these courses of action for its effectiveness in promoting democratic education and with regard to its constitutional merits.