Supplement
for Fourth Class:
Copyright
© 2026 Bruce W. Hauptli
I.
Questions Last Time.
II. Insufficiently Clarified
Material:
We began first class discussion of “What Is Democracy?” with “citizens not subjects,” talk of rule of law as well as guardrails. Note that Franklin responded to a question outside the Continental Congress that they had come up with a plan for a democracy which would last “if we can keep it. Are the guardrails alone sufficient to sustain our democracy?
Because the answer here is clear “no,” I want to turn our attention to Gutmann’s presumption that we are dealing with a multicultural democracy where citizens disagree about “what is good” and “what is moral,” and to her view that we need to ensure that Democratic Values are taught if we are to maintain and develop our democracy:
95 The democratic
purposes of primary schooling constrain as well as empower democratic
communities, but not in the name of parental choice, liberal autonomy, or
conservative virtue. The principles of nonrepression
and nondiscrimination limit democratic authority in the name of democracy
itself. A society is undemocratic—it
cannot engage in conscious social reproduction—if it restricts rational
deliberation or includes some educable citizens from
an adequate education. Nonrepression
and nondiscrimination are therefore intrinsic to the ideal of a democratic
society, as parental choice, liberal autonomy, and conservative virtue are
not.
95-96 We value
democracy not primarily as a pure process that defines what is just, nor as a
perfect process that guarantees justice (defined by some
nonprocedural standard). Rather because it is the best way by which we can discover
what a community values for itself and its children.
Gutmann wants to talk about how our democracy can be consciously social reproduced—hoe it can be restored, maintained, and continued into the future; and she believes democratic education is the key here:
58 …schools have a much greater capacity than most parents and voluntary associations…for teaching children to reason out loud about disagreements that arise in democratic politics and to understand the political morality appropriate for democracy.
She disagrees with those who hold a Family State theory who [23] “…expect to create a level of like-mindedness…among citizens that most of us expect to find only within families….The purpose of education [here] is to cultivate unity…by inculcating in them the desire to pursue the good life above all inferior ones.” She contends that even Plato’s Republic, for example, fails to provide a promising model for such states.
She disagrees with those who hold a State of Families theory because they [32-33] “…abdicate all educational authority to parents….
The “pluralism” commonly identified [here] is superficial because its internal variety serves as little more than an ornament for onlookers. Pluralism is an important political value insofar as social diversity enriches our lives by expanding our understanding of differing ways of life. To reap the benefits of social diversity, children must be exposed to ways of life different from their parents and—in the course of their exposure—must embrace certain values, such as mutual respect among persons, that make social diversity both possible and desirable.
She disagrees with those who hold a State of Individuals view who would limit teaching to values clarification (treating very moral opinion as equally worthy and encourage children in the false subjectivism). [37] She contends that “the same argument that holds against the family state holds against the state of individuals: being right is not a necessary or sufficient condition because parents and citizens have a legitimate interest (independent of their “rightness”) in passing some of their most salient values on to their children.” Going on to say in the next paragraph, “why must freedom be the sole end of education, given that most of us value things that conflict with freedom? We value, for example, the moral sensibility that enables us to discriminate between good and bad lives. A well-cultivated moral character constrains choice among lives at least as much as it expands choice.”
So, summing up the discussion of the other theories and transitioning to her discussion of the educational theory for a Democratic State, she maintains:
39 we disagree over the relative value of freedom and virtue, the nature of the good life, and the elements of moral character. But our desire to search for a more inclusive ground presupposes a common commitment that is, broadly speaking, political. We are committed to collectively re-creating the society that we share. Although we are not collectively committed to any particular set of educational aims, we are committed to arriving at an agreement on our educational aims (an agreement that could take the form of justifying a diverse set of educational aims and authorities).
First, who is included in her ‘we’? She wrote in 1987 and 1999, and I think she clearly believe it applies today—but is this true of all of us, most of us, a majority of us, …? The importance of this question needs to be emphasized, as is evidenced by the current situation in Florida. Of course, in February of 2023 any discussion of “states and education “is going to suggest a discussion of the situation in Florida.
44-45 Second, clearly the two Democratic [political] Values she emphasizes are non-repression and non-discrimination. They are key to democracy, and must be encouraged and taught in a democratic education, and they can encourage future citizens to develop the deliberative characteristic which is necessary for democratic citizenship.
Importantly, she responds to those who object to this sort of foundation for the educational system: [39] “The virtues and or character we are cultivating…are necessary to give children the chance collectively to shape their society. The kind of character you are asking us to cultivate would deprive children of that chance, the very chance that legitimates your on claim to educational authority.”
Her discussion in Chapter Two begins to discuss purposes of primary education and the elaborates on how the other theories don’t promote what is necessary if we are to provide a foundation for democracy. I won’t travel over this land a second time, but I didn’t get to properly discuss 64-70 Parental Choice:
Those who advocate for “parental choice” which allow the options of private education. While public schooling in the states is the norm, there have been serious inequities which have arisen in states, and notable failures in the education of students, and she will discuss these schools in Chapter 4. Here she discusses a new movement of parents advocating for public vouchers for private schools:
65-66 to the extent that advocates of voucher plans focus on the rights of individual parents to control the schooling of their children, they rest their defense on the fundamental premise of the state of families….More sophisticated voucher plans…make substantial concessions to the democratic purposes of primary education by conditioning certification of voucher school on their meeting a set of minimal standards.
Here there is a “mixed” control of the education, and some theorists champion the idea that allowing for a variety of “mixture” might foster diversity. Gutmann contends that:
70 The problem with voucher programs is not that they leave too much room for parental choice but that they leave too little room for democratic deliberation.
The appeal of vouchers to many Americans who are not otherwise committed to a state of families stems…from three facts. One is that our public schools…are so centralized and bureaucratized that parents along with other citizens actually exercise very little democratic control over local schools. The second is that only poor parents lack the option of exiting from public schools and this seems unfair. The third, and most sweeping fact, is that the conditions of many public schools today is bleak by any common-sensical standard of what democratic education ought to be.
III. Chapter Three: Dimensions of
Democratic Participation:
71-75 Levels of Democratic Control:
75 In anything but a tiny city-state, community control over schools
cannot be identified with local control because there
are several democratic communities that have a
legitimate role to play in determining school policy. For the same reason, federal and state control must not be all-encompassing,
otherwise local democratic control over schools is rendered
meaningless. Local public schools play a
legitimate role in reflecting and responding to the more particular collective
preferences of face-to-face communities, a purpose that few other political
institutions can serve as effectively in our society.
75-79 Democratic Professionalism:
75-76 At all levels of American government, political control over schools
is challenged—and often shared—by other authorities: parents and parent-teacher
associations, teachers and teacher’ unions, accrediting
agencies, private foundations, civic
groups and lobbying organizations….Although all these groups help shape
what happens in American schools, the challenge posed by teachers and teachers’
unions is by far the most significant in upholding the principle of
nonrepression against democratic authority.
77-79 She discusses authority and professionalism in the
professions of medicine, law, and teaching:
77 too much autonomy leads to “the insolence of office.” Too little autonomy, on the other hand,
leads to what one might call “the ossification of office,” from which,
by almost all accounts, the teaching profession in the
United States.
79 Far more than doctors or lawyers,
teachers make compromises in their professional standards for causes that are
often entirely beyond their personal control: too many students, too little
preparation time for teaching, too much administrative work, too little money
to support their families. Some of these causes, however, may be within the collective
power of teachers—organized by professional teachers’ unions—to change.
79-88 Teachers’ Unions:
79 Such unions can “…create the conditions
teachers under which teachers can cultivate the capacity among students for
critical reflection on democratic culture.”
80 Such unions should have sufficient
authority to combat ossification of office, but not so much as to engender
insolence of office.
80-81 Such unions were
begun to ensure teachers have sufficient control over their work, and
multiplied as they secured better rates of pay.
81 Merit pay is an important way of
mitigating ossification. But, she adds:
“democratic education depends not only upon attracting intellectually
talented people with a sense of professional mission to teaching, but also on
cultivating and sustaining that sense during their career as teachers.”
82-84 While teacher pay is important to
teachers’ unions (as it is to both boards and teachers) professionalism is even more important, and one reason that teachers’ unions came
into being:
82 Although a school board may establish
curriculum, it must not dictate how teachers choose to teach the established
curriculum, as long as they do not discriminate
against students or repress reasonable points of view. Although a school board may control the
textbooks teachers use, it may not establish how teachers use the textbooks
within the same principled constraints).
If teachers are not permitted sufficient
intellectual authority, they can not successfully teach students to be
intellectually independent. Of course
too much autonomy is as problematic as too little.
83 She discusses the move toward teacher
tenure for primary and secondary school teachers contending systems of
impartial review are key. Fostering
professionalism is important both in the classroom and in the larger school
context, and good schools can retain teachers by treating them as
professionals. She goes on to point out
differences between primary and secondary school teachers and college or
university professors:
84 “Teachers’ unions are ideally an interim
solution to the problem of professional ossification, but the interim is likely
to last a long time given the obstacles now standing in the way of teachers
gaining a greater role in shaping school policy.”
84-88 She identifies state, federal, and
large school district regulations and requirements as obstacles which
perpetuate the role of teachers’ unions.
88-94 Democracy Within Schools:
88 While the professionalism of teachers can safeguard against repression
and discrimination, a truly democratic education requires that the students
also be allowed to play a role in their
education.
89 Students who are predisposed neither to
participation nor to learning present the greater challenge to a democratic
conception of teaching because their negative attitude toward schooling can
readily reinforce a purely disciplinary method of teaching: teachers assert
their authority, first to produce order, and then to funnel a body of knowledge
into students.”
89-93 But highly committed and professional
teachers can adopt participatory strategies which can reach such students:
92-93 Although we lack enough evidence to say
how much internal democracy [within schools] is necessary to cultivate
participatory virtues among students, the low levels of political participation
in our society and the high levels of autocracy within most schools point to
the conclusion that the cultivation of participatory virtues should become more
prominent among the purposes of primary schooling, especially as children
mature intellectually and emotionally, and become more capable of engaging in
free and equal discussion with teachers and their peers.
93 She cites Dewey’s Lab School as an
exemplar here.
94 However, she contends, a democratic
school cannot be a democracy. The role
of such schools is to prepare future
citizens for democratic citizenship.
Were they fully ready for citizenship, being students in school would no
longer be appropriate.
IV Chapter Four: The Limits of Democratic Authority:
95 The democratic purposes of primary schooling constrain as well as empower democratic communities, but not in the name of parental choice, liberal autonomy, or conservative virtue. The principles of nonrepression and nondiscrimination limit democratic authority in the name of democracy itself. A society is undemocratic—it cannot engage in conscious social reproduction—if it restricts rational deliberation or includes some educable citizens from an adequate education. Nonrepression and nondiscrimination are therefore intrinsic to the ideal of a democratic society, as parental choice, liberal autonomy, and conservative virtue are not.
95-96 We value democracy not primarily as a pure process that defines what is just, nor as a perfect process that guarantees justice (defined by some nonprocedural standard). Rather because it is the best way by which we can discover what a community values for itself and its children.
97 First, the Chapter will examine three pairs of policies which raise the problem of repression in public schools: banning and approving books, teaching creationism and civics, and sex education and sexist education. It then goes on to discuss private schools, separating moral from religious education, restraining the limits that might be placed on democratic education.
Banning and Approving Books:
99-101 She discusses how book banning is generally repressive, and any policies or decisions to engage in such bans must be the result of deliberative democratic procedures. Similarly, with textbook control situations!
101 The most effective means of avoiding direct repression may therefore be indirect: to restructure the process by which democratic decisions are made rather than to constrain decisions after they have been made. Restructuring the process rather than constraining its outcomes is likely to have the additional unintended advantage of furthering the education of adults, while they further the education of children.
Teaching Creationism and Civics:
102 The religions that reject evolution as a valid scientific theory also reject the secular standards of reasoning that make evolution clearly superior as a theory to creationism. Only by putting religious faith above reason can someone believe that the entire fossil record….
103 The case for teaching secular but not religious standards of reasoning does not rest on the claim that secular standards are neutral among all religious beliefs. The case rests instead on the claim that secular standards constitute a better basis upon which to build a common education for citizenship than any set of sectarian religious beliefs—better because secular standards are both a fairer and a firmer basis for peacefully reconciling our differences.
Sex Education and Sexist Education:
Gutmann first talks about sex education (107-111), and then goes on to discuss sexist education (111-115).
108 Teaching about sex is…not the same as teaching sex, just as teaching about religion is not the same as teaching religion. The most ardent advocate of the separation of church and state could consistently admit a course of comparative religion in the public-school curriculum. The distinction between teaching sex and teaching about sex is considerably harder….
110 She considers sex education with a provision of exempting students who (or whose parents) are opposed.
111 Gutmann uses “sexist education” “…to characterize a specific set of educational practices: those that serve, often unintentionally, to restrict the quality or quantity of democratic education received by girls (or women) relative to that received by boys (or men).”
Note that here she refers to “educational practices” where at other times it is “education,” “educational theories.”
112-115 She discusses statistics in the hiring of primary vs. secondary teachers, and statistics regarding administrators and the apparent discriminatory practices.
115 The educational rationale for breaking sex stereotyping implicates not only the authority structure but also the curriculum of schools. Because most discussions of sexism in education concentrate on the curriculum, I have focused on the authority structure. Breaking sex stereotypes in the curriculum is equally important but simpler to justify. It should be obvious that no democratic principle prevents teachers from paying more attention to women in history and literature from adopting gender-neutral language. The practical obstacles that stand in the way of curricular reform make it even more important that we discover as many principled ways as possible to overcome sex bias in schooling.
Private Schools:
115 In this section she addresses the question “is access to private schools a necessary or desirable limit on democratic control over primary Education?” The question of private schooling leads, naturally, to a discussion of whether dissenting parents should be able to exempt their children from some elements of the public schooling.
116 Only in a state of families is it natural to assume that parents have an exclusive right to control the education of their children regardless of democratic will.
117 She argues that while sometimes private schools can siphon off wealthier students from public schools, more than two-thirds of private students attend catholic schools, and so “…a better alternative to prohibiting private schools would be to devise a system of primary schooling that accommodates private religious schools on the condition that they, like public schools, teach the common set of democratic values.”
117-120 This accommodation can be broadened but where a religion espouses racial discrimination or repression a line is be crossed: “because the requirements of racial nondiscrimination and religious nonrepression conflict is this case, democratic principles permit but do not require legislatures to constrain fundamentalist along with all other schools to racial nondiscrimination.”
Dissent within Public Schools:
122 Public schools would more effectively teach democratic values…if they were willing to exempt some children from practices to which their parents object as long as those practices do not require public schools to be discriminatory or repressive…By such selective accommodation, schools may be able to teach both the moral value and the principled limits of democratic dissent without elevating conscientious refusal into a constitutional right of children or of parents acting on their children’s behalf.
123 By respecting conscientious dissent within these principled limits, public schools can offer a valuable lesson in democratic toleration, and also obtain the allegiance of some dissenting minorities. Private schools provide the option for exiting for intense dissenters as well as an incentive for public schools to become more tolerant of internal dissent even when they are not legally obligated to do so.
Separating Moral from Religious Education and Limiting Limits:
I’m skipping her discussions here.
I greatly appreciate comments and corrections--typos and infelicities are all too common and the curse of "auto-correct" plagues me!
Email: hauptli@fiu.edu
Last revised on 02/27/26