Supplement
For Third Class:
Copyright © 2026 Bruce W. Hauptli
I. Your Questions From Last Time and the Reaings.
II. Un-Covered Material Chapter I:
States & Education:
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).”
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.
41-47 Finally, she advances A Democratic State of Education in contrast to the other conceptions:
42 the broad distribution of educational authority among citizens, parents, and professional educators supports the core value of democracy: conscious social reproduction in its most inclusive form. Unlike a family state, a democratic state recognizes the value of parental education in perpetuating particular conception of the good life. Unlike a state of families, a democratic state recognizes the value of professional authority in enabling children to appreciate and to evaluate ways of life other than those favored by their families. Unlike a state of individuals, a democratic state recognizes the value of political education in predisposing children to accept those ways of life that are consistent with sharing the rights and responsibilities of citizenship in a democratic society. A democratic state is therefore committed to allocating educational authority in such a way as to provide its members with an education adequate to participating in democratic politics, to choosing among (a limited range of) good lives, and to sharing in the several sub-communities, such as families, that impart identity to the lives of its citizens.
44 …a democratic
state must aid children in developing the capacity to understand and to
evaluate competing conceptions of the good life and the good society. The value of critical deliberation among good
lives and good societies would be neglected by a society that inculcated in
children uncritical acceptance of any particular way or ways of (personal and
political) life….To integrate the value of critical deliberation among good
lives, we must defend some principled limits on political and parental authority
over education, limits that in particular require parents and states to cede
some educational authority to professional educators.
One limit is that of nonrepression.
45 A second principled limit on legitimate democratic authority, which also follows from the primary of democratic education, is nondiscrimination.
An important background point here is a contrast between the pluralistic view under consideration and Plato’s view that there is only one good life for human beings—a life n accord of the dictates of deductive philosophical wisdom—and if individuals can not attain the level of philosophical knowledge needed to understand this life, they needed to have this good life imposed upon them. The idea that there is only one good life has been deeply ingrained in Western Culture (whether the discussion is regarding morality or the good life more generally), though Plato’s particular view has never gained the wide acceptance he hoped for.
Consideration: The United States is a country composed of 50 States, and thus, truthfully, in need of a “Democracy of States” model. While the core elements she is discussing in this chapter may be constitutive of any “democratic model,” how does our “plurality” figure into the discussion of democratic education? How much can these differing democratic experiments differ? How can what occurs in one state bring others to become “more” (or “less”) democratic?
An example: AIOverview on changes in public education Louisiana:
Louisiana's shift in school systems, particularly in New Orleans, was primarily driven by the need to reform a failing, bankrupt school district following the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This led to a state-takeover, converting schools into an all-charter system, promoting autonomy, and implementing stricter accountability.
Key factors and events driving these changes include:
While the post-Katrina reforms led to significant academic gains, the system has continued to evolve, with oversight returning to the local school board in 2018, while still operating largely through charter, nonprofit, and autonomous models.
III. Chapter II. The Purposes of Primary Education
In this Chapter Gutmann addresses the core purposes of “primary education:” [50] “the earliest educational experiences are provided by parents and families—training by discipline and example. These educators are supplemented by day-care centers, friendship circles, schools, as well as religious and civic organizations.”
49 She says that “…in this and the next two chapters, I explore the potential of democratic authority over primary education, which I take to subsume both elementary and secondary schooling. This chapter examines the democratic purposes of primary education. I begin by defending two purposes which are often considered to be in conflict, separately essential to democratic education and together constitutive of “deliberation”….”
50- 52 Deliberation and Democratic Character:
50-51 In early schooling they come to
experience didactic instruction learning reading, writing and arithmetic by
direct instruction and begin to (50) “…develop capacities for criticism,
rational argument, and decision making by being taught how to think logically,
to argue coherently and fairly, and to consider relevant alternatives before
coming to conclusions.”
51 Because “we” disagree about “what is
good,’ we face hard choices, and “children
must learn not just to behave
in accordance with authority but to think
critically about authority if they are to live up to the democratic ideal of
sharing political sovereignty as citizens.”
Of course, there is a serious tension here as
any parent knows! While good
democratically committed parents want their children to behave in accordance with their authority, they also want them to think critically about authority.
The serious tension between these morals is
not subject to a strict and unique describable point. Very young children may have a different amount
of leeway, and as children mature what was appropriate earlier may no longer be
so. Similarly in larger social
settings.
While she hasn’t explicitly said so yet, she
contends that those who are adept at logical
reasoning but lack moral character
are the worst sorts of sophists; while but those who have a steady moral
character but lack a developed rational capacity “…are ruled only by habit and
authority, and are incapable of constituting a society of sovereign citizens.”
Thus, Gutmann contends, education must feature both these as necessary, but not sufficient traits:[1]
51 taken together, inculcating character and teaching moral reasoning do not exhaust the legitimate ends of primary education in a democracy. Citizens value primary education for more than its moral and political purposes. They also value it for helping children how to live a good life in the non-moral sense by teaching them knowledge and appreciation of (among other things) literature, science, history, and sports.
52 She clarifies that she will focus discussion on the roles schools play rather than on the role played by parents who: 52 “…command a domain of moral education within the family that is-and should continue to be—largely immune from external control. If there should be a domain for citizens collectively to educate children in the democratic virtues of deliberation, then primary schools occupy a large part of that domain although they do not monopolize it.”
In the Chapter she elaborates on the three educational theories she criticized in Chapter 1 and their problems in Primary Education in order to clarify the democratic theory she champions.
53-54 Amoralism:
Those who hold a Family State theory maintain that primary schools play no role in moral education, holding that it is the family which has this job. Gutmann contends that schools both do, and should, facilitate development of moral character:
53…by insisting that students sit in their seats (next to students of different races and religions), raise their hands before speaking, hand in their homework on time, not loiter in the halls, be good sports on the playing field, and abide by many other rules that help define a school’s character.
54 Public schools in a democracy should serve our interests as citizens in the moral education of future citizens. She discusses private schools further on pp. 64-70, and notes that she will discuss the role of private schools in Chapter Four.
We will need to consider whether a democracy, as she envisages it, can thrive if only some children attend private schools, if many of them do, if a majority of them do….
54-56 Liberal Neutrality:
She considers how public schools might fulfil the role of moral education for those whose conception of democracy is a state of individuls.
55 Liberal neutrality supports the educational method of “values clarification” which enjoys widespread use in schools throughout the United States. This view is committed to valuing critical thinking and rationality but, contrary to what some critics contend, it is not committed to indoctrination:
55-56 the problem with a Family tate view that “I have my opinion and you have yours and who’s to say who’s is right?” This moral understanding does not take the demands of democratic justice seriously. The toleration of mutual respect that values clarification teaches is too indiscriminate for even the most ardent democratic to embrace.
She goes on to argue that those who hold anti-democratic values believing others are not “equal” need criticism not clarification. Failing to call for this is anti-democratic!
56-59 Conservative Moralism:
56 Those who are committed the conception of a democracy as a family state “…reject freedom of choice as the primary purpose of primary education. They seek to shape a particular kind of moral character that will be constrained—by either habit or reason, or both—to choose a good life.”
57-60 Gutmann notes that the core difficulty for such a view is determining which character, and which methods of character development, will be selected for inculcation. Moreover, schools don’t seem to be well-suited for development of specific characters.
58 She notes, on the other hand, that “schools have a much greater capacity than most parents and voluntary associations…for teaching student to reason out loud about disagreements that arise in democratic politics and to understand the political morality appropriate for democracy.”
59-64 Liberal Moralism:
59-61 Next Gutmann discusses “conservative moralists” who would have schools inculcate a particular character and set of moral values. They, champion schools inculcating “…in children the desire and capacity to make moral choices based on principles that are generalizable among all persons.”
60-64 Gutmann claims that efforts to do this have not been successful. She quickly discusses several such theorists: Piaget, Rawls, and Kohlberg.
While she believes this view is preferable to the one that seeks to inculcate a particular character and morality, setting up schools as authoritative arbiters of general moral principles is anti-democratic.
64 In sum, her
criticism of the sort of schools those who are committed the conception of a
democracy as a family state advance is: “the price of denying democratic
authority over schools is dispensing with the democratic purposes of primary
education.”
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.
LINKS:
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 02/13/26
[1] The distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions may be made in a number of ways. Necessary conditions may be described as “those which must be there for an event to occur, or for a concept to apply” (thus paying your parking fines is necessary for graduation); while sufficient conditions are conditions such that the event must occur, or the concept must apply (thus a direct double shotgun blast to the head is sufficient for death). Note that conditions may be sufficient without being necessary (as in the example), and that necessary conditions need not be sufficient (as in the example). An alternate way of drawing the distinction is to say that “p is a necessary condition for q” means “if q is true, then p is true” (symbolically q ® p), while “p is a sufficient condition for q” means “if p is true, then q is true” (symbolically: p ® q).