Website for Bruce Hauptli's Midcoast
Senior College Course for Spring 2026
Amy Gutmann On How Our Democratic Society Should Make Decisions About Education
Class meets 9:30-11:00
AM on Mondays February 2—March 23
Room 119 of
University of Maine Augusta Brunswick Center, Orion Hall, 12 Sewall Street,
Brunswick (On Brunswick Landing in Cook's Corner)
Copyright © 2026 Bruce W.
Hauptli
Please Note: this webpage will be revised throughout the
course. If you haven't closed your
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Course Description:
Amy Gutmann is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. From 2022 2024 she was our Ambassador to Germany, from 2004 to 2022 she was President of the University of Pennsylvania, from 2001 to 2004 she was Provost of Princeton, and from 1976 to 2004 she was a Professor of Political Science at Princeton. Wikipedia says: "Through her writings, Gutmann has consistently sought to bridge theory and policy to advance the core values of a civil democratic society: liberty, opportunity and mutual respect. In a recent ranking of US political scientists in PhD-granting departments she is ranked second-highest in citations among all political theorists….”
Her first major contribution to political philosophy was her book Democratic Education (1987; revised 1999). It was reviewed in the Journal Ethics and was considered "the finest contribution to the literature on democratic education of the last seventy years." It fostered a revival of interest in the relationship between democracy and education The book addresses central questions in the political theory of education such as:
How should a democratic society make decisions about education?
What should children be taught?
How should citizens be educated?
What is the proper response of democratic education to the challenge of multiculturalism? and
Should schools try to cultivate patriotic or cosmopolitan sentiments among students?"
Gutmann and her
frequent coauthor, Dennis Thompson (he is the Emeritus Alfred North Whitehead
Professor of Political Philosophy at Harvard), have developed a conception of
democracy which they call Deliberative Democracy, and we will start by
looking at. We will then turn to
Gutmann's philosophy of education which stresses the importance
of publicly supported education that "develops the capacity to deliberate
among all children as future free and equal citizens" and “encourages"
schooling whose aim is to teach the skills and virtues of democratic
deliberation within a social context where educational authority is shared
among parents, citizens, and professional educators." We will
contrast her educational philosophy with several
others as we assess its potential to repair our democracy, and we will study
its implications at all educational levels for both the control and the
distribution of such an education.
Required Reading: Amy Gutmann, Democratic Education, second edition (1999) ISBN 978-0691009162. On Amazon: Kindle: $32.41, Paper: $9.88-$32.82, Hardcover: $6.18 (it’s a collegiate textbook, thus the weird pricing).
This course webpage and syllabus will have more links and information added before and during the course. There will be web supplements for each meeting—which are intended to ease understanding of the material. They may be read before, and/or after, the class.
First Week, February 2: Introduction:
Readings for First Class: Please read my A Quick Introduction to "Deliberative Democracy" and Democratic Education; as well as Guttmann's "Preface to the Revised Edition" of our text as well as "Introduction: Back to Basics" (pp. xi-18 of our text) prior to class.
Second Week, February 9 : States &
Education:
Readings for Second Class: Chapter One: States and Education, and you might find my contrast between “indoctrination “and “education” interesting in “Education, Indoctrination, and Academic Freedom.”
Third Week, February 16: Democratic Participation,
and The Purposes of Primary Education [Class on Zoom since University of Maine Augusta Brunswick Center I Closed
for Presidents’ Day]:
Readings for Third Class:
Chapter Two: The Purposes of
Primary Education.
Fourth Week, February 23: Dimensions of Democratic
Participation, and The Limits of Democratic Authority:
Readings for Fourth Class: Chapters Three: Dimensions of Democratic Participation, and Four: The Limits of Democratic Authority,
Fifth
Week, March 2:
Distributing Primary Education, and The Purposes
& Distribution of Higher Education:
Readings for Fifth Class: Chapter Five: Distributing Primary Schooling, Chapter Six: The Purposes of Higher Education, and Chapter Seven: Distributing Higher Education.
Sixth
Week, March 9:
Extramural Education Educating Adults and The Primacy of
Political Education:
Readings for Sixth Class:
Chapters Eight: Extramural Education, Nine:
Educating Adults, and Conclusion: The
Primacy of Political Education
Seventh Week, March 16 and the Challenges of Civic
Minimalism, Multiculturalism, Cosmopolitanism: and Criticisms:
Readings for Sixth Class: and Epilogue: Challenges of Civic Minimalism, Multiculturalism, and
Cosmopolitanism
Eighth Week: March 23:
Links:
I greatly appreciate comments and corrections--typos and infelicities are all too common and the curse of "auto-correct" regularly plagues me!
Email: hauptli@fiu.edu
File last revised on: 02/05/26