The republican political tradition, which originated in Ancient Rome and picked up by several early-modern thinkers, has been revived in the last couple of decades following the seminal works of historian Quentin Skinner and political theorist Philip Pettit. Although educational questions do not normally occupy the center stage in republican theory, various theorists working within this framework have already highlighted the significance of education for any functioning republic. Looking at educational questions through the lens of freedom as non-domination has already (...) yielded important insights to discussions of political education. However, consideration of the existing republican educational discourse in light of the wide range of issues discussed in Pettit’s recent works reveals that it suffers from two major lacunae. First, it does not take into consideration the distinction (and deep connection) between democracy and social justice that has become central to Pettit’s republicanism. Thus, the current discussion focuses almost exclusively on education for democratic citizenship and hardly touches upon social justice. Second, the current literature thinks mainly in terms of educating future citizens, rather than conceiving of students also as political agents in the present, and of school itself as a site of non-domination. This paper aims at filling these voids, and it will therefore be oriented along two intersecting axes: the one between democracy and justice, and the other between future citizenship in the state and present citizenship at school. The resulting four categories will organize the discussion: future citizens and democracy; future citizens and social justice; present citizens and democracy; present citizens and social justice. This will not only enable us to draw a clearer line between the civic republican and liberal educational theories, but also make civic republican education a viable alternative to current educational approaches. (shrink)

What would the institution of the family look like, if it were reformed according to republican desiderata? Would it even survive such re-shaping?

The aim of this paper is to consider the ways in which civic republican theory can provide a meaningful and useful account of social justice, one that is which holds resonance for educational debates. Recognising the need for educationalists interested in civic republicanism to pay greater attention to ideas of justice—and in particular social justice as it concerns relationships between citizens —it is argued that a form of civic republicanism committed to freedom as non-domination is capable of providing a substantive (...) model for analysing social justice within educational arenas. After positioning the contribution offered here within existing educational literature on civic republicanism, salient elements of social justice as freedom as non-domination are identified. On this basis, debates concerning the existence and potential expansion of state grammar schools in England are considered in relation to the account of republican social justice as non-domination. It is argued that from this republican position grammar schools represent an arbitrary domination of the interests of those less well off by those with greater material and cultural capital and in doing so lead to advantages for some at the expense of others. Though the focus of the paper is on grammar schools in England, it is suggested that republican justice may be a useful frame for considering similar educational cases in England and elsewhere. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of a radical republican conception of freedom as non-domination, rooted in the anarchist tradition. In discussing both the non-statist theoretical frameworks and the practical educational experiments associated with this tradition, I suggest that it can add a valuable dimension to recent critical work in philosophy of education that draws on the republican idea of freedom as non-domination.

An important branch of neo-republicanism holds that freedom as non-domination is the supreme ideal that should be pursued in a polity. In this paper I set out to better specify what neo-republicanism has to say about education. I propose a series of reforms that ought to track the common avowable interests of children, focusing on two important dimensions: i) establishing a proper institutional framework through which children can effectively influence decisions that will in turn affect them; and ii) how the (...) civic education curricula should be modified so that the institutional framework will be upheld by virtuous future citizens. I then turn to showing how we can employ the neo-republican framework in order to criticise certain lacunae of educational systems and to improve upon these in a manner that would be in line with the desideratum of freedom as non-domination. The particular example that I focus on is that of Romania, a country whose educational legislation contains some minimal stipulations regarding civic education and pupils’ involvement in the decision-making process. Nonetheless, such stipulations either do not go far enough or are indeterminate, which might make them susceptible to implementation in a way that would be detrimental to the pupils’ common avowable interests. (shrink)