The Future of the Public in Public Education

This essay is based on a paper originally presented at ISSEI’s 15th International Conference, “What’s New in the New Europe?”, The University of Lodz, Poland, July 11–15, 2016.

Abstract

In recent years much has been written on the political and social effects of the Internet on the public sphere, but comparatively little attention has been paid to its effects on the educational systems in Europe and beyond. More specifically, the effect of the shift in the locus of public communication to the private sphere, with everyone commenting on everything from their personal computers, tends to undermine and delegitimize the traditional institutions of education. New forms of communication need new educational and behavioral standards. At the same time, not only individual citizens but especially public intellectuals and educators have to come to grips with the fact that there is less and less regulation of the new spaces and new publics they address. This article discusses what we can possibly expect our public education to achieve under these new conditions of local and global communication systems.

Keywords:

• Education
• mass communication
• the public sphere
• public intellectuals
• modern democracy

Notes

This essay is based on a paper originally presented at ISSEI’s 15th International Conference, “What’s New in the New Europe?”, The University of Lodz, Poland, July 11–15, 2016.

1. Oelkers, “Die öffentliche Gesellschaft.”

2. Geiss, Der Pädagogenstaat; and Aubry, Schule zwischen Politik und Ökonomie.

3. Rosenblum, Good Neighbors.

4. Rorty, Achieving our Country, 25.

5. Fuhrmann, Bildung: Europas kulturelle Identität.

6. Mendelson, review of Chun, Updating to Remain the Same, 36.

7. Goffman, “Remedial Work,” Relations in Public, 138–49.

8. Thierney, The Public Space of Social Media.

9. Wajcman, Pressed for Time.

10. Skinner introduces various theoretical concepts in his preface to Rosenblum, The Return of Grand Theory. Other approaches include those of Thomas Kuhn, John Rawls, Louis Althusser, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Fernand Braudel.

11. Bruner, “The Autobiographical Process.”

12. Bohman, Public Delibaration.

13. Putnam and Putnam, “Education for Democracy.”

14. I owe these references to Rita Casale’s lecture at the University of Zurich, May 12, 2016.

15. Parker, Schools, Curriculum and Civic Education.

16. Parker, Teaching Democracy.

17. According to Bertho, Les enfants du chaos.

18. Ravitch, Death and Life of the Great American School System.

19. Weber, Studienausgabe, 18ff.