A vindication of transnational democratic education – replies to Michael Festl, Martin Beckstein and Michael Geiss

ABSTRACT

In Democratic Education in a Globalized World (Routledge, 2019) I defend a discourse theory of global justice as the appropriate normative¹

¹ I would like to thank the guest editors of the book symposium, Klaus Dingwerth and Simon Pistor, as well as David Tresilian and Sharman Levinson for valuable exchanges on this article.

ground for conceiving educational justice and citizenship education under conditions of economic and political globalization. In addition, I articulate democratic conceptions of global educational justice and citizenship education that recognize a moral-political right to democratically adequate education and call for the creation of transnational democratic consciousness. Based on these conceptions I spell out school practices such as historically informed, cross-cultural learning within socially diverse settings that would contribute to realizing these conceptions. In this article I reply to liberal perfectionist, communitarian-conservative and empiricist-historical critiques of Democratic Education in a Globalized World from Michael Festl, Martin Beckstein and Michael Geiss, respectively. I emphasize the feasibility of injustice-reducing educational practices, I explain how a discourse theory of justice accommodates considerations of both the good and the right, and I justify why the grim record of past educational experience does not render pointless the pursuit of progressive aims through education.

KEYWORDS:

• Educational justice
• citizenship education
• liberal education
• global justice
• global democracy

Introduction

In Democratic Education in a Globalized World – A Normative Theory (subsequently abbreviated by DEGW) I provide philosophical justifications of democratic and transnational conceptions of educational justice and citizenship education and defend these conceptions against a variety of objections from poststructural and postcolonial perspectives (cf. Culp 2019a). In the formulation of these conceptions I rely on basic ideas of the discourse theory of global political and distributive justice that I have articulated in Global Justice and Development (cf. 2014). I briefly recapitulate these ideas in order to clarify the ways in which DEGW represents a distinct global justice-based position on educational justice and citizenship education.

In Global Justice and Development I have intervened in the contemporary liberal-egalitarian debate between so-called statists and cosmopolitans as to whether interpersonal equality applies as a norm of distributive justice only inside states or worldwide. I have re-framed this debate by maintaining that the question ‘What is a just global distribution of resources?’ should be answered indirectly by responding first of all to the question ‘Who is to decide what counts as a just global distribution of resources?’ In that way I have reached the conclusion that reducing global distributive injustice means, first of all, removing the obstacles that block participation in domestic and international political deliberation about how to arrange economic orders. By drawing on this conception of global justice in DEGW, I aim at bridging the fields of global justice theorizing and philosophy of education (cf. also Culp 2019b).

The global justice-based justification of democratic and transnational conceptions of educational justice and citizenship education that I pursue in DEGW operates at three distinct levels – the methodological, the normative-theoretical and the practical level. On the methodological level, I highlight the historical and systematic connections between political philosophy and philosophy of education and emphasize the importance of engaging in ‘political philosophy of education’ and ‘philosophy of political education.’ On this basis I justify viewing a conception of (global) justice as the adequate normative ground of educational policy by criticizing alternative grounds such as human capital formation and liberal perfectionism as well as by unfolding the idea, as John Rawls has put it, that justice is the ‘primary virtue of social institutions’ (Rawls 1971, 3).

On the normative-theoretical level, I vindicate a global and discourse-theoretic position on educational justice, according to which persons have the moral-political right to a democratically adequate education that allows them to participate in the discursive co-determination of the basic normative principles that are underlying their social and political orders. Under conditions of economic and political globalization one central normative implication of this conception is that citizenship education should enable persons to participate effectively in domestic, inter- and transnational political decision-making processes, which, I argue, requires the formation of domestic and transnational democratic consciousness.

On the practical level, the book makes several suggestions as to which educational policies would reduce global educational injustices and contribute to a democratically adequate transnational citizenship education. One of these suggestions is that citizenship education should transcend the nationally structured school systems. That means, among other things, that inter- and supranational organizations should assist arranging supplementary forms of transnational schooling so as to promote transnational democratic consciousness.

In their insightful contributions to this symposium my critics focus on all three levels of my book’s argumentation: Michael Geiss on the methodological level, Martin Beckstein on the normative-theoretical and Michael Festl on the practical level. Festl sems to agree by and large with my methodological and normative-theoretical positions but is concerned with several practical aspects regarding the realization of my conceptions of educational justice and citizenship education. So Festl’s critique in mainly internal, which is why I will start by analysing his critical reflections. By contrast, Beckstein’s article, which I will discuss directly thereafter, is situated primarily at the normative-theoretical level and represents an external critique. It offers a conservative-communitarian critique of the transnational and global aspects of my account of democratic education, which nevertheless seems to accept my methodology of approaching educational issues from a normative-theoretical perspective. Finally, Geiss’s article, which I will examine lastly, is located at the methodological level. Based on the empiricist perspective of the history of education, Geiss calls for greater sensitivity to the sobering historical experiences with educational programmes that aspire but fail to bring about social progress.

Reply to Festl

Festl has a progressive political outlook and endorses the domestic as well as the global diffusion of democratic values through education. Nevertheless, in his insightful comments on DEGW, he points at problems regarding the feasibility of my conceptions of democratic citizenship and educational justice. His concerns are very specific and address questions such as ‘What if poor states do not use the international resources that they receive in order to improve their educational systems?’ and ‘What if the rich states’ domestic educational investments would be economically more efficient than international educational investments from an aggregate global point of view?’ In response, I question that Festl’s examples adequately reflect the normative implications of my conceptions of education. In addition, I will also identify educational policies that are not only better aligned with my conception but also appear more feasible than the policies that Festl discusses.

Before discussing these questions, however, I engage with Festl’s proposal to adopt liberal perfectionism, which is also grounded on practical considerations. Festl justifies this proposal by suggesting that a commitment to a liberal conception of the good would render my educational project in the pursuit of global justice motivationally more effective and less cold-blooded. Despite its appeal, I view Festl’s proposal as insufficiently neutral vis-à-vis (certain) traditional and religious conceptions of the good that must not be deemed unreasonable on the ground that they ascribe less importance to the individual choice of a particular way of life. Thus, my conception of democratic education are meant to be compatible with a variety of liberal and non-liberal understandings of the good.

Liberal perfectionism

Festl (2020) seems to suggest that my conception would be more convincing if it was less neutral.² He recommends adopting liberal perfectionism as normative theory and states explicitly that a ‘new account of [liberal] education must not be afraid of embracing a concept of the good life’ (Festl 2020, 29). This concept of the good life, as liberal perfectionism formulates it, posits that the individual choice of how to lead one’s life renders one’s life flourishing. This is because, according to liberal perfectionism, only by individually choosing which way of life to pursue will the individual activities and projects over the course of one’s life conform with one’s individual identity.

The reason why Festl encourages me to endorse liberal perfectionism is that on his view the ‘liberal project,’ by which he means the diffusion of liberal values throughout the entire world, would only be successful if liberalism included a conception of the good. Informed by the recent analysis of Krastev and Holmes (2019), Festl refers to the failure of liberalism in Eastern Europe after 1989 and argues that the lack of a commitment to a specifically liberal conception of human flourishing accounts for this failure. The ‘liberalism as it was applied to Eastern Europe,’ Festl argues, ‘came without a concept of the good life,’ and that is a central reason why it has failed (Festl 2020, 29).

Before explaining my reluctance to ‘embrace’ liberal perfectionism, I would like to clarify, first of all, that I do not understand my conception of democratic education as either inspired by, or part of, said liberal project. Again, the normative theory that is underlying my conception of democratic education is based on a discourse theory of global justice, according to which structures of justification need to be erected that enable individuals to justify vis-à-vis each what they owe each other as a matter of justice (cf. Forst 2012, passim; Culp 2014, ch. 5, 2019a, ch., 2). In that way my educational theory diverges from those liberal theories who claim that individual moral-political rights and duties could be determined through moral philosophical argument alone – monologically rather than dialogically, so to speak (cf. Habermas 1996, ch. 3; Forst 2012, ch., 9).

One reason why I refrain from endorsing liberal perfectionism is that contrary to Festl (2020, 30) I doubt that ‘autonomy is part of human flourishing because without it we cannot know what to value.’ I view it as compatible with my understanding of moral autonomy that some individuals may pursue a religious way of life and lead flourishing lives, even though they may not have rationally chosen that particular way of life as the best among a variety of alternatives. I would be surprised if religious believers would not be able to explain why they are following the particular conception of the good that they are following. However, I do not view autonomy in the sense of a deliberate choice of a particular way of life as a (necessary or sufficient) condition for human flourishing.

I also disagree with Festl that such autonomy would be necessary to ‘know what to value.’ A religious believer as well as a hedonist can know very well what to value even without having carefully considered how valuable what they value is compared to other understandings of what is valuable. The values that they value can contain ‘internal’ reasons as to why they should be valued – such as the will of God or the various pleasures that one experiences – and need not be expressed in terms of their relative value vis-à-vis other values. Indeed, I agree with Festl (2020, 30) that ‘[e]verybody, qua being a human being, is affiliated with values.’ Yet I doubt that this anthropological fact justifies the normative claim that, as Festl (2020, 30) puts it, ‘the capability of [comparatively] valuing values is valuable.’ I can ‘know what to value’ even without engaging in a comparison of different systems of value.

Festl’s admission that ‘the capability of valuing values is valuable’ is revealing, however, because it unveils that liberal perfectionism is not agnostic regarding the relative value of different ways of life (Festl 2020, 30). It actually views the individually chosen way of life as particularly valuable. Thus, contrary to Festl’s claim that on the liberal perfectionist view autonomy is ‘a condition for dealing with values as opposed to prescribing values,’ liberal perfectionism prescribes valuing the deliberate valuation of value (Festl 2020, 30). In fact, it appears unavoidable that liberal perfectionism is committed to ‘prescribing values,’ if it is a distinctive feature of this liberalism – as opposed to political liberalism – that it contains a ‘comprehensive’ conception of the good and thus includes a substantive understanding of what renders an individual life flourishing. On my view, pace Festl, this renders perfectionist liberalism potentially paternalistic and possibly also Eurocentric and hence parochial (cf. Culp 2019a, ch. 2 and 7).

Thus far, I have still left unaddressed the problem that without a commitment to a particular understanding of the good life it is unlikely, as liberalism’s experience in Eastern Europe has supposedly shown, that my conception of democratic education would be able to attract and bind many followers. My response to this problem is twofold. First of all, the democratic citizenship education that I envision has as its aim the development of an effective sense of moral responsibility to fulfill requirements of discourse-theoretic (global) justice. To the extent that this kind of citizenship education is successful, it will cultivate the kind of motivation that is necessary for maintaining a democratic order. It is unknown to me whether citizenship education in Eastern Europe has actually tried to promote such a sense of moral responsibility for justice. It is at least conceivable, however, that educational policies, like other policies in Eastern Europe after 1989, were narrowly oriented towards furthering economic efficiency and dismantling the state. Hence it might be this neglect of the political aims of citizenship education which explains, at least to some extent, the failure of the liberal project in Eastern Europe. Therefore, liberalism’s failure in Eastern Europe need not be predominantly explained by its lack of a conception of the good.

What is more, the kinds of democratic arrangements that my conception of democratic education is meant to promote are not void of any conception of the good. Indeed, the philosophical justification of my conception is not based on a particular conception of the good. Nevertheless, those who are part of a democratic order can defend and unfold, as participants of an ongoing political practice, a specifically political conception of the good for the particular political order(s) of which they are part. Thus, there is no reason why a context-specific conception of the good could not become definitive of a particular political context (even if only fallibly) and motivate those who are part of this context to maintain its central practices. In that way the actual democratic arrangements that could be based on my non-perfectionist understanding of the importance of democracy could display a commitment to a certain conception of the good. Such a commitment, however, would not be philosophically justified. Instead, it would be the outcome of contingent and context-dependent political justifications of those who are members of these democratic arrangements.³

Theory and practice

Festl’s other set of concerns relates to the relation between theory and practice. ‘Culp should,’ he argues, ‘elaborate on … practical issues pertaining to his global right to education’ (Festl 2020, 27). This is necessary, according to Festl, because there are several difficulties concerning the realization of educational justice in practice, especially if one thinks of it as a matter of how rich countries could use excess educational resources in order to respond to shortfalls of educational resources in poor countries (cf. Festl 2020, 2–3). The practical problems that Festl identifies include the fungibility of the resources that a poor country receives from a rich country, the moral hazards that the transfer of resources generates in poor countries and the potential sub-optimal use of transferred resources from the aggregate point of view of both the rich and the poor countries. These problems, especially the first two, are well-known from the expansive literature on the effectiveness of international development aid (cf. Ellerman 2005; Easterly 2006; Moyo 2009). Given the pervasiveness of these problems, it seems important to clarify how inter- and transnational educational policies based on my democratic conception of education would deal with them.

However, I need to distance myself from the framing within which Festl is able to identify these problems in the first place.⁴ To begin, the distinction between poor and rich states is not of particular relevance for my understanding of responsibility for educational justice. What matters is that within all states citizens enjoy the right to a democratic education so that democratic structures of justification will eventually come about. It is not only possible but a sad reality that even within many rich countries many citizens do not enjoy the right to a democratic education. Consequently, many rich states should first of all concern themselves with the question of how to ensure the right to a democratic education for all of their own citizens before turning to the question of how such a right could be granted to citizens of other states (cf. Culp 2019a, 78). Given the cultural, economic and political discriminations based on class, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation in many of the rich (and supposedly but not truly democratic) countries of our contemporary world, it seems as if for the time being many of these rich states would have to use their moral energies domestically rather than transnationally.

But let us assume that there is a fair number of fundamentally democratic states that would have resources available to attempt promoting democratic educational policies abroad. What if these attempts are prone to fail for the types of reasons mentioned by Festl – supposing that his reasoning would still apply to this considerably different context, which is not characterized by the rich vs. poor countries-distinction? In the book I explicitly mention this possibility, recognizing that ‘[u]nder certain circumstances there might not be any feasible educational public policies for the sake of promoting democratic citizenship education abroad’ (Culp 2019a, 102). In such circumstances, I argue, ‘the best choice could consist of attempting to further realize a particular understanding of domestic equal educational opportunity’ (Culp 2019a, 102). That is, if the transnational demands of my conception of educational justice cannot be realized, then one possibility is to move from the morally more fundamental (or ‘primary’) to the morally less fundamental (or ‘secondary’) requirements of domestic educational justice (cf. Culp 2019a, 77–8). These requirements include equal educational opportunity, which I view as less fundamental than the realization of democratically adequate education, although they also express requirements of domestic educational justice (cf. Culp 2019a, 78).

In addition, a further practical response to the inability of effectively promoting democratic education abroad would be to focus on the ways in which refugees and migrants from other countries are treated inside those states in which fundamental democratic education has supposedly already been reached. More specifically, given the inability to effectively use excess educational resources abroad, these resources could be used domestically in order to support the social integration and political inclusion of refugees and migrants so as to maintain fundamentally just domestic democratic orders. Educational public policies that aim at realizing this aim could adapt the contents of civic education so that the citizens of the receiving state are in a better position to interact democratically with the migrants or refugees. Furthermore, such policies could also include specialized courses for migrants and refugees that provide them with the linguistic, cultural and economic attitudes, knowledge and skills that they need in order participate in the democratic procedures of the state to which they have moved. Given the moral-political right to democratic education which my conception of global educational justice justifies, all of these measures would count as duties of justice and thus they could not be easily rejected on the ground that they are too demanding to fulfill (cf. Culp and Zwarthoed (2020) on the various relations between education and migration).

I recognize, however, that Festl is right to emphasize that careful attention needs to be given to problems regarding the practical realization of the normative demands of my conception of educational justice. In the case of universalist conceptions of justice and education, such as mine, the gulf between theory and practice appears particularly wide. This is why I have addressed a number of practical problems in the book, including those of normalization and ideology in the case of domestic forms of citizenship education as well as those of hubris and epistemic deficiencies in the case of transnational forms of citizenship education (cf. Culp 2019a, 146–9, 149–54, 170–2 and 172–4, respectively). Yet Festl’s critique shows that there are several other problems that can arise in educational practices that appear comparable to those which I envision. It is crucial to think and study carefully how to respond to such problems. Otherwise, as I also recognize in DEGW, a conception of democratic education would be insufficiently reflexive, since it would not be engaged in ‘carefully analyzing the foreseeable effects of particular policies in a self-critical manner’ (Culp 2019a, 187). In my reply to Geiss I will further elaborate on the ways in which my conception of democratic education is reflexive in this particular sense. Before that, however, I will address Beckstein’s critiques of my conception of democratic education are based on a communitarian-cum-conservative (moral) epistemology and theory of action.

Reply to Beckstein

Beckstein’s (2020)elegant critiques of my democratic conception of educational justice and citizenship education take issue with the neutrality of my justification of a moral right to education, the apparent lack of epistemic modesty in my treatment of tradition, and the seeming cold-bloodedness of my understanding of the motivational presuppositions of transnational democratic activities. I discuss these three critiques in reverse order.

The cold-bloodedness objection

One of the central aims of DEGW is to explore the ways in which educational theory and practice should become instrumental in cultivating and nurturing the motivation that is necessary for engaging in the reduction of global ecological, environmental and political injustices (cf. Culp 2019a, 7–11). Far from neglecting Michael Sandel’s (1982) and other communitarians motivational critiques of liberalism, my book begins by recognizing that thus far theorists of global justice have not taken seriously enough the problem of motivating globally just behaviour (cf. Culp 2019a, 7–11.). The introduction explains that the book discusses education from the point of view of global justice and not, for example, trade or health, precisely because it views educational theory and practice as sites in which motivational change can be effectuated.

Now, Beckstein recognizes that my conception of democratic education addresses the motivational concern of how to foster the socio-cultural prerequisites of national and transnational democracy and views this as ‘an important move in the right direction’ (2020, 24). Nevertheless, pointing towards Sandel’s (1996) critique of liberal education, Beckstein argues that my conception of democratic education focuses excessively on ‘understanding individual rights as trumps against society’ and fails to ‘sensitize students to the idea that the enjoyment of individual rights simultaneously calls for a recognition of social obligations such as a moral responsibility to maintain the [just] institutional order’ (2020, 23). I doubt, however, that my conception of democratic education is a proper target of this kind of communitarian critique of liberal education.

Firstly, the justification of moral-political rights that I defend in the book is primarily discourse-theoretic rather than liberal (cf. Culp 2019a, 35–39). That is, instead of viewing moral-political rights as being grounded on the basis of natural law, which can be ascertained by the use of reason, I argue that moral-political rights, which are based on principles of justice, must be discursively justified within appropriately arranged structures of justification: ‘basic principles of justice underlying a particular social and political order should result from an exchange of reasons among all those who are subject to that order’ (Culp 2019a, 39). The validity of moral-political rights depends on the relevant discursive community through which they have been justified and their contents have been established. Hence, justifications of moral-political rights have a collective dimension, even if moral-political rights also protect individuals from the arbitrary rule of those who exercise political power (cf. Habermas 1996, ch. 3; Forst 2012, ch., 9). This is why ‘liberal’ is not the best label for my view.

Secondly, whatever the role of ‘social obligations’ may be within a primarily liberal conception of education, my democratic conception of citizenship education recognizes the importance of developing the attitude of ‘respect vis-à-vis others’ through the practice of such an attitude in classrooms and other school settings (cf. Culp 2019a, 110, 121–22, 129). My understanding of the aims of citizenship education includes not only ‘inward-looking’ self-respect but also ‘outward-looking’ respect vis-à-vis others, which I understand as a fundamental social obligation. Following Gutmann (1995, 561), I refer to this respect vis-à-vis others as ‘a reciprocal positive regard’ (cf. Culp 2019a, 121). Moreover, following Costa (2011, 67), I highlight that an implication of such respect is the need for the virtue of reasonability, which involves not only the recognition of valid demands of justice, but also the willingness to follow such demands (cf. Culp 2019a, 121). What is more, I argue explicitly that global citizenship education must contribute to furthering ‘motivationally effective consciousness for global justice,’ which I define as a ‘motivationally effective sense of moral responsibility for realizing demands of global justice’ (cf. Culp 2019a, 1 and, 16). Hence, when reflecting on these features of my conception of citizenship education, it is clear that it takes seriously the importance of ‘social obligations.’

In reply, Beckstein could concede this point but insist that the ways in which I suggest modelling education so as to elicit the motivation to recognize social obligations is mistaken. Indeed, he criticizes that my ‘educational program conspicuously focuses on the intellectual skills necessary to empower citizens while treating questions of collective identification and the emotional economy motivating democratic solidarity as orphans’ (2020, 15). But this critique neglects not only that among the skills that I emphasize is the hermeneutical skill to understand individuals and groups from other cultural backgrounds – the skill of cross-cultural empathy, so to speak. The critique also overlooks that I emphasize the development of attitudes like self-respect and respect vis-à-vis others as well as the diffusion of knowledge about inter- and transnational political affairs. So it is not only skills but also knowledge and attitudes and that I understand as important for the ultimate central aims of citizenship education, namely, the formation of domestic and transnational democratic consciousness.

In addition, my list of attitudes, knowledge and skills is neither meant to be exhaustive regarding the individual characteristics necessary for domestic and transnational democratic consciousness, nor is the idea that all of these individual characteristics taken together would constitute such consciousness. By contrast, my list merely provides key examples of individual characteristics without which transnational democratic consciousness is unlikely to be obtained. Ultimately, domestic and transnational democratic consciousness represents a collective achievement that results from social and political processes of democratic ‘conscientization’ – a terminology that I have adopted from Paulo Freire (cf. Freire 1970; Culp 2019a, ch., 5). As I argue in DEGW, such processes are stimulated and arise in economically, ethnically and socially diverse school settings with relatively flat hierarchies that embody a culture of reasonable debate and practice cross-cultural learning beyond the Western canon (cf. Culp 2019a, 120–7). Hence, I disagree with Beckstein’s analysis that my understanding of the aims of democratic education is excessively intellectual and void of considerations of ‘collective identification.’

Indeed, the practices of collective identification at the transnational level that I envision cannot rely on, as Beckstein puts it, ‘feelings of being part of a [national] community of fate,’ as the ‘social justice models favouring a nation-state-based world order’ usually do (Beckstein 2020, 23). They cannot build on the combination of human rights and (national) membership rights and the ‘shared identity, loyalties and emotional attachments’ that this combination engenders (ibid.). However, it is questionable that an exclusively national account is a compelling model of motivationally effective political subjectivity and agency. As Williams’ (2009) has already highlighted, the fates of those living in different states are presently interlaced. This fact undermines civic-nationalist understandings of identity and agency. Indeed, as transnational social movements such as Occupy, Fridays for Future and Black Lives Matter have recently shown, it is inadequate to view collective political identification exclusively or primarily through a nationalist lens. For example, the contemporary debates about the exclusion of (poly-)ethnic minorities in France and Germany can only be properly grasped against the background of transnational practices of solidarity in response to racism. Hence, I doubt that the ‘emotional economy motivating democratic solidarity’ actually has the national character that Beckstein suggests that it has (Beckstein 2020, 23).

Epistemic modesty and the lure of tradition

While Beckstein is very critical of the pedagogy and the account of moral motivation that I defend, he applauds that I emphasize epistemic modesty as an aim of global citizenship education. Students should not only learn facts about national and transnational politics, I argue, but they should also recognize the limits of their knowledge. For example, students must recognize that they cannot easily extrapolate their understandings of political institutions and processes in country X – or in historical period A – to those in country Y – or to those in historical period B. Beckstein nevertheless worries that my conception of epistemic modesty suffers from a ‘rationalist constriction’ (2020, 19). According to Beckstein, this rationalist constriction shows up in the ‘progressive bias’ of my conception of democratic education (2020, 23). For if one were truly epistemically moderate, so his argument goes, then one would have to embrace a conservative rather than a progressive stance. He mentions two reasons to support this claim. One is that we have very little information about the potentially undesirable side effects of any institutional change. Another is that we have to assume that ‘established institutions … constitute valuable storage systems for practical knowledge and accumulated historical experience’ (Beckstein 2020, 22).

Let us assume for the sake of the argument that these two reasons adequately express epistemic modesty and that they justify adopting a conservative rather than a progressive stance vis-à-vis institutional change. If that were the case, however, then the most rational thing to do – i.e. the course of action that is best supported by the available reasons – would be to embrace, as Beckstein puts it, a ‘rebuttable presumption in favour of the given’ (2020, 22). This would imply, however, that the progressive bias of my conception of democratic education actually did not display an excess but rather a lack of rationality. My conception would be insufficiently rational because without good reasons it hoped that institutional change would make things better, even though a proper understanding of the reasons that we could glean from the virtue of epistemic modesty actually pointed towards a conservative orientation. Hence following the logic of Beckstein’s argumentation, it is actually his conservatism and not my progressivism that best represents rationality’s requirements. This is why I am at a loss to understand why from his point of view my progressive conception is said to be suffering from a ‘rationalist constriction.’ From the perspective of Beckstein’s reasoning ‘in favour of the given,’ it is my progressivism rather than his conservatism that embodies wishful thinking and lacks a rational foundation.

The more problematic aspect of Beckstein’s critique that my conception of democratic education suffers from a progressive bias, however, is that it seemingly neglects that I am calling for fundamental transformations of educational practice because of the widespread economic, environmental and political global injustices that we collectively fail to address effectively. Nationally oriented practices of citizenship education that have been in place over the past few decades have not instilled in citizens an effective sense of moral responsibility to combat border-transcending economic, environmental and political injustices. Neither the global climate crisis, nor the problems of widespread hunger and severe economic deprivation, nor the undemocratic character of powerful economic actors and global governance institutions have been confronted seriously enough over the past few decades. Moving from an essentially nationalist practice of citizenship education to a global conception of citizenship education is necessary because the current practices of citizenship education have insufficiently contributed to ameliorating the glaring global injustices.

Thus, the basis of my call for educational change is not the naïve belief that such change tends to be positive. Instead, the basis of my plea that ‘global citizenship education … must contribute to the creation of a motivationally effectiveness consciousness for global justice’ is that the current global orders are deeply unjust – environmentally, economically and politically (cf. Culp 2019a, 1). Thus, given the severe injustices that the present economic, environmental and political institutions are continuously reproducing, we have to give up the ‘presumption in favour of the given.’ Indeed, Beckstein acknowledges that if ‘existing policies and institutions are clearly unjust or defective,’ then they ‘can safely be replaced by better alternatives’ (2020, 22). Perplexingly, however, he seemingly fails to recognize that the antecedent of this implication is actually true and that the pursuit of ‘better alternatives’ is hence permissible (or mandatory, as I would argue). And so despite the massive global environmental, economic and political injustices Beckstein does not call into question the claim that ‘established institutions … constitute valuable storage-systems for practical knowledge and accumulated historical experience.’ In fact, given said global injustices, this claim is actually ideological, since it covers up the ways in which our ‘established institutions’ have been and are still successfully reproducing these injustices. What is more, even if one would not view the contemporary global institutional orders as deeply unjust, the mere fact that these orders have fundamentally changed over the past few decades puts into question the belief that the ‘established institutions’ continue to represent valuable sources of know-how.

Liberal neutrality

Finally, in addition to the ‘rationalist constriction’ that Beckstein identifies in my supposed progressive bias, he also suggests that my conception of democratic education ‘suffers from a slight rationalist constriction’ because I demand that educational public policies should promote what I dub ‘personal moral autonomy’ (, which I will subsequently abbreviate with ‘moral autonomy’) (Beckstein 2020, 4). The promotion of such moral autonomy, as I understand it, means that citizens should be able to exercise the moral right to reject the imposition of understandings of what is valuable in the conduct of their personal lives that they cannot authentically endorse. Beckstein claims that the cultivation of such moral autonomy through education would violate the principle of liberal neutrality. This is because, according to Beckstein, the recognition of this moral autonomy would be incompatible with certain religions that supposedly do not ask believers ‘for conscious and rational approval’ of their way of life (cf. Beckstein 2020, 20, 21). These religions merely ask their believers to recognize that others (i.e agnostics, atheists and believers of other religions) have ‘the right to pursue whatever lifestyle, including individually chosen ones.’ In that way my conception of democratic education, so Beckstein, ‘leaves insufficient room for traditional ways of life’ (Beckstein 2020, 21).

Beckstein’s critique strikes me as problematic in three distinct ways. Firstly, it is hard to imagine that religious believers would be willing to respect the moral autonomy of others, while denying that they themselves also possess such autonomy. This is because once that religious believers recognize certain reasons as to why others possess such autonomy – for example, the reason that there is no rational proof for the validity of any conception of the good, then they might start wondering why they themselves supposedly do not also possess the moral autonomy to reject conceptions of the good that they cannot authentically endorse.

Secondly, it seems flawed to maintain that ‘a religious way of life typically does not’ recognize the believers’ right to moral autonomy (cf. Beckstein 2020, 20, my emphasis). Since the 2^nd Vatican Council Catholics, for example, recognize the freedom of religion as a human right of all human beings, including themselves. That is, the Catholic Church recognizes the Catholic believers’ right to reject the Catholic faith. It thereby endorses a core aspect of the Catholic believers’ moral autonomy.

Thirdly, the claim that I make is actually a lot more moderate than Beckstein’s critique suggests. On my view, the exercise of moral autonomy does not involve comparing different ways of life and evaluating how fitting they are for my individual identity. For example, ‘[a] faithful parishioner’ of the Lutheran church need not, as Beckstein holds, consider ‘converting to Buddhism or to religious humanism’ (2020, 21). Moral autonomy primarily concerns the recognition of the right to say ‘no’ to the imposition of understandings of the good life that are found to be inappropriate because they would involve an unauthentic way of life.

Furthermore, moral autonomy neither asks individuals for a positive, ‘rational approval’ of the way of life that they choose, nor does the exercise of moral autonomy necessarily involve comparing one understanding of the good life vis-à-vis others. (cf. Beckstein 2020, 20, 21). Indeed, I would be surprised if (religious or non-religious) individuals would not be able to cite reasons as to why they have adopted and follow a certain conception of the good. But still, the expression of such reasons is not part of the requirements of my conception of moral autonomy. My conception of moral autonomy is a deontological rather than a teleological one, which does not view moral autonomy as normatively relevant because its exercise is a sufficient condition for leading a flourishing life. As I clarify in the book, ‘the idea of personal moral autonomy means that individuals should be aware that they have the right [rather than the duty] to reason critically which ends they would like to pursue in their private lives,’ and so ‘the normative importance of personal moral autonomy is [not] grounded in the idea that its exercise is necessarily conducive to leading a flourishing life’ (Culp 2019a, 43). Hence, I view as ungrounded Beckstein’s concern that my conception of moral autonomy is incompatible with traditional ways of life.

Reply to Geiss

In a nutshell, Geiss’s critique of my conception of democratic education is that it represents ‘mere normativism.’ He views my conception as being insufficiently informed by the empirical and ‘historical realities’ of education (Geiss 2020, 17). Sound normative theory, he argues in his thoughtful comments, must involve a reflection on past educational experience and the empirical limits of what education can achieve. Otherwise, so Geiss, ‘a purely normative approach runs the risk of repeating many of the problems inherent in educational thinking’ (2020, 17). The central reason why Geiss takes this risk so seriously is because he is committed to what he calls the ‘Adam Smith approach’ to education. Following this approach, ‘education … is not first an instrument that can be used for a specific purpose but is nevertheless an immensely powerful institution’ (Geiss 2020, 17). In line with this idea, Geiss posits that ‘education is one of the most important instruments for stabilizing a hierarchical social order’ (2020, 19). From this perspective, thus, the imminent risk of a ‘purely normative approach’ is that of ascribing excessively progressive targets to education which are bound to remain unfulfilled. Hence, a normative conception of education must recognize the severe limits of what education can deliberately achieve and remain modest in its aspirations. This seems to be at least one ‘moderate’ conclusion of Geiss’s critique.

Another more ‘radical’ conclusion, one which Geiss’s comments also seem to point at, is that any progressive conception of education is misguided because it overlooks the essentially conservative character of education. As Geiss puts it, ‘in view of the rich historical experience with normatively charged educational reforms, it seems … necessary to conclude … that education … cannot simply be steered politically in the desired direction’ (2020, 20). In the following I will explain why I disagree with both of these conclusions. I start by recognizing the importance of the historical realities for normative educational theory, before I criticize a narrow focus on the Smithian approach to education and then defend my normative educational concerns with global citizenship education as an empirically adequate response to problems of global injustice.

The importance of education’s empirical and historical realities

To start off, I agree entirely with many of Geiss’s methodological points. It is essential to learn from history as well as to offer a compelling analysis of the current educational problems and challenges. Otherwise educational theory will indeed repeat past failures and be insufficiently connected to present social conditions. I concede that DEGW may seem to fall short of these methodological desiderata. For example, the book does not include analyses of the educational practices envisioned by Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill and Rabindranath Tagore, although they have advanced the idea of a religion of humanity – an idea which admittedly shares certain characteristics of the ideas of domestic and transnational democratic consciousness which I defend as central aims of citizenship education. But rather than concentrating on certain elements in the history of education that the book has failed to address, let us look at some of the contemporary and historical realities of education that the book actually discusses in an attempt to offer an adequate historical contextualization of the educational theory that it develops.

Regarding the contemporary realities, for example, I discuss in Chapter 1 the recent economization of schooling (and higher education), which the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has been actively promoting over the past few decades. In line with other philosophers like Martha Nussbaum (2010) and Julian Nida-Rümelin (2013), I observe that recent educational practices have adopted ‘a narrowly conceived human capital conception of education, which means that they are oriented towards furthering the students’ future employability and economic growth’ (Culp 2019a, 4). I problematize the effects that this economization has on democratic education and also suggest that the rather scant philosophical reflection on this economization contributes to a discursive environment in which it can easily expand.

In addition, in Chapter 4 I explain in great detail the ways in which the contemporary nationalist practices of citizenship education fail in their attempts to create democratic consciousness domestically. In brief, I explain this failure as follows:

“[U]nder current conditions national decision making is affected by inter-, trans- and supranational processes and phenomena such as, for example, tax competition, international legal human rights norms and the effects of climate change. Thereby exclusively domestic democratic citizenship education generates unsatisfiable expectations, since it suggests that the exercise of national democratic control among the co-citizens of a single state is feasible, although it is not. As these expectations are disappointed, such kind of democratic citizenship education tends to lead to frustration vis-à-vis the existing domestic arrangements that are supposedly democratic” (Culp 2019a, 103).

It is based on the recognition of this failure of the actually existing domestic practices of democratic citizenship education that I argue that under conditions of economic and political globalization democratic citizenship education must prepare citizens for their participation in both domestic as well as inter- and transnational decision-making processes.

Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, I discuss the potentially problematic normalizing and ideological side-effects of citizenship education, which occur, for instance, when courses of civic education ‘present a society’s political past and present in an excessively favourable manner,’ and when such courses neglect to ‘acknowledge that despite the long history of educational and political attempts to realize public autonomy, most citizens in most societies do not possess such autonomy’ (Culp 2019a, 187).

Finally, from a historical perspective, I reflect upon colonial and neo-colonial practices of education, including that of British colonial education in India. Two of the problems of education that have historically manifested themselves in such (neo-)colonial contexts, I argue, are hubris and epistemic deficiencies (cf. Culp 2019a, 170–4). The very few recommendations that I make for transnational contexts of education are informed by an analysis of these problems as they have unfolded in history. What is more, the central reason why I engage with the problem of Western parochialism in global citizenship education is the historical fact that much of the colonial education carried out by the colonial powers has actually suffered from such parochialism (cf. Culp 2019a, ch., 7).

Consequently, my conception of democratic education is not an exercise at the philosophical drawing board. It actually grows out of a dissatisfaction with the glaring failures of past and present practices of citizenship education. My book is an attempt to think about ways in which these and other failures can be avoided and calls for a reflexive theory and practice of education that takes seriously the problematic side effects of well-intentioned educational efforts (cf. Culp 2019a, ch. 6, section 1, on this methodology).

Dewey vs. Smith?

Geiss is nevertheless correct when he argues that I (also) fall into John Dewey’s camp in thinking about education. ‘Dewey,’ Geiss (2020, 10) explains, ‘wants education to transform society.’ Likewise, I want education to contribute to the transformation of societies and their relations to each other. As I argue in DEGW, citizenship education must equip late modern citizens to participate in domestic and transnational decision-making processes so that they can eventually transform the undemocratic character of both domestic and transnational social arrangements (Culp 2019a, chs. 4 and 5).

Different from what Geiss seems to suggest, however, we do not need to think of the Smithian and the Deweyan approaches to education as being mutually exclusive alternatives. It is just as well possible to think of these two approaches as complementing each other. We need not make an a priori choice as to whether education is either status-quo conserving or status-quo transcending. That is, when studying the historical and contemporary realities of educational thinking and practice, we can remain open to the possibility that education sometimes tends to reinforce social hierarchies and political exclusion, while it sometimes may indeed be a liberating force that is able to overcome the status quo. In fact, taking seriously the possibility that education has this Janus face seems to be a straightforward implication of Geiss’ demand to empirically understand ‘what education actually is’ (2020, 16).

Indeed, Geiss picks well-chosen examples that seem to substantiate the Smithian rather than the Deweyan approach to education. Geiss highlights, for example, ‘how progressive educational reforms in the 20^th century [have] failed time and again,’ how education cannot avoid ‘resulting in a “credentials race” due to being a positional good,’ and how ‘cosmopolitan educational initiatives in the Los Angeles region have fostered the emergence of a neo-conservative movement within the Republican Party’ (2020, 19–20). These are insightful examples, and my analyses of ideological, colonial and neo-colonial forms of education in Chapters 6 and 7 of DEGW can be added to the list of failures of normative projects of education. However, if we only looked at the historical failures of education, then we could indeed give up any constructive normative reflection on educational practice. Education would seem to be doomed to be status-quo preserving and there would be no room at all for the Deweyan idea of deliberately transforming society in a progressive direction, at least in part, through education. This is what I earlier referred to as the radical conclusion of Geiss’ analysis of my book, which I think is flawed and to which I believe Geiss is ultimately not committed.

The reason why this radical conclusion is flawed is itself empirical and historical. The educational practices of alphabetization that were practiced by Paulo Freire in Northeastern Brazil in the mid-20^th century, based on which he was able to formulate the ‘pedagogy of the oppressed,’ actually were liberating for many of the economically poor (Afro-)Brazilians that were participating in them. The educational programmes of de-Nazification and democratization that have been installed in postwar Germany have also been successful, at least to a certain extent. Undoubtedly, the study of the horrors of the Shoah in civics and history classes contributed to deconstructing racist and ethnonational understandings of German citizenship that were hindering the development of an appropriately inclusive democratic consciousness. And the list of liberating or inclusive practices of education could go on. In short, the presentation of a dichotomous choice between either a Smithian or a Deweyan style of educational thinking would itself be nothing but a ‘purely normative approach’ (Geiss 2020, 17). It would lack the empirical and historical contextualization of education that Geiss rightly calls for, but apparently fails to live up to in his own, one-sided commitment to the Smithian approach.

Why education matters for global justice

Arguably, Geiss may concede that the Deweyan approach is sometimes more adequate for theorizing education. However, he could insist that in the particular case of addressing problems of global justice it is not. Geiss (2020, 4) states that he is ‘no longer sure to what extent education is the place to discuss questions of social or even global justice.’ There is a tendency, he thinks, to ‘educationalize’ social problems, as if education was a panacea for social progress (cf. Geiss 2020, 4). What is often lacking, Geiss argues, is an analytical clarification of ‘how education relates to the normative program for which it is intended to be the solution’ (2020, 20).

In the case of my global conception of democratic education, for example, Geiss suggests that it is unclear that the current lack of democratic education is primarily the result of inadequate educational policies (cf. 2020, 21). Instead, the problem of democratic education in many poor countries is the lack of economic resources available for financing education and thus a problem of economic but not of educational policy. In addition, Geiss also points out that ‘the struggle for education as a public good that allows political and economic participation for all inhabitants of a territory happens locally’ (ibid.). So why exactly do I think that educational policies that are transnationally conceived are apt for addressing problems of global justice such as, for example, extreme economic deprivation, climate change injustice and political injustice?

Regarding the transnational perspective on educational policies, I have already mentioned earlier that international organizations such as the OECD have had a considerable impact on the ways in which schools have been transformed in many of the world’s middle- and high-income countries over the past two decades. The Panel for International Student Assessment (PISA) has led to a more competitive and economic culture within and among schools, which has in turn been detrimental for the realization of the democratic aims that schools pursue (cf. Biesta 2016; Engartner 2020). Similarly, in the case of higher education, the so-called Bologna reform has resulted in a profound restructuring of universities throughout Europe that has entailed more career-oriented learning and competition-inducing study programmes. Furthermore, the political protests of students such as the school strikes of the Fridays for Future movement for ‘climate justice’ also have a transnational dimension. Hence it is empirically inadequate to maintain that the political battleground of democratic education is exclusively local programmes.

There are also several reasons for focusing on educational rather than economic policies when considering problems of global justice. First of all, the recognition of a moral responsibility for global economic or distributive justice rather than merely for national economic or distributive justice requires a fundamental change of moral attitude. It may even be adequate to speak of a revolution of the mind that the motivation to pursue global justice requires. And schools appear to be an apt context for promoting such a revolution, given that over the last two centuries national systems of school education have been installed in European and American societies in order to promote national consciousness. Thus, at least to a certain extent, the task of national school education has been to support the completion of the democratic revolutions of the 18^th centuries that have intended to dissolve the hierarchical feudal orders and consciousness. Arguably, national school systems have not been altogether unsuccessful in the realization of this task. In light of this historical experience and the contemporary problems of global injustice that persist, at least in part, due to an excessively nationalist moral-political consciousness, it seems adequate to ascribe to the present systems of education the additional task of nurturing transnational consciousness for justice.

What is more, another reason to focus on educational policy is that developing such consciousness matters not only from a motivational, but also from an epistemic point of view. This is because if we do not want to fall prey to a flawed methodological nationalism that explains the economic differences between countries solely by reference to national factors, then we need to adopt a transnational perspective that enables us to offer an adequate analysis of problems such as severe economic deprivation. Studying the causal importance of trans- and international phenomena such as colonialism, slavery and trade is essential for accounting for the international and global interpersonal differences in income and wealth (cf. Pogge 2002, 139–144; Beck 2008; Milanovic 2016).

Furthermore, global citizenship education is not a philosophical idea that still awaits its practical realization. In Germany as well as in other countries like Canada, global citizenship education has already become a central element of the curriculum of not only private international but also of ordinary public schools (cf. Evans, MacDonald, and Weber 2009; Mannion et al. 2011). In other words, there are existing life-worlds that are corresponding to my normative conception of democratic education – entgegenkommende Lebenswelten, as Habermas would put it. These life-worlds contain educational practices that are already involved in bringing about the kind of revolution of the mind that the global ecological, economic and political concerns injustices are calling for. Hence the exploration of how educational policy can help reducing global injustices represents a normative reflection of ongoing social and political practices. Ignoring these practices within a theory of educational justice would mean to lack sensibility for normatively relevant empirical realities.

This is not to say, however, that all of the existing practices of global citizenship education conform with and realize the aims of my conception of democratic education. Many practices of global citizenship education have an economistic or functional bias and mainly focus on equipping students with the attitudes, knowledge and skills that they need in order to have successful careers in a globalized economy.⁵ Furthermore, in many countries the core ideas of global citizenship education have not been comprehensively implemented thus far. In Germany, for example, the orientation framework for global learning (Orientierungsrahmen für den Lernbereich Globale Entwicklung) has been limited to the disciplines of geography, civics, religion-ethics, economics and vocational education up until 2016. And the 2016 framework still fails to inlcude the last 2 to 3 years of schooling (gymnasiale Oberstufe) (cf. Engagement Global 2016). Hence the current practices of global citizenship education should become more democratic, less career-oriented and be institutionalized more comprehensively.

Finally, scholars like Christine Straehle (2010) and Lea Ypi (2011) have suggested that transnational solidarity and consciousness for global justice should be furthered not through educational reform but through institutional reform or avant-garde political agency, respectively. Regarding Straehle’s proposal I am sceptic that global governance institutions will work adequately and have the desired effects on transnational solidarity unless citizens are sufficiently educated (and healthy) in order to participate in these inter-, trans- and supranational procedures (cf. Dingwerth 2014). Yet, whatever the conceivable merits of these alternative proposals may be, in light of the substantive reasons mentioned in the previous three paragraphs, it seems independently justified to experiment with new modes of education and consider whether they may be effective in bringing about the necessary domestic and transnational democratic consciousness. This is what the kind of evidence-based approach to education, which Geiss seems to favour, actually demands. In case the potential costs of such large-scale experimentation are deemed excessive, then at least (further) small- and medium-scale experimentation should be pursued.

Conclusion

Festl’s, Beckstein’s, and Geiss’s contributions to this symposium challenge my argumentations in DEGW at the practical, normative-theoretical, and methodological levels and focus on quite distinct aspects of the book. Nevertheless, they all seem to share – albeit in different ways – the concern that my conceptions of citizenship education and educational justice are too idealistic. For Festl, my conceptions are too idealistic because he thinks that they fail to address pertinent practical considerations concerning their realization. For Beckstein, they are too idealistic because they normatively transcend the nationalist political imaginary and explore the supposedly unknown and motivationally daunting terrain of inter-, supra- and transnational political action. Lastly, for Geiss, my conceptions are too idealistic because they are allegedly insufficiently informed by the rich history of failures in deliberately bringing about social transformation through education.

In my replies to these critiques from an internal, external and empiricist perspective, respectively, I have argued that numerous of the practical implications of my conceptions of democratic education seem clearly feasible, that the global nature of contemporary ecological, economic and political injustices as well as of social movements renders adequate the transnational framing of my conceptions, and that several of past educational experiences suggest that deliberately transformative education need not fail. In that way I hope to have shown that neither the practical difficulties of transformative educational practices, nor the empirical nature of present global injustices and social movements, nor the historical experience with normatively ambitious educational programmes undermine the validity of a normative theory of education that transcends the status quo. In order to underline the importance of such a normative theory, I would like to recall in closing that for Kant,

“the prospect of a theory of education is a glorious ideal, and it matters little if we are not able to realize it at once. Only we must not look upon the idea as chimerical, nor decry it as a beautiful dream, notwithstanding the difficulties that stand in the way of its realization.” (Kant, 1960 [1803], 8)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ I would like to thank the guest editors of the book symposium, Klaus Dingwerth and Simon Pistor, as well as David Tresilian and Sharman Levinson for valuable exchanges on this article.

² Beckstein, by contrast, as I will explain below, criticizes my conception of democratic education as insufficiently neutral.

³ Cf. Forst (2002) for the way in which a discourse theory of justice combines ideas of ‘the right’ and ‘the good.’

⁴ It seems that Festl understands my conception of democratic education from within a ‘distributive paradigm,’ according to which political conflicts concern the distribution of (economic) resources. In line with Iris Young (1990) and Forst (2014, ch., 1), however, I believe that this distributive paradigm is inadequate for thinking about politics in general as well as about democracy in particular. Politics concerns primarily questions of power and democracy is above all a matter of establishing relationships of political and social power in the right way.

⁵ I criticize the economistic or functionalist understandings of global citizenship education in Culp (2019a, ch., 5).