Citizenship as shared fate: Education for membership in a diverse democracy

Educational Theory

Volumn 62, Issue 4, 2012, Pages 381-395

  Ben Porath, Sigal ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84864300789     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2012.00452.x     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. My views on citizenship, and even more so on education, differ from those of Melissa Williams, but I am nonetheless indebted to her work on shared fate and especially to her illuminating essay "Citizenship as Identity, Citizenship as Shared Fate, and the Functions of Multicultural Education," in Citizenship and Education in Liberal-Democratic Societies: Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities, ed. Kevin McDonough and Walter Feinberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 208-247.
2. I have discussed in previous work the ways in which war and conflict can develop further dimensions of shared fate, such as a shared sense of threat and solidarity in the struggle. See Sigal Ben-Porath, Citizenship Under Fire: Democratic Education in Times of War (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2006.
3. Sigal Ben-Porath, "Wartime Citizenship: An Argument for Shared Fate,"Ethnicities 11, no. 3 (2011).
4. For a theoretical account of the sociological practices of nationalism, see Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
5. Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity Without Groups (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004).
6. For a study on the workings of nationalism in schools, see Thea Renda Abu El-Haj, "'The Beauty of America': Nationalism, Education and the War on Terror,"Harvard Education Review 80, no. 2 (2010): 242-275.
7. This is illustrated by the discussion of language in Bruce Maxwell, David I. Waddington, Kevin McDonough, Andrée-Anne Cormier, and Marina Schwimmer, "Interculturalism, Multiculturalism, and the Political Dilemma of Conservative Religious Schooling," in this issue.
8. Rogers Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1997), 13-14.
9. I use the terms "citizenship education" or "education for citizenship" rather than "civic education" because my discussion constructs citizenship broadly rather than focusing on the more skills-oriented and curriculum-based vision that the term "civic education" denotes.
10. Rob Reich, "How and Why to Support Common Schooling and Educational Choice at the Same Time,"Journal of Philosophy of Education 41, no. 4 (2007): 711.
11. As I argued in the previous section, identity should not be the sole focus of this endeavor, but I nonetheless agree with Reich's analysis of the capacity of the common school to provide a rich context for developing desirable forms of democratic citizenship.
12. Eamonn Callan, Creating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 76.
13. Eamonn Callan, "Better Angels of Our Nature: Dirty Hands and Patriotism,"Journal of Political Philosophy 18, no. 3 (2010): 249-270.
14. Michael S. Merry and Jeffrey A. Milligan, "Complexities of Belonging in Democratic and Democratizing Societies: Islamic Identity, Ethnicity and Citizenship in the Netherlands and Aceh,"Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 29, no. 3 (2009): 318-319.
15. I further elaborate the justifications for focusing on the nation rather than multinational and regional associations or global affiliations in Sigal Ben-Porath, "Citizenship as Shared Fate," in Education, Democracy, and Justice, ed. Danielle Allen and Rob Reich (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, in press).
16. The case may be different in some key ways in emerging democracies, in post-conflict contexts, and in other systems of governance. Therefore this argument focuses on contemporary examples of stable Western democracies. To apply to some of these other contexts, it needs to be tweaked. I tackle post-conflict issues in Sigal Ben-Porath, "Wartime Citizenship: An Argument for Shared Fate,"Ethnicities 11, no. 3 (2011): 313-325.
17. One such policy that helps defend the rights of members of illiberal subgroups is entrance paths. I discuss those in Sigal Ben-Porath, "Exit Rights and Entrance Paths: Accommodating Cultural Diversity in a Liberal Democracy,"Perspectives on Politics 8, (2010): 1021-1033.
18. Tommie Shelby, We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005).
19. Michael S. Merry and Jeffrey Ayala Milligan, "Citizenship as Attachment and Obligation," In Citizenship, Identity and Education in Muslim Communities: Essays on Attachment and Obligation, ed. Michael S. Merry and Jeffrey Ayala Milligan (Basingstoke, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 3.
20. This account clarifies some of what makes the nation-state a valuable institution although there are other values promoted by this structure that I do not discuss here. For further discussion, see Sigal Ben-Porath, "Civic Virtue Out of Necessity: Patriotism and Democratic Education,"Theory and Research in Education 5, no. 1 (2007): 41-59.
21. Note that my argument leaves open the possibility of competing and additional values, and it does not give up the possibility of criticizing any particular nation-state or its actions.
22. Roberta L. Steele, "All Things Not Being Equal: The Case for Race Separate Schools,"Case Western Reserve Law Review 43, no. 2 (1993): 591-624.
23. Michael S. Merry, "Segregation and Civic Virtue," In this issue; and Michael S. Merry, "Cultural Coherence and the Schooling for Identity Maintenance,"Journal of Philosophy of Education 39, (2005): 477-497.
24. Cynthia Estlund, Working Together: How Workplace Bonds Strengthen a Diverse Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
25. Lawrence Blum, "Best Traditions Patriotism: A Commentary on Miller, Wingo and Ben-Porath,"Theory and Research in Education 5, no. 1 (2007): 61-68.
26. Harry Brighouse, "Should We Teach Patriotic History?" In Citizenship and Education in Liberal-Democratic Societies, ed. McDonough and Feinberg, 157-178.
27. Michael S. Merry, "Patriotism, History and the Legitimate Aims of American Education,"Educational Philosophy and Theory 41, no. 4 (2009): 378-398.
28. Michael Hand, "Should We Promote Patriotism in Schools?"Political Studies 59, no. 2 (2011): 328-347.
29. Denise G. Réaume, "Official Language Rights: Intrinsic Value and the Protection of Difference," In Citizenship in Diverse Societies, ed. Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 245-272.
30. Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), Where he argues that "la survivance in Quebec has depended on a number of these very basic conditions: French-language education, not only in childhood, but through to higher education; the right to use one's language, not only when interacting with government, but also in one's day to day job, whether in the public service or private employment; the right... to exempt francophone immigrants from the requirement to learn English to gain citizenship... [and] the right to self-government, as embodied in a federal subunit which has the power to make decisions with respect to education, employment, and immigration" (p. 158).
31. Will Kymlicka and Allen Patten Language Rights and Political Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
32. Oriol Aspachs-Bracons et al., "Compulsory Language Educational Policies and Identity Formation,"Journal of the European Economic Association 6, no. 2-3 (2008): 434-444.
33. Maxwell et al., "Interculturalism, Multiculturalism, and the Political Dilemma of Conservative Religious Schooling.".
34. Carola Suárez-Orozco and Marcello Suárez-Orozco, Children of Immigration (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002). The authors present the challenges that children of immigrants, who make up one-fifth of school children in the United States today, face in the schooling system. They make the case, which correlates with the framework of shared fate, of first-language retention in addition to English-language access.
35. On linguistic diversity as problem, right, or resource, see Richard Ruiz, "Orientations in Language Planning,"Journal for the National Association for Bilingual Education 8, (1984): 15-34.
36. For example, some schools in Texas, a state with a significant Spanish-speaking minority, offer double immersion in English and Spanish to all students and teachers.
37. THIS ARTICLE BUILDS in its earlier sections on my article "Citizenship as Shared Fate," in Education, Democracy, and Justice, ed. Danielle Allen and Rob Reich (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, in press). For critiques of previous versions, and excellent discussions on shared fate, I am grateful to Nicholas Burbules, Michael Merry, and the participants of the Educational Theory Summer Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to the participants of the Institute for Advanced Studies' Dewey Seminar 2009-2010, and to Eamonn Callan, Walter Feinberg, Amy Gutmann, Lucas Swaine, Yuli Tamir, and Melissa Williams. I thank the Spencer Foundation for their support in writing this article.2011.