This paper develops a liberal contextualist account of schooling that balances institutional autonomy with public accountability under conditions of reasonable pluralism. First a conceptual obstacle is discussed: the tendency to conceive educational autonomy according to the false dilemma of instrumentalism versus non‐instrumentalism. Then an alternative is advanced—the contextualist picture—that places education's institutional autonomy in its proper light. The conclusion raises and then responds to important objections to the contextualist picture.

This paper develops a liberal contextualist account of schooling that balances institutional autonomy with public accountability under conditions of reasonable pluralism. First a conceptual obstacle is discussed: the tendency to conceive educational autonomy according to the false dilemma of instrumentalism versus non-instrumentalism. Then an alternative is advanced—the contextualist picture—that places education's institutional autonomy in its proper light. The conclusion raises and then responds to important objections to the contextualist picture.

This is the third of the four essays in Part II of the book on liberalism and traditionalist education; all four are by authors who would like to find ways for the liberal state to honour the self-definitions of traditional cultures and to find ways of avoiding a confrontation with differences. David Blacker’s essay on civic friendship and democratic education develops a Rawlsian conception of civic friendship, the scaffolding of which is necessarily provided by the wide range of comprehensive conceptions (...) of the good that characterize democratic societies. Thus, Blacker argues, a democratic civic education ‘allows citizens to embrace democracy on their own terms, drawing support for democracy’s requisite political conceptions from the perspectives of citizens’ many different secular and/or religious comprehensive doctrines’. For Blacker, a conception of civic friendship that is friendly to citizens’ multiple comprehensive doctrines also entails a substantial lowering of the ‘wall of separation’ between church and state so that courts might be more willing than they currently are to allow the use of state funds to support religious groups, in particular where these groups perform functions within public schools that converge with public interests. The essay concludes by proposing and defending two American educational policy initiatives that are consistent with Blacker’s politically liberal ideal of civic friendship – the revival of a ‘school stamps’ plan first proposed in the 1970s, and a modified version of a ‘clergy in the schools’ programme recently struck down by a federal circuit court in Texas. (shrink)

Through a philosophical lens, this book explores the powerful educational capabilities of classic psychedelics.

This chapter contains sections titled: Educational Technology as Revealing and Concealing Ontological Assumptions Critical Themes for Education Work and Play Imagination.