Democracy can mean a range of concepts, covering everything from
freedoms, rights, elections, governments, processes, philosophies
and a panoply of abstract and concrete notions that can be mediated
by power, positionality, culture, time and space. Democracy can
also be translated into brute force, hegemony, docility, compliance
and conformity, as in wars will be decided on the basis of the
needs of elites, or major decisions about spending finite resources
will be the domain of the few over the masses, or people will be
divided along the lines of race, ethnicity, class, religion, etc.
because it is advantageous for maintaining exploitative political
systems in place to do so. Often, these frameworks are developed
and reified based on the notion that elections give the right to
societies, or segments of societies, to install regimes,
institutions and operating systems that are then supposedly
legitimated and rendered infinitely just because formal power
resides in the hands of those dominating forces. This book is
interested in advancing a critical analysis of the hegemonic
paradigm described above, one that seeks higher levels of political
literacy and consciousness, and one that makes the connection with
education. What does education have to do with democracy? How does
education shape, influence, impinge on, impact, negate, facilitate
and/or change the context, contours and realities of democracy? How
can we teach for and about democracy to alter and transform the
essence of what democracy is, and, importantly, what it should be?
This book advances the notion of decency in relation to democracy,
and is underpinned by an analysis of meaningful, critically-engaged
education. Is it enough to be kind, nice, generous and hopeful when
we can also see signs of rampant, entrenched and debilitating
racism, sexism, poverty, violence, injustice, war and other social
inequalities? If democracy is intended to be a legitimating force
for good, how does education inform democracy? What types of
knowledge, experience, analysis and being are helpful to bring
about newer, more meaningful and socially just forms of democracy?
Throughout some twenty chapters from a range of international
scholars, this book includes three sections: Constructing Meanings
for Democracy and Decency; Justice for All as Praxis; and Social
Justice in Action for Democracy, Decency, and Diversity:
International Perspectives. The underlying thread that is
interwoven through the texts is a critical reappraisal of
normative, hegemonic interpretations of how power is infused into
the educational realm, and, importantly, how democracy can be
re-situated and re-formulated so as to more meaningfully engage
society and education.
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