Rebalancing Quality Education in a Democratic Society

Abstract

The integrity of democracy and quality education in the United States has been jeopardized by a market-based school reform agenda. The last twenty years of federal policy and legislation has resulted in privatizing public education, vilifying the voices of teachers and narrowing the curriculum to easily quantified skills in reading and math. The curriculum taught in U.S. public schools has been reduced to corporate terms of achievement and measurement. Within this paper, I explored the question, "What does quality education look like in a democracy?" A critique of recent educational reforms in the United States and influential international benchmarks are presented, and a curricular scope for quality education is proposed incorporating the missing democratic fundamentals. This paper hopes to encourage a global dialogue among policy makers, educators and other stakeholders who value a quality public education and see it as necessary to pursue a democratic vision.

Democratic Education: A Theoretical Review (2006–2017)

“…Although various disagreements have arisen within this group, all multiculturalists have in common an understanding that debates on plurality and diversity should be prioritized (Haav, 2008). Similarly to liberal pluralists such as Robert A. Dahl (Belcastro, 2015;Lan, 2013) and John Gray (Alexander, 2007;Fraser-Burgess, 2009), multiculturalists advocate a multiplicity of spaces (i.e., formal, informal) where democratic practices might take place (Gibson & Grant, 2012;T. McDonough, 2008;Todd, 2011).…”

“…At the opposite extreme, advocates of the social reproduction approach argue for an education for (future) citizenship. In the line with what Westheimer and Kahne have described as participatory citizenship education (Lan, 2013;Sibbett, 2016;Zyngier et al, 2015), participatory pedagogies are expected to allow younger generations to engage with participatory values that have been defined by the previous generations (Belcastro, 2015;Buck & Geissel, 2009;Zyngier et al, 2015). The curriculum for civic studies in British Columbia (Canada), for instance, explicitly specifies its aim in relation to active citizenship (Ruitenberg, 2015).…”

“…For them, education is essential for political, epistemological, and moral reasons. Political equality can only be guaranteed in a society of knowledgeable and rational citizens, and so democracy demands the universalization of education (Msila, 2013) to guarantee equal opportunities of self-realization (Belcastro, 2015). Mass schooling policies worldwide, currently acknowledged in the Declaration of Human Rights and in the UNESCO's Education For All program (Okoth & Anyango, 2014), have (at least partially) their roots on this conception (Duarte, 2016).…”

“…Establishing common standards, such as the Common Core State Standards in the United States, reflects a commitment to the idea of quality education for all, because it fosters transparency of practices and more efficient procedures (M. Levinson, 2011). Independent audits like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Programme of International Student Assessment (Belcastro, 2015), the English Quality Assurance Framework for the Higher Institutions (Bacon & Sloam, 2010), or the High stakes testing under the US "No Child Left Behind" policy (Meens & Howe, 2016), help prevent fraud and allow citizenconsumers to make more informed choices (Pennington, 2014).…”

The Problem Of Education Accessibility In Modern Russia

“…A characteristic feature of the development of education today is the tendency to expand its accessibility. At the same time, it is generated by considerations not only moral (justice) or ideological (transformation of education into a general civilizational value), but, first of all, economic ones (Belcastro, 2015;Ilyasov, 2019). The politicians of industrial countries have long realized that only those peoples will be able to enter the information society, which will provide an opportunity to receive quality education not only for the economic and political elite, but also for the widest layers of the population (Sardoc, 2018).…”