Deliberative Pedagogy and the Rationalization of Learning

Abstract

The Swedish government seems to be telling us to believe that schools should ‘impart the more unvarying forms of knowledge that constitute the common frame of reference that all in society need’ (Lpo-94 1994, p. 5), that the ‘school has the important task of imparting, instilling and forming in pupils those fundamental values on which our society is based’ (ibid., p. 3), and that those should underlie the basic approaches of learning in a democratic pluralistic society. This rationalisation of learning seems to increase the student’s understanding, and to be a reason for the agent’s - that is, the student’s - action as an informed and responsible member of a democracy. However, public education is increasingly challenged by altered conditions in our post-national societies. Economic, technological and political issues are no longer exclusively a national-state matter, but a transnational and global one. Cultural homogeneity is being increasingly challenged by increasing recognition of difference. Should teachers then only impart ‘the more unvarying forms of knowledge’ to and instil the ‘fundamental values’ of our society in children and young people in order to educate them as informed and responsible citizens? Imparting and instilling do not self-sufficiently legitimise or rationalise learning in a deliberative sense. Democratic deliberation offers a more full-fledged view of learning in deliberative democratic and pluralistic societies or so I will argue.