Harry Boyte, whom we have criticized in Making Citizens for founding Public Achievement, has invited Making Citizens author David Randall to join him and Deborah Meier in an online conversation at Education Week. We welcome the chance for discussion, and David's first contribution is now posted online—for free, but you need to register to read the article.
Here is an excerpt from his article:
Finally, there is the idea that education to democracy involves education to power—where power registers the continuing influence of the ideas of Michel Foucault and Saul Alinsky, among others. On the contrary, the end of education is to equip students to engage in the search for truth—to liberate their minds. The capacity to search for truth fosters the capacity to act as a citizen, but our schools should not conflate truth and power. Education to truth teaches students (among other things) to reason about what means and ends they should use in the later exercise of power, and to know that not all realms of life aim at power alone. Education to power may produce political strength—but blind strength, robbed of the capacity to think, the knowledge that the search for truth exists, or the realization that the search for truth should be cherished. Such blind strength promotes neither liberty nor democracy—and is not civic.
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