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Created: February 1, 2003
Latest Update: February 1, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Educational Reform from the Left and the Right

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, February 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This essay is based on Radical Change in Education for a Nation Still At Risk CURRENT AFFAIRS COMMENTARY by William M. Brinton. 1996. Backup.

Discussion Questions

1. There are some excellent suggestions for educational reform in Brinton's essay. Are these left or right perspective ideas? Or does left/right even matter in a discussion like this.

   Consider that education is one of society's basic needs. It matters to all of us; it determines our future. So, if you were ranking the valence of education in the life space (Kurt Lewin) of our society, would you expect it to be higher in the life space of the left or right? Consider that one of the major dividing factors between left and right is emphasis on individual freedom and responsibility, particularly responsibility, on the right, and a concern for the inequality produced by social and economic stratification and privilege on the left. If you are a Republican doing well in a Republican world, how likely are you to encounter the lived experience of ghettoized poverty and dysfunction? If you are a Democrat, never mind a Marxist, struggling to teach the poor, to feed the hungry, to shelter the homeless, how likely would you be to encounter the lived experience of ghettoized poverty and dysfunction?

   Consider the complexities and the interdependence of individuals, geography of space, time in history, and individual commitment to overcome and succeed. Consider how on earth we could draw a line between left and right that cognizant thinking individuals could all agree on. Consider the re-interpretation of consensus theory, whether consensus, even in the sense that Habermas seeks it, is essential to collaboration on global survival.

2. Would an acceptance of illocutionary understanding and a reasonable understanding of alterity permit an educated populace to contemplate these radical educational reform measures without having to classify the whole document as either right or left?

   Consider that reform is most needed in those areas that are generally denied wealth by the distribution of resource goods in this society. Consider further that those who have access to wealth probably are much less aware of the role wealth plays in the education of their progeny. (Remember valences in Kurt Lewin's life space.) Then consider what illocutionary discourse might contribute to this situation.

   More later. jeanne February 23, 2003.