Borman Et Al 2012 Education, Democracy & the Public Good

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DOI: 10.3102/0091732X11424100 2012 36: viiREVIEW OF RESEARCH IN EDUCATION

Kathryn M. Borman, Arnold B. Danzig and David R. GarciaEducation, Democracy, and the Public Good

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Introduction

Education, Democracy, and the Public Good

Kathryn M. BorManUniversity of South Florida

arnold B. danzig david r. garcia

Arizona State University

To be interested in the public good we must be disinterested, that is, not interested in goods in which our personal selves are wrapped up.

George H. Mead

It is vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good.

James Madison, The Federalist No. 10 (as cited in Bozeman, 2007, p. 1).

In the second decade of the 21st century, the world in general and schools in par-ticular are becoming more diverse. All around us, the percentages of students from different ethnic and racial backgrounds are increasing. At the same time, social and economic inequalities are on the rise along with civil disturbances and alienated youth. In addition, the relationships between schooling, democracy, and citizenship are being reshaped as interpersonal relationships are created and sustained beyond the intimacy of face-to-face communication. Skype, Twitter, Facebook, and other new ways of communicating allow people to connect to one another in ways not possible only a few years ago. These new modes of communication not only open new horizons by allowing people to connect across great distances, but they also cre-ate new challenges for schools and for social cohesion. As new information becomes available and students look to new sources for inspiration, schools must also change

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Review of Research in EducationMarch 2012, Vol. 36, pp. vii-xxiDOI: 10.3102/0091732X11424100 2012 AERA. http://rre.aera.net


viii Review of Research in Education, 36

in response. Educators themselves need to become boundary crossers in order to understand and nurture the strengths that a new generation brings to their experi-ences in school, at home, and as global citizens.

These ongoing changes mean that stories and narratives are being written, for peo-ple all over the world, and these changes even call into question who is represented in the public good. Finkelstein (in press) argues that individual locations worldwide are transforming and that through stories, narratives, and oral and ethnohistories, it is possible to capture these new dramas and social identities. Schools are places where these new narratives play out on a daily basis. Ideally, schools, as the sites of formal education, are also the places where students are afforded meaningful opportunities to belong, aspire, contribute, grow, and inspire others.

With these demographic, social, and educational changes as a backdrop, the pur-pose of this volume of Review of Research in Education is to present new research that explores the varied intersections between Education, Democracy, and the Public Good. It is intended to give readers a broader perspective on how the three constructs are interconnected and applied in the United States and in other countries around the world. By examining the theme in multiple contexts and through diverse lenses, the chapters provide a deeper understanding of the many ways that education and schools serve the public good, where the public good is used throughout the vol-ume as a unifying concept to express purposes beyond individual self-interest in order to encompass those that serve greater public purposes.

For our part, in addition to bringing together the esteemed authors who contrib-uted to the volume, we extricate the major themes that arise in our minds from our reading through the chapters. The introduction is intended only as a guide for the reader and not a directive. We invite readers to experience the volumes content for themselves.

DEmocratIc DElIbEratIon, cItIzEnshIP, anD thE PublIc GooD

One theme that is addressed in multiple ways across the chapters in the volume concerns the various terms often associated with the public goodfor example, the common good, the public interest, and public values. One key to defining the public good according to Feinberg (Chapter 1) is the proposition that the public good is a collective reflection on values held in common, which makes them public values as opposed to common values. In this view, a commitment to the public good requires democratic deliberationopen and rationale debate in which citizens consider the ideas presented by others.

In defining the public good, various chapters raise concerns for how various communities identify a shared (i.e., public) good. One approach taken is to hold ones narrower public interest up to scrutiny of the wider community where alterna-tives are deliberated, social consequences are tested, and the most widely values of a shared public good are identified. Rogers et al. (Chapter 3), for example, explain


Borman et al.: Education, Democracy, and the Public Good ix

how new communities of learners engage in public debates over what it means to participate actively and meaningfully in a democracy. In their explanation, democ-racy requires recognition of common interests, and this recognition comes through discussion and publicity. Democracy also requires that individuals come to public deliberation with an open mind. If people are predisposed in advance, the opportu-nity for democratic deliberation breaks down and the system becomes ideologically driven. Instead, conflicting interests must be brought into the open to be discussed and evaluated. This process requires holding suppositions open to public scrutiny and public deliberation.

At issue is how people learn to act as citizens in a democracy. This specific concern is considered by Fischman and Haas (Chapter 8), who explore the notion of citizen-ship as embodied cognition (Lakoff, 2002). According to the authors, embodied cog-nition points to the deeply embedded and unconscious ways that people come to see, understand, and represent citizenship and the ways schools contribute to these defini-tions through citizenship education. In their view, people are not born good citizens but learn to be good citizens in school and in other settings (i.e., family). Learning to be a good citizen, however, requires learning to manage the various tensions of citizenship, tensions among egalitarian aims, and unequal outcomes. People under-stand and construct self-interest through unconscious and automatic subjectivities. As a result, directed instruction alone will never carry the day, and instead, the deep learning required of citizens in a democracy occurs through metaphor and proto-types. Education then provides access to the very language and thought required for democratic deliberation of the public good and reveals the importance of schooling to achieve these understandings.

Democratic deliberation involves cooperative inquiry; it does not equal an aggre-gative approach to the public good or one in which special interests dominate. Rather, deliberative democracy holds promise for developing alternatives to market failure and economic individualism. Bozeman (2007) points out that

democracy was . . . a powerful method of problem solving, one that possessed an informal logic of inquiry that must sound quite familiar to contemporary observers and advocates of public dispute resolution methods and techniques. (p. 110)

The importance of democratic deliberation, for understanding how education contributes to democracy and the public good, is captured in the new scholarship in this volume on charter schools, neighborhood effects, social cohesion, social justice curricula, forms of direct democracy (e.g., ballot initiatives), and achievement gaps among ethnic groups. The chapters provide concrete examples of the complexity of education practice and the difficulties encountered in defining and achieving the public good. They also illustrate how the public good is less well understood by a vague ambiguousness and better understood by the recognition that it can be repre-sented via multiple meanings.


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the Private sphere and the Public Good

Multiple chapters in this volume emphasize the public sphere and how schools and other educational settings contribute to the public good. The chapters also consider how the personal or private sphere contributes to a greater good. This view points to multiple ways in which people form community connections, one of which is through religious participation. Historically, there are many examples of religious groups who look inwardly to look back outside to a vision of public action and the public good (e.g., the antichild labor movement of the 19th century, the civil rights movement, AIDS activism) examples that draw from religious communities (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1996; Putnam, 2000, Putnam & Campbell, 2010). Putnam (2000) characterizes the accumulated efforts of ecumenical religious organizations that look outward and encompass people from across different social and economic divisions as bridging social capital, a lubricant of sorts that eases social connections by forming weak ties that link people and communities who normally move in different circles.

The way in which religion brings people together and contributes to democracy is examined by Fischer, Hotam, and Wexler (Chapter 11) who ask, what it means to think about democracy and education within society, culture and religion (p. 262). Their case study of politics and religion in Israeli society focuses on contemporary religious Zionism and challenges the notion that a return to religion is synonymous with a return to fundamentalism. Instead they argue for a more nuanced under-standing of the ways in which democratic self-expression, authenticity, and freedom of the self are located in religious understandings that are different from religious orthodoxy. The commitments to religion are drawn from a democratic character that is rooted in communitarian (as opposed to liberal) democracy. The case study argues that religious Zionist democracy is not a democracy of isolated, atomized individu-als each jealously guarding his/her rights. Rather, it anchors democracy in participa-tion in the community, in the cosmos and in God (p. 272). The downside of this conception of democracy, however, is that it is acceptably exclusionary. The authors point out that historically, exclusion has not always been the case and that a democ-racy of interconnectedness is still possible, especially as pedagogy of personal expres-sion is embraced, one that involves educational and religious choice for teachers and students and that nurtures self-expression, freedom, autonomy, and authenticity in the educational process. Their case study points to new directions for democratic schooling in which learners are not alienated from one another and which rejects the exclusion of others in the name of community and collective self-hood.

Fox, Buchanan, Eckes, and Basford (Chapter 12) raise similar concerns by explor-ing niche charter schools with enthnocentric cultural, ethnic, linguistic, or philo-sophic orientations. These schools adopt language, religious, and cultural programs, while trying to avoid running afoul of church and state separation. Are these schools best understood as exclusionary and sectarian? Should they be eligible for public funding? Do they contribute to the public good? Fox et al. propose that these more


Borman et al.: Education, Democracy, and the Public Good xi

ethnocentric schools are better able to accommodate cultural values and beliefs, and possibly religious practices as well. They can protect children from negative assimila-tion, marginalization, and risks associated with low achievement.

rEflEctIon anD lEarnInG In a DEmocratIc communIty

The research reported in this volume illustrates how learning is built on the foun-dation of democratic community that contributes to the public good. Multiple case studies describe educational settings in which priority is given to (a) open inquiry and free interplay of ideas, (b) commitments in which members work for the common good, (c) environments that respect the rights of all including the least powerful, and (d) changes to school structures, processes, and curricula. Democratic community emphasizes reciprocal (as opposed to hierarchical) relationships among community members, in which authority is understood as authoring oneself rather than directing others as to what to do. In democratic settings, learners are best served when they control the conditions of their own learning.

The idea of learning in a democratic community draws from the work of John Dewey (1916, 1938). Deweys vision for democracy viewed the ordinary individual as capable of participating in the economic and political decisions that determined their fates (Robertson, 1992; Minteer, 2006; Schubert, 2009). Dewey (1933) pro-posed that people learn by holding their experiences up to experimental scrutiny and that civic capacity is enhanced as people deliberate, take action, and reflect on their actions. Rogers (2002) adds that democratic participation is enhanced through reflection because

Reflection is meaning makingit moves the learner to a deeper understanding of experience and its relationship with and connections to other experiences and ideas.

Reflection is a systemic, rigorous, and disciplined way of thinking, with roots in scientific inquiry.

Reflection is part of a community of learners, understood in interaction with others. Reflection is an attitude that values the personal and intellectual growth of oneself and others. (Rogers, 2002, p. 845)

reflection as meaning making

Researchers indicate they stand on the shoulders of giants to imply that under-standing is built around social consensus and that learning from one source is applied in subsequent situations. Chess players gain expertise from the experiences of others, studying thousands of unique situations, which are then recalled and applied in new circumstances. Real-world actions are also context bound, and every situation has unique qualities, which must be considered to take action. Experience, by itself, is not enough; actions can become routinized or actors can become cynical. The goal of reflection is to learn what to take away from experience. Reflective practitioners


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learn from experience by connecting their individual and personal experiences with deeper and more extended considerations that are raised by knowledgeable others. According to Rogers (2002), The creation of meaning out of experience is at the very heart of what it means to be human. It enables us to make sense of and attribute values to the events of our lives (p. 848).

reflection as a rigorous Way of thinking

Reflection is more than stream of consciousness or simply believing that something is the case; it is systematic and disciplined (Dewey, 1933; Rogers, 2002). Reflection bridges one experience to the next by moving a practitioner from a state of question-ing (perplexity) to a more settled state, when the implications of experiences are not yet fully established. This process involves a certain amount of curiosity, which opens up the possibility of new learning.

reflection as Part of a community of learners

Reflection connects everyday experiences into theories of action and links indi-vidual moral action to societal change and the public good. In this view, reflection occurs within a community and is accomplished in collaboration with others. Taylor, Rudolf, and Goldy (2008) identify three core stages in how people learn to be more reflective in practice: (a) understanding the social construction of reality, (b) recog-nizing ones contribution to that construction, and (c) taking action to reshape that construction (p. 659). Reflection suggests that internal perceptions shape how exter-nal reality is viewed and that inner thoughts and prior experiences shape how people define situations and make inferences.

The three stages are not separate from one another, and there is interplay among them (Taylor et al., 2008). Recognizing the social construction of reality involves unpacking the multiple points of view and contexts of an event. Looking at ones individual perspective entails a more detailed explanation for how things happen in the world and slows down premature interpretation for why things happen. Taking action requires a reframing of an event in ways that alter ones previous construction of events based on new information and evidence. Ultimately, reflection is a tool for connecting individual experience to the community of practice and facilitates learn-ing from experience.

cIvIc PraGmatIsm anD aPPlIcatIon of thE PublIc GooD

John Dewey (1916) points to civic pragmatism as a method of democratic social inquiry that achieves social consensus and the agreement to view the world in a particular way at a particular point in time. Pragmatism combines the idea of public good and its practical applicationthat is, the public good in action (Bozeman, 2007). The research in this volume supports the view that the public good is under-stood through the workings of social inquiry and citizen-engaged discussion and


Borman et al.: Education, Democracy, and the Public Good xiii

accomplished through democratic deliberation. Education, citizenship, and the pub-lic good are not associated with specific interest groups, and the state is more than an umpire among competing interests. Rather, the public good is a political construct where in the presence of disputes and disagreements, all parties must learn! The edu-cational potential of democracy is to broaden interests and improve intellectual and communicative skills.

For some people, participation in democratic processes enables them to discover and develop their public dimensions, by providing the kinds of interactions that develop capacities for autonomous judgments. This is one of the themes presented in the chapter by Rogers, Mediratta, and Shah (Chapter 3), who argue that when youth engage civically, they are more likely to participate civically as adults. They point out that youth organizing often focuses broadly on social injustices, often highlighting racial oppression. These students are then empowered by relating personal experi-ences within broader patterns of inequality.

Mickelson and Nkomos (Chapter 9) examination of integrated schooling and social cohesion concludes with an argument for the importance of schooling in the development of key social building blocks for a cohesive, multiethnic society. They report that the preponderance of social and behavioral science research finds that a positive relationship exists between attending schools with diverse peers and life course outcomes consistent with social inclusion in democratic, multiethnic societies. This is less of an economic argument for the benefits of integrated school and social cohesion and more the case that when many people share a particular good, there are good reasons to sustain it.

Hogrebe and Tate (Chapter 4) offer the geographic information system (GIS) as an underused but timely and powerful tool to inform legislators, citizens, and other stakeholders about important social issues such as segregation, fiscal inequality, and sprawl. They argue for the use of GIS to develop visual political literacy projects that can help communities learn while supporting civic engagement. They make a strong argument through a review of related research that visual images facilitate the comprehension and retention of complex social arrangements, and visual representa-tions, such as maps, are a useful source of information to facilitate civic debates about regional development issues. One type of GIS in particular, participatory GIS or community-based GIS, holds promise to empower historically disempowered people and communities, by empowering grassroots organizations to participate effectively in planning and policymaking decisions.

One must remain cognizant, however, that not all racial/ethnic groups fare equally under a democracy. Bedolla (Chapter 2) describes the uneven treatment of direct democracy for Latinos, the largest and fastest growing minority community in the United States. She argues that the disparities in academic opportunities, the low lev-els of educational achievement, and the lack of civic learning opportunities in public schools are all associated with low levels of Latino civic engagement. Thus, even though choice through direct democracy is intended to provide an opportunity for


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the populous to make policy decisions on their own behalf, there remains a disjoint between public policies that govern Latino communities and the lived experiences of Latinos themselves.

As a whole, the authors in this volume argue for the capacities of the common man and in the enabling power of education provide an antidote to those with less hopeful views. Deweys (1916) view of the public interest is that it is not an absolute, universal, or ahistorical good. Conflict is not ignored in this view; rather, deliberation and democratic social inquiry can promote the discovery of new courses of action and reveal underlying shared interests. In Deweys view, the process could result in the transformation of the underlying conditions that produced such conflict among individuals and groups, making it possible for a common political culture to be estab-lished and maintained (Bozeman, 2007; Dewey, 1916).

choIcE anD thE challEnGEs of InDIvIDualIsm

Policymakers continue to use choice as a governance strategy by placing deci-sions of considerable consequence in the hands of parents and the electorate. Among policymakers, school choice provisions for parents are often regarded as a universally positive feature of public policy that garners bipartisan support. The potential pit-falls of choice as a potentially divisive force are interwoven throughout the volume. Many of the authors, through the course of contemplating the intersection between Education, Democracy, and the Public Good from different perspectives, arrive at a common point; choice will continue as a dominant policy strategy and, as such, will continue to reveal the tensions between individualism and collectivism. How society responds to choice will shape the contours of democracy and how well the public good is served.

Glass and Rud (Chapter 5) provide a starting point by defining individualism as the freedom from interference by any group or organization, including government, in the quest to achieve his or her own goals. Individuals are to be protected from obli-gations imposed by the state (p. 96). When policymakers follow individualistic prin-ciples and allow parents to chart the education course for their own children, they shift public education from government-provided schools to government-funded and privately provided schools, abdicating the states responsibility to provide quality educational settings and rendering government to the more limited role of regulating education. Once the state provides parents with school choice options and parents make their choice, parents themselves become responsible for the consequences of their choices (Hursch, 2007), despite the confusing information provided to par-ents via accountability polices (Garcia, 2011). Individualism as applied to electoral choices creates a tension between voting based on self-interest and voting based on collective welfare. The concern is the extent to which the voting public can move beyond self-interest and support education and social policies that benefit other peo-ples children. The alkali of individualism is the inability to look beyond self-interest to understand, even appreciate, the social purpose of organizations that do not serve


Borman et al.: Education, Democracy, and the Public Good xv

ones personal self-interest, a transcendent quality that is central to promoting com-munity in a democratic society.

When choice promotes individualism, the threat exists that self-interest can trump the public good, and a pressing question throughout many of the chapters is where and how can the collective shape educational policy? With regard to policy, the collective can be understood as a shared common good of citizens, comprising a recognizable political community. In this view, education policy promotes the public good if and only if (a) people share it (b) by virtue of their role as a member of the public and (c) can be best or only promoted by concerted public action. The public good then comes from shared public roles and requires deliberate and coordinated collective action to accomplish (Bozeman, 2007, p. 103).

For some, populist forms of direct democracy, such as ballot initiatives, are one way in which the collective can become engaged because policy choices are decided by those most affected by the outcomes. Ballot initiatives have also become a popular option for legislators, who may prefer to send controversial initiatives to the ballot and avoid the public backlash of an unpopular vote, and for frustrated citizens, who would rather take initiatives into their own hands rather than work through legisla-tive bodies that can be perceived as detached from the concerns of everyday people. Ballot initiatives, however, are often complex, and the provisions contained therein can be more radical than if the policy had been debated and compromised through more representative forms of democracy.

Moses and Saenz (Chapter 6) target an overlooked consequence of direct democ-racy; education ballot initiatives often affect minority populations, yet they are decided by majority rule. They raise concerns about the ballot initiative process and whether seemingly democratic referenda truly serve the public good. They question if important public values such as affirmative action policies can be trusted to a vot-ing process in which self-interest and manipulated information are the predominant modes of deliberation. They conclude that ballot initiatives related to issues of civil rights for minority populations serve to degrade the democratic ideal, and conse-quently the public good (p. 126), and they call on researchers to provide expert information to inform citizen decision making.

Furthermore, choice is often associated with markets and consumer behavior. Sandlin, Burdick, and Norris (Chapter 7) examine the ideology of consumerism as an additional challenge to democracy because citizens are redefined as consumers and traditional democratic forms of civic participation are eroded to hollow expressions of consumption. Consumerism furthers individualism through encouraging market behaviors, and society becomes reduced to a collection of individuals meeting their own needs and desires, connected only by the common consumption of like prod-ucts. Commercialism in public schools can lead to miseducation and threaten the sustainability of a democratic society by replacing human values with market values, and school marketing promotes impulsive behavior over the sustained ability to think critically about complex issues.


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Many of the authors identify the importance of a community conversation in the maintenance of a deliberate democracy. This point is summarized well by Feinberg (Chapter 1), who reminds us that the notion of acting as a collective requires a con-versation between strangers and should not be confused with the collective behavior of individuals acting on their own interests. The public is more than the sum of individuals but requires rational deliberation about a common fate (p. 4). Like other authors throughout the volume, Feinberg uses choice to articulate his argu-ments. He contends that vouchers are supported on the idea that it is appropriate to transfer public funds to private purposes because the education of ones child benefits others, a neighborhood effect. The benefits are individualistic, however, and are not based on the shared value that allowing parents to use vouchers to choose schools for their individual preferences is beneficial to the community as a whole. In other words, there is no public discourse or reflection leading to a shared judgment on the purposes and ends of public education.

Feinberg identifies the goal of public schools as renewing a public by provid-ing the young with the skills, dispositions and perspectives required to engage with strangers about their shared interests and common fate and to contribute to shaping it (p. 1). Yet choice policies present a direct challenge to the opportunity for students to attend schools with students of different backgrounds and to learn from a diversity of opinions. Segregation is a detrimental byproduct of choice policies as students of similar demographic backgrounds are likely to self-congregate in schools of choice (Garcia, 2008). Fox et al. (Chapter 12) chronicle one extreme example, culturally focused niche charter schools, which are unique educational spaces made possible through the expansion of charter school policies. The expressed mission of niche charter schools is to preserve language and/or cultural ties while serving the needs of special interest groups. The limited missions of niche charter schools attract homog-enous student bodies.

Finally, to the extent that choice policies remain a fixture of public policy, individ-uals will be compelled to not only fend for themselves but to suffer the consequences of their decisions. These high stakes will accrue without the benefit of public forums where citizens can debate, be held accountable for their opinions, and find mutual solutions that benefit all segments of society. Instead, public policies will be decided by citizens who express their preferences through individualistic and shielded venues, such as the secrecy of the ballot box or voting with your feet along with a group of like-minded friends. Then, one can look toward demographic trends to understand the complexity of the challenges that lie ahead, particularly for the United States. Here, we return to Glass and Rud, who point out a stark reality: The demographic majority of today is not the demographic majority of tomorrow. In the United States, the current demographic reality allows a wealthier, older, White majority to impose their policy preferences over those of a burgeoning, young, and brown populace. There exists the legitimate fear of tyranny of the majority and the possibility of future civil discord as the tables are turned over time. As these many challenges to our sense


Borman et al.: Education, Democracy, and the Public Good xvii

of collectivism take hold, there is a pressing need for public education to stimu-late cross-generational, cross-racial, community conversations to shape our collective notions of democracy and what it means to serve the public good.

orIEntatIon to thE volumE anD brIEf ovErvIEW of thE chaPtErs

overview

The volume is divided into three sections based on common themes.

Schooling, Inequality, and Commitment to the Public Good

The chapters in this section focus on inequality in schooling and how inequal-ity and social inequity affect the public good. The section opens with Feinbergs thoughtful treatment of how the public good is distinct from the common good. As mentioned above, Feinberg argues that public schools and an education policy committed to the public schools shape public rationality and a commitment to a common public identity. Feinberg discusses the encyclopedic consideration of rac-ism and sexual harassment to make the case that reflection on common values makes them public values.

Bedollas research on educational attainment and Latino civic engagement pro-vides a human face on issues of social cohesion and participation in a democratic society. Bedolla discusses how despite being the fastest growing group of citizens in the United States, Latino students and families are still drastically underserved by public schools. The chapter highlights the major problems that English-language learners face in public schools, in part because of budget issues and ballot initiatives that influence the quality of education that Latino students receive. She highlights a central problem: If one of the purposes of public schooling is to develop an edu-cated citizenry, then public schools are failing a fast growing minority group that will occupy a prominent place in the American electorate in years to come. Improving preschool opportunities, changing second-language education, and authorizing the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act are a few of the suggestions for combating alienation and enabling Latinos to contribute to the public good in a manner commensurate with their growing demographic numbers.

Rogers, Mediratta, and Shah explore how through youth organizing, minority youth can engage civically and learn democracy in their own right. Historically, the experience of minority and low socioeconomic status students in the United States has resulted in an unequal distribution of opportunities for learning and practic-ing civic engagement. Youth organizing is a promising method for young people to practice politics and get involved, hopefully establishing civic habits that remain throughout their lives. One of the benefits of youth organizing for public education is that it encourages the most vulnerable community members to engage with policy-makers. As a result, voices that are often left out of the education policy debate, such


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as students with low grades or discipline problems, are included in the conversation, subsequently affecting policy.

Hogrebe and Tates research examines the tremendous potential of GIS tools to influence education and health policy. GIS allows people to visually engage the results of policy decisions and to hold controversial issues such as segregation in public schools up to the light of public scrutiny. Three broad categories of approaches to GIS in edu-cation are highlighted in their research: (a) desktop software, which allows for great flexibility in overlapping information; (b) GIS Internet applications, which can be used to visualize location of relationships on a website; and (c) K12 curricular applications, which are used to help develop spatial thinking. The major uses of GIS are discussed in terms of a new visual framework for seeing relationships among variables, which, because of their physical proximity, allow for a better understanding of and reduction in social inequity. The authors demonstrate how GIS can empower grassroots organiza-tions to participate effectively in planning and policymaking decisions.

Individualism, Self-Interest, and the Public Good

The uniting subtheme of this section is an exploration of the circumstances, opportunities, rationales, and motivations for moving from self-interest toward greater democratic participation and contribution to the public good. This section addresses concepts such as individualism, self-interest, consumerism, and the con-sequences associated with how these concepts play out in different public settings. Conversely, the authors explore counter concepts such as communitarianism, demo-cratic participation, voter participation, and the meaning of citizenship. In general, the chapters point to the rising of individualism and the challenges it presents for advancing the collective or public good.

Glass and Rud define the contours of individualism, and on the support of a well-reasoned analysis of U.S. demographic data, they bring to light the tensions between the pursuit of individual interests and demographic realities. They raise the alarm that current education policies advance the interests of todays voting majority. These policies serve the needs of older, White voters, who are less willing or unwilling to pay for the adequate education of racial/ethnic minority children in public schools, and may create conflicts in the future as the young, growing Latino population enters into political maturity. The authors raise the question whether self-interest and indi-vidualism will override consideration for a greater good of the community, that is, the public good.

Moses and Saenz point out that ballot initiatives, typically thought of as a form of direct democracy that engages citizens in a democratic process, can also trample on minority rights and constrain the democratic process. The history of ballot initia-tives points to manipulations, confusions, and unequal access to information. These actions can represent a hijacking of the democratic process. Their analysis leads the authors to suggest that the policy outcomes of the ballot initiatives related to the rights of minority groups (e.g., affirmative action and desegregation) are too risky to


Borman et al.: Education, Democracy, and the Public Good xix

leave in the hands of the public at large, whose interests can be manipulated through political pandering.

Sandlin, Burdick, and Norris suggest that the rise of the ideology of consumerism, delivered through the ubiquitous commercial settings that surround us daily, encour-ages consumption as a primary source of well-being. The authors challenge some widely held popular ideas that some consumer behaviors contribute to the public good, when, in fact, these activities serve to erode the public sphere. Alternatively, they argue for a more critical examination of how the private sphere contributes to the public good. In particular, the authors suggest that school commercialism has become an insidious element of this process, bringing consumer culture into schools and shifting public education to a dystopian commercial venture that stands in oppo-sition to what Dewey envisioned as the role of public schools in a democratic society.

Finally, Fischman and Haas challenge the idealistic perspectives of how citizen-ship education is delivered in schools settings in an era of quickly transforming and global societies. They review the historical perspective that undergirds the notion of citizenship as the development of socially acceptable relationships between indi-viduals and the nation-state, including who is allowed membership and the promi-nent place of schools in promulgating bounded forms of citizenship education. They advance the theory that one learns through metaphors and prototypes and that, as such, notions of citizenship are more fluid and better understood via the lens of embodied cognition. They use the nation as family as a metaphor to reconsider issues of democratic governance and the relationship between schooling and citizen-ship. They argue that using embodied cognition is a more realistic framework from which to consider how students construct their subjectivities and that citizen edu-cation should link democratic activities to the lived experiences of students in and outside of formal school settings.

Social Justice and the Public Good in Cultural, Ethnic, and Religious Educational Settings

The chapters in the final section of the volume explore a common concern with the changing borders of schools and communities and how different types of schools and school settings can contribute to the public good. The chapters also focus atten-tion on a variety of civic skirmishes that have arisen in different locations and con-texts. The chapters consider issues related to access, institutional variation, and pat-terns of belief and behavior. Collectively, they regard schools and communities as places with unprecedented diversity. They also attest to cultural congestion, where the contours of community life and bonds of affiliations are continually subject to negotiation. In these locations, designations of insiders and outsiders are explicit and fluid; time-honored habits of heart, mind, and association are deeply challenged. In these communities, new institutional forms are proliferating, and traditional beliefs and social practices are at risk.

Mickelson and Nkomo provide a detailed review of research on social cohesion in multiethnic democratic societies. Their evidentiary review finds that integrated


xx Review of Research in Education, 36

education is positively related to several worthwhile social outcomes, such as K12 school performance, acceptance of cultural differences, and lower rates of racial prej-udice. The more general theme is that diverse education is an important building block of a cohesive democratic society.

Hill et al.s chapter defines justice in terms that include not only the overall dis-tribution of inputs and outcomes but also what happens within educational settings that contribute to well-being and an overall relational justice. The authors look at the relationships experienced by students (and perhaps teachers) in schools and consider how these issues are connected to issues of race, class, culture, language, HIV sta-tus, marginalization, and so on. Specifically, they discuss how South African schools might better serve the public good from both a distributed justice and a relational justice perspective. The authors conclude that citizenship is deeply related to every-day experiences and applications of distributed and relational justice/access for chil-dren. In essence, one cannot have a public good unless the idea of including the entire public is addressed.

Fischer, Hotam, and Wexler contend that education, citizenship, and religion are not necessarily at odds with one another. They propose that religion provides oppor-tunities to cultivate the self and participation in a public good. The challenge is how to create a language of educational practice, which is not exclusionary or oppres-sive to outsiders and those considered to be the other. The importance of education in cultivating a rational, sensitive, and ethical human being committed to the public good gets new importance in this iteration.

Fox, Buchanan, Eckes, and Basford explore some of the legal basis and differences between religious and cultural schools. They examine niche charter schools, which are sanctioned by law and straddle constitutional lines through the use of academic materials with religious content and school practices that afford opportunities for religious activities. The authors use a case study approach, with a focus on Hawaiian Charter schools and a charter school serving Somali students in the United States, to present a nuanced understanding of the relationship between culture, religion, and public education along with the advantages and challenges these schools face. The authors suggest that the public views these niche charter schools in very positive ways but that the schools also push the boundaries between church and state.

closInG

In closing, this volume of Review of Research in Education covers new ground on the intersection of education, democracy, and the public good. As a whole, the vol-ume gives readers new research for examining the values that underlie current think-ing regarding schooling and civic capacity, citizenship, individualism and community, religion and ethnicity, and justice and social equity, as these concepts intersect with the public good. We hope that readers come away with an enriched understanding of how social, cultural, political, and economic values shape current debates about schools and education policy nationally and internationally and with appreciation for the dynamic skills and civic capacities needed in a changing world.


Borman et al.: Education, Democracy, and the Public Good xxi

acKnoWlEDGmEnt

The editors would like to thank Emily Ackman for her support and assistance in making this volume possible.

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