Abstract
The way children are brought up not only influences their own lives but also the way societies function. Famous educationalists, such as Dewey, Montessori and Freire, pointed to the close relationship between the social and political catastrophes of their time and the way children were raised. Such analyses formed the basis for their ambition to change the world through educational reform. For many reasons it is not very popular anymore nowadays to connect education and socialisation with the world’s state of affairs. Child-rearing has become an individual project, in which behaviour and behaviour modification seem to be the focal point. However, upbringing and education need to have a much wider scope. For example, it is the task of adults to show young people what it means to participate in a democratic society, in which citizens, for example, are entitled to develop their own identity but in which they should allow others the same right. And adults should teach youngsters to resist the tempting difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’, that on the one hand gives people a feeling of security and connectedness but on the other hand increases the risk of societal processes that can lead to dehumanisation and exclusion. In this chapter we will develop the empirical and normative argument that such tasks can only be accomplished by a civil society that is prepared to consider the cultivation of the democratic way of life as a joint responsibility of citizens, that is, a socialising civil society.
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Notes
- 1.
See, for example, http://www.pointofview.nl/vreedzameschool/
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de Winter, M. (2014). Subjectificating Socialisation for the Common Good: The Case for a Democratic Offensive in Upbringing and Education. In: Biesta, G., De Bie, M., Wildemeersch, D. (eds) Civic Learning, Democratic Citizenship and the Public Sphere. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7259-5_5
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