Amy Gutmann on How Democratic Society Should Make Decisions about Education

We will discuss Gutmann’s book Democratic Education as it addresses questions in political theory of education including how a democratic society should make decisions about education, what children should be taught, how citizens should be educated, what is appropriate response of democratic education to multiculturalism, and should schools cultivate patriotic or cosmopolitan sentiments among students. The Journal of Ethics called Guttman’s work, “the finest contribution to the literature on democratic education of the last seventy years.” 

Required Reading: Amy Gutmann, Democratic Education, second edition (1999), ISBN 978-0691009162. 

Bruce Hauptli was Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Florida International University where he taught for 39 years. He taught this course in 2017 and 2021 and feels in the current political context, it seems apposite.