No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Democracy for education is an essential element in the dissemination of democratic principles to ensure that the younger generation understands and can carry on the democratic lifestyle.

After its sovereignty transfer to China in 1997, Hong Kong has seen added new national components to its currently practiced school civic education curriculum which promotes basically a local democracy. The study is thus to examine what national curriculum is implemented in schools in building the 'one country, two systems' China locally. This is a case study, consisting of ethnographic participant observations for a period of 14 months in a secondary school, of ethnographic interviews with 9 secondary 6 and 5 student informants, of eight class observations ranging from secondary 1 to 7, and of documentary research about the school's civic education programme, which is focused on the exploration and explanation of how students learn, from their viewpoint, the different facets and levels of a national citizenship being developed in the school. Different from what it has in the mainland China, it is found that the national identity students have learnt is territorialized in the sense that it is a composite identity of nationalism and democracy, with a two-tier loyalty towards Hong Kong and China, a democratic Hong Kong and de-politicized ethno-cultural China. Also, the making of the national identity is more an interactive process of consensus and of cultural decisions among various participants like the government, teachers, parents, students and past students, media and outside bodies rather than a national imprinting. It demonstrates characteristics very like Smith' ร plural model of nation building at its macro-process level and at its micro-process level Anderson's national theory of imagination with a modification. The study hints that the school's national programme turns out to be citizenship education for divergence rather than for convergence as it is initially planned. While the school enlarges the commonality of the ethno-cultural base for national identification, it at the same time widens the political differences of the two sides of the border through its deliberate neglect and avoidance of teaching of mainland politics and its focus on local politics. Despite the fact that the national civic education is the school-based programme and the study is context-specific, there are points and possible lines of development found in the case school, the author believes, more commonly shared than distinct in other local schools which imagine in more or less the same way that they face similar - situations in conducting-the- civic education programme in the HKSAR in the early post-handover years.

The word 'democracy' today generally signifies a liberal form of democracy, which provides citizens with both a public sphere in which they have their say in running their affairs, and a private sphere where basic negative freedoms are enshrined. Globalization and the knowledge economy have served to accent diversity as characteristic of late modern democratic societies, and ground belief in individual and social construction and consumption of knowledge. Given the liberal understanding of democracy, this research argues that diversity, which is extending its reach into Arab societies, especially in Arab states that have established democratic institutions, puts demands on citizenship education programmes in these states not only to help students develop a capacity to respect other ways of life, but also to help students develop a capacity for reasoning and critical thinking that allows them to make their own choices and decisions, which would lead to their development as autonomous individuals. Individual autonomy as a liberal ideal could be argued to encourage students to reflect on their own 'inherited' ways of life, which may come into conflict with traditional sources of authority such as religion, tradition and the state. This research argues that a reasonable approach for citizenship education in democratizing Arab states could be grounded in John Rawls' political liberalism which, while providing a framework for liberal democratic citizenship education, also provides room for reasonable traditional ways of life to preserve their place in society. To illustrate some of the tensions between democratic citizenship values and traditional sources of authority, chapter three sets to analyze some aspects of the citizenship education programme in Jordan in which reconciling the traditional with the modern is among the overarching objectives. Analysis is based on Norman Fairclough's three dimensional critical discourse analysis model.

This project seeks to give a normative account of citizenship education in the context of deliberative democracy. Within the framework of reasonable pluralism. civic life is not as ethically minimal as many liberals think. I will argue that liberal democracy needs to incorporate the idea of deliberative democracy in order to achieve its aspiration for the teaching and learning of active and reciprocal citizens within the framework of reasonable pluralism. Ethical traits. dispositions, and characters are essential liberal vi11ues to bring about a flourishing liberal democratic life. Using the conception of deliberative democracy, I theorize an ethically robust conception of the political person for liberal citizenship education that could accommodate the ideas of public reason, political morality and civic action. In so doing, I propose a framework of citizenship as reasonableness by reformulating Rawls's political liberalism and supplementing it with Dewey’s Pragmatism - especially his ideas of human intelligence. freedom as individuality and cooperative inquiry. As such, liberal democratic citizenship could be attentive to civic duties. active civic participation, and cultivation of liberal virtues. This framework also demonstrates an authentic understanding of liberal democratic polity as an ethical project of cooperative living and fulfills the inherent requirements of liberal theory, both in terms of articulating an ethically robust conception of the political person as well as accommodating moral difference in a diverse society. In addition, the educative feature of public deliberation suggests that reasonable citizens could thoroughly internalize public reason and political morality through practising deliberative civic action. Through the lens of deliberative democracy, this project aims to advocate a thick conception of citizenship education for contemporary liberalism in order to address the theorization of the civic self and the moral demands of liberal democratic citizenship.

The terms of debate over the civic purposes of public education in a plurally diverse polity have been centred on the educational significance of engagement with forms of diversity that are both plural and heterogeneous. Central to these discussions have been various challenges, problems and difficulties related to the status, scope and justification of a citizenship education that would educate students so as to recognise and respect one another as free and equal members of a polity that is plural in its cultures, values and traditions. Yet, existing conceptions of citizenship education, I argue, both misrepresent our commitment to civic equality and also fail to treat with equal civic respect the normative significance of individuals' diverse commitments and allegiances. This thesis explores how and why a defensible conception of the civic purposes of public education is to be squared with the fair terms of engagement with diversity and how an alternative way of articulating the civic priorities and the individual interests in educating citizens as fully cooperating members of a polity is to be justified. I maintain that the challenges, problems and difficulties linked to the education of citizens so as to recognise and respect one another as free and equal members of a polity depend in large part on how we define and connect the two principled commitments associated with the liberal version of the rights-based conception of citizenship. In this thesis I outline and defend an egalitarian pluralist account of citizenship education that offers a distinctive response to the theoretical problems and practical difficulties in educating citizens so as to recognise and respect one another as free and equal members of a polity. I articulate a conception of the fair terms of engagement with diversity that would be of the greatest benefit to those students that are the least advantaged.