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Educating for deliberative citizenship : public reason, political morality and civic action

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.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:576974
Date January 2013
CreatorsLeung, Cheuk-Hang
PublisherUniversity College London (University of London)
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10020740/

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