Rethinking Democratic Education

Steiner argues that democratic education should equip citizens to be "the measure of all things". Questioning, criticizing, and reconstructing the language of the day, dissecting the rhetoric of politics, economy and culture - these are the skills, Steiner contends, needed by those who will one day be the sovereign voices of our society. But this goal is not the focus of current educational reform which aims at educating "productive citizens", nor is it encouraged by democratic theorists in colleges and universities. This work provides a model of education focused on the human capacity to judge and construct a well measured life - a model in which philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy are brought together in a single, over-arching conception. Drawing on such diverse sources as postmodernist philosophy, Greek drama, and the contemporary literature of educational reform, Steiner presents a conception of education through which the citizens of tomorrow might indeed be readied for the task of lifelong measurement of self and world. After a discussion of classical sophistry, Steiner draws from Rousseau's writings a model of teaching and a conception of democratic self-constraint.
He then moves on to Dewey, who links the viability of a democracy to the full human experience of its citizens, so that a society must take responsibility in forming the inherent capacities of each person to engage the public sphere. The final chapter applies the theoretical lessons to today's education, seeking to shift the purpose of education from an economic model of the "productive citizen" to a more political model of the "thinking citizen".