Education for Democratic Citizenship: Transnationalism, Multiculturalism, and the Limits of Liberalism

Abstract

Why and how do shifts in the philosophical underpinnings of education occur? How should students be educated in and for democratic citizenship? In this article, Katharyne Mitchell explores these questions by analyzing a debate regarding the purpose of education in a Vancouver suburb. She shows how immigrants from Hong Kong successfully contest the normative assumptions of Western liberalism, in which the production of democracy, the practice of education, and the constitution of the nation-state are naturally bound together. By tracking the recent ideological debates and the actual decisions made, it is possible to analyze some of the growing rifts between a Dewey-inspired understanding of education and democracy and newer, more global, transnational educational narratives.