This article shines an important light on the continuing struggle of disabled people for dignity, citizenship rights, and access to the marketplace. Common threads bind the struggle for basic human rights among disenfranchised groups, offer experience and approaches to facilitate change, and move society towards social justice. The philosophy…

In this article, a civil society is viewed as the qualitative state of the social organism as the result of the social actions of individuals in the framework of the particular culture. Such a representation is based on the sociocultural approach, and it finds expression in the formulation of the terms "culture of civic-mindedness" and…

The Center for Humanistic Education (CHE) engages high-school students and teachers from the Arab and Jewish sectors in an examination of connections between the Holocaust, personal and social morals, and implications for present Israeli society. Since 1997, CHE has been working regularly with about 25 Jewish and Arab high schools, engaging about…

The major purpose of this study was to explore the social studies teachers' perceptions and understandings of citizenship education in primary schools in Botswana. The study adopted a post colonial lens by using the notions of the pedagogy of imperialism and contrapuntal criticism to interrogate the teachers' perceptions of citizenship education.…

Illuminating hip-hop as an important cultural practice and a global social movement, this collaborative project highlights the emancipatory messages and cultural work generated by the organic intellectuals of global hip-hop. Contributors describe the social realities--globalization, migration, poverty, criminalization, and racism--youth are…

Given the current crisis in urban education and the frequent calls for urban school reform, a number of colleges and universities have established teacher education programs designed specifically to prepare teachers for work in urban schools. These urban-focused teacher preparation programs seek to provide pre-service teachers with the knowledge,…

Education in a democracy is geared toward and powered by a particularly precious and fragile ideal, which can be simply stated: every human being is of infinite and incalculable value; each a unique intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual, moral, and creative force; each person is born free and equal in dignity and rights; each endowed with…

This article examines how the universal human right to education can be understood in terms of what Seyla Benhabib considers "democratic iterations". Further, by referring to the concept of jurisgenerative politics, Benhabib argues that a democratic people reinterpret guiding norms and principles which they find themselves bound to,…

South African universities confront a situation that most advanced countries face : the increasing enrollment of the so-called "new students" ("non-traditional" in SA) from disadvantaged milieus, less prepared for the requirements of the traditional university culture. They are urged to respond to this challenge within a moral…

This article presents the author's response to Connolley and Hausstatter's article "Tocqueville on Democracy and Inclusive Education: A More Ardent and Enduring Love of Equality than of Liberty." The perspectives of diversity treated in their article are both diversity among "people's abilities," and diversity of "opinions." According to Connolley…

Scholarship has isolated internal economic conditions and political institutions as essential factors in political development and democracy-building, this research suggests that external influences are at play. During times of civil war and post-conflict reconstruction, governmental and socioeconomic structures are likely weak or nonexistent, and…

This paper examines the role of teachers in the implementation of citizenship education in Colombia. Consistent with its highly-decentralized school system, Colombia's National Program of Citizenship Competencies was developed with the participation of many local, national, and international partners. Among the most involved and most critical…

In this essay, Leonard Waks reconsiders the issue of the public character of charter schools, that is, schools funded through public taxation but operated by non-state organizations such as nonprofit and for-profit educational corporations and nongovernmental public interest organizations. Using John Dewey's conception of a democratic public as a…

Schools are uniquely placed in democracies. Among other things, they are sites of learning about things democratic, including learning "through" as one (important) way of learning "about." There are other sites in which to learn about and through democracies but schooling's uniqueness is that it is a site through which all must pass. So…

For the past 3 years, the educational leadership faculty at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) has been engaged in program reform and curricular innovation. The reform process was initiated by centralized external authorities--a combination of international rankings, national accreditation bodies, national leadership standards, and state standards,…