Session Information
13 SES 04 B, Ethical Dimension of Citizenship.
Paper Session
Contribution
The aim of this paper is to analyse the concept of citizenship in post-secular society where religion has paradoxically become an acute issue for moral and civic education. Societal framework of education in Europe is in constant move: that is why educational research should analyse those cultural and societal shifts not just as sociological facts (as the secularization paradigms have argued) but as profound philosophical and ideological changes. Referring to the conference theme this paper discusses about cultural change that is not myopic to religion as an integral element of educational institutions.
Research Question:
Why should citizenship include the perspective of ethics and worldview?
The objective of this research is to explore the ethical and religious elements of citizenship in a democratic society. This paper argues that worldviews should be recognized as a fundamental element of the concept of citizenship. Referring to the ongoing research in Finnish school context it can be claimed that the bond between moral, civic and religious elements have lost their reference to the nation-state but are now searching their interconnections in global scale. In this paper I ask how education responds helping people to become responsible citizens into multicultural and post-secular (Habermas 2006) society and B) how religion can play an important role in this process.
As a conceptual framework, citizenship is understood as something more than just a political or legal status. Citizenship includes a broader view of ethical relation between Me and the Other; between a man and a collective. Being political means communal debate about good life (McLaughlin 1992; Jackson 2004; Papastephanou 2008). In line with Aristotle's philosophy by practising virtues a man seeks for a good life and fulfils his task as a citizen (Sihvola 2005, 60-61; MacIntyre 2004, 161). A person is inseparable from his community; therefore the search for good life is shared by the individuals in society. The ideal of citizenship poses namely moral responsibility over communal tasks (Rawls 1993, 217). Citizenship is a meeting point of private and public morality; this implies that education into citizenship would mean the problematizing of these two moral spheres (Beck 1998).
Citizenship is not purely secular entity. Understanding our values forming the base how we perceive life we accept the particularity of every worldview and see the value connections. (Valk 2007) The critique is directed to the secularist thinking that only religious worldviews are problematic when people perform in public sphere (Wolterstorff 1997). This paper implies that any worldview has to be evaluated through same criteria when asking their applicability to the democratic discourses on civic matters.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Beck, J. 1998. Morality and Citizenship in Education. London: Cassel. Gadamer, H-G. 2004. Hermeneutiikka. Ymmärtäminen tieteissä ja filosofiassa. Suom. Nikander, I. Tampere: Vastapaino. Habermas, J. 2006. Religion in Public Sphere. European Journal of Philosophy. 14 (1), 1–25. Jackson, R. 2004. Rethinking Religious Education and Plurality: Issues in Diversity and Pedagogy. MacIntyre, A. 1984. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Second Edition. University of Notre Dame Press. McLaughlin, T. H. 1992. Citizenship, diversity and Education: A Philosophical Perspective. Journal of Moral Education. 21 (3). Nussbaum, M. C. 1997. Democratic Citizenship and the Narrative Imagination. Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. 107: 1, 143 – 157. Tarrant, J. M. 1989. Democracy and Education. Avebury. Papastephanou, M. 2008. Religious education for political thinking and citizenship. Journal of Beliefs & Values. Vol. 29, No. 2, 125-137. Rawls, J. 2005. Political Liberalism. Expanded ed. New York: Columbia University Press. Sihvola, J. 2005. Maailmankansalaisen etiikka. Helsinki: Otava. Uljens, M. 2008. Mitä on (suomalainen) kasvatusfilosofia? Teoksessa Siljander, P. & Kivelä, A. Kasvatustieteen tila ja tutkimuskäytännöt. Paradigmat katosivat, mitä jäljellä? Kasvatusalan tutkimuksia 38. Suomen kasvatustieteellinen seura, 263- 287. Valk, J. 2007. Plural public schooling: religion, worldviews and moral education. British Journal of Religious Education. Vol. 29, No. 3, 273 – 285. Weinstein, J. R. 2004. Neutrality, Pluralism, and Education: Civic Education as Learning About the Other. Studies in Philosophy and Education. 23: 235 – 263. Wolterstorff, N. 1997. The Role of Religion in Decision and Discussion of political Issues. Teoksessa Audi, R. & Wolterstorff, N. Religion in the Public Square. The Place of Religious Convictions in Political Debate. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 67 – 120.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.