Revisiting Civic Education and Liberal Democracy

Abstract

This last chapter discusses some core conclusions from the study. The essentially blind trust placed in public civic-normative education by states/stakeholders and educational scholarship alike is one element. Another concerns the standard view of educational statehood as an essentially monolithic entity and well-structured source of civic dispositions and normative content for dissemination to liberal democratic polities. A third concern is the vastly under-theorised standard notion of systemic efficiency that underpins typical analyses of civic-normative education; a notion that fails to appreciate the immense inertia and unpredictability of educational regimes and practices. A fourth item is an unfortunate belief that normative ideals may be articulated in terms of clean slates. These different misunderstandings are all subjected to critical appraisal, thereby not necessarily indicating where to go on in the study of civic and normative education, but at least showing where not to go.