ABSTRACT
Sheldon S. Wolin's descriptions of the body politic and the political economy bear directly upon tensions existing between capitalist democracy and public education. Indeed, there is a vocal and growing movement to privatize public education in some parts of the country. In education as in politics, the internal contradictions of capitalist democracy are played out—daily, repeatedly, and destructively. Public knowledge as a concept central to democratic education has, in fact, received remarkably little attention from theorists of education or democracy. A socialist theory of education, founded on the premise of public knowledge as an essential component of full and free individual development and democratic politics, would thus represent a significant challenge to the status quo in both arenas. The chapter explores some of the dimensions of a vision and the projects it engenders, focusing on how a socialist reconstruction of public knowledge might expand the horizons of political democracy and educational possibility.
