ABSTRACT

As public institutions the schools have the responsibility to help all students develop the skills, knowledge, and traits of character necessary for life in a liberal democratic society. More positively, the idea of a new common school can incorporate many of the aims expressed in other themes as well as many of the legitimate concerns of the reform movement. The liberal democratic state has, in the educational realm, an interest in social unity that overrides the excessive individualism all too characteristic of our economic and social relationships. The particular strategies that might be adopted to reach the general aim of equal common education is perhaps less important than the fact that the means were produced by those involved. Political theory's task has been primarily seen as analytical and philosophical. It typically follows philosophy's telos toward more general, coherent, objective accounts, free from the particularities and contingencies of history and culture.