Kristina R. Llewellyn. Democracy's Angels: The Work of Women Teachers. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2012. 207 pp. Paper $29.95 (original) (raw)
Related papers
In the name of democracy : the work of women teachers in Toronto and Vancouver, 1945-1960
2006
In the Name of Democracy: The Work of Women Teachers in Toronto and Vancouver, 19451960, examines the limits of educational 'democracy' for women educators. Educational administrators across the political spectrum assumed separate spheres to be intrinsic to the social contract for 'good' citizenship: the school as a public institution was dedicated to the rational, autonomous, politically engaged subject. 'Woman' was not that subject. This thesis demonstrates that women were quasi-citizens in the public school, yet leaders in the delivery of democratic hope for the age. On the one hand, women teachers were encouraged to participate in the increasingly 'democratized' institution of the public secondary school and were embraced as necessary participants in the labour market of the education system. In the years after the Second Great War, the reconstitution of the social order depended upon their performance. On the other hand, the maintenance of tradit...
Gendered Democracy: Women Teachers in Postwar Toronto
The focus of post-war Toronto public secondary schools was the creation of a microcosm of liberal democracy, promising freedom and effective citizenship for the nation. The article explores how gender hierarchy was an implicit part of early post-war liberal “democracy” in schools. By examining women teachers’ oral histories, the article discusses the discrepancy between their responsibilities as partners in the “democratic” school and their authority with specific reference to curriculum and inspection reforms of the period. The barriers of post-war educational “democracy” for Toronto women secondary teachers show clearly in the informal and localized ways they adapted this model for their everyday practice.
Encounters in Theory and History of Education, 2018
Although Education Science in its broad sense and the History of Education in its more specific limitations have not paid much attention to the social and political theory of Jürgen Habermas, there is no doubt that his critical analysis of secularized modernity and deliberative democracy provides a series of insights that allow one to deepen and better understand the current problems of education systems and their historical institutions in Western societies. Habermas shares with pedagogues like John Dewey and others, a critical defense of the historical project of the Enlightenment, above all, centered on the key issues of the autonomy (Autonomie) and responsibility (Mündigkeit) of the individual. Both in Dewey and in Habermas we can find an offensive identification of the practice of democracy with the conditions of so-called communicative actions. Both thinkers aspire to recover the value of the individual against an unrestrained and omnipresent capitalist ethos. The main reference of the search for a new normative framework for democratic societies focuses, primarily, on an intersubjective dimension that is considered as the core of non-sovereign communicative actions and, hence, as a decisive source for the liberty of the individual facing the power structures of the modern world. In a similar way, Hannah Arendt had raised the reflective judgment (reflektierende Urteilskraft), fed from the aesthetics of Immanuel Kant, as the main way of passing the idea of philosophical freedom towards social dimensions, that is, to turn it into political freedom: both in Arndt and in Habermas, this transformation is only possible within a sphere of human plurality (cf. .
This study asks: What did it mean to be a Canadian citizen in the late forties and fifties? Who were considered good citizens, what were their qualities, and how did the teaching of citizenship relate to notions of identity, nation(alism), belonging and international development within a postwar liberal democracy? Finally, how did educational and policy materials as reflected in the curriculum and pedagogy of the day represent citizenship? Recent studies of this period emphasize diversity and dissent among educators who challenged the status quo, despite pressures to conform to societal norms and to produce workers with skills and attitudes that would benefit the modern economy. This research on citizenship, youth, and democratic education suggests reasons to re-evaluate our understanding of what is considered the legitimate domain and purpose of citizenship education along with the possibilities of teaching citizenship within a school/classroom setting.
Boyte An Education Movement for Democracy, Review Essay Good Society Vol 25 No 2-3 2016.pdf
This review essay in The Good Society (vol 25, no 2-3, 2016) treats two edited collections, Post, Ward, Long and Saltmarsh, "Publicly Engaged Scholars"; and Levinson and Fay, "Dilemmas of Educational Ethics." I argue that both have considerable strengths, showing the considerable democratic ferment in and around education (K-12 and higher education), and both neglect sustained the kind of attention to cultural change in work, workplaces, and professional identities needed to generate a large, transformative movement in education.
Teacher Education and the Politics of Engagement: The Case for Democratic Schooling
Harvard Educational Review, 1986
Henry A. Giroux and Peter McLaren argue that many of the recently recommended public-school reforms either sidestep or abandon the principles underlying education for a democratic citizenry developed by John Dewey and others in the early part of this century. Yet, Giroux and McLaren believe that this historical precedent suggests a way of reconceptualizing teaching and public schooling which revives the values of democratic citizenship and social justice. They demonstrate that teachers, as "transformative intellectuals," can reclaim space in schools for the exercise of critical citizenship via an ethical and political discourse that recasts,in emancipatory terms, the relationships between authority and teacher work, and schooling and the social order. Moreover, the authors outline a teacher education curriculum that links the critical study of power, language, culture, and history to the practice of a critical pedagogy, one that values student experience and student voice....