ERIC Number: EJ1444150
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024-Oct
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0039-3746
EISSN: EISSN-1573-191X
Addressing Democracy and Its Threats in Education: Exploring a Pluralist Perspective in Light of Finnish Social Studies Textbooks
Studies in Philosophy and Education, v43 n5 p555-571 2024
Democracy is increasingly being challenged, by disengagement and by anti-pluralist movements (Levitsky and Ziblatt in How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future, Viking, New York, 2018; Wikforss in "Därför demokrati. Om kunskapen och folkstyret" [Because of this, democracy. On knowledge and people's rule] Fri Tanke, 2021; Svolik et al. in J Democr 34(1):5-20, 2023). This article draws upon a theoretical discussion about democracy, pluralism, and threats to democracy. Departing from Dewey, Laclau, Mouffe, Young and Allen, we address democracy as an ideology that centers around pluralism, or an ever-increasing inclusion of voices from the margins as its goal. We argue that perceiving democracy pedagogically as a pluralistic ideology would support students' democratic citizenship and equip them for a world where threats to democracy are being reported. Employing a case study on Finnish social studies textbooks, we analyze how democracy as well as threats to democracy are discursively portrayed. Our study shows that the textbooks present democracy as predominantly institutional and static. We also find that while disengagement is portrayed as a problem for democracy, anti-pluralist movements are generally not referred to as a threat. Additionally, we examine a discourse in the textbooks that connects freedom of speech with democracy in a way that favors a multitude of opinions, even antidemocratic ones, over creating space for marginalized voices. Drawing on the theoretical discussion and the results of the analysis, we argue that a focus on pluralism as the core of democracy makes the opposition between restricting hate speech and advocating for democracy redundant.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Democracy, Democratic Values, Cultural Pluralism, Social Studies, Textbook Bias, Textbook Evaluation, Textbook Standards, Textbook Content, Freedom of Speech, Inclusion, Ideology, Political Attitudes, Social Action
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Finland
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A