Katz / Verducci / Biesta Education, Democracy and the Moral Life

1. Auflage 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4020-8626-7
Verlag: Springer Netherland
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 146 Seiten, Web PDF

Reihe: Education (R0)

This volume has its origin in the Francis T. Villemain Memorial lectures at San Jose State University – a lecture series established in 1992 to honor the memory of 1 Dean Francis T. Villemain. All the essays in this volume, with the exception of those by Gert Biesta, Susan Verducci, and Michael Katz, were developed from l- tures given as part of the series. The general rubric of the lectures was “democracy, education, and the moral life” – a title reflecting Villemain’s lifelong love of the work of John Dewey whose preface to his famous work in 1916, Democracy and Education, suggested that the purpose of education was to develop democratic ci- zens, citizens infused with the spirit of democracy and the capacity to think and act intelligently within democratic settings. Of course, for Dewey, democracy was not to be conceived of as merely a political form of government, but as a shared form of social life, one that was inclusive rather than exclusive and one that was capable of adapting to the changing features of contemporary social and political reality. Francis T. Villemain’s appreciation for the intersections of the values of dem- racy, education, and the moral life was heightened by his doctoral work at Teachers College, Columbia University in the 1950s – where Dewey’s legacy remained a powerful one. But it also continued during his career at Southern Illinois University where he collaborated in compiling and editing the collected works of John Dewey.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Katz, Michael S.

Verducci, Susan

Biesta, Gert

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Education and the Ethics of Democratic Citizenship.- Is There a Right to Education? A Philosophical Analysis Through U.S. Lenses.- The Democratic and Educational Potential of Political Blogs.- Democratic Patriotism and Multicultural Education.- Racism: What It Is and What It Isn’t.- For Goodness Sake: How Religious Stories Work To Make Us Good and the Goodness that They Make.- Sporadic Democracy: Education, Democracy, and the Question of Inclusion.- Public Reason and the Education of Democratic Citizens: The Role of Higher Education.- Love and Hatred in the Moral Life: Educational Investigations.

Leseproben

"Chapter 3 The Democratic and Educational Potential of Political Blogs (p. 47-48)

Nicholas C. Burbules

Abstract Weblogs (""blogs"") have grown up. Once viewed as a personal outlet for daily diaries, chitchat, and rants, blogs have become an important public space that is transforming social and political relations. Blogs are used for many purposes, but political blogs are a locus of community building, organizing, informing, and shaping public opinion. Because they are free for those with access to a computer and the Internet, they have vastly increased the number, range, and diversity of voices gaining an outlet for their views – although with this growth has also come an increase in misinformation and unproductive ""noise."" Educators are only beginning to explore ways of using blogs in their teaching, as well as ways of teaching students how to use, read, and evaluate blogs for a range of learning purposes. In the political arena, learning with and through blogs creates a number of opportunities for students to express their own ideas and encounter a broad range of challenging views (including, for example, international views) they might have very little access to through other media. Learning to become critical interpreters of news and opinion on blogs, as with other areas of critical media literacy, is increasingly important.

3.1 The Rise of Blogs

More and more people receive their news, information, and political commentary from weblogs (""blogs""), and more and more people are providing news, information, and political commentary by creating their own blogs (O’Brien, 2004). Because blogs are free and easy to create, they have opened up the Web to a rapidly expanding authorship. There are over 70 million blogs today, with more than 120,000 new ones being created every day (Soltan, 2007). Some blogs are individual creations, others are the work of collectives. They are used for a variety of purposes, from personal online journals or diaries, to fan sites about popular performers, to soapboxes for rants on controversial issues. My main interest here are those blogs used to provide political news and commentary (which may include rants).

Blogs are easily updatable: this gives them the character, unlike more static Web pages, of providing a steady stream of new content – indeed, many ""bloggers"" will admit that, once starting a blog, the desire to post frequently becomes a bit of a compulsion. If you want people to visit and read your blog (and who doesn’t?), what attracts readers and keeps them coming back is the prospect of finding something fresh and new with each return visit. Blogs also make it easy to quote and link to the content of other blogs – in fact, some blogs are nothing but content selected and reposted from other sites. This intertextual quality and the common trend of providing a ""blogroll"" or list of other blogs dealing with related concerns, gives blogs what David Weinberger (2004) calls ""an ethos of generosity."" Many Web pages, particularly commercial sites, want viewers to visit and stay put (as it is called, giving them ""sticky eyeballs""), because the longer you stay at their site the more likely you are to buy something."