Citizenship under Fire: Democratic Education in Times of Conflict | 
 enlarge | Author: Sigal R. Ben-porath
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $33.95
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1329099
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 176
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0691124345
Dewey Decimal Number: 370.115
EAN: 9780691124346
ASIN: 0691124345
Publication Date: March 27, 2006
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Product Description
Citizenship under Fire examines the relationship among civic education, the culture of war, and the quest for peace. Drawing on examples from Israel and the United States, Sigal Ben-Porath seeks to understand how ideas about citizenship change when a country is at war, and what educators can do to prevent some of the most harmful of these changes. Perhaps the most worrisome one, Ben-Porath contends, is a growing emphasis in schools and elsewhere on social conformity, on tendentious teaching of history, and on drawing stark distinctions between them and us. As she writes, "The varying characteristics of citizenship in times of war and peace add up to a distinction between belligerent citizenship, which is typical of democracies in wartime, and the liberal democratic citizenship that is characteristic of more peaceful democracies." Ben-Porath examines how various theories of education--principally peace education, feminist education, and multicultural education--speak to the distinctive challenges of wartime. She argues that none of these theories are satisfactory on their own theoretical terms or would translate easily into practice. In the final chapter, she lays out her own alternative theory--"expansive education"--which she believes holds out more promise of widening the circles of participation in schools, extending the scope of permissible debate, and diversifying the questions asked about the opinions voiced.
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Philosophically rich, relevant to contemporary events December 28, 2007
R. Reich (Palo Alto, CA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Sigal Ben-Porath's book has the ingredients of a classic text: something that opens up a new line of scholarly inquiry that, afterwards, seems hard to believe hadn't been opened up before. Ben-Porath's main theme - civic education during wartime - has never to my knowledge been addressed in as comprehensive and inventive a manner. The importance of the topic is so obvious that it needs no explanation. Writing as a theorist but rooting the text in the setting of contemporary Israeli and American conflicts enables the author to write with philosophical gravitas and a timely sense of current events. The main argument of the book - that civic education in public schools ought to run counter to the public culture of belligerent citizenship - is compelling. And the erudition of the author is on full display; Ben-Porath has mastered of a wide array of scholarly literature In short, this book makes a real contribution to scholarly debate and will be of interest to an audience far beyond political theory.
The basic architecture of the book is to spell out the constricting and anti-democratic nature of a dynamic she labels "belligerent citizenship", a phenomenon where civic education and broader socialization mobilize a citizenry behind a war effort. Ben-Porat's fundamental argument is that civic education is meant to educate citizens, not soldiers. It is wrong, she argues, to remake the schoolhouse into an engine of support for war. She looks for resources to provide a positive conception of civic education during wartime in the literatures of peace education, feminist pedagogy, and multicultural education, and then pulls together threads and reflections on "expansive education", a model that positions public schools as the normatively desirable counterweight to the dynamic of belligerent citizenship. The book contains a very interesting critical discussion about the deficiencies of contemporary approaches to citizenship education during times of conflict and an analysis of three complementary literatures - peace education, feminist education, and multicultural education - for their capacity to address the pressing question of educating for peace during wartime. The final chapter defines and defends "expansive education."
Expansive education serves two purposes: it sustains a commitment to democracy when democracy itself might be threatened by unthinking patriotism and other ill-effects of belligerent citizenship; and it paves the way for forgiveness and possibly reconciliation with international foes. What's distinctive about Ben-Porath's "Expansive Education" is that it captures the aims of both peace education and multicultural education. It is civic education for international peace building and for domestic harmony. The book elaborates civic virtues as they relate not only to a system of domestic social cooperation but also to international relations.
It's worth noting that apart from the novel idea of expansive education, Ben-Porath has provided a definitive critique of peace education, compellingly ridiculing its pretensions to solving every possible conflict and power-struggle and deriding its utter neglect of the socio-political context of peace. Another significant contribution is the way in which Professor Ben-Porath puts to use the insights of feminist pedagogy for purposes far beyond the improvement of gender relations.
An extended version of this review appears in the Journal of Philosophy of Education.
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