Democratic Education As a Curricular Problem: Historical Consciousness and the Moralizing Limits of the Present

By repositioning democratic education not as something that can be achieved by following a certain, proven process, but as an inherently paradoxical enterprise in its dealings with the tension between schooling as the intentional production of citizens and the uncertainties of democracy, an alternative way of reading the curriculum emerges. This book aims not at arriving at the right combination of theory, policy and praxis that will provide the democratic utopia, but at historicizing the discourses that have shaped the ways in which we think and act in the field of education.

Daniel S. Friedrich is Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. Prof. Friedrich is currently interested in the travelling of teacher education reforms around the world. He has published articles in Comparative Education Review and the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing among others.