On the Reconsideration of the Role of Public Education

This paper is to reconstruct the idea of a public and of public education so that it makes sense in modern times.Public education as Aristotle well understood involves the reproduction of a public,and this means both the formation of a certain kind of identity and a commitment to the use of rational discourse. Reconsidering public education in modern times requires a modified definition of original Aristotelian notion of a public.Having identified two flaws in the argument for school choice advanced by neo capitalists like Milton Friedman,the author proposes the idea of the public as a regulatory ideal.It is in the engagement of collective reflection on common values that the creative normative work of a public is performed and where the public actually constructs and endorses new norms,and develops moral innovations,allowing it to address new facts and to grow new principles.