Doom is front page news, especially when it’s about democracy and education.
One recent story combines both flavours of disaster: Australian high school students’ bad education spells doom for democracy.
The impetus was a national civics test by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), which only 28 per cent of Year 10 students tested passed – the worst result recorded to date.
The ABC’s headline declared that 72 per cent of Australian students don’t understand “the basics of democracy”. The Daily Telegraph called the outcome “embarrassingly bad” and “a dark sign for democracy”.
They’re right to worry about democracy’s future.
After all, many western democracies face rising inequality, crackdowns on legitimate protest, and limited popular participation. The United States has arguably been an oligarchy for some time, while European politics has nourished various brands of elitist – from liberal technocrats to conservative authoritarians.
In Australia, wealth inequality increased significantly from 2003 to 2022. Active political party membership fell from four per cent in the 1960s to just one percent in 2007, and union membership fell from 45.6 per cent in 1986 to 14.3 per cent in 2020.
Membership in civic and political groups fell from 18.6 per cent in 2006 to 7.4 per cent in 2020; membership in social groups, from 62.7 per cent to 45.6 per cent.
But there are some bright spots.
For instance, young people are far more likely to sign a petition or attend a protest than their elders.
This brings us back to school students. What should they be learning about democracy to qualify them as good citizens?
How to qualify for democracy
Ideally, voters should have a strong understanding of the democratic tradition. This includes the global history of movements to extend suffrage, end slavery, build labour and political rights and achieve self-determination – and the elite resistance to these movements.
We need to think about what an education for democracy rather than about democracy would look like.
They should also have a firm grasp of democracy’s philosophical underpinnings, the main critiques against it and democracy’s complex relationships with liberalism, socialism and conservatism.
To be informed voters, they will also need to know the full history of Australian politics and its political parties, as well as the wider social and natural world in which democratic decisions take place.
So, basically, every student must have a comprehensive grasp of world history, foreign policy, political economy, literature, religious studies, moral philosophy, as well as various social and natural sciences.
That’s a lot. And it’s fair to say not many students have mastered all this by the end of high school. Even those pursuing this knowledge over their entire lifetime will struggle to attain it.
Indeed, many opponents of democracy over the past two centuries have argued against it on the grounds that various groups are too ‘ignorant’, ‘stupid’ or ‘irrational’ to deserve the vote.
But if no one is qualified for democracy, they’re even less qualified to wield unaccountable power over others.
This would require not only an impossible level of knowledge about the world and understanding of others’ needs but also an unlikely degree of selfless morality.
We arrive then at one of the core foundations of democracy: we don’t need to be experts or elites to deserve a say in the decisions affecting us.
And if we are to be equal and free, and to correct wrongs, we must have a say in such decisions.
An education for democracy, not about democracy
The real question, then, is what kind of education fits students for democracy – understood, not as a set of institutions, but as an ideal: that everyone can and should be free, equal and active participants in making the world they live in.
Ideally, voters should have a strong understanding of all of democratic history.
So, let’s skip this round of moral panics and ask what an education for democracy rather than about democracy would look like.
We can start with what democratic education cannot be: the passive, uncritical absorption of official party lines.
Here, unfortunately, the civics test is less than ideal.
For example, students are asked why Australia gives aid to foreign countries.
The ‘correct’ answer is: “The Australian government believes in the value of helping people in need throughout the world”.
Incorrect answers include wanting to control “the countries that accept Australian aid” and wanting to “prove to the world that Australia is a rich and powerful nation”.
ACARA’s answer here isn’t wrong: many well-meaning people support foreign aid for precisely this reason, and it does improve many people’s lives. But the other answers aren’t wrong either.
Australia’s own Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade notes the role of aid in reducing poverty – but also in protecting borders, opening up trade, building regional security and serving Australia’s national interests.
Many political scientists similarly argue that foreign aid is a tool of foreign policy, allowing for the projection of greater control and influence.
It doesn’t seem very fair if we deduct points from young people for agreeing with hard-nosed scholars and diplomats.
So, what kind of education would support democracy?
To be informed voters, students need to know the full history of Australian politics. PHOTO: Julia M Cameron
School is a great place to start
Teachers, parents, students and education researchers would all have insights here.
If I’m to offer my two cents as a political theorist, I think some basics are certainly needed: students need the literacy and critical reading skills to navigate a complex world and some basic understanding of how to vote, how to talk with other people and how to join a relevant community group, sports club or trade union.
Beyond this, a democratic education should cultivate students’ curiosity about the world; a friendly interest in the people around us; the capacity to provide reasoned arguments for our views; and the ability to listen, suspend judgment and entertain perspectives we disagree with.
It should build empathy for the experiences of others; the ability to work with diverse people on an equal footing to pursue shared goals; respect without adulation for knowledge; and a willingness to question both authority and our own presumptions.
School is a great place to start on these skills, and the humanities and social sciences help build them. But we need to cultivate them across all spheres of public life – and they can just as easily grow as decay across our lifetimes.
What do you think? Because I’m no authority – and democracy doesn’t need one.
This article was first published on Pursuit. Read the original article here.
