Conférencière/Conférencier

Description

Debating controversial issues in schools is considered one of the central practical means of realizing the aims of democratic education. Yet, which issues should count as controversial is itself contested, both in increasingly polarized political debates and in classrooms across the world. This makes the task of dealing with controversial issues in the classroom a politically fraught and practically complex challenge for teachers. As representatives of the liberal state and as educators in polarized political environments, teachers have to find ways to reconcile the necessity of impartiality in democratic education with the equally important goal of cultivating concrete civic dispositions and virtues in students that will make them active stewards of democratic life. These and related problems of teaching controversial issues gain a more intense and partly also different quality in cases where liberal democracies are at war. As is also indicated by a variety of historical studies, in times of war calls for patriotic unity and ideological conformity tend to trump tolerance for ideological diversity and a critical engagement with competing political perspectives. Dissenting political voices are increasingly perceived with suspicion, distrust and as lacking loyalty to the national cause. Ideals of impartiality and objectivity (e.g. in journalism) are undermined by a suppression of disagreement, straightforward lies and propaganda. Instead of public deliberation of controversial political issues, the spectrum of acceptable perspectives narrows and patriotic enthusiasm and the willingness to contribute to the war effort become the order of the day. How should teacher deal with these and related challenges? How can they uphold an ethos of dialogue and openness under these conditions? Should they remain politically neutral in classroom discussions about the war?  In my presentation I will discuss these and related challenges and problems that teachers face when dealing with controversial issues in the context of war. In order to do so, I will first provide an overview on the controversy over controversial issues in the Philosophy of Education and outline my own approach to teaching controversial issues. Based on a reconstruction of the major problems and paradoxes associated with teaching controversial issues in the context of war, I will then apply my approach to teaching controversial issues to concrete contemporary cases and problems, which are primarily related to the educational and political implications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.