重思公共教育的作用

On the Reconsideration of the Role of Public Education

本文旨在于现代背景下重建公众和公共教育的概念。亚里士多德理解的公共教育涉及公众的再生产，它包括某种身份的形成和对使用理性话语沟通的信奉。在现代背景下重思公共教育，需要对亚氏的公众定义加以修订。本文通过分析米尔顿‧弗里德曼等新资本主义者支持择校的观点中存在的两个问题，提出了公众是理想的监管者的主张。通过参与共有价值观的集体反思，公共群体共同制定新规范，增加新的准则，开展道德创新，使其能够应对新的现实。

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.