A pragmatist reconsideration of pluralism in schools

Abstract

Discussions over school settings and curriculum contents are an important expression of how complex our contemporary democratic societies are, and of how challenging it can be to reach some kind of agreement in pluralist contexts. This challenge becomes a major dilemma when the discussion at hand is animated by a conflict at the level of ethos. This chapter will therefore explore the philosophical underpinnings to this political and educational debate. We will explore which epistemological assumptions underpin the dilemma of pluralism, and examine their manifestations in the debate on the participation of religiosity in the education system. As the chapter title indicates, we will do this by focusing on the pragmatist tradition. Specifically, we will address the pedagogic scope of the distinction between public and private as maintained by Richard Rorty, and we will reconsider the pluralist metaphysics held by William James as an alternative path to understanding and re-addressing the dilemma of pluralism in schools.