熟議デモクラシーにおける教育政策の正統性

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抄録

The purpose of this paper is to reexamine, in what sense, the recent rise of deliberative democracy can be said to imply the legitimacy of educational policies, referring to Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson's deliberative democratic theory.

There has been renewed interest in historical and democratic issues such as the creation and practice of “decent politics (subject)” related to participatory and deliberative democracy. In the political course of the postwar economic growth, Japanese educational administration has given priority to bureaucracy and professionalism rather than to responsibility to respond to layman control over the legitimization of education and educational policies. In modern liberal pluralist society, however, democratic politics must tend to deal with moral disagreements. There has been criticism of the self-righteousness, closeness, and formalism of educational administration, and calls for educational administration and governance open to society. As political citizens are emerging and growing up, the problem of the legitimacy of educational policies arise: “What kind of educational policies should be decided by whom and how?”

In previous studies, while paying attention to “power-based politics” related to educational administration, by focusing on accountability, participation, deliberation, and moral disagreement, “decent politics” as a democracy emphasizing communication has been sought and examined from the perspective of “educational legitimacy.” In considering the issue of the legitimacy of education and educational policies, I would like to restrain as much as possible the idealistic redefinition of educational identity to “decent politics”, paying attention to understand the realities and dynamics of educational politics. This paper, therefore, focuses on Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson’s deliberative democratic theory and democratic education which approach “decent politics”, paying attention to the problems of “power-based politics” inherent in educational communication itself, and reexamines what implications can be obtained for the issue of educational legitimacy in policy deliberation.

I would like to examine the legitimacy of educational policies, referring to their deliberative democratic theory which proposes a provisional, minimum democratic values setting for policy deliberation, distancing itself from value-neutral proceduralism and value-oriented constitutional democracy. If deliberative democratic theory has its origin in providing educational power with deliberation to relativize irrational and asymmetrical power-based politics, and if the dynamic of political values — for example, reciprocity, mutual respect, nondiscrimination, and nonrepression — for conscious social reproduction of our societies is left unquestioned, the feasibility of “decent politics” related to democratic decision-making of educational policies would recede, and it would also weaken democratic fairness of educational policies.