The State’s Educational Neutrality: A revolution proposal for Educational Pluralism (aka Education 2.0)

Eugene Matusov, University of Delaware, USA

Ana Marjanovic-Shane, Chestnut Hill College, USA

Started on October 24, 2011

Abstract

We call the State and any Partisan-Visionary Educational approach (e.g., transmission of knowledge, constructivist, progressivist, dialogic, democratic) to shift its overall position to education from seeking the Benevolent Dictatorship and Educational Monopoly to the Educational Neutrality and Plurality. We have noticed that each educational philosophy has two independent dimensions: 1) Partisan-Visionary (i.e., how it defines its educational values) and 2) Relationship-Power (i.e., how it views its relationship with other educational philosophies). At the current point, it seems that almost ALL existing educational philosophies (with a possible exception of the Democratic Education philosophy, see Summerhill, Sudbury Valley School, The Circle School) seek Monopoly on the institutional educational power through convincing all educators and general public in its rights and appealing to the State to enforce and impose its vision on all educational institutions. We appeal to both all Educational Philosophies and the State to abandon their insistence on imposition of their Partisan Vision on all educational institutions in favor of Educational Pluralism.

Table 1. Two dimensions of educational philosophies

		Relationship-Power
Partisan-Visionary		Monopolist	Pluralist
	Transmission of knowledge	x —>
	Constructivist	x —>
	Progessivist	x —>
	DEFA	x —>	?
	Democratic education		x

While developing our PARTISAN-VISIONARY approach to education, which we call “Dialogic Education For Agency” (DEFA), surprisingly for ourselves, we have come across a limitation our own PARTISAN-VISIONARY approach – a limitation that requires a complimentary PLURALIST approach of power relations with other educational philosophies. This contradiction is built into what we see as the fundamental characteristics of Dialogic Education For Agency:

Dialogic Education For Agency defines education through critical dialogue with others (physically present and/or absent) and self, in which students are encouraged to take their own positions, test their worldviews, desires, and perceptions against alternative ideas and realities, accept responsibilities, seeking limitations of available truths;
Dialogic Education For Agency views students as active makers of culture, transcending the given. Education is production of culture. A vision of culture reproduction is viewed in DEFA as anti-educational.
Dialogic Education For Agency defines education as praxis of praxis (cf. Aristotle, 2000), i.e. it is based on the students' own defining and critical examining their own purposes, desires, and values, including the purpose and value of their own unfolding education (Matusov & Marjanovic-Shane, 2012);
Dialogic Education For Agency is based on the fundamental liberal tolerance (Kukathas, 2003), respect, and dialogic appreciation of the Other (Bakhtin, 1999), including the Illiberal Other, – i.e. on the tolerance for, appreciation of, and respect for diverse points of views, including diverse, oppositional, and even disliked and objected educational philosophies;
Dialogic Education For Agency values students’ agency and, thus, it respects students' own generative, transcending, transformative, or even unchanged decisions and actions about participation in its praxis of education and does not seek the students’ arrival at preset curricular or moral endpoints, however desirable these points may be for the society. Therefore DEFA legitimizes and respects the participants’/students’ non-cooperation, non-participation, and pushing alternative agendas (Matusov, 2011; Matusov & Brobst, 2013);
Although we believe that Dialogic Education For Agency is the best Educational Philosophy for students’ education, Dialogic Education For Agency cannot be imposed on students who disagree with our belief in DEFA. Monopoly and dialogue are not compatible (Bakhtin, 1999). Students and educators cannot be forced into critical dialogue, so valuable in DEFA.

Thus, Dialogic Education For Agency approach sees education to be based on the Pedagogical Pluralism power relations with other educational philosophies – accepting diverse Partisan Educational Philosophies that may contradict our Partisan DEFA approach that we believe is the best. And therefore, we had to conclude that, indeed, Dialogic Education For Agency has to be based on a tension between a partisan vision, insisting on its best approach to education, and the following relational pluralism, “I disapprove of your educational philosophy, but I will defend to the death your right to use it in your school” (paraphrasing the famous credo of pluralism wrongly attributed to a famous French writer François Voltaire).

This realization of DEFA’s vision and its pluralism lead us to start developing a different educational policy. It is a policy that is will not aim at replacing the current “wrong” educational philosophy imposed by the State, which we describe as Alienated, Standards-Based, Education (Matusov & Marjanovic-Shane, 2012), with “the correct” educational philosophy — our Dialogic Education For Agency (DEFA), our partisan candidate for the "best" education. Rather, we see the abolition of any Educational Monopoly and any Benevolent Dictatorship. Instead, we propose that the State must embrace and defend educational pluralism as the right way for developing an educational policy in a democratic society rather than to impose a particular educational philosophy as the best vision for education.

From our point of view, this change is revolutionary, constituting Education 2.0, because it transcends the current educational policy based on the State’s Educational Monopoly and struggle by many alternative innovative educational philosophies for this Monopoly (i.e., Education 1.0). Rather than replacing the content of the State’s Educational Monopoly from a “bad” educational philosophy to a “good” educational philosophy (cf. from “a bad tsar” to “a good tsar”) – Education 1.0, – we propose here to separate The State and The Education by promoting the State’s Educational Neutrality (cf. Illich, 1983; Kukathas, 2003).

We see the educational role of the State in:

Promoting financial conditions for the minimum human right of the universal access to good education as defined by students;
Safeguard of educational philosophical pluralism;
Safeguard of students’ educational interests;
Safeguard of democracy in the society, which at times may interfere with the goal of education.

Problems of the State’s Educational Monopoly aka Education 1.0

Any Educational Monopoly will ultimately force the educational practice to (among others):

alienate and, thus, disadvantage students and teachers, who do not believe in this particular Monopoly-imposed educational philosophy, from their own learning, agency, goal-defining processes, self-actualization, ownership, and from equal human relations (see the Confession of a Professor Hypocrite);
not to become praxis of praxis, in which students can develop, explore, and develop educational values that they want to subscribe (this value is especially appreciated in the DEFA educational philosophy);
prevent students and teachers to live according to their own conscience – the value so important for any liberal society;
exclude students and teachers in participation in a democratic process in the field of education;
promote educational violence by forcing unwilling students and teachers, who do not subscribe to this particular Monopoly-imposed educational philosophy, to do only what other people decide is best for them;
be not a self-correcting practice: teachers’ pedagogical mistakes may often lead to blaming students for their incompliance with the teacher's expectations and to pedagogical violence rather than to improvement of pedagogical practices themselves;
suppress students and teachers’ creativity, originality, thinking out-of-box, intuitive, artful, critical thinking, controversial societal issues, spontaneity, improvisation, self-reflection, legitimately self-initiated activities, defining values and qualities, interests, and ownership for their own lives;
create students’ disabilities and dislikes of learning and particular subjects and reify these disabilities and dislikes by teachers' blaming the students being the “lazy”, “unmotivated”, “stupid”, “handicapped”, “undialogic”, “unintelligent”, “unruly”, and so on;
create accountability systems focusing on systematic sorting people on "success" and "failure";
systematically put students from socially disadvantaged groups in educational failures;
stifle educational authorship, innovations, diversity of ideas and approaches, and experimentations.

In addition, the current State Educational Monopoly prioritizing Alienated Standards-Based Learning creates the following problems for the educational practice to (among others):

be dogmatic, “civic church” like, and authoritarian (e.g., often students’ last argument is “it is written in the school textbook”);
service better for the needs of students in socially advanced groups;
aim ideologically at reproduction of the society and at winning job competitions;
be burdened by non-education goals like babysitting young children, suppressing delinquency in public spaces (like getting teenagers out of streets), eliminating job competition with adults, preventing exploitation of children, promoting national unity and patriotism, providing children and public safety, providing food and health care for children of poor families, maintaining total immunization, promising upper social mobility and social equality, forced integration, and so on;
regiment students in arbitrary institutionally-defined chronological age-based groups;
straight-jackets students’ subjectivities (i.e., ideas, thinking, perceptions, attitudes, values, feelings, morals, and so on) into desired curricular endpoints preset by teachers, policymakers, curricular experts, test designers, taxpayers backed by the power of the State;
reduce the unique human potential to economic inter-exchangeable and replaceable skills, knowledge, and attitudes of servitude;
prepare students for the known past and not for unknown future;
prioritize knowing over learning, making learning instrumental and not self-worth;
separate educational research and educational practice by making educational research bossy and irrelevant for the practice of education;
de-ontologize, exploit, and decontextualize the students’ immediate social problems and interests making them abstract “lessons” in order to move the students to preset curricular endpoints (e.g., the State set standards);
replace teachers’ and students’ human judgments, which often may entail risky responsibilities, with decontextualized, impersonal, universal rules (e.g., like “zero tolerance” policies);
demand from the students (and teachers) uncritical conformity — unconditional cooperation with state’s, schools’ and teachers’ demands;
conform disobedient students with punishments, threats of punishments, rewards, and medication;
expect the students to accommodate to school and not school to the students.

Education 2.0: Principles of the Educational Pluralism & State's Education Neutrality revolution

Freedom of Education: Freedom for the participants to pursue any educational philosophy according to their conscience, worldview, and values;
Education is defined by its Educational Philosophy: Educational values, curriculum, instruction, and social relations, what constitutes learning and guidance, and pedagogical design;
Education has an important societal value recognized by the State: The State role is providing access to “good education” by funding of Education through taxes;
The Educational Neutrality: Stop the State monopoly in supporting a particular type of educational philosophy over any others. Instead of defining "what works in education" or "best educational practices" or "research-based education" or “promoting social cohesion” or “winning national economic competition” in the monopoly on publicly and privately paid education, the State should promote diverse ways of defining education by diverse students. No more No Child Left Behind (by the President George W. Bush and Senator Ted Kennedy), no more Race to the Top (by the President Barak Obama) — no more the State's Monopoly educational reforms;
Separation of the Educational Philosophy and the State: The State cannot support or inhibit any educational philosophy;
No Educational Accountability to the State (or anybody) but Answerability to the students: The State cannot meddle in defining the purpose, quality, practice, institution (or its absence), and/or ways of achieving Education. Accountability with its rules, its regulations, and its system of punishments and rewards is needed when agents are not free (i.e., to move away from each other) and do not have full control of decision making. Freedom is a self-correcting process that does not need accountability. We have moved away from the notion of accountability as such in favor of freedom and self-correcting. We wonder if "answerability" is a better term replacing accountability. Schools and teachers should answer to students about the quality of their education;
The quality of education is regulated by a Self-Correcting process: The quality of education is negotiated between the student and the teacher (mediated by parents for young students or psychologically disabled) with the final word having by the student;
Financial access to good education as a minimum human right: The State has to guarantee financial access to good education to all by providing minimal funding. However, the State must not attempt to define and/or guarantee what is "Good Education". Here are our reasons for why we think that good education cannot be guaranteed:

Definition of "Good Education" emerges in the practice of education itself rather than preexists it (this is what Aristotle called "praxis" in contrast to "poiesis", in which goals, outcomes, and values preexist the practice);
Definition of "Good Education" is always contested and community- and participants-specific and related to people's own emerging and contested definition of "Good Life" rooted in freedom of conscience (Kukathas, 2003);
“Good Education” cannot be guaranteed by anybody in principle because education involves the participants' creative transcendence of their local and global circumstances. It is artful and subjective. It cannot be determined or predicted. It is essentially not technology or science (although it may have elements of technology and science that do not determine the practice of education);
Defining what “Good Education” is is a part of Education itself and, thus, it is the primary business of the student/learner. This is probably our Partisan position on Education coming from our partisan approach to Education that we call “Dialogic Pedagogy For Agency”. This self-referential feature of Education, which is essentially praxis of praxis (in our creative use of the Aristotelian terms), makes it very different from many other practices, which are either poiesis or simple praxis (Matusov & Marjanovic-Shane, 2012). Being praxis of praxis can be unique feature of the education practice, contrasting it with other practices;
A teacher or an educational institution can help the student/learner to define “Good Education” for him/herself and facilitate its process, which is essentially self-directed;
The State should have a legitimate protective regulatory and legal (i.e., oppressive-coercive-enforcing, in a legitimate sense of this term) function and role to make sure that students and facilitators of their education do not abuse each other and the society;
Just by providing financial opportunities to all potential students via redistribution of resources through taxes and educational vouchers, the State does not have any moral and legitimate right to engage in defining what “Good Education” is nor to enforce/impose any definition. The protective regulatory function of the State should apply to both publicly and privately funded Educational Enterprises equally in the same way, recognizing their autonomy, sovereignty, and independence. Engaging in redistribution does not give any additional rights to the State. Education can be public by access but must be remain private by its self-determination of what “Good Education” is.

Non-diversion of Education: Education has to be prioritized or separated from non-educational goals (e.g., custodian goals, excluding from job market, providing health care);
Down expert guardians, benevolent dictators, of education: Education helps students to explore what is good for them in their past, present, and future rather than imposes any predefined good on them;
The student is the final authority for his/her education: The students are the highest and final agency for their education (“you can bring horse to the river but you can’t force it drink”);
Genuine education is dictatorship of learners: The final word about their own education belongs only to the student him/herself (mediated by legal guardians for young students and students with certain mental disabilities). Teachers and educators can only inform, suggest, and/or advise the students;
No forced education: Forced and imposed education breeds pedagogical violence and inhibits students' subjectivity and voice;
The right for non-consent, unilateral, Educational Divorce: Both students and their teachers have right to unilaterally interrupt their educational relations without negative consequences for each other;
It can be said that the State's Educational Neutrality is the worst form of the organization of education except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time (paraphrase from Winston Churchill’s statement about democracy);
Schools and education exists for students, not students for schools and education;
Liberty is based on respect for diversity, non-participation, non-cooperation, and disagreement and on the increasingly broadening and enforcing Universal Human Rights: Excessive equality homogenizes people and excessive inequality disables people. Both of them rob people from their freedom and agency. They are enemies of the liberty in education and elsewhere;
Freedom of Speech is a part of Education;
Funding for good education has to be guaranteed for all as a part of the Minimum Universal Human Rights: The State (i.e., Federal, State, and Local governments) has to provide enough, minimum sufficient, public funding for good education (see Occupy Your Brain) for the most financially disadvantaged population, thus, constantly moving up the worst financial case scenario;
Having both PARTISAN and PLURALIST positions in education: Our particular Participant position is Dialogic Pedagogy For Agency; our general Pluralist position is “I disapprove of your educational philosophy, but I will defend to the death your right to use it in your school.”

Proposal in details

Who gets educational vouchers and from whom

Educational vouchers backed by public taxes are issued by 3 public agencies: the Federal Government, State, and Local Counties (the main source of public educational funding now in the US);
Education vouchers are given directly to all children from 4 to 18 annually regardless of a type of education or economic needs (not to state educational departments/ministries, school boards, school districts, nor individual schools);
Legal guardian can have unilateral decision on children’s education younger than 9-year old. Guardianship of psychologically disabled students over 9-year old must be established by a court decision;
Children between 9 and 13 must give their consent together with their legal guardian for use of educational voucher;
Young people over 13 can make their own decisions about use of educational voucher;
Each student within the jurisdiction of the educational voucher agency gets the same amount;
Students with Special Needs will get additional educational vouchers;

Educational provider charter

Individual educational providers (e.g., parents, tutors, master of apprenticeship, autodidact students) and educational organizations (e.g., schools, coops, community centers) have to write an educational proposal charter to cash the educational vouchers from a government agency;
The purpose of the educational proposal charter is to provide a minimum safeguard against possible abuse of educational vouchers by demanding that any educational organization or provider has to publicly announce its educational services and should include:

Educational philosophy (in a narrow sense of description of educational values);
Educational design;
Budget that shows how educational design can be realized and the vouchers’ money spend on educational needs;
Vision of curriculum;
Description of instruction.

The government has to be education-neutral to the educational philosophy of an educational proposal and educational purposes and cannot object about “quality of education” within the existing laws (e.g., no unlawful organizations can be educational providers);

The relationship between the student and the educational provider

Only students (mediated by guardians for young or psychologically disabled students) decide the quality of education by joining or leaving (at any time) or through negotiating/collaborating with the educational organization or education providers.
In case of any divorce between the student and the education provider, the remaining educational voucher money are portable and transferable which is guaranteed by the State (proportional to the unattended time);
Students (and/or guardians) can sue the educational organization and/or provider for misrepresenting their educational proposal charter or not fulfilling it;
In Higher Education, universities and colleges are not allowed to require/force students to take particular courses for certification, credential or other purposes.

Defining the amount of educational vouchers based on the minimum human right of universal access to “good enough education”

Calculation of the minimum sufficient amount of educational public voucher is based on our several assumptions:

Good education may require some minimum funding;
Funding alone does not guarantee good education;
In the context of the State's Educational Neutrality, the only indicator of the educational quality is students' satisfaction of their education (mediated by the parents' satisfaction for young children or psychologically disabled students);
Students who are funded exclusively or almost exclusively by the public educational vouchers – “poorest students” — should get access to “good enough education” as much as “richer students,” whose funding exceeds the amount of the educational public vouchers by adding private sources such as additional public and private grants and family contributions/investments in their children’s education;
If the item#d is not achieved, the amount of public educational voucher has to be increased to allow meeting the access equality condition (i.e., the item#d)

Let us provide a formula of the Education Finance per Student (EFpS) based on the US situation:

EFpS = Federal Voucher + State Voucher + Local Government Voucher + Grants + Public sources + Parent investment;

Federal Voucher = the same amount for all students in the US based on federal taxes (the only amount that is the same for all students);

State Voucher = the same amount for all students of a particular state but different among states, based on state taxes;

Local Government Voucher = the same amount for all students of a particular locality but different among localities, based on local taxes;

Grants = public (=taxes) and/or private money provided for certain causes or conditions that a particular student gets — can be different for across different places or students;

Public sources = involve public sources of education (e.g., publically financed Internet sources, Internet infrastructure, libraries, public TV and radio, museums) used by a particular student;

Parent investment = Parents’ and families’ contributions to their child’s education (e.g., bought books, paid cable TV, travel abroad, paid access to the Internet).

Hence, with exception of the Federal Voucher, all other education finance sources create financial inequalities in education, which may or may not contribute to educational inequalities.

Note: Besides financial contributions to education there are non-financial contributions involving cultural practices (e.g., parents’ bed night reading, parental cultural practices of constant discussions and justifications their decisions with their children, learning activism of students, safe and secure state conditions from violence, good general economic conditions, strong public democratic discourse, children free from abuses). Although these non-financial factors may greatly contribute to education, we do not include them directly in our financial calculation while they may influence indirectly our voucher formula.

The minimum sufficient amount of the public educational voucher will be defined through a special annual survey by an independent agency financed by the State (at each level — Federal, State, and Local governments for the USA).
The annual survey will collect and publicize the information about:
1. students' satisfaction with their education on a 10-point scale (mediated by legal guardian’s satisfaction for young and/or psychologically disabled children) and
2. all total educational expenses per each student (including all extra contributions by parents, teachers, grants, loans, and so on).
We can foresee the following possible scenarios here:
1. “Poorest students” (PS) have the education satisfaction index above or equal 6 on average (PS>=6), no adjustment is necessary. The amount of the educational public voucher seems to be enough to provide the quality of education. There can be a financial investigation for possible decreasing the amount of the 3 Vouchers;
2. “Poorest students” have the education satisfaction index below 6 on average but above “the richer students” (RS) (RS<PS<6), no adjustment is needed. Although students do not seem to access to "the good enough education" on average, funding does not seem to be a factor. We expect that self-correcting processes of students moving away from unsatisfactory education, informed by educational research, will kick in to fix the problem;
3. “Poorest students” have the education satisfaction index below 6 on average and below “the richer students’” satisfaction index which is below 6 (PS<RS<6), adjustment is needed. The adjustment amount for increasing the educational public voucher has to be statistically calculated to allow the average point of the students' satisfaction to reach point 6, the minimum point defining "the good enough education";
4. “Poorest students” have the education satisfaction index below 6 on average and “the richer students’” satisfaction index above or equal 6 (PS<6<=RS), adjustment is needed. The adjustment amount for increasing the educational public voucher has to be statistically calculated to allow the average point of the students' satisfaction to reach the average point of the students' satisfaction of their education from the second group.

When educational public voucher has to be adjusted, the Federal Government, State Government, and/or Local County Government have to increase the public voucher amount, pending on taxpayers’ and representatives’ willingness, other demands, and priorities.
Special education vouchers have to be issued by the Federal Government, State, and Local County regulated by the same principle as described in #14-18;
All legitimate non-educational functions of the current educational institutions should be separated and financed separately in order not to divert the purpose of education — e.g., baby-sitting, teenage supervision, preventing children gangs and delinquency, comprehensive immunization, sorting people for proficiency or other purposes (i.e., summative assessments), providing health care, and so on. For example, if a student decides not to get education, his/her parents have to be provided by another, non-educational, voucher for some non-educational functions valued by the society;
The transition from funding the current State’s Educational Monopoly system based on accountability to funding the new Educational Pluralism system based on self-correcting practice has to be investigated by educational economists and policy analysts. Currently, only students in so-called “public” education schools get taxpayers’ money. Will the new system and transition require much more money and taxes? Maybe. On the other hand, although we do not know for sure, our suspicion is that a lot educational money is wasted on bureaucracy, testing, accountability, educational design, textbooks, audits, and so on. The State's current educational monopoly and distrust in students' (and their guardians') educational decision making are very costly, in our view, in financial, pedagogical, and human waste and suffering. We wonder if we do not need to add much money to start the new system. The new democratic Educational Pluralism system of self-correcting practice will need minimum bureaucracy for managing educational vouchers. No Boards of Education, no Departments of Education, no publically funded Business Thinking Tanks, no Standardized Testing, no Standardized Textbooks, and so on… Although, some new publically funded agencies of annual surveying, oversight, research, and so on may be needed.

Q&A Concerns

1. Distrust in students and their parents/guardians

1.1) Question: What about students' (and their guardians’) competence to judge the quality and the usefulness of their education before they possess sufficient knowledge for such judgment? Wouldn't this lack of knowledge make them vulnerable to bad judgment about their own education, and subsequently a lack of guidance as the students move away from it? What if students decide to only play videogames masquerading as their education? What if students from traditional societies choose to only learn about, for example, milking camels? Wouldn't it create a possibility that later in life students may regret that they did not know better earlier, and that they made wrong decisions about their own education that exposed them to bad guidance or no schooling at all? Will the students’ initial ignorance lock them in their ignorance even more? No?

Answer: Yes, by the definition students are ignorant that is why they need education. Even more, not only the students are ignorant but they do not know how exactly they are ignorant. A medieval German monk Nicolas from Cusa (now Bernkastel-Kues, Germany) argued (probably, after Plato’s Socrates) that education is not about elimination of one’s ignorance but rather illumination of one’s ignorance by learning the boundary of one’s own ignorance (what he called “learned ignorance”). In our view, one of the most important areas for this illumination is education itself and its quality.

Educational Pluralism invites the students to engage in investigation of their own educational desires and values by providing ready-made educational options and by encouragement to create new options. The uniqueness of educational practice in comparison with many other practices is that education is not just a praxis that develops its own values, goals, and desires through the practices itself, but education is praxis of praxis where values, goals, and desires undergo testing through a critical dialogue (Matusov & Marjanovic-Shane, 2012).

Still, what about a situation, in which students’ ignorance would lead them in an educational “dead end” of dogmatic, ignorant, brainwashing, or just shallow transmissionist “education”?! Yes, our Pluralist proposal may be not perfect solution for each particular student from a certain point of view, but arguably better than the existing status quo because it invites students to consider other possibilities while the existing Monopolist approach does not provide other legitimate options.

Authoritarian and shallow “education” often (but not always) creates students’ resistance even in ignorant students. And with help of resources that the Educational Pluralism provides, they can escape these oppressive educational establishments at any point (which they can’t escape now). In these cases, the self-correcting feedback loop of the practice will work.

However, what about students who enthusiastically and actively embrace socialization in authoritarian and shallow “education,” embrace “pure entertainment”, or develop apathy paralyzing their escaping actions in these authoritarian and/or shallow educational environments?!

In our view, we have to live with this possibility. Nothing can be done to completely prevent all negative consequences of students/parents’ bad decisions. The price of freedom and the essence of the freedom are in the people’s right to make their own mistakes. Risk-free and mistake-free freedom does not exist. Unfortunately, bad decisions can and will happen in our proposal. People can become remorseful due to their missed educational opportunities. It is just there is no alternative to freedom to learn. It is better to miss an educational opportunity than to close an educational opportunity though alienation to academic learning as it happens too often now. Remorse for missed educational opportunities is in itself already education in action, although it is not necessarily safe learning.

The concern in the question is “if a student doesn’t learn this and that, he or she will be in trouble in the future. Personal safety-net may require authoritarian learning! It may by painful now but beneficial later.” Forced imposition of learning does not guarantee its success.

However, we see two types of student ignorance that have to be treated in different ways.

One type of ignorance may be life threatening. This concern is important and legitimate but, we argue, it is not educational and has to be separated from education. Not any learning is educational. For instance, if one saw someone reaching to eat something poisonous (e.g. a good looking, but a poisonous mushroom), it would not be safe to just leave them to their own judgment – they should be prevented from making a fatal mistake even by force. We think that some ignorance may lead to a life threatening situation. This kind of ignorance should be a matter of ethical and responsible treatment of young children, youth and other people who for any reason are not in a position to make a good judgment in a life-threatening situation. Parents and other guardians who provide protection (baby-sitting, teen supervision, etc.) need to create safe environments to prevent physical and psychological harm. It is sometimes necessary for a child (youth and or adult) to trust someone else to guard and guide them, before they know better. However, we don't see this kind of trust and almost unconditional obedience ("just do what others tell you to do!") as having an educational value in itself unless it becomes a subject of educational questioning. Learning safe and appropriate behavior without understanding reasons for it is a matter of training, rather than educating. But it can become education when life safety is allowed to be investigated with the student. In general, there can be many legitimate and important social functions and needs that are non-educational in their nature — they can be promoted by the society but should be separated from education.

On the other hand, another type of student ignorance may lead a student to make no life threatening "errors" and/or "mistakes." We see that kind of ignorance as an excellent material or condition for education. When a person notices that their knowledge, beliefs or opinions are not anymore "correct", and starts to doubt that he or she "knows better", it is an exact moment when education begins, i.e. he or she is suddenly moved to learn more about a particular issue. It is never too early or too late for education – education happens when a student recognizes her or his ignorance and asks a real question interested to get a relevant answer. Education is about learning about one’s own ignorance and its limits.

There is also a possibility of misjudging students’ ignorance by outside observers’ disvaluing certain activities — for example, students’ exclusive playing videogames, fishing, partying having fun, being interested in fashion or pop culture, playing soccer, and so on. Some proponents of the Democratic Education movement argue (e.g., a founder of the Sudbury Valley School, Dan Greenberg) that these students will eventually get tired and get over these unproductive activities with age. We respectfully disagree that this will be the case for all students. Because of this disvaluing of certain practices, these outside observers do not see the educational value of students’ exclusive engagement in these socially valuable practices. Only when these observers learn that the former students become designers of videogames, or soccer players, or famous entertainers with multimillion incomes later on, these outside observers may change their mind about the value of the students’ prior activities. Similarly, exclusive learning of some traditional cultural practices like milking camels is a legitimate educational activity chosen by students. Learning is a future-oriented process and the future is always unknown and unpredictable. It has to be meaningful for the students or it stops being learning at all. We argue that learning is a by-product of students’ ontological engagement in socially valuable (but at times contested) practices. Deciding what social activities are valuable or not is a part of education itself and should not be regulated by observers. We address other concerns — e.g., not learning important skills and knowledge in school — about this case below.

We think that our revolutionary Educational Pluralism proposal leads to an education that is rooted in the fundamental students' questions about what is a good education in the first place in the face of the unknown and unpredictable future ("what is a good school for me?"). This kind of education is about making decisions not based on the pre-existing ready-made answers, but on generating new questions, critically evaluating different possible answers, and developing new approaches. We believe that conditions in which education begins with generating questions and problems has a better chance to create real opportunities for learning, than any State-controlled education based on answers, outcomes and standards imposed on students who have not had a chance to have any questions in the first place, whose questions are of no significance for the imposed standards, and are often silenced as disruptive to the State imposed set of answers and standards.

We believe that genuine education only occurs when students are free to participate in it and thus free to not participate in it, when they are the final authority for their own learning, when education is free from educational violence. “You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink!” Forcing students to learn is a lost cause…

In our view, although these negative developments cannot be prevented, we see some correcting counter forces at work that can minimize the negative power of this development. These students will live in a broader society with Educational, Informational, Social, and Political Pluralisms that may penetrate both the students’ consciousnesses and their oppressive educational environments. Another pressure is “the ontological tests” of these oppressive educational environments by the life itself. Finally, neither students nor the parents of young children need to make their educational decisions in solitude without assistance of other people and sources, although the “epistemological authority” of these “expert sources” about quality education is never guaranteed either. Thus, again we hope and rely here on “an invisible hand” of critical dialogue and its attraction for people.

However, in our view, there will never be guarantees for elimination of failure because total elimination of such failure of wrong personal decisions kills freedom and responsibility. In addition, we think that currently, with the State Educational Monopoly, such failure is more prevalent because majority of students are robbed of their decisions and ownership about their own education, which keeps locking them in their overall ignorance about their own education. We believe that alternative to the Educational Pluralism — the Educational Monopoly — produces more failures because it inhibits conditions for Good Education.

1.2) Q: Asking students to be judges of quality and value of their education is a little unfair on the students – one would not ask a movie audience to be the ‘final judge’ of the movie half-way through the movie – would it be fairer that one should wait until they’re a few years into ‘post-formal education’ to ask them to judge the value of their education?

A: We respectfully disagree. About movie, nobody forces audience to watch the movie to the end. You said, it is unfair to the movie. We say: no, it is fair! The authors of the movie need to know the truth about how the audience experiences the movie – so that they can improve their own movie making. The audience is not for the movie but movie for the audience. It would be unfair to audience to imprison it so a movie director gets a full account of his or her movie by the audience (at it happens currently in many schools). Similarly, in education, the goal of students is NOT to be "fair" to guidance provided by the teachers (i.e., not to hurt teachers feeling and well-being), but to learn for themselves. When the students judge the teacher's guidance in all its fairness, it can be only in regard to whether it is meaningful to them or not. Being judged as a bad teacher for a particular student is not "unfair" but the fairest possible feedback to the teacher about how the teacher is providing meaningful opportunities for his or her students’ learning.

1.3) May some parents/guardians and children especially from poor and socially disadvantaged groups not be sufficiently knowledgeable to make good educational choices? Before people can make wise educational choices, they must be wisely educated in how to do so.

A: We think this is a very patronizing argument coming from middle class folks not trusting poor people thinking that their ways of thinking are stupid or wrong and they can be saved by benevolent educational expert-dictators. But let’s consider it deeply. It may be true that some (many? low income?) parents and children do not know what is good (education) for them, right? But, nobody does. This is what the education is about: to explore what is good, to explore people’s desires, to explore what will be good in the unknown future for the unknown themselves. This education is not about prepackaged knowledge, skills, or attitudes. But if somebody thinks that what education is, that is fine with us, as well, because it does not matter where to start the Education journey.

Another point: our proposal is not to make the situation ideal or even good, but rather better than it is now. Currently many educators want educational specialists, wise men and women, to define and rule education to prevent “ignorant” and “unwise” people from making poor decisions about their education, like in Plato’s Republic. In the Enlightenment, many rich people and aristocracy did not want to give common people any political decision making because of their “ignorance” and need for “guidance” and “guardians” (like in Iran now). Although in democracy, people can and do make poor choices; the history shows that there is no benevolent king, benevolent expert/guardian, or benevolent dictator, who can do it better for the people than by the people.

Our ways of arranging educational vouchers promote people to discuss diverse educational proposal charters, debate them, and redefine them. Also, parents and students will be invaded by advertisement thanks to consumerism that will be promoted by our proposal for the Educational Pluralism. For better or for worse, advertising by a school or educational provider’s educational philosophy and design to students and parents is a part of education. It is a part of public education itself and good use of public vouchers.

God forbid working class folks may create education that makes sense to them! In our view, so far the term “working class school” (i.e., a school serving well working class folks’ educational needs) sounds almost like an oxymoron. We wonder (our hypothesis) if working class folks’ pedagogical indifference to school choice in some countries was (in part?) caused by this phenomenon. If it was the case, our revolutionary proposal for the State’s Education Neutrality, which promotes transcendence of any existing choice of schools, can give working-class folks an opportunity to design their own visions of good education may be an interesting solution.

1.4) Q: What about abusive parents/guardians who do not take students’ best interest in education at their heart?

A: It has to be addressed by a legal and child protecting agency which may punish the parents/guardians by, for example, taking educational vouchers back.

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2. Fear of the “unfit” Other

2.1) Q: What about separation the State and the Church? Educational vouchers can promote religious education and break separation of the State and the Church.

A: First of all, the majority of conventional public schools are actually religious in their essence because they promote “civic religion” of authoritative dogmatism. For example, when we asked many of our undergraduate students how they know that the Earth is round they said, “It is written in the textbook.” Yes, it’s not Jesus or Moses but it is Science and Authority. In our view, the result is the same.

Second, the religious people are the same taxpayers as secular you and me. They have to have right for education in whatever way they define it. They should have right to live according to their conscience, guaranteed by a liberal State. Why do they have to subsidize us with our secular beliefs (or their absence)? Is it because we are right and they are wrong?! Let’s have equal rights for education to be “delusional” or “righteous” paid by public (i.e., all of us!). Since it is up to the students to make a decision about their education, there is neither the State’s discrimination nor support for any particular religion or its absence.

2.2) Q: What about hate groups like KKK, terrorists, or Nazi’s Education?

A: Unless it is illegal, no discrimination can be made.

2.3) Q: Will Illiberal, Undemocratic, Religious Fundamentalists, Racists, Nationalists, Neo-Nazi, Fanatics, Totalitarianists — people whom "liberal, democratic, we" fear and loathe, whom "liberal, democratic, we" want to limit and suppress (at least), with whom "liberal, democratic, we" think Dialogue is impossible (i.e., the Ultimate Other) — will take advantage of Educational Pluralism and it will help ultimately take the control over the society thanks to your Educational Pluralism like it historically happened in Germany in 1933 when the National Socialists (Nazis) came to power using Democratic Pluralism of the Weimar Republic?

A: We think that the fear here is that “Illiberal, Undemocratic They” may capture the power by force, if “Illiberal, Undemocratic They” have a legitimate ways to grow through education supported by through public educational vouchers. In other words, we think that the fear is that “liberal, democratic, we” (i.e., “good folks”) will be “feeding” “the enemy” (i.e., “mean-spirited wrongdoers”) to become stronger, and then “the enemy” will jump back and OUTLAW pluralism through their power monopoly. Something like the NAZI party in Germany was democratically elected in Reichstag in mid and late 1932, Hitler was legitimately appointed to the Chancellor by the President von Hindenburg in January 1933, and then NAZI abolished the Weimar democracy in Germany in spring 1933. Thus, Democratic Pluralism led itself to its death. Can it happen with Educational Pluralism? Can Educational Pluralism weaken and eventually kill a Liberal Society and Liberal State?

The main role of the (liberal, democratic) State in our proposal is to protect educational pluralism (and not only educational but also political) by repressive force and means (i.e., legislation, courts, police, army). In our view, it is not the role of educational institution to engage in an oppressive function of the State. As the history shows, the political fear and threat coming from totalitarian groups are real but educational pluralism should not be sacrificed in addressing it. Our defense of educational pluralism in face of totalitarian threat is similar to defense of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of political discourse that can also be abused by totalitarian groups and have to be protected (and in some extreme cases limited) by the State. On the other hand, we see the Liberal State’s defensive powers as legitimate, which may legitimately interfere with the Education. This conflict must be resolved by democratic legislative and judicial processes with the framework of a National Constitution.

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3. Collapse of social cohesion

3.1) Q: What about fragmentation of the society through voluntary segregation (coming from students)?

A: Well, fragmentation and voluntary segregation — guaranteed freedom of assembly and freedom to leave an assembly — is an essential part of any liberal, democratic society (Kukathas, 2003). Concerns about promoting social cohesions, as valid concerns, are contested and outside of the function of education (at least from our Partisan DEFA vision of education). We think that such self-segregation educational institution as all-girl schools, or Black universities, or athletic schools, or religious schools, or Montessori schools (i.e., self-segregated schools based on a particular educational philosophy) are legitimate, in our view.

3.2) Q: What about forced segregation coming from the educational organization and providers (e.g., potential students are weeded out via testing, age, entrance exams, or social group filters)?

A: We don’t know. Tough! We need advice from legal scholars, from court decisions, and/or from democracy (e.g., people vote for a solution) on a case-by-case basis.

3.3) Q: Will educational vouchers and choices promote homogeneity, fragmentation, and voluntary segregation?

A: Yes, probably. Good concern. The problem is that the price of forced integration is alienation and violence. Also, some voucher schools and educational providers and students may value or explore diversity (but some not…). In our view, the issue is in the price of social engineering and violence behind it. Some voucher schools will be geographically based and some not. It is OK with us. Some people are “dwellers”, some are “nomads”, and some are in between.

3.4) Q: Political Democracy and Political Pluralism forces diverse people in a contact zone with each other in their fight for power and control over the State, which promotes Dialogue among them (but does not guarantee it). Your Pedagogical Pluralism educationally fragments the society into opinionated, self-contained, at times even aggressive, ideological “bubbles” and, thus, diminishes opportunities for Dialogue, no? For example, some Muslim communities in Germany do not want their children to study about the Holocaust and socialize their children in Anti-Semitism — must public education remedy these problems by imposed public education? What about teaching Denazification?

A: We agree that fragmentation in society is a potentially serious problem and that some but, by no means all, educational practices under our Educational Pluralism may lead to fragmentation. However, we have two main issues with this critique of Educational Pluralism: 1) Would the alternatives to Educational Pluralism based on Forced Educational Integration better solve the problem of societal fragmentation? and 2) If so, should Educational Pluralism and, thus, genuine education (in our view), be sacrificed for a legitimate societal concern with societal fragmentation?

In our view, the first question is really empirical and not as obvious as it seems. We think that on average Forced Educational Integration creates more societal fragmentation than Educational Pluralism will create. Forced Educational Integration creates alienation, disinterest, resistance, repulsion, and, thus, strong disengagement from imposed education – disengagement with its mighty centrifugal forces as students’ agencies search for their creative meaning of self-realization. In contrast, Educational Pluralism creates conditions for freedom of exploration and interests in others – conditions that may or may not realize.

Our educational libertarian colleague Kevin Currie-Knight made the following argument in response to this concern that we found important to use here, “Even if fragmentation is a bad thing, there is a tradeoff here between allowing individual liberty (and the possibility of fragmentation) and disallowing individual liberty so that we can ensure homogeneity. So, at very least, anyone who argues that we want to educate so that we all have certain educational experiences in common must be prepared to argue that individual liberty is less important than homogeneity.”

Let us bring another political example. Based on the historic fears, both States of Germany and Austria have banned neo-Nazi parties, public political discourses, and literature. In contrast, in the United States these neo-Nazi parties, public political discourses, and literature are legal, which allows, but does not require, a public dialogue between “us” and “them” about ideological and moral tensions. In the United States, neo-Nazi groups are relatively weak, while in Germany and Austria they are relevantly strong. We wonder if free, non-forced, public discourse glues society together and deals better with distractive forces of totalitarianism and bigotry.

Thus, in our view, Educational Pluralism and freely minded Education itself do not need to be sacrificed for fear of societal fragmentation — social cohesion must not be imposed through education.

3.5) Q: What about children of illegal immigrants?

A: All children in the US have to get educational vouchers regardless of their citizenship or immigration status (and their parents pay taxes anyway!) What is more important is that Education is a human right).

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4. Pains of transitions to the Educational Pluralism

4.1) Q: How can the society start the transition from the current authoritarian system based on accountability to the new democratic system based on the State’s Education Neutrality and self-correcting practice?

A: This question should better addressed by public policy analysts and educational economists. We roughly envision this process in the following way. There should be preparation time allocated after the Congress and the President signs a new education bill authorizing the new democratic system based on the State’s Education Neutrality. This time will be used on building new (very small) governmental bureaucracy for educational vouchers and public schools should use this time for planning what they want to do. Then, all public schools and school bureaucracies will be closed and some will be reopened if they get enough educational vouchers from students and parents of younger kids. Also, new educational organizations and providers will emerge. However, there can be a transitional period of running two system in parallel, with one fading and the other growing. During this period old schools will be asked to write their educational charter in preparation for the transition. Additional funding resources may be needed to allocate for the transition.

4.2) Q: Will this revolution of the State’s Education Neutrality kill public schools (in their current form of public bureaucracies)?

A: All voucher-based Education (schools, homeschooling, educational agencies, educational cooperatives, learning circles, self-studies, and so on) will be public because they will be financed by public money of taxpayers. Because of that probably all current public schools will have to transform one way or another from being a part of a larger bureaucracy to being a self-standing and self-governing school, based on negotiation with the students (mediated by parents for younger children) and on the self-correction processes answering to the students. Not all of the current public schools will probably be able to survive. If existing public schools are perceived by a financially enough number of students as good, these public schools will probably survive. If not, they will not be able to keep up with the student-choice education — the students will pull out their public educational vouchers from them. Those public (and private!) schools will be forced in a choice either to change or to close.

But is it a Social Darwinism of survival of the fittest? In our view, this is not Darwinian survival the fittest because it is about good and not fittest (or strongest). Does anyone want his or her children to attend a bad school? We do not think so. Of course, what is good or bad can be contested which is fine in our proposal since we insist on the Educational Pluralism and State’s Educational Neutrality. As soon as some students find a school good, it will be fine. However, if nobody (or very few) likes it, it will die because no funding. In our view, it is a self-correcting process rather than Social Darwinism.

We are coming to a conclusion that all existing systems of public education are, in fact, based on public vouchers, — i.e., a redistribution of funds for education through taxation. Currently, this is not visible because, costs calculated per child, the public vouchers go to school districts bureaucracies that channel them to particular schools (in US). We suspect that in other countries it is somewhat similar.

We think that the public is people and not the State or the State bureaucracies. So, why do not trust people with their decisions of what is good for them using their money?! We want to abolish totalitarian schools, not public schools. All schools are public that are supported on public money. We want to abolish the current state of imposition of technological standard-based education on all except the rich, who can pay for their own schools. We want to abolish any Educational Monopoly driven by any Educational Partisan Philosophy (including our own favorite ed philosophy of DEFA). Equity is yes, but not imposed equality of mediocrity and misery. We see much more equity and democracy in our voucher proposal than in the existing totalitarian standard-based school system of accountability.

4.3) Q: What about teachers? Their professionalism? Their position and protection of their job and conditions of work (i.e. what about teacher unions)? Will the revolution of the State’s Education Neutrality worsen the teachers’ professionalism and conditions of teachers' jobs?

A: We suspect good teachers will flourish and the State's Education Neutrality will raise teachers’ professionalism — based on the real life feedback about their teaching that will come from the students. However, the same feedback also may and will worsen conditions of teachers' job stability rather strongly. Some teachers will lose their jobs if there is no demand or they won’t be appreciated by the students. To ease the transition, the State may need to assist willing teachers to educate themselves in a new educational environment with providing TEACHER EDUCATION vouchers to preserve their jobs or find new ones. The teacher tenure will be probably destroyed. As to teachers’ salaries, this issue has to be studied by educational economists. The salaries may even be raised (see 4.1), but we don’t know for sure.

As to the teachers unions, they will be forced to reorganize, no question about that, but they probably will survive (like actors’ union without protection of job but fairness, pensions, legal matters, and so on). In our view, in addition to teachers unions guarding their job conditions and well-being, teachers need to develop professional organizations with different and at time conflicting agendas: 1) a teacher union focusing on the teachers’ rights, job security, benefits, salary negotiation, safe job conditions, legal protection of teachers, and so on and ; 2) a teacher professional organizations focusing on professional improvement and advances of the teaching practice. These two important functions can be at time in accord and at time in contradiction with each other and require separation of their legitimate agendas. Currently, the teachers unions include the second functions and they have secondary priorities in the hierarchy of concerns and are often overruled by the first functions. That is, in our view, why we may see cases of an excellent novice teacher being laid off to secure the seniority even of a mediocre teacher.

4.4) Q: Can we accept your Pluralist Theory of Dialogic Pedagogy but develop a different proposal keeping Benevolent Monopoly on Educational Philosophy or some kind of Limited Educational Pluralism or Gradual Educational Pluralism without committing to your radical and scary proposal for your “Educational Pluralism”? Why don’t you use your intellectual muscle to develop a way of spreading your Dialogic Education For Agency that we like as the best way (or, let’s say in a politically correct way, “a better way”) of education on more and more students? Why do we need to willingly give “them” resources for education to the pedagogical practices that we dislike and despise and, thus, promoting monologic and oppressive types of “education”?

A: Correct us if we are wrong, but does “Benevolent Monopoly on Educational Philosophy” mean convincing a majority of people in a country and influential politicians that DEFA (for example) is the best educational approach that should be imposed and forced on every public school and every teacher in a public school? If so, how can a teacher, who does not believe in critical dialogue and resists it, become a good dialogic teacher? In our DEFA view, becoming a dialogic teacher includes freedom for dissent, meaning a legitimate possibility not to become a dialogic teacher or even freedom to actively become a monologic teacher. Critical dialogue is manifestation of freedom. People cannot be ordered or forced to be free. Imposed/forced dialogue is dead dialogue. Monopoly on Educational Philosophy is not a condition of education but is a particular Educational Philosophy by itself and this is a monologic educational philosophy blocking praxis of praxis (i.e., genuine education according to our DEFA approach). That is why, in our view, benevolent Monopoly on Educational Philosophy is impossible, it is a contradiction in terms, a misnomer.

Now let us turn to the idea of “Limited Educational Pluralism” (LEP). We envision LEP as a situation when certain “legitimate” educational philosophies will be allowed and supported by the State but some other will be not. Students or their parents will be financed by taxpayers’ dollars to attend educational institutions and settings (e.g., homeschool) that have committed to the legitimate educational philosophies. However, other educational institutions and settings will be not approved for funding (e.g., “dogmatic” educational philosophies, religious, “intolerant”, and so on). Special Federal, State, and Local governmental educational boards can make these political decisions on behalf of their taxpayers’ constituencies: a) which educational philosophy to finance and which not and b) whether an educational institution or setting complies with legitimate educational philosophy or not in its practice. This differs from our “unfettered” Educational Pluralism that is limited by the legal system, not by an arbitrary political decision of public philosophical preferences.

First of all, we definitely see a step forward of this Limited Educational Pluralism from the current stage of the State Educational Monopoly. It will also promote more debates on educational values and engaged students in decision making about their education (if this version of LEP directly gives students the decision making power and not their parents – especially for older students, of course). In our view, LEP is an acceptable temporary compromise for us as a significant improvement of the educational practice moving in “a right direction.” LEP can be a transitional phase toward the full Educational Pluralism.

However, we see at least three major objections against the LEP approach as such – i.e., permanently established. First, in LEP, political boards and taxpayers will rob students from their decision making about “good” and “bad” legally allowed educational philosophies and practices and, thus, limit the quality of their education understood as praxis of praxis – i.e., the students’ examination of values of their own education. Second, all taxpayers should be allowed to use benefits of their educational tax within the limits of the law. Third, LEP creates disparity between rich students who have more educational choices outside of public schools and poor students, who do not have them. Thus, by default, rich students are engaged in higher quality of education because we define education as praxis of praxis – i.e., examination of possible educational values and deciding what is the best for the student him or herself.

Regarding “Gradual Transition to Educational Pluralism”, we think that as political conditions in a country mature for the Educational Pluralism, it is fine with us to transition gradually when the State Educational Monopoly becomes weakened and the overall educational practice is moving toward Educational Pluralism through creative experimentation. What do you think?

4.5) Q: Is "our" society (i.e., US, UK, Russia, Israel, South Africa, New Zealand, China, Vietnam) really ready for the Educational Pluralism? If not, what are right conditions, traditions, and transitions for the Educational Pluralism? Is the Educational Pluralism right and doable for all societies?

A: We think that right historical conditions are needed for the State’s Educational Neutrality. Educational Pluralism is doable when it can be established through democratic political processes: voting, judicial decisions, legislation, executive decrees, rule of law, and free political dialogue. In our view, Educational Pluralism is the only educational principle that is compatible with a Constitution in a democratic society (but other people may disagree) and with a Liberal Society and a Liberal State. We think that ideas of the Educational Pluralism will be more supported in societies with long democratic traditions and tolerance with dissent of the Ultimate Illiberal, Undemocratic, Other. We suspect that Educational Pluralism will be more supported in post-skill and post-knowledge, agency-based societies and economies with Open Access information, and we see trends toward this development around the globe (especially in “economically developed” societies, although this is a painful process).

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5. Socialists’ concerns: “Are you educational libertarians/anarchists or what?!”

5.1) Q: Will education be commercialized, treating students as consumers? Will capitalist market economy distort education in the democratic voucher self-corrected educational practice?

A: Yes. No doubts about that; as the capitalist market economy does this corruption with art, health care, and other practices. However, capitalist market distortion and corruption of the Education is better than feudal pedagogical violence of the current totalitarian school system, in our view.

We see at least two danger of commercialization. One is deceptive advertising that can be curtailed by lawsuits, students walking away, and bad publicity and reputation. The other one is more serious of pleasing students without much education: feeling-good industry without much education, junk education. This is by far more serious problem because it disrupts a self-correcting feedback loop.

This problem is not new. It exists in art, food, medicine, and other industries and practices. What usually curtails (but not eliminates) this parasitic tendency of capitalism are two counter-currents: 1) people often get tired and bored out of empty pleasure and 2) people get exposed to something outside of their immediate “bubble” and they want to move there and experience some new aspects of life. Also, this problem can and should be a part of public debate as it is in other industries and practices.

5.2) Q: How is this educational revolution different from the school choice voucher reform that has been tried on a local basis in many countries?

A: In our view, the HUGE difference between our revolutionary proposal for the revolution of the Educational Pluralism, mediated by democratic vouchers, on the one hand, and existing voucher choice school experiments, on the other hand, is that as far as we know, all tried experiments so far have been embedded in the existing imposition of the Technological Standard-Based and Accountability-Based Education by the State’s Monopoly on Education. In the existing voucher school reform, often parents make choices of schools with their vouchers that lead to better outcomes for their children – in terms of societal currencies such as examinations, employment prospects, upper social mobility, etc. It is still a monologic system of imposed values – the freedom is about how to get these imposed values. Usually educational voucher reforms are supposed to provide diversity and flexibility to better serve to, better achieve the goals of the Educational Monopoly on Educational Values with Compulsory Education. Currently, this Educational Monopoly is defined by the Standards-Based Education. In our revolutionary proposal, we argue for Plurality of Educational Values. We argue for Educational Pluralism that allows both freedom of educational path (i.e., instruction) and freedom of educational destination (i.e., curriculum).

We argue that the State should not only have Religious Neutrality of not imposing or suppressing any religion or absence of it. Similarly, the State should be out of the business of imposing or suppressing any educational philosophy. But like the Medical Care, the State must provide Education as a human right. This means no Accountability to the State. Similarly, the quality of medical care is negotiated between the doctors and the patients.

In our view, our revolutionary proposal for the Educational Pluralism mediated by vouchers is analogous (with limits) to a shift of providing food for people through soup kitchen (like current voucher system through school districts) versus food stamps (like in our democratic proposal). While providing food stamps, the State has Food Neutrality about what kind of food poor people should buy. Yes, some dieticians and doctors are concerned about what kind of food people in general and poor people eat or about abuses of food industry, but in our view, it can be wrong to return back to the comprehensive soup kitchen system that was in past to address these abuses. Also, in our view, the educational situation is different from the food situation in a very important aspect. Namely, food getting and eating is separated from deciding what food is good for you. While, we argue in our Partisan DEFA approach, that education is primary concern of considering about what is good for you and why.

Finally, proponents of the voucher and school choice market-based reform often argue that the quality of education will be established by market competition. We disagree with that since plurality of educational values establishes plurality of what quality of education may mean of a particular educational establishment. However, we do agree that market can be useful for creating a self-correcting loop but we think that it can happen only in a regulated market. For example, currently, many universities have established educational monopolies within "free" educational market of Higher Education. We think that like in economy, unregulated or poorly regulated educational market can lead to cartel-like monopolies. State regulation protecting and defending Educational Pluralism is needed. For this reason, we are not libertarians.

5.3) Q: Will this proposal of the revolution of the State’s Education Neutrality destroy equal opportunity for Education? Isn’t liberty a prize that we only achieve after winning the battle for equality?

A: In our view, the State should NOT be in the business of equalizing financial opportunities for education. We are against equality or even equity as the primary concern guiding education. We think it is not only unrealistic but really dangerous because, arguably, sometimes excessive equality is even more dangerous than excesses of inequality, leading to totalitarianisms (of the twentieth century). We think that liberty does not start with equality or even equity – the Old Left is wrong about that. We think the Old Left has not learned much from the 20th century tragic lessons yet. As the 20th century painfully has showed to us, oppression by equality is MUCH WORSE than oppression by inequality assessed by the unprecedented scale of misery, crime, and death by the totalitarian Communist and Fascist regimes, both of which tried and successfully reduced inequality on a mass scale (both economically and politically). Liberty does not come or start with equality or equity but it starts with respect for and appreciation of diversity/otherness and respect for the broadening minimum universal human rights (Kukathas, 2003). In our judgment, excessive inequality is better than excessive equality because at least the former beads diversity and not the other way around. Excessively equal society is without the future and essentially suicidal and homicidal. Both equality and inequality oppressions are bad and have to be avoided as our proposal suggests. However, our proposal does not make the situation perfect or eliminate terrible abuses but rather jumpstarts a process of making the situation better (but still messy and unjust) by empowering people for action.

We are not concerned about “equality-based fairness” or everybody having “the same funding” or “the same opportunities” (i.e., equity). Not only this is an impossible myth, in our view, but it is not desirable either. We are concerned about the minimum being good enough, we are concerned the minimum moving up, we are concerned about raising minimum human rights. If somebody has more than the minimum – great as it promotes further innovations and experimentations! It can set the goal for others and redefine what “being enough” means. As a writer William Gibson said, “The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.” Fighting with unevenly distributed good is fighting with the future of this good. The issue is not to eliminate the future from the present by making everybody equal (i.e., misery for all) but to make it more evenly distributed as soon as possible by moving the minimum up. We try to address the issue of the growing gap between the poor and the rich by our Proposal Items#14-18 by raising minimum voucher funding by the assessment of the median expenses of satisfied students.

We think that when it comes to ACCESS to QUALITY education, it is not a matter of equality or degrees of variability, but a matter of a basic human right – and that this right must be defined by the student as education that is meaningful to her or him!!! After all, in our opinion, meaningfulness (to the student) is the only measure of the educational quality. Today, while many students have access to "education", a very small number of students has an access to education that is to a certain degree more meaningful to them. But many, many more students can only access what to them amounts to less meaningful or even completely meaningless "education". The majority of the students have to spend a good part of their lives in situations that are not only meaningless and distressing but are socially and psychologically harmful because they displace students' participation in meaningful and significant social practices in which they can find and participate in creating psychological and social richness. Rather, they are placed daily and over prolonged periods of time (12 years +), in situations of psychological and social suppression equivalent to a psycho-social desert (i.e. total personal meaninglessness, becoming "academic zombies", Matusov & Brobst, 2013). In that sense, any educational practice that is meaningless to the student is by default harmful — especially when it amounts to long periods of time over many years of one's life. Because, at the end of the day, educational meaningfulness can be judged only by the student herself or himself — and therefore is tremendously variable, we do not see that providing for this basic human right is a matter of equality, but rather a matter of equity! A human right should be unconditional, but its meaning should be free to limitlessly differ from one to another person. Thus, we see educational equity as the condition for each person to create a rich web of meaningful relationships to self, to the others and to the world.

5.4) Q: What about inequality? Richer states, richer counties, richer parents can pay for better education (although, what does it mean “better education”?) or at least for more educational resources.

A: Yes, we live in a capitalist society based on inequality and education will be affected by it. The question is if this proposal will decrease or increase the existing inequality and in what way. We suspect that based on our Proposal Item#14-18, when rich parents raise funding for their children’s Education, they may push for increasing value of educational vouchers.

5.5) Q: Will this educational revolution be bad for environment since big urban school disappear?

A: This is an interesting concern but we are not sure that this gloomy predication is right. The greenest schools are probably not urban monsters but homeschools that do not require any transportation. Our educational revolution will probably promote homeschooling as more parents and students may have resources for that coming from public vouchers. In our view, the environmental problem in the US is based on government subsidy of gasoline and nothing to do with vouchers.

5.6) Q: Education is a public affair in the interest of the society. It’s curriculum and instruction have been decided by democratically elected public representatives (e.g., by Local School Board in the US). What is wrong with that?

A: We argue that education and learning (which are not the same according to our DEFA partisan vision) are ALWAYS primary private business of the learner. Neither the society nor its democratically elected representative cannot and must not decide what is good for each individual learner to learn and how to learn it to make this learning meaningful for the learner. The social concerns and pressures (e.g., job availability, credentialism) can be communicated to the learner but must not be imposed on him or her. Nobody can know what is best for a particular learner in the unknown future.

5.7) Q: Are you educational libertarians?

A: Although we are not afraid of political labels and we do see certain similarities between and even synergies with our Educational Pluralism and Educational Libertarianism (on the political right) and Educational Anarchism (on the political left), we do not see our position as either libertarian or anarchist (although if at all, we feel being closer to social anarchists than to libertarians). It is true that we are closer to libertarian, liberal, and anarchist approaches to education than to socialist. We see affinity with some versions of libertarianism/anarchist approaches in the following aspects of our proposal for Educational Pluralism: our insistence on students’ decision making about their education (i.e., promoting individual liberties); our interest in a self-correcting feedback loop of educational practices (i.e., self-organizing and emerging processes); respect for students/children’s rights; our focus on mutuality and negotiation; and ending the State Monopoly on Educational Philosophy.

However, we see divergence between our proposal for the Educational Pluralism and libertarianism/anarchist in the following aspects:

In contrast to libertarianism/anarchist approaches primarily interested in promoting individual liberties, we have come to Educational Pluralism from a different focus of our particular partisan position of the Dialogic Education For Agency (DEFA) claiming that genuine education involves students’ defining what education is good for them, defining goals and values of their education, testing ideas about education, and investigating the students’ own desires (i.e., praxis of praxis, using Aristotle’s terms; “internally persuasive discourse” in Bakhtin’s terms).
In contrast to libertarianism/anarchist approaches interested in promoting individual discrete choices, our partisan DEFA approach focuses on students’ continuous goal defining, values and desires’ examination, testing ideas, and making decisions.
In contrast to libertarianism/anarchist approaches interested in promoting choice making viewed as an entirely individual, independent, and autonomous matter; our partisan DEFA approach defines the students’ decision making processes about their education as social, cultural, historical, and discursive by their nature.
In contrast to libertarianism/anarchist approaches insisting that individual always/often makes better choices for him/herself than authority or experts, our partisan DEFA approach focuses on importance of students’ decision making for their education per se as a way of testing their ideas, values, and desires, regardless how good or correct their initial particular decisions about their education are.
In contrast to libertarianism/anarchist approaches emphasizing individual autonomy defined by Kant, our partisan DEFA approach focuses on human personal agency defined through transcendence of the given socially recognized by the relevant others and requiring justification and answerability/responsibility rooted in internally persuasive discourse.
In contrast to some libertarianism approaches, claiming that market defines truth and quality through success of a particular educational practice and institution in a market competition for customers, our partisan DEFA approach focuses on students’ own definitions of truth and quality as tested by them in their education with help of others.
In contrast to some libertarianism approaches viewing education as achievement of curricular standardized endpoints by the students preset by the society, economy, and competitive job market (i.e., poiesis in Aristotle’s terms), our partisan DEFA approach views education as examination of desires, defining goals, testing ideas, and critical investigation of personal and social ready-made and emerging values (i.e., praxis of praxis in Aristotle’s terms).
In contrast to anarchist approaches, we do not see Education instrumentally as mainly subordinated and serving to embetterment and improvement of the society. We believe that Education has value in itself and at times this value may go in conflict with goals of societal improvement. The self-contained value of Education has to be respected and not automatically sacrifice for the “societal good.”
In contrast to libertarianism/anarchist approaches distrusting the State and minimizing its role, our partisan DEFA approach highly appreciates the State in at least its four important function with regard to education:

protecting and promoting Educational Pluralism,
promoting financial opportunities for quality education for all (but not defining this quality outside of the students’ own definitions),
protecting rights of diverse communities and individual people (liberal and illiberal);
protecting a democratic society as a condition for good education.

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6. Societal imposition on education

6.1) Q: How can forces and players outside of education legitimately shape education? What about legitimate concerns by employers and/or by general public about students' competences necessary for: workplaces, skillful and informed democratic participation in the society, competition for getting good jobs, upward social mobility, and so on?

A: We think that this is a very important question and this is how we try to address it within our Educational Pluralism revolution proposal. First, we insist that all social demands on personal education — at the end of the day, education is always personal and particular — should be viewed as contested and problematic for many reasons. The primary reason, in our view, is that considering what is good for a particular student in the past, present, and future is the primary business of the education process itself. The secondary reasons are that: a) social forces and players can never know well what is good for a particular student or even for the societal future itself (the future is never fully predictable or known) and b) on the close analysis, societal forces and players often disagree with each other about their conflicting demands on education (e.g., democratic participation may demand social equality while upward social mobility may demand social inequality, cf. Labaree, 1997).

Second, outside social forces and players must NOT impose their demands on education via financial resources, regulations, and policies beyond the safety and legal protection concerns for students and education providers for the reasons stated above and preserving the overall Educational Pluralism.

Third, outside social forces and players can and even should legitimately set safeguards for competence and establish summative assessments, aiming at sorting education alumni based on their competencies. The outside social forces and players may want to communicate about the consequential importance of their demands and competence safeguards directly to the students or through education providers (who may want to investigate these demands in advance to attract more students, if they want). However, it is up to students (mediated by parents/guardians for young and psychologically disabled students) to attend or not to attend to these social demands (which can be wrong in the long run anyway). The priority of educational curriculum – what to study – has to be always under control of a student.

6.2) Q: Wouldn't the Educational Pluralism undermine educating a well-rounded person at least for some schools who choose not to push all academic curricula?

A: We always have two positions: One is pluralistic. According to this position if students and educators want to do education for “well-rounded person” – this is fine with us and our proposal. But if not, it should not.

The other is our partisan position, Dialogic Education for Agency. According to that position, the “well-rounded” pedagogical objective is both unachievable and undesirable. It is unachievable because human agency cannot exist in a decontextualized, "all purpose", passive, "wait-to-be-used", universal, "do-it-all" form. Human agency is always focused, purposeful and relational to particular personal desires and situations. In this view, it is impossible, and even harmful to teach subject matters or skills that are not the student's actual “here-and-now” interests, and meaningful and important aspects of a practice, in which he or she is involved. All alive creatures have biases in order to be alive. They are attracted to certain things in the environment and repelled from others. Forcing them to become “well-rounded,” means making them indifferent and, thus, dead, – killing their interests, attractions, and inquires!

Furthermore, in reality, on the close look, also so-called “well-rounded curriculum” programs are not so well-rounded, prioritizing a high culture over a low culture, intellectual labor vs. manual labor, well- paid vs. low–paid jobs and professions, and so forth.

A “well-rounded” person, a so-called “a Renaissance man,” as a pedagogical goal, is also undesirable. Human agency is the strongest, most satisfying and most creative when it is well focused and spirited in particular practices. Achieving mastery in one area is always done at expense of and, thus, handicaps in some other area. The reverse is also usually true: handicap in one area of human mastery can become an advantage in another area (e.g., colorblind people are good in uncovering military camouflaged weapon and troops). Development of human agency can be compared to evolution: plants and animals are well adapted to their own ecological niche, but cannot survive in another ecological environment. An imaginary “well-rounded” plant that is adapted to all environmental condition would lose the evolutionary competition to a specialized plant. Any personal investment in one area of human mastery comes at expense of another. Trying to achieve everything leads to mediocrity in all fields.

6.3) Q: Don't we need a common educational base? A common cultural capital? Is there no value in providing all students with the same foundation of knowledge? Even some required minimum? The core curriculum? The basics? Shouldn't all students know who George Washington or Rosa Park (in the US context), for example, were, or to be able to read, or to be able to appreciate "Romeo and Juliet", or to be able to do basic math, algebra, and financial literacy, and to understand statistical information presented in newspapers?

A: Based on our pluralist position, if students and teachers want to implement “common core of knowledge” and similar ideas that will be perfectly fine with us and our proposal.

Our partisan position as the proponents of Dialogic Education for Agency however, opposes the notion of “common core knowledge” because it undermines a person’s freedom of learning choice. One has to have a freedom of learning choice of what to study, when to study it, with whom, and for what purpose to study it. Freedom of learning choice is an all-or-none position and it comes with the freedom not to study anything that the person does not desire. "Freedom is indivisible. It means you must never influence the choices children make. It’s all or nothing" (Neill, 1966). Not only it is unnecessary to require a "common core of knowledge", but also it undermines the "absolute trust" (Neil, Summerhill) in child's agency. Human agency does not recognize decontextualized, pre-existing, personally non-significant knowledge as genuine knowledge.

Not learning something, as a young child, admittedly, can be a handicap for the adult in the child’s future. A person might wish to have learned something before. But, the greatest gift that education can give a person is to be open to learning when the person needs it. Preparation for unknown future occurs through the person's intense interaction with the present. (Watch "Boy who didn't want to learn to read" – an excerpt from the movie "The Children of Summerhill", 1998, about such a case.)

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7. Contradictions in your Proposal for the Educational Pluralism

7.1) Q: Why doesn’t your "revolution proposal" for the State's Educational Neutrality apparently work in Higher Education? University and college students have their "private vouchers" to pay tuition but it does not lead to negotiation of pedagogy and curriculum and does not create “a self-correcting practice.” Why is that? The institutions of Higher Education remain to be monopolists of defining education for their students and in-tune to the State Monopoly. Why doesn't your proposal work for Higher Education?

A: We agree that Higher Education is monopolized by a technological Standard-Based Educational philosophy similar to the State's Educational Monopoly but using a different means for this monopoly. The current monopoly on educational philosophy by the State is established through funding and regulations — by dictating educational values through public vouchers usually send to the school districts, through regulations, and through accountability policies. In contrast, the Higher Education Monopoly is realized in the US mostly through universities and colleges requiring/forcing students to take particular courses for their successful graduation to get educational credentials valued by businesses and institutions outside of education (i.e., diplomas, certificates, degrees). This conveniently ensures that professors always will have enough number of students in their required classes and release them from anxiety about whether their class will make it or not. These professors do not need to advertise their course to students, or to convince their potential students in value of the course for them, or to be concerned about their teaching reputation among the past, current, and future students. Thus, students cannot vote by their feet (and, thus, tuition dollar) when they find a course or a professor to be insensitive for their educational needs.

Our item#14 of the Proposal forbids universities and colleges dictate students what particular courses they must take for successful graduation. Although, in our view, it may be OK for universities to set a minimum number of courses for graduation and their general nature as well as particular non-course learning experiences (e.g., theses defense, internships). We think that forbidding universities to force the students to sign up for classes that the students may not want to take will take care of the problem, destroy Higher Education Monopoly on educational philosophy, promote students-professors-employers negotiation of pedagogy and curriculum, make professors answerable to their students, and, thus, democratize professional and liberal Higher Education. We hope that it will also force to take any "experts" of accreditation and professional guilds out of business of dictating pedagogy and curriculum to universities and colleagues.

7.2) Q: There is an apparent contradiction between your Educational Pluralism and your own current version of your particular educational position for "the best education" that you have defined as “Dialogic Education For Agency” (DEFA) (e.g., currently in your classes you are imposing your dialogic values on your students through your DEFA educational practices). Can you address it, please?

A: We think that the presented tension between our Educational Pluralism and our Particular Educational approach “Dialogic Education For Agency” (DEFA) as "the best educational approach" that we have been developing now is real one. Although DEFA is pregnant with pluralism in itself – in a sense it values diverse ideas, desires, and values; – it is true that DEFA also tacitly, but forcefully, socializes the participants in critical dialogue. In our view rooted in Bakhtinian dialogic framework, the forceful power of socialization in critical dialogue comes from the dialogic nature of humanity. When a teacher is genuinely interested in a student’s ideas, feelings, desires, values, opinions, and goals – not to exploit the student’s subjectivity, not to “teach” the prescribed curricula, but to understand the student and take the student seriously as another human being, – this interest of one person in another often creates power of dialogic ontological engagement and later even nostalgia for critical dialogue in a student (i.e., “education for nostalgia”, although not any nostalgia is good, in our partisan view, – only one about critical dialogue. For example, nostalgia for totalitarian camaraderie is not necessarily good in education).

Our Partisan DEFA educational approach seems to be rooted in Socrates' statement that "unexamined life is not worth living". This statement is a contested statement. Thus, Kukathas (2003) convincingly argues that:

a) unexamined life may be worth living;

b) examined life may not be worth living;

c) examining life may ruin "good life" as defined by the criterion of "living according to one's conscience";

d) imposing examining life on others may deprive them from both their "good life" and their meaningful examination of their lives.

We recognize a contradiction between our Particular Educational DEFA approach and our Educational Pluralist approach and we are committed to both (which means we are committed to a contradiction). Although, we claim that DEFA is better than any other educational approach, we also recognize that education is a self-defining endeavor for the students (i.e., praxis of praxis), which mean that students have to be on a path of defining their own education – even if this path is not DEFA.

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8. Libertarians' concerns: "The State who pays the piper, calls the Education tune"

8.1) Q: Are you too naïve and too optimistic to expect benevolence and self-restrain from the State not to engage itself in regulation and defining Educational Philosophy for education the State pays? Are you saying that as long as the state is regulating educational forms that act outside of accordance with the law, then this is sufficient to justify such legislation? Polygamy is illegal federally, so is it now just for the State to regulate and stamp out any educational forms that teach practice of polygamy (not about polygamy)? In some states – most closely, Canada – it is illegal to engage in holocaust denial, but it is not clear that because states feel that this is pertinent to national security (or, really, civic well-being), that stamping out all educational forms that teach the practice of holocaust denial (not about holocaust denial) is not just run-of-the-mill viewpoint discrimination. Really, at some point, allowing the State to stomp out all educational forms that engage in activities it has judged (by legislation) to be corrosive to order and peace REALLY puts the idea of educational neutrality by the state at risk. Would you place a GREAT bit of faith (ironically enough) in the State to restrain its own powers and hold to a distinction (between regulating for public safety BUT NOTHING ELSE) that is delicate AT BEST?

A: We think we are not as naïve as to assume that just because the State’s Educational Neutrality will be morally and legally recognized and accepted by the society in the future (unfortunately, currently, we are far from that yet), it will be enough for the State behave in accordance with this principle. There are the following several reasons that we doubt in the State’s automatic compliance:

There will be always grey areas between the legitimate and illegitimate interference of the State using its protective and supportive regulatory power that may interfere with the State Educational Neutrality principle. These grey areas will require case-by-case judgments, which will be contested across diverse communities and across time.
Different communities and individuals may have both legitimate and illegitimate interests in imposing Educational Philosophies on each other through use of the Oppressive State power. The examples of polygamy in US, holocaust denial in Canada, 2012-2013 failed attempts to regulate the size of “junk drinks” in New York City by Major Blumberg, and so on are very good ones.
Unfortunately, the pure abuse of and corruption by power based on the limitless based on the motto, “We can therefore we will,” will be with us regardless people in power. We agree with political libertarians and anarchists and the Founders of the USA Republic that it is much better to expect and normalize this evil intend of power abuse even in good folks and develop processes and structures counteracting it as much as possible rather than expect automatic goodness from all people. As history shows again and again, the expectation of the universal goodness from all “good folks” universally leads to terror (e.g., Revolutionary France, Russia, China, and so on).

Although we are not scholars of the Statehood, we have found the current situation and practices in liberal democratic states are more or less satisfactory and being “good enough.” This success is based on having many sources of power, diversification of the nature and types of power, divisions of power, vertical and horizontal power, self-correcting processes, freedom of public speech, diverse institutional and informal power, and so on. What liberal democratic society can or cannot legally tolerate remains contested and negotiated. There have been hopeful historical trends of liberalization of the USA and other liberal democratic societies (e.g., gay marriage, open gay military service, gender equality, legalization of marijuana, decriminalization of prostitution, race civil rights). In short, in many ways, we think the situation with the State Educational Neutrality is not unique challenge for a liberal democratic State. It is a challenge along with many other challenges. And we think that a historically liberal democratic State will deal with these challenges in a “good enough” way (and increasingly better). We do not expect and do not want “the perfect” solution for a liberal democratic State. Nothing is guaranteed in a liberal democratic State — even such an arguably unproblematic issue as a State’s ban on torture can suddenly become an issue of a public political debate (e.g., in the 21st century in the USA). Deeply down the society is regulated by consciences of its participants and not just by its laws and Constitution. Everything remains problematic and contested and will remain contested. For example, although the State and the Church are constitutionally separated in the USA, the relationship between the State and the Church remain problematic and this is not necessary a bad thing. We expect that the relationship between the State and the Education will remain bumpy under our revolutionary proposal of the State Educational Neutrality.

In our revolutionary proposal insisting on providing the minimum financial resources for Good Enough Education by the State to all as a Human Right, we challenge a rather common (wrong) assumption that the State may have additional moral and legal rights in areas of practice and life where the State redistributes taxpayers’ funds. In our view, the State’s moral and legal rights, when these rights exist legitimately, must be independent of the fact whether a State contributes the taxpayers’ money or not. For example, if a State finds out that a particular medicine is poisonous or useless, it should legitimately and oppressively ban this medicine regardless whether the State financially contributes or not to the pharmaceutical industry. Unfortunately, currently this important principle is not widely recognized by the public and by moral and legal foundations of a liberal democratic State. Redistribution of taxpayers’ money does not give any additional moral or legal right to the State to interfere. Publically funded enterprise does not give any additional right to run this enterprise. Publically and privately funded enterprises and practices must be regulated in the same way, essentially remaining autonomous, sovereign, and independent from the State. Only State-run enterprises can be different in this regard. This is important for all practices but, especially, important for Education for the following reason.

Based on our Partisan DEFA position, we argue that education has its unique feature of being praxis of praxis, in which defining what “Good Education” is a necessary part of “Good Education” for its participants. This provides additional demand for the State Educational Neutrality in contrast to other practices and enterprises.

In general, we accept the double nature of the State: the State being a safeguard and enabler of Liberalism and Democracy AND, at the same time, being one of the biggest threats and abusers of Liberalism and Democracy. Unfortunately, in our view, these two tendencies are inseparable and we need to maximize the former and minimize the latter. This is why we are not Political Anarchists or Political Libertarians. We are not for minimization or elimination of the role of the State. But we are not Political Socialists, hoping that the State will be able to solve all or even major societal problems, either.

Finally, we want to emphasize that the State Monopoly is not the only thread for the Educational Pluralism. Private and public universities, embedded in the capitalist market economy, have managed to establish their own Educational Monopolies without much help by the State, at least in the USA. The Higher Education has been monopolized without support of the State and within the capitalist market forces. We must use legal, moral, formal, and informal diverse types of powers on diverse levels to promote the Educational Pluralism and to resist Educational Monopolies regardless their origin.

Acknowledgements

We are greatly thankful to many our colleagues who read previous drafts of our revolutionary proposal for the Educational Pluralism (aka Education 2.0) and raised their concerns and questions: Jayne White, Jay Lemke, Alexander Sidorkin, Paul Sullivan, Beth Ferholt, Anna Rainio, Yifat Ben David Kolikant, Iris Ben David-Hadar, David Blacker, Michal Zellermayer, Peter Rule, Brian Edmiston, Ruth Arber, Ulrike Wolff-Jontofsohn, Werner Wintersteiner, Mariam Orkodashvili, Gail Weinstein, Michalinos Zembylas, Terrie Epstein, and Zvi Bekerman. We want to thank Zvi Bekerman for inviting us to present and discuss our proposal at the Cultural Sustainability, Social Cohesion, and Glocal Education, Jerusalem, Israel, June 16-18, 2013. We also want to thank to Jim Rietmulder and Kathy von Duyke for supporting our proposal and Kevin Currie-Knight who helped us to develop some of replies in dialogue with his libertarian position on education. We also want to disclose that we have not cherry picked nor weeded out any concern about our State’s Educational Neutrality introduced by our generous colleagues: we either tried to modify our proposal or honestly addressed the concern.

References

Aristotle. (2000). Nicomachean ethics (R. Crisp, Trans.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Bakhtin, M. M. (1999). Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics (Vol. 8). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Illich, I. (1983). Deschooling society (1st Harper Colophon ed.). New York: Harper Colophon.

Kukathas, C. (2003). The liberal archipelago: A theory of diversity and freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Labaree, D. F. (1997). How to succeed in school without really learning: The credentials race in American education. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Matusov, E. (2011). Authorial teaching and learning. In E. J. White & M. Peters (Eds.), Bakhtinian pedagogy: Opportunities and challenges for research, policy and practice in education across the globe (pp. 21-46). New York: Peter Lang Publishers.

Matusov, E., & Brobst, J. (2013). Radical experiment in dialogic pedagogy in higher education and its centauric failure: Chronotopic analysis. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers.

Matusov, E., & Marjanovic-Shane, A. (2012). Diverse approaches to education: Alienated learning, closed and open participation and critical dialogue. Human Development, 5(3), 159-166. doi: 10.1159/000339594.

Neill, A. S. (1966). Freedom–not license! New York: Hart Pub. Co.

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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Dialogic Pedagogy

There is "no alibi in Being" — Bakhtin (1993)