This paper aims to examine the anthropological presuppositions underlying Philippe Foray’s critical argument concerning the role of schools in shaping citizens. While we share his concerns regarding the school’s claim to promote citizenship, we disagree with certain aspects of his argument. More specifically, we challenge the notion that an individual’s engagement in political life is a matter of personal choice. Rather, we contend that human beings are intrinsically political and that their very humanity is inseparable from active participation in social and civic affairs. In response to the liberal anthropological framework, we plea for a reconsideration of citizenship within a virtue-ethical framework —one that offers a more meaningful account of both education and everyday life. On this view, citizenship is not simply a legal status or a set of social practices but a virtue in itself. This shift in perspective necessitates a fundamental reconsideration of civic education: rather than approaching it as the mere transmission of knowledge, habits, or rules, we must confront a more fundamental issue—whether, and under what conditions, citizenship can truly be taught.
The introduction of socially acute questions into the school curriculum requires political education aimed at understanding the problems of the Anthropocene. From this perspective I favor the study of controversies and social conflicts. This strategy is caught in a tension between the aim of the common good and the pluralism of conceptions of the good which is expressed, in a conflicting manner, in a democratic society. How, in education, can we take charge of both this ideal aim of the good and the reality of social conflicts? And how can we avoid reproducing the controversy with students instead of clarifying it? Such tensions are central to Dewey's political philosophy. This article strives to show that the explanation of these tensions between common and conflict proves extremely instructive for political education based on the elucidation of controversies concerning socially acute questions and makes it possible to define a critical perspective in a problematizing community.
The paradigm of inclusivity (Dugas, 2022), through the ethical foundations implied in its rhetoric, such as the ideas of living together or a school for all, seems to resonate with the notion of the common good, which has quietly reemerged on the political scene in recent years. In France as in Brazil, implementing the inclusive paradigm comes with a tension between two contrasting notions: that of the common, underlying the ethics of the project, and its opposite, that of the particular, present in the expression ’special educational needs,’ which is central to school inclusion. Since these epistemological issues are key to the ethical and praxeological construction of the inclusive paradigm, a deeper reflection is needed. Therefore, this article offers an analysis both on the convergence between the notions of inclusion and the common good, and on their connection to educational policies in France and Brazil. This analysis allows us to observe that the rhetoric in favor of inclusion can be constructed within logics perceived or interpreted as contradictory, even paradoxical, like the common/particular conceptual couple. These contradictions, if transmuted into a divide, can weaken the anchoring of the inclusive paradigm in school reality through a climate of instability and uncertainty within the project itself.
