Defining democracy and its practices remains an illusive challenge. What exactly is it? What’s its relationship to public institutions, most importantly, to public education? Is America’s crusade to democratize the world just (or democratic!)? More critically, although some feel that it has the potential to exist, we should ask, as Whitman does, whether democracy has a life beyond theory? Whitman wrote that “We have frequently printed the word Democracy … yet … it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened…” In any case, these are some of the questions that continue to plague concerned Americans, citizens around the globe, philosophers, educators and democratic politicians.

Nevertheless, I believe that the vast majority of Americans (and the globe’s democratic people) have an intuitive awareness about what makes a democratic society, about its foundational principles—justice, shared-responsibility, equality and equity, stability, security, critical citizenship, compassion, and a commitment to human rights—and this is the case, even if we cannot define it absolute, or claim it to be entirely real.

I take the time to discuss the “meaning” of democracy because (given Mr. Lofton, Mr. Goswick and Mr. Rowe’s discussion about the necessity for the meaning of democracy and of American politics) I think it is important to point out that Mr. Ayers’s analysis of American education also works with a definition of democracy and of democratic education that is not perfect, but hopeful.

The Brother has a vision of the future. Wherein our schools are committed to equality and equity, and to empowering students of all races, creeds, and class; where all students receive the necessary tools to be critical thinkers, and agents in the world; of educational spaces that promote diversity in its broadest sense, and invite dissension and non-conformism. In this future classroom, student-teacher power dynamics will not take precedence, neither will routine testing; indifference will be neither taught nor tolerated, and imagination will be fostered and encouraged. It is a vision. But environmentalist Susan Griffin aptly states, “Let us begin to imagine the worlds we would like to inhabit…”

There is a prophetic tone to Mr. Ayers’s condemnation of American public education. On the one hand, he castigates America for not fulfilling its promise of equitable education to all, and points to future danger/a dangerous future for all our children and this nation; yet, on the other hand, there is a light named Hope. Ayers challenges and encourages us when he states: “The power of rising expectations, of imagination unleashed, of hope for something better than the politics of division and war and fear – all of it is in the air and on the move.” And this is why I agree with Mr. Ayers that as a nation we need a strong and committed to deconstructing our current system, and to a radical REconstruction of our public schools. If democracy is to persist, than this “re-imagining” of American education can and must take place.

Mr. Goswick, with whom I have spoken quite a bit, I think understands that the Founders had a far more expansive, enlightenment oriented concept of “civil rights” than what he credits here.

Case in point Luther and Calvin didn’t believe men had an unalienable natural right to worship false gods and the FFs did.

The Founding Fathers disagree with your assumption. They believed Civil Rights come from Natural Law, found in the Scriptures, and elucidated in the Protestant Reformation. Calvin and Luther beat the Enlightenment, or any liberal ideal by 150 years.

John Lofton, Recovering Republican
Communications Director
Institute On The Constitution
JLof@aol.com