Individuals‟ will to develop civic knowledge, skills and values depends on their acceptance that they belong to a state, an organisation where they have rights and duties. This acceptance
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depends on the existence of certain social ties amongst them. The present section investigates these ties through reflecting on whether tolerating other people is enough or if engaging with unknown people and celebrating differences are also necessary attitudes.
Most current political philosophers, if not all, agree that tolerating other individuals is a duty of all citizens. Many of them go further and claim that, somehow, the state should stimulate people to get closer. From this view, people should not only tolerate but also engage themselves with unknown people and be encouraged to share some views with them. In 3.4, Rawls‟ defence that individuals have to possess certain civic values that make them morally connected to co-citizens is endorsed, in opposition to Gauthier‟s suggestion that no moral duty of individuals towards others should be demanded to anyone. In this way, though being a liberal rather than a communitarian, Rawls cannot escape from appealing to a sense of community in his theory. Given this, it seems fundamental to determine which civic values are needed to guarantee a fair society. Thus, at first, Galston and Macedo, thinkers who disagree about the extension of these values, have their ideas compared in order to clarify if only tolerance should be expected from citizens or if also engagement and celebration of difference should be stimulated.
Galston proposes a very limited intrusion of public policies into the private lives of individuals. He does not expect any sentimental involvement of individuals with other people‟s problems, rather merely some consideration for their conditions as human beings. Based on Walzer‟s suggestion that even tolerance is rare in our history (1999, p.xi.), Galston assumes that engagement is excessively optimistic. In this way, he proposes a struggle to develop a society based on the principle of tolerance, defined by him as the “refusal to use coercive state power to impose one‟s view on others” (2002, p.126). In this sense, it seems that he supports the idea that a government should not interfere in the practices of any specific culture within its state.
Galston, for example, considers acceptable cultures which do not treat equally certain individuals who belong to them (homosexuals, women, etc.). To solve this problem, by assuming “the fact that we are born into certain groups to which we do not choose to belong”, Galston says that all individuals have to be guaranteed awareness of alternative‟s lifestyles, assess to them, freedom from brainwashing and chances for leaving their social groups (2002,
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p.122). In his words, “Securing this liberty will require affirmative state protections against oppression carried out by groups against their members” (2002, p.122-3).
Thus, Galston‟s claims seem to be under a minimal consensus. However, there is a main problem that makes such claims incompatible with the limited theory proposed by him. It is impossible to make a society as a whole accepting of these policies without making individuals engage with co-citizens‟ issues. For example, it is possible to suppose that, in a small community quite detached from the rest of the society, women are treated as inferior and have much less opportunities to project and implement their life plans. If there is not a social commitment amongst different groups, there is no reason why the rest of the society would care about the internal problems of that small group. The lack of proximity results in lack of knowledge and intimacy amongst groups. It makes the internal unjust inequalities in this small group almost impossible to be fixed by the state.
Individuals care about injustices towards oppressed people – and then feels responsibility in the process of building a legitimate society – only if all citizens feel somehow close to each other. Thus, going further than Galston‟s narrow proposal, Macedo says that “a merely „tolerant‟ community does not really stand out as one that is flourishing as a community. Liberal justice is compatible with forms of community and conditions of human character that fall below what could be considered „excellent‟” (1990, p.266). He, then, defends that:
[t]he allegiance of liberal justice in a diverse society should encourage attitudes of tolerance and sympathy among people who disagree. As we come to realize that those who engage in lives different from our own are nevertheless like us in important ways, we may come to sympathize not only with these persons but also with their projects and commitments, with choices different from our own, with careers and lifestyles not seriously considered before (Macedo, 1990, p.267).
Through this defence, Macedo focuses on the importance of stimulating people‟s engagement with those that otherwise would not be close to them.
Engagement depends on the establishment of certain limits on private attachments. Necessarily, to some extent, self-interest and the importance of family, small community and friends have to be relegated to a second plan when compared to common good. There is no
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doubt that, as discussed in 2.4, family attachments are one of the pillars of contemporary Western societies and there is a consensus that such special ties have to be protected. However, there are two main reasons, also based on shared consensus of Western individuals, to limit families‟ and small communities‟ special attachments. Firstly, it is a broader attachment that allows societies to build special conditions for stability, something that is in the interest of all. Moreover, as discussed in 4.3, Okin (1999) calls attention to the fact that it is exactly within the family that certain strong kinds of injustice are established. Her analysis examines gender inequality, however, this reasoning can be extended to other injustices against minorities within families and small associations.
In order to advance this reflection, it is important to observe that, though a kind of engagement is needed for developing communal ties, getting people closer is not an easy task. Individuals in plural societies differ from each other regarding several things: gender, race, social class, sexual orientation, faith, political position, cultural tastes, etc. Thus, how should the state act towards creating conditions for these different people living together? Should some differences be reduced? Should differences always be seen as something good and celebrated? Or should they be seen as inevitable and tolerated?
Firstly, it is fundamental to clarify the meaning of tolerance and celebration of difference, the main concepts involved in this reflection. The LGBT community usually demands positive attitudes of people towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans people. They differentiate between people who only tolerate, from others who also accept and finally from those who celebrate different sexual orientations. These three very useful concepts, however, are barely found in academic papers about this subject. One exception is Riddle‟s (1994) work, which proposed an even more sophisticated list of eight different attitudes towards the LGBT community: repulsion, pity, tolerance, acceptance, support, admiration, appreciation, and nurturance. This thesis defends that, more than tolerating and accepting, people should celebrate difference of sexual orientation. (The same idea can be expanded towards other groups, for example, ethnical minorities.)
Obviously, specifically this defence of celebration of different sexual orientations finds resistance in lots of conservative groups, mainly the religious ones. They are not willing to celebrate sexual orientations (for many of them, “options”) different from heterosexuality. They, at most, accept homosexuality. And the number of people with this behaviour is huge.
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For example, in a 2012 opinion poll conducted in the US, 42% of people declared that they consider homosexuality immoral (BLOOM, 2013, p.143). On the other hand, there is no doubt that these numbers are decreasing and laws protecting LGBT rights are being multiplied in Western countries. However, is state protection of LGBT rights enough or should it cultivate on people the willing of celebrating such idea?
Regarding this specific point, given the fact that the lack of celebration of LGBT people invades the public sphere and implies lots of unfair inequalities (for example, LGBT people have more difficulties finding jobs, like black people in racist societies), proactive state actions are needed in order to stimulate celebration of plurality of sexual orientations, even if it goes against the beliefs of many people. It is a typical case in which the ideal has to pressure the real. This reflection touches on a central aspect of this thesis, and receives more attention in the conclusion.
However, it has to be done in a very mild way, since a radical attitude towards this can promote clashes in the family and in broader society. Part of this problem is associated with lack of knowledge of people in general, though the other part depends upon democratic decisions in which some groups will be defeated. For example, the allowance of LGBT people to get civil union or adopt children seems to be an immediate consequence of the constitutional right of equal treatment under the law; on the other hand, a hypothetical law obliging churches to celebrate same-sex marriage is something much more difficult to derive from the constitution, and, though it seems fair, the reactions against such decision could be more problematic than the eventual benefits from it.
Regarding this discussion of celebration of differences, in 6.3, it is presented a fundamental difference between how black people historically supported themselves in the US and in Brazil. In the US, the process of miscegenation has been much slower than in Brazil. On the one hand, this fact has made the American society much more racist and divided than the Brazilian one. On the other hand, American segregation had created a stronger sense of brotherhood/sisterhood amongst black people that make them have more conditions to fight for their rights and to celebrate their culture.
In Brazil, this process has been more fluid, the cultures are more mixed, but still black people are occupying the lower positions in society. The mobilisation of the black community, to a
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high degree favoured by the democratisation of internet access and by the legal stimulus to race self-identification that comes with affirmative action, however, is creating a space for black people to develop this brotherhood/sisterhood atmosphere. Regarding this, it is mentioned above in several different discussions that this thesis defends that social integration should be cultivated, since it stimulates social responsibility. However, recovering the partial defence of multicultural practices developed in 4.3, it can be understood that, before such integration, people from oppressed groups need to feel pride in their origins in order to participate in equal conditions of recognition in this process. Chapter 9 and the conclusion return to this discussion.
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Chapter 8 represents the transition from a discussion about justice to a reflection on citizenship education. It proposes a list of civic virtues that individuals should theoretically possess to participate well in democratic processes. A list of seven civic virtues is, then, presented: civic knowledge, critical thinking, cognitive empathy, compassion, willingness to compete fairly, fighting for justice, following rules democratically created. From this, a theoretical debate about ideal citizenship curriculum (chapter 9) and the observation on how civic virtues are cultivated in Brazilian real curriculum can be developed (chapters 10 and 11).
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9. Ideal theory of citizenship curriculum
Chapter 8 presents certain civic virtues that individuals have to possess in order to sustain just societies, based on what is discussed by the previous chapters. Related to this, the present chapter proposes an ideal theory of citizenship curriculum that is linked with the improvement of justice in Western societies, more specifically, in Brazil. This chapter, however, only develops an ideal proposal on this regard, being empirical observations achieved by chapters 9, 11 and 12. It, then, starts by (9.1) showing that, though Western citizenship values are roughly shared, different countries have distinct interpretations of them and this fact produces significant differences in their citizenship education projects. Next, it is shown that (9.2) neutrality in education does not exist. Then, (9.3) the importance of the family in this process is defended, but (9.4) the importance of formal citizenship education is also defended in order to balance the influences of the family, media, civil society over children and youngsters. From this, ideas on how schooling can and should work towards cultivating the civic virtues presented in chapter 8 are developed in the next sections. First the chapter investigates (9.5) how the state should manage, through a “supra” official citizenship curriculum, the whole school system – distribution of educational resources, parental intervention on what is taught, etc. Next, it is proposed (9.6) how a “wide” and (9.7) a “narrow” official citizenship curricula should be designed. Finally, (9.8) a debate between two powerful and partially opposed theories – critical thinking and critical pedagogy – on how dealing with citizenship curriculum is presented in order to make clearer the ideal pedagogical position towards citizenship education defended by this thesis. This chapter is, then, concluded by (9.9) anticipating, still from a theoretical perspective, some limitations regarding the implementation of citizenship curriculum.