Education for participation

Subject didactics as an agent of politics?

Resumo

The paper presents a critical review of key tenets of mainstream educational thinking on participation. Many approaches to education for participation tend to fall short of the state of the art of social science research on participation. Therefore, the paper calls for educational and subject didactic approaches to consider the diversity and irreconcilability of theories of participation and of models of citizenship. It aims to curb participatory enthusiasm by taking into account crucial empirical findings on the disappointing effects of increasing participation. Persistent and increasing economic and political inequality and tendencies of depoliticisation turn out to be among the main obstacles to delivering on the promise of equal opportunities for democratic participation. This brings the systemic tensions between democratic participation and capitalism to the fore. Against this sceptical assessment of participation theory and the reality of political participation, the challenges, possibilities and tasks of subject didactics in the social science domain are discussed. Above all, they face a fundamental decision: to subscribe to the idea of a functionalist education for participation as a kind of social engineering via schools, or to foster critical and political thinking about participation with the aim of changing prevailing power relations in favour of the less powerful and the powerless.