Three models of citizenship and public education

Abstract

Citizenship is commonly considered to be synonymous with the state membership and rights related to the state membership. However, modern political philosophy presents at least two contradictory visions of citizenship: the liberal and the communitarian. The first one sees society as an aggregate of autonomous subjects. The second one- tends to view it as a community. These visions result in different shapes of state organisation and of course different models of public education. While liberal vision of public education emphasises subject’s self-determination, tolerance, and free market skills; republicanism regards public education as a tool for inculcating public virtues, traditions and building sense of belonging. In the paper strong and weak points of both liberal and republican visions of citizenship and models stemming from them are commented. The author presents also the third model of citizenship – so called – low-level communitarianism that represents the demand to exempt some members of a community from state-established education.