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22 - Education, Trust, and the Conversation of Democracy

from Part Three - Key Topics and Concepts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2023

By
Anthony Simon Laden
Edited by
Julian Culp ,
Johannes Drerup  and
Douglas Yacek
Julian Culp
Affiliation:
The American University of Paris, France
Johannes Drerup
Affiliation:
Universität Dortmund
Douglas Yacek
Affiliation:
Universität Dortmund
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Summary

Although it is widely thought that more education is a reliable remedy for democratic ills, I argue that it is not always so. The problem arises because education plays a role in shaping what I call people’s trust networks: the set of sources of information they regard as trustworthy. A democratic society can falter if its citizens live on isolated epistemic islands (i.e., occupy nonoverlapping trust networks). If the educational system serves to reinforce one kind of trust network rather than help people build bridges between trust networks, education will rearrange the population of these islands but potentially make the underlying topography less democracy-friendly. The chapter makes this case and then looks at some potential educational remedies to the problem it outlines.

Keywords

trustsocial epistemologycivic engagementhigher educationreligionmarginalization
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Democratic Education , pp. 361 - 376
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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