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Levinson analyses and applies contemporary liberal political theory to certain key problems within the field of educational theory, centred around determining appropriate educational aims content and institutional structure.

This article examines the conflict in political liberalism between the demands placed on education by liberalism and those placed on education by democracy. In so far as the principles of political liberalism entail both that the state not interfere with individuals' private commitments and that it ensure the maintenance of liberal democratic institutions, I suggest that it is rent by an internal tension that poses particular dilemmas for education. This tension is explored through three competing models of the school as a politically liberal institution, expressed in terms of a schematic analysis of three countries' approach to education: England, the United States and France. I argue that while all three countries capture important aspects of the politically liberal educational project, and while the American approach especially successfully and self-consciously addresses the balance between liberalism and democracy in constructing the school as a public square, no model in theory or in practice is able to meet the diverse and competing demands of political liberalism. In so far as any political system is viable only if it is able to maintain itself across generations, however, I conclude that political liberalism fails as a theory in at least one important respect, and that the problem of education thus deserves much deeper attention from liberal political theorists than it has yet enjoyed. (British Journal of Political Science / FUB)

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 Diversity -- 2 Promoting Diversity in the Public Schools (Or, To What Extent Does the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment Hinder the Establishment of More Genuinely Multicultural Schools?) -- 3 ''Getting Religion'': Religion, Diversity, and Community in Public and Private Schools -- 4 Identifying the Jewish Lawyer: Reflections on the Construction of Professional Identity -- 5 National Loyalty, Communalism, and the Professional Identity of Lawyers -- 6 The Confrontation of Religious Faith and Civil Religion: Catholics Becoming Justices -- 7 Abstinence and Exclusion: What Does Liberalism Demand of the Religiously Oriented (Would-Be) Judge? -- 8 Is Liberal Nationalism an Oxymoron? An Essay for Judith Shklar -- 9 ''Culture,'' ''Religion,'' and the Law, with Rachel Levinson -- Bibliography -- Index

It is a truism that public school teachers should not take partisan stands in the classroom in ways that discourage students from considering or adopting alternative reasonable perspectives. At least three arguments support this widespread belief. (DIPF/Orig.)