Suchergebnisse

The British government white paper, Excellence in Schools & the subsequent report of the Advisory Group on Citizenship, Education for Citizenship, recommend that schools educate pupils in citizenship & democracy. This recommendation is considered in the context of reasons why there has traditionally been no formal or well-articulated political education in schools. Among these reasons a pervasive antipathy to politics & to government is identified as one of the most powerful. This antipathy is expressed from the left & the right wings of the political spectrum, & the "critical" opposition to both, as well as from interests such as those defending professional & personal autonomy. These arguments imply that "politics" is optional, not a set of practices & institutions with which individuals must be familiar. It is argued that this proposition cannot be valid. Adapted from the source document.

This paper presents analysis of the distinctions between public & private life that were drawn & reflected upon in the London press coverage of the death & funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales (who died on 31 Aug 1997). This corpus is notable because journalists & other commentators had unprecedented opportunity & incentive to reflect, in print, on how & where the line between public & private ought to be drawn. In so doing, their efforts served to expose more clearly the difficult, controversial, & fuzzy nature of this distinction. The corpus is also notable because it contains considered accounts of the nature of public life, the role of "the public," & the constitution of political rule in GB. It is here suggested that, within the context of normative political theory, "reflexivity" must be a key component of "publicity." The analysis also shows how, in discursive genres such as broadsheet print journalism, a variety of contrasting & even inconsistent conceptual analyses & social theories can be integrated. In the material analyzed here, the feminist & the psychoanalytic critiques of liberal & conservative "public" vs "private" distinctions are prominent. To some degree they destabilize the meanings of public & private that liberal & conservative commentators deploy; to some degree they fail to do this. Discourse, it seems, can contain contradiction without much discomfort. 1 Appendix. Adapted from the source document.