Page 140 - TWO OF A KIND • Erik Renkema

CHAPTER 6
Pihlström (2015) and Ghiloni (2011), but also in a recent publication of Miedema in which he builds on former insights of Habermas and McLaughlin. These insights connect education in democratic values with citizenship education for all students and with the concrete implementation of “mutual learning processes and dialogue between
religious and secular citizens” (Miedema 2014, 366). Democratic values for living together and learning from differences are to be taught in citizenship education and in religious education in the context of societal developments and incidents that keep showing the need for this education (Miedema 2014). Apparently Dewey’s view on the role of education for fostering democratic values of students is still a main topic in academic discourse about both religious education as well as citizenship education in modern society.
We also recognize a relationship between Dewey’s perspective on democratic education and empirical data from our research. First, we recognize a substantive parallel between his perspective and the values that our respondents underline for educating their students. Their value of students co-existing in the encounter of differences bears a strong resemblance to Dewey’s perception of a school as a “miniature community” (1899, 15). Moreover, the respondents’ valuation of the dialogue about students’ life experiences seems to be in line with the central role of experience that Dewey highlights in his vision on education. Our respondents value the attention for life experiences in religious education as a way of fostering dialogue: when students explore differences and commonalities between their experiences in life this enhances the expression of encounter as a core school value. Second, Dewey’s view on democracy can be constructive for the reflection on the concrete practice of religious education of cooperation schools. We detected a discrepancy between key values as mentioned by formal documents and the respondents on the one hand, and religious education practice on the other. We recommended that teachers organize concrete practices of dialogue that facilitate expression of encounter between students from confessional and non-affiliated education (Renkema, Mulder and Barnard 2017). Because of Dewey’s dominant focus on education in the context of plurality and on the school as a community (Biesta and Miedema 1999), we elaborate on his perspective on democracy and relate it to the specific plurality as a characteristic of cooperation schools and their educational practices where encounter and community are expressed.
138