Public school as a constitutional condition of modern democracy can not deal with absolutistic and fundamentalistic claims of public morality in a neutral way. The problems resulting from this for a laicistic school are discussed in the context of liberal tradition in France and the “école laïque” as it originated in the 19th century.

Public school as a constitutional condition of modern democracy can not deal with absolutistic and fundamentalistic claims of public morality in a neutral way. The problems resulting from this for a laicistic school are discussed in the context of liberal tradition in France and the “école laïque” as it originated in the 19th century.

Public school as a constitutional condition of modern democracy can not deal with absolutistic and fundamentalistic claims of public morality in a neutral way. The problems resulting from this for a laicistic school are discussed in the context of liberal tradition in France and the “école laïque” as it originated in the 19th century.

The Republican education, its concepts, theories, and form of discourse belong to the shared European heritage of the pre-modern Age. The pedagogy of humanism and its effects on the early Modern Age are represented by Republicanism. Even if Republicanism found a political continuation in liberalism and democratism of the Modern Age, the same cannot be said of pedagogic continuity without some reservations. In pedagogy of the Modern Age an alternative to Republicanism prevails that builds onto a body of concepts, discourse, (...) and theory; it goes back to an old theological tradition. Rousseau chooses this alternative exclusively for his concepts of education. He is neither the inventor nor the one who builds up this language in contrast to pedagogical Republicanism. Nonetheless, the pedagogical canonization of Rousseau as one of the co-founders of pedagogical Modernity, marks the specific development that this theological language of pedagogy undergoes at the turn of the nineteenth century. Originally it is closely linked to specific theological, dogmatic lines of thought, namely, to the respective Piety movements within the two Christian denominations of Western Europe. Yet at the turn of the nineteenth century, this theological language of pedagogy increasingly loses that exclusive link to this particular context and becomes thus freely available to any form of pedagogy, which puts at its centre the child’s soul, absolute inwardness, and introspection as both holy and also threatened by a basically decadent social environment and outward world. (shrink)