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Terence Mclaughlin’s essay addresses the conceptual and practical complexities involved in identifying and evaluating the nature, status, and institutional context of common (public) education in pluralist societies. He explores some of the neglected burdens and dilemmas faced by common schools in pluralist, multicultural, and liberal–democratic societies. The potential weight and complexity of these burdens and dilemmas is reflected in Stephen Macedo’s observation that common schools give rise to questions relating to some of the ‘deepest divisions’ and ‘most intractable conflicts’ characterizing the public lives of modern states. The chapter has five sections: Section 5.1 outlines some general considerations relating to common schooling and a conception of common education, pointing out that the relationship between the two is a contingent one – the adequacy of a particular institutional arrangement, such as the common school, depends critically on the extent to which it embodies an adequate conception of common education; Section 5.2 offers a sketch of some general features of such conceptions; in Sections 5.3 and 5.4, respectively, some of the burdens and dilemmas of common schooling are explored; Section 5.5 addresses neglected questions relating to the pre-eminently practical burdens and dilemmas highlighted in the previous two sections. McLaughlin’s chapter is especially helpful in identifying a number of the most important considerations in the presumption in favour of common schools as the most suitable arrangement for advancing common education, and his essay maps the conceptual, curricular, pedagogical, and policy issues that must be addressed in clarifying and defending the role of common schools and common education in liberal–democratic societies.

The essays in Part III of the book, on liberal constraints and traditionalist education, argue for a more regulatory conception of liberal education and emphasize the need for some controls over cultural and religious educational authority. Walter Feinberg’s essay, on religious education in liberal–democratic societies in relation to the question of accountability and autonomy, takes up the issue of educational constraints with respect to religious schools in such societies. While he allows that religious education need not be inconsistent with liberal goals, and can find reasons why some liberal societies feel it appropriate to provide public support for religious schools, he argues that certain conditions can render such support tyrannical and unwise. He concludes that if the conditions are appropriate for public support of religious schools, then there should also be significant public control. After an introduction in Section 14.1, the chapter has six further sections: Section 14.2 discusses some of the potential lines of conflict between religious liberal education and public (common) education; Section 14.3 examines a number of arguments that have been advanced in support of public funding for religious schools; Section 14.4 looks at a potentially fundamental reason for denying public funding for religious schools – that it would be tyrannical to take tax funds from one believer in order to advance the beliefs of another – and the implications as regards the First Amendment to the United States Constitution; both Sections 14.4 and 14.5 suggest some of the conditions that need to be satisfied in order to supply this funding – primarily that it must be predicated on the school advancing individual and social autonomy; Section 14.6 briefly suggests what such an arrangement might entail for the traditional way in which the public/private divide is conceived; Section 14.7 concludes.

In the first section of this introductory essay, the dilemma of public education in liberal multicultural societies is introduced, and the aim of this book is outlined. This is described as an examination of some of the fundamental philosophical issues that give rise to conflicting views on public education in order to shed light on questions of educational policy in liberal–democratic societies. In two further sections, the essay focuses on outlining the philosophical and educational contexts that unify the subsequent essays and together clarify the purpose of the book as a whole. The essay concludes with an overview of the book.

Joseph Dunne’s essay begins by examining the ways in which schooling in modern liberal–democratic societies tend to function as the agent of cultural homogenization and alienation, and thus block liberal–democratic efforts to offer meaningful recognition of local cultures and to promote the skills and dispositions required for participatory democratic citizenship. The danger here, Dunne points out, is that when the homogenizing elements of modern schooling become dominant, they might serve to encourage an ‘insouciant cosmopolitanism that may fail to meet people’s needs for identity (and by this failure help open the door to the very xenophobic nationalism it wishes to repudiate)’. The chapter concludes by reflecting on some possible educational responses that might offer some hopeful ways of addressing such dismal extremes. In particular, he is interested in the educational possibilities offered by a reconfiguration of national identities and state institutions in the emerging European Community in the context of national, cultural, and religious strife that currently besets Northern Ireland. Thus, like Waldron, Dunne sees local cultural identities – be they national, religious, or cultural – as complexly related to, but potentially compatible with, cosmopolitan historical forces.

This chapter examines whether, in a liberal democratic society, the charitable deduction can be justified. The chapter argues that the burden is on the state to show that the charitable deduction is both desirable and just. He explores a number of justifications and finds them inadequate for the task. The chapter argues that the most promising justification is the pluralism rationale, according to which the deduction can be justified on the basis of the role it plays in promoting individual engagement in civil society. However, according to the chapter, it is difficult to justify the deduction on those grounds, because in the end it favors the preferred charities of the rich.

The late Neil MacCormick, in his Institutions of Law, made some important but underdeveloped claims about the relationship between civil peace and the role of the criminal law in liberal-democratic societies. The primary purpose of this chapter is to examine the issues raised by these claims, taking especially into account (i) some criticisms raised by other criminal law scholars, and (ii) MacCormick’s generic claim that ‘law is institutional normative order’. The broad conclusions of the chapter are (i) that MacCormick’s thesis has greater merit than his critics have allowed, and (ii) that debates on criminalization need to take greater account of research in social and political science, especially analyses relating to social order.