Understanding and action: Thinking with Arendt about democratic education

Abstract

Taking as its point of departure Ahier’s location of the problem of citizenship in the context of the changes that globalisation and neo-liberalism have brought about in higher education, this article focuses on the conceptual preconditions that need to underpin the idea of ‘teaching’ citizenship through the university curriculum. The article takes the republican notion of citizenship and Hannah Arendt’s contribution to thinking politics, citizenship and education to propose a political pedagogy that can help foster a citizenship identity that counters the individualist identities provided by the insidious influence of the market in higher education.