Abstract
This article presents the relevance of Critical Theory for education in the contributions of Habermas and Young. It connects their respective proposals of deliberative democracy and communicative democracy by applying a conceptual methodology. Habermas’ criticism of the insufficiencies of the liberal and republican models as well as his alternative based on the deliberative model is developed as a third way. Deliberation, as such, is then structured on two requirements: the legal institutionalization of the rules of participation in the public sphere and the democratic formation of individuals. Young considers that Habermas’ proposal has made progress. However, it is still flawed, as it does not include the plurality of expressions of the subjects and incurs exclusions from historically marginalized social groups such as Blacks, women, and low-income groups. Young’s alternative is a model of communicative democracy that contemplates pluralisms, dissent, and multiple forms of communication and narratives. It shows emotional, affective, biographical, bodily, and existential components obliterated by Habermas’ proposal. To conclude, it advances the hypothesis that Habermas and Young, despite their differences, offer indispensable elements to rethink broad educational processes in which citizenship and the preparation for inclusive participation in society are prominent in the face of technical and individualistic restrictions.
Communicative democracy; Deliberative democracy; Education; Critical Theory