The Crisis in Pluralistic Education: Between Deliberation and "Unity of Opposites"

In this article, I want to consider the logic and perspective of a mode of educational thought widely found within the educational systems of liberal Judaism in its various forms. I will clarify its assumptions and implications and examine the limits of its pluralistic underpinnings. At the same time, I will outline a perspective that is unfamiliar to conventional educational discourse, a perspective that is generally not understood as being pluralistic. I will show it to be an alternative which contemplates a broader kind of pluralism that resolves some of the problems of pluralism that will be discussed below. The discussion of the conventional model and its alternatives will have four parts: 1. An examination of the distinction drawn by Akiva Ernst Simon between what he terms “protestant religion” and “catholic religion” (terms that will be replaced by others). 2. A clarification of the educational corollaries of “protestant” thinking through an analysis of the thought of Joseph Schwab. 3. A description of the alternative of the Unity of Opposites model and its differences from Simon’s binary approach. 4. An indication of the educational implications of Unity of Opposites model.