This essay defends public education, conceiving it as the mainstay of the democratic republic. In the first part, the essay investigates the rupture between political philosophy and pedagogy, between the theory of democracy and the theory of human education and how much such a rupture hinders reflection on the worldwide growth of neoconservatism. In the second part, considering the diagnosis that the advance of the neoconservative perspective causes the destruction of public education and considering how much this hinders the cultural and moral consolidation of democracy, the essay reconstructs some general features of the republican education outlined by Kant in his Über Pädagogik classes. The essay concludes that the Kantian idea of public education focused on cultivating all human capacities is the core aspect of the education of future citizens, and should therefore also be the task of the current public school.
Keywords:
Public education; Human education; Democracy