Rethinking the democratic role of education through childism

There is a strong tendency in both theory and practice to view education’s democratic role as that of equipping students with specific attributes presumed necessary for democratic life. Discussions thus center around identifying the required values, skills, and capabilities, as well as the types of educational endeavors that best foster them. What underpins such discussions is the assumption that the child is inherently lacking, which, I argue, leads to a conceptual dead end. In this article, I explore how the concept of childism can expand the epistemological framework for understanding and theorizing education’s democratic role. Using theoretical concepts from Biesta and Rancière’s sporadic democracy, along with Fricker’s theory of epistemic injustice, I discuss a case from a Danish state school where a teacher harasses a student. I argue that the perception of the child as a deficit being causes children to suffer systemic epistemic (and other) injustices, as incidents of adults harassing children can go unnamed and unrecognized. The potential long-term harm is a loss of trust in one’s ability to know, interpret, and understand the world. I argue that this is also a loss in potential claims for equality based on the perception of injustice, a loss that damages the democratic quality of society. The article advocates a childist turn in research on education’s democratic role. Childism enables a hermeneutical breakthrough that can spark new discussions of scholarly, social, and political norms regarding the question of democracy and education.