IDEAL SPEECH CONDITIONS, MODERN DISCOURSE AND EDUCATION

Habermas's educational importance is usually misconstrued or underesti mated, partly because the scope and implications of ideal speech condi tions are generally misunderstood. These conditions are only relevant to discursive speech situations, but non-manipulative teaching need no t be discursive. And not even discursive teaching is an appropriate oc casion for ideal speech conditions. They properly apply to discourse i nstitutions, at the 'epistemic centre of modernity'. Thus, the concept of ideal speech conditions impinges on the relation of school to high er education and on curricular change as an agency of modernisation, a nd illuminates the need for access to discourse institutions, if perso nal autonomy is an aim for school children, students or adults. Neo-Ma rxists, traditionalists and progressives all misunderstand the importa nce of discourse institutions.