Liberalism, pluralism, and political education: paradox or paradigm?

Inspired by concern about promoting civic participation and preserving the liberal democratic state, political theorists have recently reignited a deb ate about the nature of political education in a liberal society. These the orists' arguments in favor of teaching toleration are significant for the p rogress of education reforms currently being debated and implemented in cur rent liberal democracies and some Emerging nations. Despite the increasing attention paid to the value of liberal civic education, however, its specif ic content is typically left virtually blank. This article aims to redress this gap in the literature by developing a coherent and comprehensive (albe it still very general) curriculum for liberal political education. To this end, Section I analyses the nature of the ideal liberal democratic state an d develops a general curriculum for liberal political education based oil t he type of citizens needed to preserve and take advantage of such a state. It concludes by introducing two potentially illiberal outcomes of this curr iculum: children's forced development of the capacity for autonomy, and the reduction of diversity in the state. Section II argues that the developmen t of autonomy is actually central to liberal theory and liberal education m ore broadly conceived, while Section III suggests that civic and social div ersity will persist, but rightly play a secondary role to the goals of libe ral political education. The article concludes, therefore, with a reasserti on of the content and importance of liberal political education.