DEMOCRATIZATION: SOME THEMES IN UNEXAMINED TALK.

The article focuses on democratization in education. It considers some themes connected with demands for democratization. The call for democratization in universities often does take the form of protesting against the fact that teachers and students are not equal in relation to the subject and that this inequality is manifestly unjust in that the teacher has not been given his duties as the result of a popular vote by all those who work from day-to-day on a university campus. Those who argue for democratization in education also speak as though the right of student equality were a natural right, one not needing any justification by reference to status, relationship or role. Without critical intellectual inquiry the vital distinction between fact and value in education would go unrecognized. Similarly, when the present day advocates of democratization appeal to the needs of society which education must serve, the real need is to expose the conceptual confusion involved in such appeals. The revealing of this confusion is itself an exercise of the critical analysis which have been argued, must remain autonomous if there is to be anything one calls education.