Abstract

School choice advocacy is dominated by perspectives that reflect a tendency to regard public schooling as a private service commodity. In recent years, numerous works of Anglo-American political philosophy, sociology and legal theory have attempted to restore a conception of public schooling as an institution that cultivates civic virtue. Counterintuitively, these works also endorse prudently regulated school choice as a means of honouring public purposes while accommodating pluralism within liberal democracies. Four such recent works help outline the salient dimensions of this perspective and the disputes within it. While not a political panacea, this perspective ought to inform public deliberations about school choice and public education generally in Anglophone nations.