Social Justice Education (SJE) has become the defining orientation of many educators and educational researchers, but is not without its detractors. Because of its overt political investments, SJE has been accused of brainwashing students and violating the terms of democratic legitimacy. In this chapter, I offer a philosophical defense of some SJE. Using Canada as an example and comprehensive liberalism as a framework, I argue that many practices that we wish to protect under the banner of SJE can be defended by appeal to the foundational values that are common to liberal democracies and find expression in contemporary legislation. I suggest five criteria for distinguishing between defensible and indefensible forms of political education, allowing that not all self-proclaimed SJE will be defensible, and some less progressive education will be. I conclude by anticipating two objections to this strategy.

In this chapter, Hannah Arendt is characterized as a “pedagogue of the public realm” and, at the same time, as an antipode to John Dewey and his ideas of democracy and education. Arendt’s understanding of the political sphere – the so-called “political” – is illuminated and questioned in its proximity to political thoughts of Jacques Rancière. The elementary political dimension of education is asserted in line with, or even despite, Arendt’s insights and skepticism.

This chapter asks: when political emotions are invoked in the classroom, can this be done without the process of democratic education degenerating into a form of emotional and/or political indoctrination? The source of inspiration for addressing this question is Hannah Arendt’s political thought on emotion and education. The aim of the chapter is to show that despite the tensions and weaknesses that have been identified over the years about Arendt’s views on both emotions and political education, she provides compelling insights against the possibilities of political education degenerating into moral-emotional rhetoric. Arendt highlights the dangers of constructing political emotions in the classroom as the foundation for political action, while acknowledging the constructive role for the emotions in the development of political agency. The chapter concludes that Arendt’s insights on emotions and political education can help educators avoid potential pitfalls in efforts that (re)consider the place of political emotions in the classroom.