The most difficult chapter of this dissertation is the one that attempts to make a

persuasive argument for a larger, more critical, more responsible role for the civil society
in the education of the child. The first part of the problem is defining “civil society.” By
“civil society” I mean only institutions that are voluntary groups are not affiliated either
with the government or market where those two powers are meant to mean something
like compulsion/coercion/policing on the one hand and the profit motive on the other. In
one sense, this chapter is central in the dissertation because it is the keystone of a
voluntaristic theory. This theory rearranges the roles of all parties in the education
process. Among all the players in education, “civil society” is by far the most nebulous:
more amorphous than the parents-vs.-government paradigm that many market advocates
foresee; more complex than the apolitical children-and-teachers in the classroom story
that anchors much of the educational literature emanating from education schools. It’s
even more complicated than a story which focuses on the dichotomy between
bureaucrats, professional organizations, and their representatives for collective bargaining
on wages and working conditions and public opinion, parents’ groups, and taxpayer
organizations on the other hand.
One of the main purposes of this dissertation is reorient and refocus the political
theory of education away from the current stakeholders, overly complex systems, and
ideologically-fraught baggage and reassign responsibilities towards real needs of
children.

Part of the reason that it’s difficult is an inherent difficult of social science/social
theory: the lack of controlled experiments. Without controlled experiments, which are
mostly off-limits due to ethical and epistemological concerns, there is bound to be a
surfeit of irresponsible theorizing. The overabundance of unmoored theorizing stems
from everything from unexamined assumptions, ideological agenda, and overgenerous
self-judgment about what qualifies as “common senses.” On the other hand, any attempt
to avoid producing inadequately defended theories and rely instead on evidence is open
to the allegations that the evidence is being misinterpreted. For instance, if someone is
proposing a new type of state program based on a smaller but more successful version of
a private program, a skeptic could easily cast doubt on the new idea by claiming (1) it
wouldn’t scale up; (2) it works as a private program but side constraints make it
impermissible to perform the same duties by government or (3) the program is okay for
one group that uses it but would not work for a larger group of people.
What is Civil Society? What are its particular advantages and disadvantages?
What role should it play in the production of education in a free society?
Perhaps due to its amorphous nature, civil society is a term that receives universal
approbation even if different parties hew to different understandings of the conception.
In the context of contemporary discourse, civil society can be understood through certain
conceptions which have the advantage of existing in real life even if they are theoretically
muddy. (This is preferable to the reverse.) In the contemporary context the most
atheoretical way to understand the concept is to make it equivalent to the idea of the
NGO (non-governmental organization). This is sometimes referred to as the third sector
— between the state and the market. Partisans of both the state and the market claim the
third sector or civil society as a web of existing institutions which confirm their
worldview and challenge its opposition. Thinkers who are “neo-liberal” or on “the New
Right” or simply “capitalist” claim that non-profit sectors rely on the vast accumulated
profit produced over time in the marketplace to liberate themselves from the profit
imperative and pursue decentralized means to make public provisions by means other
than government. By contrast, defenders of the strong state say that a realistic view
recognizes that civil society is a creature of the state and that, objectively speaking, its
value is greatly inferior to that of the state.