The Adults Are Not Alright: Theorizing Adult Democratic Education from the Capability Approach

Education-related responses to our current democratic crisis have largely been focused on schooling children and youth. This narrow focus has foreclosed or diverted our attention from other possibilities for democratic education, especially as it relates to adult citizens and the ways in which such education can — and must — extend beyond schools and other formal educational institutions. In this paper, Tony DeCesare aims to theorize these possibilities in order to lay some philosophical groundwork for an idea of adult democratic education (ADE) that can help us combat our current democratic crisis and, more generally, strengthen our commitment to and practice of democracy. Drawing on the capability approach, he argues for prioritizing two related capabilities in our theorizing of ADE: (1) democratic capability, and (2) the capability to participate in ADE. These two capabilities are both deeply interconnected and central to a theoretical framework for ADE that is grounded in the capability approach.