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Little Liberals: A Child-Centred Approach To The Inculcation Of Values, Alison M. Braley-Rattai

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In a liberal-democracy, the proper role of parents and of the state in forming children’s beliefs involves several separate but interrelated debates: These concern the conceptual space that children occupy within liberal theory, the basis of the ‘control rights’ adults are said to have over children, and the tension between the values of autonomy and diversity, which are foundational values for a liberal-democracy. To clarify these debates, competing paradigms are identified in political theories that address them: A dual-interest view and a child-centred view. The former ‘balances’ the interests that parents and children have in the child-rearing relationship, and the …

School Closures In Ontario: A Case Of Conflicting Values?, Richard Wm Irwin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Responding to financial pressures and declining school enrolments, the Ontario government in 2006 developed a new policy on school-closures establishing specific criteria to determine the value of a school to a community and requiring every school board to involve the local community in any school-closure decision. Despite these provisions, the implementation of this policy at the local level created anger and active resistance from community members.

Focussing on two school-closures within an Ontario school board, using ethnographic methods, this study explores how one board implemented the provincial-policy, specifically the impact this had on those directly affected. Informed by neoliberalism-communitarianism debates, …