Human rights, juridical forms and the crisis of values in education

Abstract

Though critical of, but nonetheless employing Habermas’s notion of systems and lifeworld (which forms part of his reconstructive theory of law), I argue that rights-related values in South Africa have taken on a juridical form at the expense of substantive public deliberation. This brings about the assimilation of values into the systems world, which impedes deliberation about values in the lifeworld. The development of normative standards by means of deliberation in the lifeworld has been hindered by the juridification of values related to human rights, and this, I argue, has contributed to the crisis of values in education. I suggest that we utilise the lifeworld space more substantively and purposefully to engage with the crisis of values in education as a way of foregrounding “nonlegal mechanisms of cooperation”1.