The main purpose of this work is to make a critical analysis of the idea of democratic education. As a leading thread I discuss the thesis developed by Amy Gutmann, according to which, democratic education has the aim of guaranteeing the conscious reproduction of society. In this context, the thesis I defend claims that democratic education demands, besides the principles of no repression and no discrimination put forward by Gutmann, a principle of recognition that communicates the orientation of the educational actions to normative sources related toan intersubjectivist interpretation of autonomy, in order for it to be possible to generate more judgment elements, mainly those included in the person’s moral, ethical, political, legal and social dimensions, when proposing educational practices aimed at the education of a participative and critical citizenry. To this end I propose an accountthat integrates the deliberative and agonistic perspectives of democracy, and defend that the key expression of the exercise of democratic citizenship is participation, that the exercise of participation depends on the realization of personal autonomy, consequently in the final part I develop an intersubjective reading of autonomy, based on the work of Axel Honneth and Rainer Forst.
