Liberalism and parental control of education

Review of Politics

Volumn 62, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 503-529

  Ruderman, Richard S ^a   Godwin, R Kenneth ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 11844271018     PISSN: 00346705     EISSN: 17486858     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S003467050004167X     Document Type: Article

References (104)

1. We use state to refer to all agents and institutions of the state, including local school boards.
2. See the work of Michael Zuckert which contests the thesis that Locke and liberalism were essentially Christian: Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), esp. pp. 91-93,187,261-72;
3. and The Natural Rights Republic: A Study in the Foundations of the American Political Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), esp. pp. 154-59,171-201.
4. See Stephen L. Carter, The Culture of Disbelief (New York: Basic Books, 1993), pp. 124-135
5. Democrats also need religion's moral capital. Robert Barro shows that increases in the percentage of persons who identify themselves as having no religion decreases a country's level of democracy in the next decade. See "Democracy and the Rule of Law," presented at the Templeton Foundation conference on Liberty, Newport, Rhode Island, 9 May 1999, available through the Department of Economics, Harvard University.
6. It is still less clear that most people are able to comply with postmodern liberalism's antidote to this problem: expanding their sense of "one of us" beyond their immediate family or kin to all Americans and, finally, to all human beings. See Eamonn Callan, Creating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 130-131 Callan follows Richard Rorty here, especially in insisting that the sense of solidarity so developed is the sole dependable psychological motive for moral action.
7. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: The Free Press, 1944), p. 82.
8. Callan, Creating Citizens, p. 152.
9. Amy Gutmann, Democratic Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 39.
10. Eamonn Callan, "Political Liberalism and Political Education," Review of Politics 58:1 (1996): 16.
11. John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, sec. 216.
12. For Locke's general view of the adversarial relation between custom or tradition and education see his First Treatise of Government, sec. 58: "when Fashion hath once established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it."
13. Locke, Some Thoughts, sec. 70.
14. Locke, Some Thoughts, sec. 70.
15. Callan, Creating Citizens, p. 202. Cf. Plato, Republic 409b-d (on the importance of being a "late learner of what injustice is" in order to become a good man).
16. Locke, Second Treatise, sec. 63.
17. Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged (New York: Basic Books, 1979), p. 3.
18. Locke, First Treatise, sees. 56-57.
19. John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1983), pp. 40-42.
20. Callan (Creating Citizens, pp. 149ff.) concedes this point. He admits that lives that reject autonomy may be happy and fulfilling (p. 151). But he still charges parents who restrict their children's "personal sovereignty" (i.e., their ability to decide for themselves whether to accept or reject autonomy) with despotism (benign or otherwise). Classical philosophy, no less than religion, would claim that this distinction still begs the question of whether individuals are (or should be) sovereign..
21. Nathan Tarcov, Locke's Education for Liberty (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 47-48.
22. See Second Treatise, sees. 2, 52-53, 71,94.
23. Locke, First Treatise, sec. 10, emphasis added; see too sec. 106.
24. Locke, Second Treatise, sec. 63.
25. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2.21.55.
26. See Thomas L. Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 207-208.
27. Locke, Some Thoughts, sec. 33.
28. See also sees. 38 and 45 (where Locke admits that his educational goal is "contrary to unguided nature").
29. Locke, Second Treatise, sec. 34.
30. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1978), p. 54.
31. A democratic "majority" is as capable as any other form of government of exercising a "despotism over the mind" (ibid., p. 105).
32. Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, p. 26.
33. Locke's revamped and protected family will, we note, be itself enlisted to teach a sense of independence (Second Treatise, sees. 65,69).
34. Mill, On Liberty, pp. 104,106.
35. Locke, Some Thoughts, Dedication.
36. Ibid., sees. 135,189.
37. Mill, On Liberty, p. 105.
38. Locke's readiness to exchange total autonomy for ordered liberty is perhaps best summed up in his admonition that "where there is no Law, there is no Freedom" (Second Treatise, sec. 57, emphasis in original).
39. Lorraine Smith Pangle and Thomas L. Pangle, The Learning of Liberty (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1993), p. 92.
40. This summary description of Coram's views, along with the relevant primary quotations, is from Pangle and Pangle, (Ibid., p. 100).
41. David Fott, John Dewey: America's Philosopher of Democracy (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), p. 38.
42. Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 87.
43. Ibid., p. 122.
44. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 177.
45. Students of Dewey will, of course, be encouraged to challenge the values and practices of their parents (and therewith, to some extent, those of their society). But they must still submit, at the end of the day, to the teachings of some combination of science, community, and professional educators. Gutmann is justified, when chicling "liberals" for seeking an educational "philosopher-king," if she has Dewey (as well as Kant) in mind-but not if she intends Locke (Democratic Education, p. 11).
46. Insofar as some contemporary liberals lack this confidence in rational selfinterest, they undermine the basis of the liberal state to which they would turn to supply the defects of parents.
47. Locke, Some Thoughts, sec. 70.
48. See Dewey, Democracy and Education, pp. 84-87. This view has the effect of allowing academic "guilds" to determine what passes for truth, another step down the illiberal, anti-individual road that Locke had wished us to avoid.
49. Alan Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism (New York: Norton, 1995), p. 368.
50. Charles W. Anderson, Pragmatic Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 164.
51. Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989).
52. John Dewey, Individualism Old & New (New York: Minton, Balch & Co., 1930), pp. 70,81-82.
53. Callan notes that Dewey's democratic culture "consigns rights to a dangerously marginal role, at best" and will surely "impose unjust burdens on some." See Callan, Creating Citizens, pp. 10-11,81.
54. Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 98.
55. William A. Galston, Liberal Purposes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 255. Consider also Plato Laws 888cl-3.
56. Stanley Fish, "Boutique Multiculturalism," Multiculturalism and American Democracy, ed., Arthur Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, and Richard Zinman (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998), pp. 69-88.
57. Callan, "Political Liberalism and Political Education," p. 12. Callan's own integrity requires him to exclude even Robert Bork from reasonable discussion;
58. Callan, "Virtue, Dialogue, and the Common School," American Journal of Education 104 (1995): 16.
59. For some unexplained reason, Callan has removed this comment from the parallel section of Creating Citizens, pp. 208-209.
60. Callan, "Political Liberalism and Political Education," p. 11.
61. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 6.
62. Richard Rorty, "Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity," in Habermas and Modernity, ed. Richard J. Bernstein (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), p. 174.
63. See Carter, The Culture of Disbelief, pp. 173,179, 204.
64. For an example of the latter, see Bruce A. Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980).
65. Gutmann, Democratic Education, pp. 15,37,95.
66. See Plato Apology of Socrates 20b;
67. also Ruth W. Grant and Nathan Tarcov, "Introduction" to John Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education and Of the Conduct of the Understanding (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1996), p. x.
68. Callan includes private schools within his definition of public ("common") schools, so long as they practice open admissions and do not claim that one way of life is preferable to others.
69. Gutmann, Democratic Education, pp. 118-119
70. She grants the key point to Locke in further admitting that no school knows how to teach Kohlberg's "morality of principle" or even autonomy (60).
71. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 55-57,65.
72. Brian S. Crittenden, Parents, the State, and the Right to Educate (Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1988), p. 62.
73. Gutmann, Democratic Education, p. 39.
74. SeeAmy Gutmann, "Civic Education and Social Diversity," Ethics 105 (1995): 557-579
75. See also Callan, "Political Liberalism and Political Education," p. 22.
76. Note the stress, in what claims to be a moral argument, on landing a good job (Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, pp. 320-22).
77. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 59-65.
78. Galston, Liberal Purposes, p. 251.
79. See also WilliamA. Galston, "Two Concepts of Liberalism," Ethics 105 (1995): 516-534
80. Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 199-200; Galston, "Two Concepts."
81. See Stephen Gilles, "Educating Children: A Parentalist Manifesto," University of Chicago Law Review 63 (1996): 972-983
82. Callan describes himself as following Gutmann in defining autonomy as "reasoned self-rule" (Creating Citizens, p. 11).
83. Gutmann, Democratic Education, p. 44.
84. Contrast Rawls's discussion of parents as the only example of the "morality" of authority: if they "love" the child and "exemplify the morality which they enjoin," they should, as a rule, be granted authority over the child. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1971), pp. 562-67.
85. When focusing on the fact that neutrality cannot cultivate moral character, Gutmann actually concedes the legitimacy of "partially prejudicing" the choices of children (Democratic Education, p. 43, emphasis in original).
86. Gutmann, "Introduction," inAmy Gutmann, ed.,Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 15-19.
87. Gutmann, "Civic Education," p. 561.
88. For a powerful demonstration that, to the contrary, liberalism requires (and would be wise to settle for) toleration rather than respect, see Steven Kautz, Liberalism and Community (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 51-76.
89. Gutmann, Democratic Education, p. 50.
90. Ibid., p. 33.
91. Having denied us the chance to instill virtue in the political sphere (by replacing ruling with representative administration), liberalism now seems bent on denying it to us in the private or family sphere. It seeks to show, that is, that parents who wish to "raise" their children are repeating the same fundamental psychological or moral error that those who wished to "rule" societies exhibited in the past. Locke distinguished parental power from political power for the purpose, inter alia, of salvaging a subpolitical sphere (the family) in which the human longing to "govern" others for the others' good could be carried on (seeSecond Treatise, sec. 170).
92. Gilles, "Educating Children," p. 981.
93. Callan is willing to concede (in a contrary-to-fact mood) that "if the deepest sources of human good had little connection to politics, and if personal autonomy estranged us from these sources, then perhaps we should go back to the drawing board and revise our theories of liberal politics and civic virtue so that they do not recommend the promotion of so unfortunate a disposition as autonomy" ("Political Liberalism and Political Education," p. 24). We hope to convince Callan to take these possibilities seriously.
94. For an example of how school choice might encourage the type of diversity sought by political liberals, see Kenneth Godwin, Frank Kemerer, Valerie Martinez, and Richard S. Ruderman, "Liberal Equity in Education: A Comparison of Choice Options." Social Science Quarterly 79:3 (Fall 1998): 502-522
95. Callan, Creating Citizens, p. 112 (quoting Gutmann, "The Disharmony of Democracy").
96. A recent study has shown that private school students show greater respect for democratic principles and greater tolerance than do public school students. These relationships remained even with controls for ethnicity, gender, parent education, family income, and state of residence. See Kenneth Godwin et al., "Comparing Tolerance in Public, Private, and Evangelical Schools" (Paper presented at the Minorities and Education Conference, 6 May 1999; George Bush Library, College Station, Texas).
97. See Laurence Steinberg, Bradford Brown, and Sanford Dornbusch, Beyond the Classroom: Why Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). Callan's response to Stephen Macedo's similar objection (Creating Citizens, p. 219) amounts, in our view, to forcing students to be accommodating without knowing why-hardly the morality of an autonomous being.
98. Callan, Creating Citizens, p. 132.
99. In fact, Callan stands ready to sacrifice psychological health and "ignorant" moral beliefs to "tak[ing] the demands of truth and understanding seriously" (ibid., p. 134). In effect, he wishes to makes society safe for philosophers, not for average citizens. \88.Tarcov, Locke's Education for Liberty, p. 76.
100. Ibid., p. 72, emphasis added. That this remark is made about the man who first conceived the more famous separation of political power into diverse branches indicates how critical continued family influence was thought to be for liberalism.
101. See David Foster, "Taming the Father: John Locke's Critique of Patriarchal Fatherhood," Review of Politics 56 (1994): 641-670
102. Callan demands that we go beyond granting "nominal assent" to liberal principles and, instead, attain the "active and taxing psychological disposition" that actively adopts them in all our "beliefs" and "choices" (Creating Citizens, p. 34).
103. Kautz, Liberalism and Community, pp. 10,54-57,69.
104. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, bk. 1, chap. 11.