Strong autonomy and education

Educational Theory

Volumn 52, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 27-41

  Winch, Christopher ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTHAMPTON   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 39749098810     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2002.00027.x     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986.
2. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
3. Some commentators, notably Eamonn Callan, Autonomy and Schooling (McGill: Queen's University Press, 1993) define autonomy in terms of self-mastery. Callan's account also emphasizes the pursuit by children of their own interests as a key feature of what he understands by "autonomy." Although I will not be directly addressing this position, my arguments have relevance to it.
4. For a recent example, see Harry Brighouse, School Choice and Social Justice (Oxford: Oxford esp. chaps. 3, 4. University Press, 2000),.
5. Raz, Morality of Freedom, chaps. 14, 15 and John Gray, Enlightenment's Wake (London: Routledge) for dissenting views on the universal benefits of autonomy.1995.
6. Richard Norman, "I Did it My Way: Some Thoughts on Autonomy," Journal of Philosophy of Education 28 (1994): 25-34.
7. John White, Education and the Good Life (London: Kogan Page, 1990) for statements of the strong autonomy position.
8. As Gray points out, toleration is an attitude that one extends to something one disapproves of, not something that one endorses. See Gray, Enlightenment's Wake, chap. 3.
9. F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (London, Routledge), chap. 6, only thinks that it is the duty of the state to provide the permission.1959.
10. Jeremy Waldron (1988) The Right to Private Property (Cambridge: chap. 11. Cambridge University Press, 1988),.
11. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, In H.J. Paton, The Moral Law (London: Hutchinson, 1948).
12. In what follows, I will use the term "knowledge" to include this broader notion of engagement.
13. As R.S. Peters points out, when actions do not conform to socially sanctioned ways of behaving, then we are inclined to look for a motive which cannot readily he fitted into the usual preference structure. In such cases, an alternative preference structure with its own instrumental rationality may be invoked, or it may turn out to be the case that the act cannot properly be described as rational. See R.S. Peters, The Concept of Motivation (London: Routledge, 1958), 9-16.
14. Hayek, In Constitution of Liberty, seems to be a soft determinist, believing that freedom and causal closure are compatible. Discussion of this point is beyond our scope here.
15. This does not, of course, imply that the agent has to articulate these reasons in order to perform the action.
16. Rawls, Political Liberalism, lect. 5.
17. In a society where people are free to choose their ends, the freedom to only choose approved ends imposes a restriction that most weak educational autonomists would regard as an unnecessarily limiting condition on freedom. For a discussion, see Christopher Winch, Education, Work, and Social Capital (London: Routledge, 2000).
18. One of the problems with Callan's account of autonomy as self-mastery in the pursuit of one's interests is that he is apparently unwilling to state at what age such interests become appropriate to the investment of educational resources. On my argument, they can be admitted only when an individual has acquired sufficient knowledge, including personal knowledge to be able to make a judgment about the worth whileness and suitability of those interests.
19. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
20. Dietrich Benner, "Education and Democracy," In Futures of Education, ed. Jürgen Oelkers (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2001), 133-52.
21. The relevant analogy would be between a nonconfessional form of religious education that allows children to learn about and engage with various forms of religious belief and a confessional form, which promotes specific beliefs. A crucial and difficult point concerns the extent to which it is possible to engage with a set of religious beliefs without at the same time promoting them. For more on this see Christopher Winch, The Philosophy of Human Learning (London: Routledge, 1998).
22. Mattew Clayton, "Individual Autonomy and Genetic Choice," In A (London: Blackwell Companion to Genethics, ed. Justine Burley and John Harris, 2001), 6-18.
23. It is important to realize that one could make an informed life-choice that was not a worthwhile one. One could, for example, choose a life composed only of physical pleasure and indolence while fully cognizant of the adverse consequences to oneself. Making a choice outside' the usual normative structure of evaluation of what is worthwhile for most human beings does render such a choice to an extent unintelligible. But this is because those who hold to the normal structure of ends-evaluation find it difficult to understand someone who comprehensively rejects it. That someone rejects it, however, does not entail that they fail to make a knowledge-informed choice.
24. They will have these even if the polity as such is run on antiperfectionist principles.
25. Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998.
26. Stephen Mulhall and Adam Swift, Liberals and Communitarians (Oxford, Blackwell, 1996).
27. Denis Lawton, Class, Culture, and the Curriculum (London: RoutJedge, 1975).
28. This relates to the point made earlier, regarding Callan, Autonomy and Schooling, that the interests that schools cultivate must be sufficiently well-grounded to help constitute at least a reasonable, if not a worthwhile life.
29. The choice being considered concerns the autonomy-promoting aim of education. It may well be the case that, as a civic aim, students be asked to consider the advantages and disadvantages of adopting such life-aims. That is quite distinct from promoting them, just as informing students about Islam and its value system is to be distinguished from promoting it as a possible life-choice.
30. Following Rawls (Political Liberalism, 50-51), who regards as a criterion of reasonableness that we are prepared to engage in fair social cooperation.
31. Raz, Morality of Freedom, draws out the consequences of a broad interpretation of the harm principle for such matters as fiscal policy, but the point can easily be extended once one admits indirect, unintended harm as a functional criterion for the harm principle.
32. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan ed. C.B. MacPherson (1651, reprint, London: Penguin) and Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals.1968.
33. This consequence seems far more credible than Kant's attempt to show that the consequences of falsely promising lead to a self-contradictory state of affairs (see Paton, Moral Law, 85-86).
34. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 48-54.
35. However, Universalizing decisions to engage in productive labor would, unlike decisions to engage only in pleasurable activities, be more plausibly universalizable. This suggests that we should not necessarily reject universalizability as a criterion of reasonableness, but that we need to apply it at a suitable level of generality if it is to be useful in a policy-making context.
36. Rawls, Political Liberalism, Iect. 1, sect. 3. It is at least arguable whether the surfing choice fulfils this condition.
37. Otherwise we are back with the subjectivism that seems incompatible with the supposedly informed nature of autonomous choice.
38. Taylor, Sources of the Self. chap. 3.2. Taylor does not mean that there is a moral consensus built around hypergoods, but that they structure the disputes within societies about what is worthwhile. The important point is that disputes about worthwhileness take place against the background of constitutive values which are presupposed, but whose interpretation is often a matter of debate.
39. This is actually quite a restrictive condition, as we have seen that the cumulative effect of many such choices is likely to lead to harm being done to others.
40. Taylor, Sources of the Self. 3.3.
41. Given that we can disagree about the nature of justice, while acknowledging reverence for it as a hypergood, some would and some would not regard respect for strong autonomy as a condition of it.
42. Gray, Enlightenment's Wake. chap. 3.
43. That is to say, conceptions that could form che basis of cooperation with others with different conceptions but who were still willing to cooperate.
44. If not, it is difficult to see how schools could fulfill their aim of preparing children for life, let alone that of retaining the confidence of most parents.
45. See, however, Sandel's (Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, esp. 184-218) comments on this issue.
46. This does not imply that such choices should not he discussed within the public school as part of programs of civic education (see comments above).
47. On the assumption that a choice that is not non-worthwhile for some will be a worthwhile choice for at least someone.
48. This in turn implies that the range of choices available under weak autonomy should be seen as a consistent disjunctive set of possibilities for the system as a whole. Their joint pursuit should not undermine social cooperation. This does not imply that it is reasonable for any individual to regard this set as available for him or her, since personal characteristics may make some of the potential choices not worthwhile for him or her.
49. Raz See, for example, Morality of Freedom, chap. 14.