Compulsory autonomy-promoting education

Educational Theory

Volumn 60, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 97-116

  Schinkel, Anders ^a  

^a ERASMUS UNIVERSITY ROTTERDAM   (Netherlands)

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EID: 78649396382     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2010.00348.x     Document Type: Article

References (104)

1. Maria Theresa (1770), Quoted in Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500 (Harlow: Longman, 1995), 122.
2. Joseph Priestley (1771), Quoted in Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London: Penguin Books 2001, ), 346.
3. Although both the terms "education" and "schooling" are used, the authors I discuss generally emphasize schooling (as opposed to child-rearing), and this is usually what they mean by "education."
4. Eamonn Callan, Creating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)
5. Eamonn Callan, "Liberal Legitimacy, Justice, and Civic Education," Ethics 111, no. 1 (2000): 141-155
6. Amy Gutmann, "Civic Education and Social Diversity," Ethics 105, no. 3 (1995): 557-579
7. Amy Gutmann, Democratic Education (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999);Meira
8. Levinson, The Demands of Liberal Education, 58.
9. White, Education and the Good Life, 105.
10. Feinberg, "The Child's Right to an Open Future," 139 (emphasis added).
11. In using the term "autonomy-promoting education" I do not mean to suggest anything about the possibility of there being an effective form of autonomy-promoting education; the term is merely intended to convey the idea of an education (in particular, a form of schooling) that promotes the autonomy of the children hereby educated - an idea autonomy liberals tend to believe in.
12. Roni Aviram and Yossi Yonah, "'Flexible Control': Towards a Conception of Personal Autonomy for Postmodern Education," Educational Philosophy and Theory 36, no. 1 (2004): 3-16
13. Jan Steutel and Ben Spiecker, "Liberalism and Critical Thinking: On the Relation Between a Political Ideal and an Aim of Education," in The Aims of Education, ed. Roger Marples (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 61-73.
14. I should note that the "it" here refers both to autonomy and to compulsory autonomy-promoting education. There is of course a gap between, for instance, the necessity of people's being autonomous and the necessity of compulsory autonomy-promoting education. The latter does not simply follow from the former, as some authors acknowledge (for example, Levinson, The Demands of Liberal Education, 47
15. MacMullen, Faith in Schools? chap. 5). I will not discuss this gap here, but assume that arguments adduced to support autonomy and merely assumed to support compulsory autonomy-promoting education can indeed be suitably supplemented to do the latter.
16. The distinction between a necessity for the preservation of the collective and a necessity for the preservation of the collective in its current form is not coincident with the distinction (introduced subsequently) between a particularist and a universalist interpretation of a necessity for the preservation of the collective. To say that "in our kind of society" something is necessary for the preservation of the collective (whether society or the state) is not the same as saying that something is necessary for the preservation of the collective in its current form; although the latter is very likely to refer to a particular society and thus to be a particularist statement, the former can relate both to the preservation of the collective in its current form and to the preservation of the collective as such, for which in a particular kind of society specific measures may need to be taken.
17. Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). Raz's justification of the centrality afforded to the ideal of autonomy in contemporary political theory has been highly influential.
18. John Gray, "Mill's Liberalism and Liberalism's Posterity," Journal of Ethics 4, nos. 1-2 (2000): 156-163.
19. Although Callan does not explicitly argue that there is only one way for a political regime to be legitimate, he also does not merely assume the liberal account of legitimacy (as Levinson does) but argues for it and criticizes alternatives: "A theory of legitimacy that permits the state to condition consent in ways that circumvent or stunt citizens' capacity for autonomous choice and reflection is a signally inept way of trying to accommodate anyone's misgivings about governmental overreaching" (Callan, "Liberal Legitimacy, Justice, and Civic Education," 152). In chap. 5 of Creating Citizens Callan argues against William Galston's view of civic education and the appearance of legitimacy a regime will have in the eyes of its citizens educated along those lines. Hence, I see Callan's interpretation of Ic as closer to universalist (U) rather than particularist (P).
20. Eamonn Callan, "Autonomy, Child-Rearing, and Good Lives," in The Moral and Political Status of Children, ed. David Archard and Colin M. Macleod (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 118-141
21. Feinberg, "The Child's Right to an Open Future," 228.
22. Levinson, The Demands of Liberal Education, 6 and 14-22.
23. MacMullen, Faith in Schools? 4-88.
24. Gutmann, "Civic Education and Social Diversity," 567-579.
25. Callan, "Liberal Legitimacy, Justice, and Civic Education," 149.
26. Harry Brighouse, "Civic Education and Liberal Legitimacy," Ethics 108, no. 4 (1998): 723-725.
27. Brighouse, "Civic Education and Liberal Legitimacy"
28. Harry Brighouse, "Channel One, the Anti-Commercial Principle, and theDiscontinuous Ethos," Educational Policy 19, no. 3 (2005): 528-549.
29. Callan, "Liberal Legitimacy, Justice, and Civic Education," 150.
30. Consider Gray, "Mill's Liberalism and Liberalism's Posterity," 158: "The problem for a perfectionist liberalism. is that of accounting for the authority of the ideal of human character and of life which they contain."
31. MacMullen, Faith in Schools? 92.
32. Creating Citizens, 44, and "Liberal Legitimacy, Justice, and Civic Education," 152-153.
33. Anders Schinkel, Doret de Ruyter, and Jan Steutel, "Threats to Autonomy in Consumer Societies and Their Implications for Education," Theory and Research in Education 8, no. 2-3 (2010).
34. Brighouse, "Civic Education and Liberal Legitimacy," 728
35. MacMullen, Faith in Schools? 23.
36. Rob Reich, Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in American Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 92
37. Catherine O'Leary Goldwyn "Schooling for Citizenship: Bridging Autonomy and Conflict," Political Theory 33, no. 5 [2005]: 722)
38. Peter Gardner, "Religious Upbringing and the Liberal Ideal of Religious Autonomy," Journal of Philosophy of Education 22, no. 1 (1988): 90
39. R.S. Peters, who wrote that "the search for reasons for action is the hall-mark of the autonomous person" (R.S. Peters, Ethics and Education [London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970]: 196).
40. Callan, "Autonomy, Child-Rearing, and Good Lives," 127
41. Levinson, The Demands of Liberal Education, 31-35.
42. Stefaan Cuypers and Willem Lemmens, eds., Charles Taylor: Een Mozäiek van zijn Denken [Charles Taylor: A Mosaic of His Thought] (Kapellen: Pelckmans, 1997)
43. MacMullen, Faith in Schools? 171.
44. Callan, "Liberal Legitimacy, Justice, and Civic Education," 147.
45. MacMullen, Faith in Schools? 23
46. Levinson, The Demands of Liberal Education, 31.
47. Kees Schinkel, Reclame en Respect voor Autonomie: Een Moreel Onacceptabel Conflict? [Advertising and Respect for Autonomy: A Morally Unacceptable Conflict?] (Master's thesis, Utrecht University, 2008). Unfortunately, this is not yet available in English.
48. Ran R. Hassin, James S. Uleman, and John A. Bargh, eds., The New Unconscious (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
49. AP Dijksterhuis, Het Slimme Onbewuste [The Smart Unconscious] (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, 2007).
50. Mark Ollsen, "Foucault, Educational Research and the Issue of Autonomy," Educational Philosophy and Theory 37, no. 3 (2005): 365-387.
51. Barbara Arneil, "Becoming Versus Being: A Critical Analysis of the Child in Liberal Theory," in The Moral and Political Status of Children, ed. David Archard and Colin M. Macleod (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 70-94.
52. Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982
53. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).
54. Colin Wringe, "In Defense of Rational Autonomy as an Educational Goal," in Education, Autonomy, and Democratic Citizenship: Philosophy in a Changing World, ed. David Bridges (New York: Routledge, 1997), 115-126
55. Donald Kerr, "Devoid of Community: Examining Conceptions of Autonomy in Education," Educational Theory 52, no. 1 (2002): 13-25.
56. Gerald Grace, "Educational Studies and Faith-Based Schooling: Moving from Prejudice to Evidence-Based Argument," British Journal of Educational Studies 51, no. 2 (2003): 149-167.
57. T.H.McLaughlin, "Religion, Upbringing and Liberal Values: ARejoinder to Eamonn Callan," Journal of Philosophy of Education 19, no. 1 (1985): 126
58. Gardner, "Religious Upbringing and the Liberal Ideal of Religious Autonomy"
59. Callan, "Autonomy, Child-Rearing, and Good Lives," 139
60. MacMullen, Faith in Schools? 6.
61. Charles Helwig, "The Development of Personal Autonomy Throughout Cultures," Cognitive Development 21, no. 4 (2006): 458-473
62. Philo A. Hutcheson, "Setting the Nation's Agenda for Higher Education: A Review of Selected National Commission Reports, 1947-2006," History of Education Quarterly 47, no. 3 (2007): 359-367
63. Ethan Schrum, "Establishing a Democratic Religion: Metaphysics and Democracy in the Debates over the President's Commission for Higher Education," History of Education Quarterly 47, no. 3 (2007): 277-301
64. Joep Bakker, Eddie Denessen, Ben Pelzer, Martine Veneman, and Sandra Lageweg, "De houding jegens klasgenoten: etnisch gekleurd? Een onderzoek naar factoren van invloed op de attitude van basisschoolleerlingen jegens klasgenoten van verschillende etnische herkomst" [The Attitude Toward Classmates: Ethically Colored? A Study Concerning the Factors Influencing the Attitude of Primary School Pupils Toward Classmates of Different Ethnic Backgrounds], Pedagogiek 27, no. 3 (2007): 201-219 (my translation).
65. MacMullen, Faith in Schools? 4.
66. Callan, "Liberal Legitimacy, Justice, and Civic Education," 150
67. Brighouse, "Civic Education and Liberal Legitimacy," 723-725
68. William Galston, Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991]) - Sometimes approach Francis Fukuyama's thought, where they seem unable to conceive of the possibility of any real alternative to the liberal democracy they have in mind. Fukuyama, of course, argued "that liberal democracy may constitute the 'end point of mankind's ideological evolution' and the 'final form of human government,' and as such constituted the 'end of history."' Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin Books, 1992), xi. Compare this with the quotation from Priestley that opens this article.
69. Jan Steutel and Ben Spiecker, "Staatsburgerlijke Opvoeding in een Liberaal- Democratische Samenleving" [Civic Education in a Liberal-Democratic Society], in, ed. Paul Smeyers and Bas Levering (Amsterdam: Boom, 2001), 239. Grondslagen van de Wetenschappelijke Pedagogiek:Modern en Postmodern
70. Callan, Creating Citizens; and Levinson, The Demands of Liberal Education.
71. Bakker et al., "De houding jegens klasgenoten."
72. As no one defends a universalist (U) interpretation of Ib or a Uu or Pp interpretation of IIb, I will deal with them briefly: IIbPp would hold that in our kind of society, autonomy (and compulsory autonomypromoting education) may or is likely to contribute to individual flourishing on a specific (presumably liberal) conception of flourishing; this defense of compulsory autonomy-promoting education would fail because it would violate liberal neutrality (because it would promote one particular conception of flourishing); the same would hold for the unlikely combination of IIbUp (unlikely because particular conceptions of flourishing tend to arise in particular kinds of society). IIbUu, according to which autonomy (and compulsory autonomy-promoting education) would contribute to individual flourishing in all kinds of society, on all conceptions of flourishing, is - given the liberal conception of autonomy - simply empirically untenable. The same holds for IbU, for some kinds of society would certainly not benefit from the (liberal) autonomy of its members.
73. MacMullen, Faith in Schools? 104.
74. Brighouse, "Civic Education and Liberal Legitimacy," 738
75. MacMullen, Faith in Schools? 4.
76. Brighouse, "Civic Education and Liberal Legitimacy," 738.
77. Brighouse, "Civic Education and Liberal Legitimacy"
78. Callan, "Liberal Legitimacy, Justice, and Civic Education."
79. Moreover, it does not count if the people lack a sense of justice. In response to Brighouse's argument in "Civic Education and Liberal Legitimacy," Callan goes so far as to say: "if 'their own reason alone' refers to how citizens would reason if they had not been educated for autonomy, justice, and other civic virtues consistent with these, then we have no basis for saying their consent would have been forthcoming in conditions where 'their reason alone' prevailed. But then 'their reason alone' is bereft of interest for any theory of legitimacy that acknowledges the necessity of autonomy and justice to the ability freely to consent to political authority" (Callan, "Liberal Legitimacy, Justice, and Civic Education,"150). In my view, this amounts to a conflation of the conditions for hypothetical and actual consent.
80. MacMullen, Faith in Schools? 130-131. Note that there is a tension between IIa and this counterargument against the circularity objection to Ic. For if it were true that personal autonomy is necessary for flourishing in our kind of society, or particularly suited to our kind of society, how likely would it be that people with capacities particularly suited to their society would decide against a social organization that also suits their own makeup?
81. A brief remark on the other options: IIaUu would fail for the same reason as IIbUu (but even more clearly). IIaPp would fail for the same reason as IIbPp: it would violate liberal neutrality, as would the unlikely combination IIaUp (see note 44).
82. Gray, "Mill's Liberalism and Liberalism's Posterity," 151.
83. Schinkel, De Ruyter, and Steutel, "Threats to Autonomy in Consumer Societies and Their Implications for Education," for a Further objection to Raz's instrumental argument.
84. Schinkel, De Ruyter and Steutel, "Threats to Autonomy in Consumer Societies and Their Implications for Education,"
85. This cannot be turned into an argument for compulsory autonomy-promoting education ("if its impact is so limited, why object so strongly to it"), for the - from certain perspectives - negative (side-)effects of autonomy-promoting education (that is, education intended to promote autonomy) may very well occur much more easily than the intended effect of such education. For instance, it may be easier to (unintendedly) alienate children from the traditions in which they are raised than to enable them to take an autonomous stance with regard to their tradition and its alternatives.
86. Martha C. Nussbaum, Love's Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 56
87. value plurality and noncommensurability, and a powerful critique of the "science of measurement" represented in our time by certain forms of utilitarianism
88. Callan, "Autonomy, Child-Rearing, and Good Lives," 127.
89. MacMullen, Faith in Schools? 8-92.
90. I am not being sarcastic here; this is a genuine description of my reading experience, which I include because I believe that liberal theory (at least as discussed here) has become too self-enclosed and has to some extent forgotten its own status as an attempt to understand reality, but no more than that. As in science, every theory in which people have invested a lot of time and energy has a tendency to solidify, with people becoming more and more reluctant to accept the provisional and merely instrumental nature of their theory. I think this is what has happened here as well.
91. Callan, Creating Citizens, 11, quoted in MacMullen, Faith in Schools? 131: "Autonomous reflection does not necessarily lead everyone to a way of life in which civic engagement has an impressively prominent place."
92. Gardner, "Religious Upbringing and the Liberal Ideal of Religious Autonomy"
93. Peter Gardner, "Personal Autonomy and Religious Upbringing: The 'Problem'," Journal of Philosophy of Education 25, no. 1 (1991): 69-81
94. Peter Gardner, "Should We Teach Children to Be Open-Minded? Or, Is the Pope Open-Minded About the Existence of God?" Journal of Philosophy of Education 27, no. 1 (1993): 39-43
95. McLaughlin, "Religion, Upbringing and Liberal Values"
96. T.H. McLaughlin, "Parental Rights and the Religious Upbringing of Children," Journal of Philosophy of Education 18, no. 1 (1984): 75-83
97. T.H. McLaughlin, "Peter Gardner on Religious Upbringing and the Liberal Ideal of Religious Autonomy," Journal of Philosophy of Education 24, no. 1 (1990): 107-125
98. Eamonn Callan, "McLaughlin on Parental Rights," Journal of Philosophy of Education 19, no. 1 (1985): 111-118
99. Michael Hand, "Religious Upbringing Reconsidered," Journal of Philosophy of Education 36, no. 4 (2002): 545-557
100. Shelley Burtt, "Comprehensive Educations and the Liberal Understanding of Autonomy," in Citizenship and Education in Liberal-Democratic Societies, ed. Kevin McDonough and Walter Feinberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 181.
101. Schinkel, De Ruyter, and Steutel, "Threats to Autonomy in Consumer Societies and Their Implications for Education." A gradual realization of the third point is visible in the liberal debate, even in the work of autonomy liberals
102. Brighouse, "Channel One, the Anti-Commercial Principle, and the Discontinuous Ethos"
103. Burtt, "Comprehensive Educations and the Liberal Understanding of Autonomy," 197
104. Callan, "Autonomy, Child-Rearing, and Good Lives."