ADAM SMITH ON EDUCATION

Abstract

Most modern economists can be classified as liberals who believe that the state should not enforce preferences since preferences are not rational. In contrast, the father of modern economics, Adam Smith, was a liberal perfectionist: He believed that some ends are better than others. This position follows from Smith's contention that economic institutions, such as the division of labor, create different characters and preferences among what would otherwise be a homogeneous population. If one wishes to evaluate these institutions, then, it cannot be on the basis of whether they satisfy the very preferences they create. Education was a case in point. There did not seem to be a market for educating the poor, but such an education would have been valuable because it would, Smith thought, counteract the torpor created among workers by the minute division of labor. Therefore, he argued, government provision of education may be called for. The rationale here is paternalistic, yet liberal in the sense that the type of character that was to be formed by education was not passive and thoughtless, but was, rather, autonomous.

Notes

1. See Seamus Heaney's “Skylights” in Fuller 2002 for a simple example.

2. Smith studied at Oxford; his miserable experience there informs much of this material.

3. Another advantage to the state, which may or may not be made to fit the market-failure template, is interesting in any case. An educated population will be “more disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing through, the interested complaints of faction and sedition, and they are, upon that account, less apt to be led into any wanton or unnecessary opposition to the measures of government” (Smith 1776, 740); and “in free countries where the safety of the government depends very much on the favorable judgement which the people may form of its conduct, it must surely be of the highest importance that they should not be disposed to judge rashly or capriciously concerning it” (ibid.).

4. An education that, for example, makes us capable of participating in and appreciating a rational conversation, or of judging of “the great and extensive interests of (our) country” (Smith 1776, 734–35).

5. The second remedy is the “frequency and gaiety of public diversions.” Here the point is “to dissipate that melancholy and gloomy humor which is almost always the nurse of popular superstition and enthusiasm” (Smith 1776, 748). It is not clear whether Smith has in mind here the positive encouragement of such diversions by the state, or simply the non-interference with such diversions. (He is certainly thinking here about the Puritan ban on the theater under Cromwell.)