Further Attempts to Balance Liberal Virtues with Claims for Cultural Identity within Traditional Non-liberal Communities. A reply to Neil Burtonwood

Abstract

In a recent paper, Neil Burtonwood (Educational Studies, 24(3), pp. 295–304, 1998) argued that 'recent attempts to balance the claims for political citizenship in a liberal democracy (liberalism) with the claims of cultural identity within traditional non-liberal communities...' (p. 295) are bound to fail; because 'liberalism cannot be neutral between ... cultures that value individual autonomy and those that do not', any 'attempts at reconciling' those two perspectives 'are bound to fail' (p. 303). His claim is that whatever position we begin from, there are real difficulties in achieving a reconciliation between the two perspectives, which he sees as exclusive. He refers to my papers (Singh, Educational Review, 47(1), pp. 11-24, 1995; Educational Studies, 23(2), pp. 169-184, 1997) where discussion method has been suggested as a means of reconciling the two positions. I still favour this method. This paper agrees with Burtonwood that liberalism is non-neutral in relation to liberal virtues such as equality and respect for persons, and no groups including liberal ones, should be privileged with respect to non-interference from the state. Although the paper acknowledges the value of 'Popperian critical method', it sees this method as very limited in respect of settling conflicts arising from comprehensive or world-views. Liberals and liberal societies have long realised this and have made attempts to accommodate cultural practices of traditional groups. Although the two positions exclude each other at a deep level, at a more mundane, every-day level, they share much that is common to both, which makes intercultural understandings possible. Education must capitalise on this and take us beyond a single framework. The difficulty is, of course, what do we do and how can we assess the situation, when frameworks themselves clash? The paper argues for dialogue, tolerance and accommodation within limits, set by respect for persons. This is not to ask liberalism to give up what is foundational to liberalism, as Burtonwood suggests, but to reinforce liberalism itself, as we show below.