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Abstract
For many, it is far from clear where the prerogatives of parents to educate as they deem appropriate end and the interests of their children, immediate or future, begin. In this article I consider the educational interests of children and argue that children have an interest in their own well-being. Following this, I will examine the interests of parents and consider where the limits of paternalism lie. Finally, I will consider the state's interest in the education of children and discuss a familiar view that argues that we have a central obligation to cultivate good citizens. The article will focus on the tensions which inevitably arise from the sometimes conflicting interests between them.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Gary Cook, Phil Shields, Francis Schrag, Harry Brighouse and especially an anonymous referee for helpful comments on an earlier draft.
Notes
Notes
1. In the popular mind, sectarian schools are chiefly religious schools; and thus I am comfortable using them interchangeably, though they need not be synonymous. For my purposes, ‘sectarian’ describes any school whose primary aim is something other than educating for democratic citizenship, autonomy and economic self-reliance. For example, these aims may include—but are not limited to—cultural preservation and religious indoctrination. I should add, however, that any school, regardless of its primary aims, may nevertheless succeed in educating for democratic citizenship, autonomy and economic self-reliance, and certainly many public schools fail miserably in fostering them.
2. By ‘paternalism’, I mean interference with the freedom of a child with a view to promoting their welfare. Whether the welfare of the child is in fact promoted is the central concern of this paper.
3. Beyond a healthy civic education designed to serve the public good, quality of education includes—but is certainly not limited to—oversight of teacher qualifications and the curriculum, as well as the equitable funding of schools to ensure reasonable class size, course offerings, adequate staffing, and the maintenance of safe and comfortable learning environments.
4. Indeed, Lomasky sees any challenges to the family as antagonism to liberal diversity itself and he is not reticent to say, ‘[I]n the absence of the family as a nucleus of recognition patterns, it is unlikely that there is much hope for a right-respecting moral community’ (1987, p. 169). To criticisms of this view, folk like Lomasky are likely to respond that parents’ obligations towards children may extend to the larger community, but parents are nevertheless bestowed with particular rights over the life projects of their children, and these will typically not conceive of individuals in terms of a greater, impersonal collective good.
5. Parent-centered advocates would in any case wager that the likely outcome of these imagined societies is that they would simply transform relationships into less intimate ones. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that some northern European countries do consider it a national responsibility to provide affordable childcare for citizens and non-citizens alike. Yet even here, the suggestion that parents’ rights ought to be trumped a priori by the state is unthinkable.
6. This has always been a nebulously defined age. The ‘age of reason’, as referred to in Plato (Republic, Book IX 950e) and Aristotle (Politics I.13), was picked up by Thomas Aquinas and later, John Locke and John Stuart Mill. For some this age was seven, for others ten, and still others, twelve.
7. The same can be said of many elderly people, as well as adults whose physical or mental impairments preclude competent functioning.
8. All of this assumes, of course, a certain cognitive development schema. What one teaches depends entirely on the emotional and intellectual capabilities a child may possess. Certain kinds of autonomy would be, then, wholly inappropriate at certain ages given the lack of experience or maturity in handling the complexity and moral import of certain knowledge or ambiguity. Hence the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) declares, ‘[The] views of the child [are to be given] due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child’ [art. 12; 14].
9. Of course if it is the individual to whom responsibility for said words and actions attaches, this raises questions concerning the extent to which any of us is fully responsible for our actions. Here I am calling attention to the effects of social conditioning and its role in shaping thought and action. Naturally, as individuals we may be fully responsible before a court of law for deeds committed, while it is acknowledged—beyond the scope of law—that our collective set of influences (including but not limited to neglect, fear or abuse) may have disposed us to behave in such a way that we might not have done, had our collective set of influences been different.
10. Of course there are certain laws that operate according to a form of paternalism and apply to everyone equally. Thus in certain states there are seatbelt and helmet laws that have been ratified in order to promote public safety. One may disregard these laws at the risk of incurring a penalty or punishment, including being denied the right to operate a motorized vehicle.
11. This is the interesting logic behind the medical practice of informed consent. Yet the reasoning capacities, specifically the ability to weigh the pros and cons of, say, an invasive operational procedure, can be witnessed in many 12-year-olds and not, for instance, in many 35-year-olds.
12. For a counterargument, see Gee (Citation2003).
13. Indeed, it is odd that little protest is heard concerning the existence of schools whose exclusive focus is music and the fine arts. One may imagine that the cultivation of artistic talent brings intrinsic benefits. I would agree, though it is not obvious to me that a child whose life revolves entirely around ballet or clarinet has necessarily been educated for autonomy.
14. I will not explore here the terribly important debates taken up in bioethical discourse, particularly the moral status of a fetus, a neonate, or a person in a permanent vegetative state. I am simply working from the common sense presumption that all persons deserve some basic level of welfare protection and provision as outlined in the charter of the United Nations on Basic Human Rights. Obviously this principle does not speak to the difficulties of implementation necessary to ensure their efficient distribution.
15. It is true that some teachers, social workers or even older siblings perform similar functions and care unreservedly for some children with as much tenderness and sincerity as any parent would. Yet few expect a social worker or a teacher to care to the same degree or to perform certain tasks that parents routinely perform unless children have already been consigned to state care (e.g. in a state orphanage, hospital, or juvenile detention center).
16. By the same token, neither can the state do these things. An overbearing state is also likely to suppress essential liberties and individual discretion. Furthermore, communities and associations that conduct their internal affairs ‘in a manner contrary to core public purposes’ can be justifiably pressured to stop, and in some instances even prohibited. But there are other forms of social pressure (‘despotism’, in the parlance of Galston) that many rarely question, including a culture infused with peer pressure, popular media and advertising that few children or adults fully understand or attempt to resist. For a powerful exposé of the machinations of advertising agencies, see The persuaders which aired on Frontline (PBS), 19 December, 2006. For a recent critique of commercialism in public schools, see Molnar (Citation2005).
17. In the final analysis, however, the rate of defection will tell us very little, for it will hardly suffice to explain the conditions under which children remain within communities or opt not to. Indeed, there are important internal constraints on freedom of choice and opportunity that may argue against ostensibly self-evident truths. This means that both permeable and non-permeable communities may experience high rates of defection or retention for entirely different reasons.
18. Samuel Scheffler refers to these as ‘presumptively decisive reasons for action’ owing to the quality of the relationship one has with another. Though there is bound to be something controversial about these partial claims, Scheffler maintains that these relationships ought to be those with recognizably ‘socially salient connections.’ See Scheffler (Citation1997), pp. 196–198.
19. However, Gutmann does point out the following: ‘[I]t is not a coincidence that the political skills and virtues of liberal democracy resemble the personal skills and virtues of a self-directing or autonomous life.’ (1995), op. cit., p. 576.
20. When these requirements are not met, the state reserves the right to withhold parental privileges if and when there is evidence of harm or neglect, including inadequate food, shelter and education.
21. Lomasky is led by his own logic to question state-mandated primary school as ‘improper encroachment.’
22. Political liberalism, as defined by John Rawls (1993), is the ideal system for preventing unwarranted interference by the state into discretionary religious beliefs and at the same time refuses to allow religious discourse to swallow up proceedings in the public domain.
23. I explore in detail what this educational oversight might entail in chapter six of Merry, Citation2007.