Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T18:02:11.722Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Liberty and Compulsory Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Peter Gardner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Although it is primarily concerned with the value of liberty and the justification of compulsory education, what lies behind much of this paper is the question ‘;Why treat children like children?’ The fact is that we do not regard children as having the same rights, privileges and liberties as adults, and children may not be thought of as deserving the same degree of respect or consideration as their seniors. In the past this has led to some horrific states of affairs, and while matters have undoubtedly improved, it is still the case that most people accept what Graham Haydon describes as ‘;the assumption that one thing can go for children and quite another for adults’. One likely consequence of this, and an important example of the different treatment reserved for children is compulsory education. Illiterate and innumerate adults are not compelled to practise their letters or play with counters or watch prescribed television programmes. Even when, to quote Mill, we have an adult ‘;who shows rashness, obstinacy and self-conceit—who cannot live within moderate means—who cannot restrain himself from hurtful indulgencies—who pursues animal pleasures at the expense of those of feeling and intellect’, we do not subject him to character-building games or uplifting scripture readings, or initiate him into the mysteries of home economics, or read Shakespeare at him. But we compulsorily do all of this and more to children. Moreover, compulsory education, as we have it, is not something from which the young can gain remission. The law that requires ‘;every child of compulsory school age…to receive an efficient full-time education suitable to his age, ability, and aptitude’ effectively defines an approach where what counts is the arbitrariness of chronology, not standards or excellence.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 15: Of Liberty , March 1983 , pp. 109 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See, for example, Mause, Lloyd de, ‘The Evolution of Childhood’, in The History of Childhood de Mause, Lloyd (ed.), (London: Souvenir Press, 1976).Google Scholar

2 Haydon, G., ‘Political Theory and the Child; Problems in the Individualist Tradition’, Political Studies 27, No. 3 (1979), 413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Mill, J. S., ‘On Liberty’, in Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government (London: Dent, 1910), 134.Google Scholar

4 The Education Act, 1944Google Scholar, Section 36.

5 Mill, J. S., ‘The Subjection of Women’, in Three Essays: On Liberty, Representative Government, The Subjection of Women (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), 429.Google Scholar

6 Ibid.

7 Benn, S. I. and Weinstein, W. L., ‘Being Free to Act and Being a Free Man’, Mind 80 (1971), 200.Google Scholar

8 White, J. P., Towards a Compulsory Curriculum (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), 5.Google Scholar

9 Dworkin, G., ‘Paternalism’, The Monist 56 (1972), 84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Mill, J. S. (1910), 150–151.Google Scholar

11 Bereiter, C., ‘Moral Alternatives to Education’, Interchange 3, No. 1 (1972), 27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Concerning the nature of educational slogans see Scheffler, I., The Language of Education (Springfield: Charles Thomas, 1960), Ch. 2.Google Scholar

13 Locke, J., ‘The Second Treatise of Government’, in Two Treatises of Government (London: New English Library, 1960), 352.Google Scholar

14 See Locke, J., op. cit., 352, 356.Google Scholar

15 Bantock, G. H., Education and Values (London: Faber and Faber, 1965), 98, 100.Google Scholar

16 Bantock, G. H. (1965), 100.Google Scholar

17 Taylor, Charles, ‘What's Wrong with Negative Liberty’, in The Idea of Freedom, Ryan, Alan (ed.) (London: Oxford University Press, 1979), 179.Google Scholar

18 Ibid.

19 Kleinig, J., ‘Mill, Children, and Rights’, Educational Philosophy and Theory 8, No. 1 (1975), 12.Google Scholar

20 Green, T. H., ‘Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract’ in Works of Thomas Hill Green, III, Miscellaries and Memoir, Nettleship, R. L. (ed.) (London: Longmans, Green, 1888), 372.Google Scholar

21 See Jones, D. K., The Making of the Education System, 1851–81 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 81–82.Google Scholar

22 Sir Isaiah Berlin observed of another positive account of freedom from T. H. Green that ‘many a tyrant could use this formula to justify his worst acts of oppression’ (‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in Four Essays on Liberty, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), fn. 1, p. 133Google Scholar). Perhaps ‘tyrannical schoolmaster’ could be substituted for ‘tyrant’.

23 See, for example, Oppenheim, Felix, Dimensions of Freedom (New York: St Martin's Press, 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacCullum, G., ‘Negative and Positive Freedom’, Philosophical Review 76 (1967)Google Scholar; and Feinberg, J., ‘The Idea of a Free Man’ in Educational Judgements, Doyle, J. F. (ed.) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973).Google Scholar

24 Hobbes, T., Leviathan (London: Dent, 1914), 66.Google Scholar

25 Locke, J., Locke's Essay on Human Understanding, Bks II and IV, Calkins, M. W. (ed.) (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1913), Bk II, Ch. XXI, Sec. 15.Google Scholar

26 See Connolly, W. E., The Terms of Political Discourse (Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1974), Ch. 4.Google Scholar

27 Spencer asked, ‘When does the child become a man?’ and concluded, ‘…that whichever qualification is chosen, will class many as men who are not at present considered as such; whilst it will reject from the list, others who are now by universal consent included in it’ (Spencer, H., Social Statics (Farnborough: Gregg International Publishers, 1970) 173). Also see below.Google Scholar

28 The following remarks, from which I have borrowed the expression ‘primary determinant’, and which were made with American teachers in mind, are by Bereiter: ‘Currently teachers are very drawn to “informal” education, as inspired by the English infant school…Here is an approach in which the child's own interests are supposed to be the primary determinant of what he learns and how. Thus it would seem that over and above whatever this approach has to offer children, it should get teachers off the hook morally. It should enable them to quit imposing goals on children’ (Bereiter, C., op. cit., 26).Google Scholar

29 According to Rousseau, ‘That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and does what he desires’ (Rousseau, J. J., Entile (London: Dent, 1974), 48Google Scholar). According to Russell, “Freedom” in its most abstract sense means the absence of external obstacles to the realization of desires’ (Russell, B., Sceptical Essays (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1928), 169).Google Scholar

30 Russell, B., op. cit., 169–170.Google Scholar

31 As Benn and Weinstein observe, ‘The range of alternatives open to me does not depend on my preference for one rather than another; consequently, to eliminate an otherwise available alternative … is just as much an interference with freedom, whether or not I should have chosen it had it been available. To abridge the possibility of choice is to abridge freedom’ (Benn, S. I. and Weinstein, W. L., op. cit., 205).Google Scholar

32 As J. P. White has noted, ‘in a voluntary system (of education), opting out of the whole programme is itself an option’ (White, J. P., op. cit., 69–70).Google Scholar

33 See Barry, B., Political Argument (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965). 137. 139.Google Scholar

34 See ibid.

35 Rousseau, J. J., op. cit., 84.Google Scholar

36 Ibid.

37 Thus W. von Humboldt wants youngsters to be allowed more freedom as they grow older (see von Humboldt, W. (1969)Google Scholar. The Limits of State Act on. (London: Cambridge University Press), p. 125Google Scholar, while Mill says that his principle does not apply to children, since paternalism, despotism and compulsion may be in order when we are dealing with the young and with barbarians. (See Mill, J. S. (1910), p. 73)Google Scholar, which we may take as indicating that neither writer thinks that children lack freedom.

38 See, for example, von Humboldt, W., op. cit., Chs. III and IV.Google Scholar

39 See op. cit., Ch. XIX.

40 Mill, J. S., op. cit., 72–73.Google Scholar

41 Op. cit., 73.

42 According to Mill On Liberty is ‘a kind of philosophic text-book of a single truth … the importance, to man and society, of a large variety in types of character, and of giving full freedom to human nature to expand itself in innumerable and conflicting directions’ (Mill, J. S., Autobiography, Stillinger, J. (ed.) (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 150)Google Scholar, and the opening quotation in the essay is von Humboldt's view that ‘The grand, leading principle towards which every argument unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity’ (Mill, J. S. (1910), 62)Google Scholar. cf Mill, J. S., (1971), 151–152.Google Scholar

43 Mill, J. S., (1910), 74.Google Scholar

44 See, for example, op. cit., 75, and Mill, J. S., ‘Representative Government’, loc cit., 208–210Google Scholar. See also McCloskey, H. J., ‘Mill's Liberalism’, Philosophical Quarterly 13 (1963).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 See, for example, Mill, J. S., op. cit., 140, 150–151.Google Scholar

46 Hayeck, F. A., The Constitution of Liberty (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,), 1960, 18.Google Scholar

47 See, for example, von Humboldt, W., op. cit., Ch. III and IV.Google Scholar

48 This point underpins Houlgate's observation: ‘not being harmed is assuredly a benefit, but there are some benefits we can achieve for a child over and above his not being harmed’ (Houlgate, L. D., ‘Children, Paternalism and Rights to Liberty’, in (eds) O'Neill, O. and Ruddick, W., Having Children, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 257).Google Scholar

49 See part 4, below.

50 Mill, J. S., op. cit., 150.Google Scholar

51 See ibid, and see also Brown, D. G., ‘Mill on Liberty and Morality’, Philosophical Review 81 (1972), 139–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 See Mill, J. S., op. cit., 151–152.Google Scholar

53 Schrag, F., ‘The Child in the Moral Order’, Philosophy 52 (1977), 174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 Spencer, H., op. cit., 175.Google Scholar

55 Humboldt in fact says of a criterion concerned with ‘the maturity of the body’, where ‘maturity’ is understood chronologically, that it is ‘indefinite and, strictly speaking, incorrect’, though he still supports it (von Humboldt, W., op cit., 122).Google Scholar

56 Spencer, H., op. cit.Google Scholar

57 While the question of Mill's rule utilitarianism has been much explored, little attention, so far as I am aware, has been directed towards his views on the treatment of the young with a view to deciding whether such views are those of a rule utilitarian.

58 See, for example, Smart, J. J. C., Philosophical Quarterly 6 (1956), 344–354.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 See Mill, J. S., op. cit., 73.Google Scholar

60 Stephen, J. F., Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 68–69.Google Scholar

61 Mill, J. S., op. cit., 137.Google Scholar

62 Ibid.

63 Mill, J. S., op. cit., 133.Google Scholar

64 Mill, J. S., op. cit., 73.Google Scholar

65 Stephen, J. F., op. cit., 69.Google Scholar

66 Ibid.

67 See Mill, J. S., op. cit, 151–152.Google Scholar

68 See Dworkin, G., op. cit., 84.Google Scholar

69 I am grateful to Professors A. Phillips Griffiths and J. F. Lively for discussing this matter with me.

70 White, J. P., op. cit., 5.Google Scholar

71 White, J. P., op. cit., 6.Google Scholar

72 Ibid.

73 Devlin, T. and Warnock, M., What Must We Teach? (London: Temple Smith, 1977), 65.Google Scholar

74 White in fact says, ‘It is a feature of our present chaotic thinking about educational matters that this fundamental point about justification (i.e. the justification of infringements of freedom), which we are quick to apply to the encroachments of the tax man or the government planner, is not one which we readily apply to school curricula’ White, Q. P., op. cit., 5)Google Scholar. It is difficult to see how anyone could adopt this stance and yet recommend that children be treated as exceptions.

75 R. F. Dearden who values personal autonomy highly sees a wide-ranging curriculum as important in its development. See Dearden, R. F., The Philosophy of Primary Education (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968).Google Scholar

76 Dearden has noted, ‘…the granting of various freedoms (to a child) by a parent or teacher might simply have the result that his direction is replaced by that of some other agency still external to the child, such as the peer group, or ‘pop culture’ heroes’ (Dearden, R. F., ‘Autonomy and Education’, in Education and the Development of Reason, Dearden, R. F., Hirst, P. H. and Peters, R. S. (eds), (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), 451–542).Google Scholar

77 This is very much the view of education and educational justification that has been associated with R. S. Peters. See, for example, Peters, R. S., Ethics and Education (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966), especially Ch. I and V.Google Scholar

78 See, for example, White, J. P., op. cit., 12–15.Google Scholar

79 See, for example, Peters, R. S., op. cit., 32–35.Google Scholar

80 Neill actually says, ‘…a child is innately wise and realistic. If left to himself without adult suggestion of any kind, he will develop as far as he is capable of developing’ (Neill, A. S., Summerhill (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), 20)Google Scholar. Such optimism is frequently found in the history of education and is used by contemporary reformers. See Barrow, R., Radical Education (London: Martin Robertson, 1978).Google Scholar

81 Dearden, for example, maintains, ‘…though interest as a motive is doubtless very desirable, it may reasonably be doubted whether everything of educational value ever could be learned under its steam alone’ (Dearden, R. F., op. cit., 1968, 23).Google Scholar

82 Devlin, P., The Enforcement of Morals (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 125–126.Google Scholar