Co-parenting and the life of the mind
The third in a ten-part series on the topic of public education in a liberal society.
This post is the second in an exchange between Patrick J. Casey and me on the role of public education in a liberal society. Read the introduction to learn more about the impetus for this project and our aims for the exchange, and click here to read the first full exchange. Our first full exchange focused on the topic of mandatory civic education; this exchange delves into what schools ought to teach within the confines of a liberal society.
Patrick,
Thanks for your description of the debates surrounding civic education. I really appreciate your description of the three levels of laws, constitution, and philosophy. If only decision-makers adhered to these levels when making decisions...
Whether schools should simply teach the basics to function in society or go beyond that to teach anything that is necessary to function in a pluralistic society seems always and forever up for debate. Reading, writing, and basic math seems pretty straight forward—of course, there are ongoing debates about which curricula and pedagogical practices are best to get you there—but history and how the government works are less straightforward. Do you teach how the government really works—e.g., that nongovernmental organizations often write bills and lobby to advocate for their passage—or do you just teach about the structures of government and how they were intended to operate? I can see how the former approach would be controversial, but the latter approach seems disingenuous and doesn't really prepare young people to fully participate in the political process; in that, they will leave the school system not having a full grasp of what it means to change policies and systems and to hold elected officials accountable.
I understand the concerns for liberalism that teaching particular ways of life may remove other viable forms of life, but teaching tolerance and mutual respect seems to align with liberalism—they would encourage living together in peace without fear of persecution by one another. I would agree with concerns regarding schools teaching about various religions and beliefs about gender and sexuality, but I don't necessarily think they should be barred from conversations in schools. I think the bigger problem is how schools are structured. In my view, the standards-based system is the problem. It requires teachers to teach content rather than facilitate learning. Certainly some schools and teachers deviate from this norm, but I think it's rare, especially in the public school system. So if teachers, as the authority figure in the classroom, are teaching about different views on gender, for example, kids will likely be inclined to take teachers at their word and not challenge them. And the students might feel that they have the “wrong” ideas if those ideas don’t align with their teacher's views.
After students have learned the basic skills of reading, writing, and math, I would argue that the school system should switch to an inquiry-based, rather than standards-based, system (e.g., project-based learning). This is where the Dewey in me comes out. In this sort of system, teachers are facilitators. They structure the classroom in a way that will allow students to have experiences, learn content, and develop critical thinking skills, but the teachers will not be responsible for delivering content in a way that implies their way is the only way to think about things. With this in mind, in the later years of school, I think students should be exposed to controversial ideas that are playing out in society, but through talking to each other and engaging with primary sources, not through the teachings of teachers. I wrote an article for Heterodox Academy summarizing a portion of a book that advocates teachers create political classrooms. A major component of the political classroom is that the students are in charge of choosing the topics and leading discussions. Teachers bring in source materials and ask probing questions when necessary, but they don't direct the conversation. The authors' theoretical framework is deliberative democracy. I'd love to know what you think of the article, you can find it here.
Regarding co-parenting:
Now that I think about it, I don't think co-parent is the correct term because that implies there is a near-equal level of cooperation between parent and school, which is rare. Parents rarely have input in the operations of schooling, such as which curriculum is implemented. I'm not sure what the correct term would be—I'll have to think about this—but for the purpose of this exchange I'll continue to refer to the role as co-parent.
I think the “savior complex” is the best illustration of how teachers see themselves as co-parent. Teachers who decide to work in low-income or communities that are disadvantaged in some way, who are not from those communities, often do so with the intention (sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious) of saving children. They likely would not describe their mentality in this way, but they want to help students escape poverty, or other undesirable conditions (from the teacher's perspective), and that's what drives their desire to teach in general and teach in a disadvantaged community (again, in their eyes) in particular. I should note, I was one of these teachers. I wanted to teach in a community where my presence mattered and where I could make a difference. (In my view, students living in affluent communities would likely do well in life regardless of my presence.) This mindset implies that the community and parents are deficient and in need of help from outsiders. My second career path is also plagued by this mentality: social work. To be clear, I think all students should have the best teachers available, regardless of whether the teacher lives in the same community as their students, but I agree with this statement (my own thinking) only to a certain extent. This is one of my internal conflicts because I am a huge proponent of community schooling and community decision-making for schools, so I guess I'd say that a school-community should decide whether teachers from the outside should be hired.
Anyway, I got off track. I do think schools of education encourage this savior complex/co-parent mindset. In my experience, the social justice focus in schools of education is what inculcates the savior mindset. For example, the idea that teachers are change agents. In schools of education, no one ever talks about parents as change agents. Instead, there is a paternalistic attitude by teachers (or maybe more so education researchers) towards parents, especially parents of color and parents with a lower socioeconomic status. For example, an argument against charter schools is that parents don't have the capital (information, connections, time, etc.) to choose the best school for their kids. When discussing parent voice in decision-making for schools, a colleague told me he didn't think parents should be involved in decision-making because they'll probably get their ideas from parenting magazines, which he clearly thought was a problem. I think some of the kindest, most well-meaning people in the world work in the education sector, but seemingly only a small portion think of parents as educators, too. Another straightforward, but important, example is that teachers are mandated reporters of the abuse of students. Without arguing whether they ought to be mandated reporters or not, I think teachers having this level of responsibility does imply that they are co-parents. And, last example, teachers often refer to their students as their kids. I did this as a teacher but upon reflection it's a bit strange—teachers do not birth nor adopt nor raise their students (they usually only have students for one year).
Ok, I'll leave it there. I look forward to your reply.
Sam
Sam,
I very much enjoyed reading your response. In what follows, I try to unpack what I see as different assumptions about education that each of us is bringing to the table. Unfortunately, this means that while I wrote a ton, I don't even get to your substantial questions. But I realized I didn't even know quite how to address them without trying to get clear about potential disagreements about those assumptions. It's been very helpful for me to parse out why I think what I think about education—though perhaps less fun for you :D
Put briefly, I suspect that the standard approach to education involves an assumption that citizens should be not merely competent but proficient at certain tasks. Therefore, education ought to be geared towards producing ideal democratic citizens and perhaps the state should mandate that everyone be, if not an ideal citizen, at least a proficient one. I think that liberal arts education ought to be geared towards producing something like masters of the liberal arts (who would likely be ideal citizens). But I do not think that politically liberal democratic societies should require that its citizens be masters of the liberal arts or even proficient at politics. I think they can only require that students become competent citizens. I worry that expanding what counts as being a competent citizen so that it maps largely onto being proficient in the liberal arts or being a “comprehensive liberal” will have the undesirable consequence of undermining diversity. Robust state-run education will have the side effect of increasing conformity of its citizenry and diminishing the diversity of forms of life in the polity. That diversity is, most importantly, protected by liberty of conscience. But diversity of forms of life is also desirable for utilitarian reasons. As J.S. Mill argued in On Liberty, the reason that western democracies have been so successful is that they have maximized the variety of paths through life that one might choose. Consequently, the idea that every citizen ought to be trained in the liberal arts or that they become “comprehensive liberals” is a mistake. Rather, the state should foster a large variety of forms of education which are compatible with very different forms of life.
A. The best form of education versus what the state can or should require
To begin with, your remark about government seems quite right—a person who had simply, for example, memorized the Constitution and knew their rights and duties as citizens but had no knowledge of actual political realities would, in a sense, be less equipped to partake in a functioning society. I would even take this further: yes, in a sense, citizens would be better equipped for political life if they knew “how the sausage is made” (provided this doesn't simply make them cynical). But perhaps more important for being equipped for being a citizen would be to know how societies ought to be run. That is, they would need history, political philosophy, literature, the sciences – all of it! In a very real sense, citizens who are masters of the liberal arts would be best equipped to live in a democratic society.
But my question in “Politics by Other Means? was only, “What kind of preparation of citizens does political liberalism require?” I'm a philosopher. I would very much like the culture of our society to be one where everyone is interested in and capable of participating in robust political and philosophical debates—I would enjoy a society where that was the tenor of our culture. I would very much like a society where everyone, essentially, is a master of the liberal arts in the classical sense.
Yet… is that necessary for a functioning or even a flourishing liberal society? I would argue that it's not. I don't think we need all of our citizens to be masters of the liberal arts. We also don't need all of our citizens to themselves be politicians. I don’t think there's a need for everyone to even be interested in such things, much less proficient in them. What the state can require is that citizens be equipped such that they can be if they so choose. That is, what political liberalism requires is fairly minimal in a free society where there is information freely available. Someone who can read proficiently can find out how the democratic process actually works. Many students simply won't care about the liberal arts and politics—and if we require that they be proficient at the liberal arts and politics, we'll be trying to change something that likely can't be changed and probably would be damaging if we could change it. I suspect that people who don't care about the liberal arts and politics are a firewall against polarization and the meddling of political elites.
To be sure, for a politically liberal democracy to flourish, there needs to be a critical mass of engaged citizens. And I quite agree with those who suggest that in many contemporary democratic societies, we are far more ready to talk about the rights of citizenship and not enough about the duties of citizenship. I would be open to arguments that it really is necessary that each citizen “know how the sausage is made”—though I suspect that there would be considerable disagreement about how it actually is made and how it ought to be made.
Nevertheless, as I'm indicating—the question itself opens a broader issue about civic education. I worry there is a kind of elitism (or maybe classism) built into the way that we think about civic education. I've never tried to articulate this before, so I may misstate what I think somewhat. But perhaps it would be worthwhile to distinguish between two things here: (a) what should be included in the best kind of education (i.e., the liberal arts), and (b) what the state can mandate in terms of making competent citizens (i.e., civic education). I think it's a mistake to think that (a) and (b) ought to be perfectly overlapping circles. That is, I think some people have an “ideal” citizen in mind—something like a master of the liberal arts or a politician or a philosopher-king—and that democracies need all citizens to be like that in order to function or flourish, or at least that it's desirable for all citizens to be these kinds of masters of the liberal arts.
In a sense, citizens who are masters of the liberal arts would be best equipped to be citizens in a democracy. But it doesn't follow that a society of people who are all masters of the liberal arts would produce the best kind of democratic state. Aristotle distinguished between the kind of education that democrats would like and the kind of education that would preserve democratic states, and I think he was right to do so. It would be bad if we tried to make everyone in the society the same in their interests and training. It would be bad for the democracy itself.
In my mind, (a) and (b) don't overlap very much and that that's probably for the best. When it comes to (a) I'm pretty elitist or aristocratic—I think education ought to be tailored to the best and the brightest. Our best citizens ought to be people of letters—yes, absolutely, masters of the liberal arts. I don't think that we have enough of these people—people who have read widely, know history, philosophy, literature, are conversant in the sciences, and so on. We have far too many technocrats and people who are hyper-specialized—they certainly populate the academy.
Yet, I do not think that being a master of the liberal arts is necessary to live a good life (though I myself prefer that kind of life). One can live a very good life being a tradesman or tradeswoman. Trying to make everyone a master of the liberal arts will only be successful if we degrade liberal arts education. Again, many students simply will not care about the life of the mind or politics. And that's okay. Trying to make everyone proficient in things that they don't care about will only result in lowering the standards of what counts as being proficient. In the long run, that lowering of standards will be fatal to democracy. That is, we'll end up holding back the people who really do want to excel in the liberal arts because we (mistakenly) believe that democracy depends on everyone being proficient at something that many aren't interested in. C.S. Lewis writes powerfully about this in a little essay called “Democratic Education” (which can be found here on this admittedly odd page—none of the bold text, italics, exclamation points, etc. are in the original).
But, when it comes to (b), I don't think we can require that everyone be the best and brightest—that wouldn't make any sense. And I don't think it's necessary for having a flourishing democracy. Some people simply don't care about the life of the mind or about politics. Rather than viewing such people as a drag or a hindrance to a political liberal society, I see them as a necessary check on busybodies in “elite” circles who wish to make everyone like themselves; those who don't care about the life of the mind or politics often just want to be left alone. A politically liberal society works best, I think, when we generally allow people to be themselves.
I would be open to arguments that everyone (or nearly everyone) needs to be proficient and engaged to have a flourishing politically liberal democracy. But I'm inclined to think that we really only need to require that people be equipped such that they can become more engaged if they'd like—that is, be able to read, write, have the basics of history and government, that sort of thing. I want schools which are geared to produce masters of the liberal arts. But to behave as if we need everyone to be one (and therefore require it) in order to have a flourishing politically liberal democracy seems wrong-headed to me. A division of labor in who is political and who is not doesn't automatically strike me as undesirable.
Many people don't care about the liberal arts or about politics—they are, I think, a bulwark against unending politicization, polarization, and political meddling. We in academic and political circles tend to forget that most people really just don't care about politics and really don't hate one another. They're just living their lives and happily interacting with one another with no thought of politics. Thank God for such people! I think we'd be better off if, in general, politics (especially domestic politics) played less of a role in all of our lives.
So, one of my questions for you would be: how closely aligned do you think (a) and (b) ought to be? Do you think that a robust liberal arts education is necessary to be a competent citizen? Or do you, perhaps, think my way of framing the issue is mistaken?
B. Mutual respect, political versus comprehensive liberalism, and diversity
I agree that teaching tolerance and mutual respect accords with politically liberal values. I would want to emphasize that my argument in “Politics by Other Means?” has a narrow scope. That is, when I talk about religious conservatives, I'm not talking about religious theocrats or even extreme forms of religious fundamentalism. I stipulate that I'm only interested in religious conservatives that accept the fundamentals of political liberalism. So, they would accept the values of mutual respect and tolerance. I would point out, however, that political liberals often (not always) seem to have a lopsided view of the duty of citizens to understand and respect one another. That is, as Luke Bretherton has pointed out, liberals are quite able to see that religious believers have a duty to understand and respect people who hold secular liberal values, but rarely seem as eager to acknowledge that reciprocity and mutual respect requires that those who hold secular liberal values have a duty to understand and respect people who are members of religious traditions.
That brings us squarely back to the question I raised in “Politics by Other Means?”. Perhaps I can at least make an initial gesture to where I think my argument in that essay leads. I think my argument points to permitting (and perhaps even using state funds to support) a greater diversity of kinds of schooling. Put simply: I think that the state, as the state, is and ought to be severely limited in what it can require students to learn but primarily because of the method or mode of teaching that public schools must adopt—namely, one is neutral between the various forms of life in a pluralistic society. For example, in a liberal society, public schools shouldn’t be making claims about which religion is true. They can only teach that such religions exist and describe them. They shouldn’t evaluate them. That is, the state shouldn’t enter into questions about whether any particular religion is actually true. Similarly, they probably should stay away from related questions which impinge on questions of religious truth, like whether abortion is morally permissible, whether only men should be eligible for the priesthood, etc. In the same vein, public schools kind of have to stay away from taking normative stances on gender, sexuality, and the like, since doing so would violate neutrality and possibly the liberty of conscience of individuals.
However, it’s possible that if the state were to dismantle public school as we've come to conceive of it, then the state could require that students learn a greater variety of topics because schools could adopt a “confessional” mode of teaching—that is, sensitive topics would be taught about from the perspective of a particular tradition. The state can't itself do this—that would be a violation of the disestablishment clause (which political liberals generally think is a well-founded principle) because it protects liberty of conscience. But the state could allow or perhaps even encourage a great variety of schools which have very different teaching styles, traditions, and so on, and, say, provide vouchers to parents so that they can send their children where they think is best (this is more or less what J.S. Mill argues in Chapter 3 of On Liberty).
These schools could teach about religion, sex, gender, and a whole host of other topics from the perspective of their tradition in such a way that would not vitiate the ability of children to adopt those ways of life in the future. In short, if someone thinks that we should mandate a greater number of topics for students to be fluent in in order to be competent citizens, then they should also be for pluralizing or diversifying K-12 schooling. If my argument is right, the alternatives seem to be (a) public school systems with robust curricula which do infringe on the rights of religious believers, (b) public school systems with anemic curricula (so as to not violate religious liberties), or (c) a diverse system of schools (with perhaps indirect public support through vouchers) with different teaching styles, goals (trade versus liberal arts, for example), philosophical and religious commitments, etc. I would support (c).
Let me state why I think it's important that liberal societies not interfere with the ability of children to adopt religious forms of life (that is, why I think (a) is a non-starter). But before I do, I can note that I agree with your criticism of the public school system—namely, that it does not adequately teach inquiry and coming to one's own conclusions. Insofar as the public schools systems offer a form of liberal arts training, they are doing a woefully inadequate job. One of my favorite philosophers, Cornel West, often says that he wants his students to “find their own voice.” G.K. Chesterton wrote in an essay entitled, “The Revival of Philosophy—Why?” that the only alternative to having one's own philosophy is to have the “used-up scraps of somebody else's thinking.” This is very much how I approach my own teaching—I want my students to find their own voice (to the point that my students have told me that they don't know what I think about various topics—I can be passionate about both of two opposing points of view!).
Yet, I teach in a university setting. Students who are in my classroom choose to be there. It is perfectly legitimate that in a liberal arts school I teach liberal values—and not simply politically liberal values like freedom and equality, but something closer to what is often called “comprehensive liberalism.” Comprehensive liberalism is a worldview in its own right—it offers an account of what a good life is with a corresponding set of wide-ranging values. For example, it is a worldview that values individualism, free-inquiry, autonomy, and the like, as a constitutive part of living a good life, over competing values like community, interconnectedness, tradition, and so on. Comprehensive liberalism tends to grate against the older idea that people are born into a world—socially, culturally, and physically—which antedates them and in which they have a place and a role to play. Comprehensive liberalism tends to push in a direction where you are primarily an individual and what you are should be a matter of your own choosing. It therefore tends to foster something of a “critical” mindset towards the society and culture into which one is born: one should be skeptical of the agreements embedded in culture about the right way to live, the roles that one is offered to play, and so on.
I am a philosopher and think that the examined life—the life of the mind—is a very good way, probably the best way, to live one's life. Nevertheless, I recognize that other people disagree with me about this. I know people that I very definitely respect who consider living as part of a community, raising a family, working hard at their job or their craft, and the like, as sufficient for living a good life. They are simply not interested in living an examined life in the sense that I am. They are not interested in the life of the mind or doing cultural criticism—they are more interested in finding a place where they fit into society and can be happy and productive. By contrast, I assume that my students want to be trained to live an examined life—that, I believe, is what liberal arts universities are for. But a politically liberal state has no business deciding that my way of life is superior to other ways of life (though it may, to some extent, suppress those forms of life which conflict with the existence of the state itself). And they have no business inculcating anything beyond what is necessary for a person being a competent citizen. They have no business turning everyone into a master of the liberal arts, a comprehensive liberal, or a cultural critic. Nor, as I tried to suggest above, is it really desirable for the state to do so. The passive resistance of “ordinary” people against the meddling of the “elites” may be pivotal for the stability of politically liberal societies.
Consequently, philosophical liberalism (what is sometimes called “political liberalism”), especially in its Rawlsian version, has much narrower aims than comprehensive liberalism. It's not supposed to be a comprehensive worldview, which offers a vision of the right way to live life or the highest good of life. Philosophical or political liberalism requires, Rawls tells us, something much more modest: a system where people view each other as free and equal citizens where people have a minimal kind of autonomy (such that they could, for example, leave a religious tradition and form of life if they so choose). But if people choose, in their home lives, churches, and associations, to adopt traditional gender roles, stratified family lives, religious hierarchies, to believe only men (or women) can be priests, where the community is valued above the individual and the like—that is their own business, not the state's. If people choose to reject comprehensive liberalism and would rather find their place in a tradition rather than seeing themselves as individuals who must critically evaluate the society and their role in it, then they are free to do so.
Why should they be free to do so? Because—and here I will be putting my own spin on things—discerning the meaning and purpose of life and then being able to live in accordance with one's beliefs is one of the highest goods of life. Liberty of conscience is the label that I would assign to the right that I believe citizens have to either freely investigate and come to their own conclusions about the ultimate meaning of life, the nature of the universe, and the right way to live (under which religions clearly fall) OR to simply freely accept the tradition and form of life into which they are born, along with its views about the meaning of life, the nature of the universe, and the right way to live. The idea of a liberty of conscience of something like this sort is firmly grounded in the liberal tradition—especially that of the American liberal tradition. This space for investigation and/or adoption of a conception of the good is, in a civic sense at least, sacred. Philosophical or political liberalism has a duty to hold this space open insofar as possible, so that people can adopt whatever conception of the good and its corresponding form of life that they deem right. Consequently, removing certain answers to the question of the meaning of life, the nature of the universe, and the right way to live—even inadvertently—is something that only ought to be undertaken with extreme caution and with excellent reasons.
As I try to suggest in my essay, I'm somewhat less concerned about which topics may be mandated per se than how mandated education plays out in public education—that is, my primary concern is that public education, because the has to be neutral with regard to the best way to live, is actually teaching a kind of secular liberalism. Saying the state can't teach, say, about gender, wouldn't mean that such topics can't be taught. It just would mean that the state can't force students to learn about these topics in the particular way that the state must teach those topics—i.e., with an eye to a kind of neutrality. As I suggest above, private schools, homeschooling, charter schools—these would be able to contextualize sensitive topics within particular worldviews. The state could require that such topics be taught, but then not teach how they are taught. Parents could send their children to Orthodox Jewish schools, or comprehensive liberal schools, or what have you. Greater pluralism and diversity of schooling is the best way forward, I think.
Public schools, as J.S. Mill suggests in On Liberty, are often conformity factories—where everyone typically reads the same thing, listens to the same thing, leaves with the same beliefs and values, and the like. Mill suggests that there is a danger to allowing this to continue. As Mill puts it, “If resistance waits till life is reduced nearly to one uniform type, all deviations from that type will come to be considered impious, immoral, even monstrous and contrary to nature. Mankind speedily become unable to conceive diversity when they have been for some time unaccustomed to see it” (end of Chapter 3). Like Mill, I think we need to embrace pluralism and embrace a diversity of forms of life. I suspect some people will think what I am articulating here is a kind of heresy—but that may only speak to how monolithic our culture has in fact become.
C. Final thoughts
I realize I haven't addressed your Heterodox Academy piece or your comments about Dewey at all. So that's still very much on the table and I do want to discuss it. I thought, however, that it would be best to lay out where my argument is leading me so that we're not talking past each other. Would you be willing to say something about how you think “the political classroom” would fit with what I've just said? I mean, given what I've just laid out, do you think that “the political classroom” would be more like politically liberal citizenship training or is it training in a kind of comprehensive liberalism? Note that I value comprehensive liberalism fairly highly—I just don't think the state can push it if it degrades the ability of students to choose religious forms of life, since that would be a violation of liberty of conscience.
I do find what you said about educators thinking of themselves as co-parents somewhat troubling. Certainly it's not the worst thing in the world. But it is odd. I agree that being a “mandatory reporter” for something like abuse, malnourishment, or neglect is a very good thing. I would suspect, however, that many people have that obligation. I remember mandatory training as a university professor that says something similar. But I suspect that firefighters, secretaries, or others who routinely interact with minors, may have similar legal obligations. But, like you, I wouldn't say that this means that they are co-parents.
Some philosophers in the tradition of political liberalism will say that the state has an obligation to ensure that children have basic goods (like food, shelter, and so on), while parents have a duty to ensure the highest goods of their children (religion, morals, etc.). This is, I think, a reasonable way of thinking about it. I would point out, however, that this is very much a division of labor between the state and the family. First, the state only would step in if the family fails to provide basic goods—otherwise, it is obligated to leave families alone. Second, the state wouldn't be able to violate the highest goods of the child to meet its basic needs. For example, it would be illicit for the government to provide children housing in a place that required that the child become a Christian or a Buddhist. Political liberalism generally maintains that even if the state has an obligation to ensure basic good for children (if the parents can't or won't provide it), they still have an obligation to not do things that infringe upon the parents' ability to meet their obligations as regards the highest good of life.