I need help to write the 1500-2000 words paper. I had outline that include each section should be written and many citation that should be in the essay. Please follow the guidelines and outline I attached. And the essay should talk about more pedagogy, curriculum and police (like 2/3 of the whole essay). I also have the feedback comment from classmate that I also attached. And please follow the feedback also. The final paper should conform to the outline and meet the requirements of guidelines and feedback comment (the photo shot).

How to achieve good life through education?

I will discuss what is the good life (ideal society and real society). And how does

education help us to achieve our goal to get good life, the importance of education. I

also want to talk about the different between pedagogy, curriculum and policy a little

bit, and discuss what is the best pedagogy in my opinion, what is the best curriculum

in my opinion, what is the best policy in my opinion. I also want to talk what kind of

problems of education we may face and how to solve them in the process of getting

good life. And what is the good life we will have through education.

1. What is the good life for us, for society?

a) In my opinion the good life for us should be we do not need worry

something. Such as, money, power and right. So we can have a happy life,

that is can also called good life.

b) The good life for society should be autonomy (Appiah, 2011) and equality

(Li & Yang, 2013 )

2. The real society’s problem

a) Not everyone have chance to be educated. For example, some minority of

China (Ryan, 2019) and people cannot be educated because tuition (video

“Sen. Bernie Sanders on college tuition).

b) The economic inequality of the urban and suburb in China (Li & Yang,

2013).

c) The racism inequality of the people. White people have privilege position of

the education (Mclntosh, 1998)

3. Why we need education. The importance of education.

a) Everyone should be educated because “education helps us earn knowledge

of the world and helps us have opinions on things in life” (peer view from

Helen Chen) and “education is crucial to participating in the society,

whether it be politically, economically or in day-to-day interactions” (peer

view from Carina Chan).

b) Better education often can give us better job for making more money and

salary, that can cancel the money worry. And when people all can have

good education, they may do not need worry about the inequality of power

and right. If we can realize a assumption, the education will help to solve

some economic problems (Anyon, 2011)

4. The best pedagogy

a) Children can learn what they want. Happy is important to the children (Neil,

1960). And a example from the video “Boy who did not want to learn to

read- Children of Summerhill 1998”.

b) Education in Finland and Education in Singapore are different. The

education of Finland shows more freedom and less pressure of students, but

this pedagogy may cause some problems like some students may not study

and they will lose competitive in their future. The Education in Singapore

give students more pressure and more work they need to do. They have a lot

of homework, not much vocation and they need go to tutoring after school,

But the good thing is they can learn actual skills they need for their jobs in

the future (video “Why Finland has the best education system in the world”

and “inside Singapore’s world-class education system”).

c) The pedagogy should not be bank system. Should not be like the students

can only learn what teachers taught. What kind of knowledge the student

will learn should not depend on teachers (Freire, 1968).

d) The children need to do some handwork such as, make the net for studying

Saanich culture. Using their hands help them can remember better and

actually feel the knowledge (Claxton and de France Roots, 2018).

e) The pedagogy in UW should be best, we have some freedom, different

cultures and we can choose what we want to learn.

5. The best curriculum

a) Multicultural: less racism and more pluralism. More pluralism can make

education fairer and adapt for many students who has different background.

For extending pluralist, that needs CSP’s help to demand “pluralist

outcomes that are not centered on White middle-class” (Alim & Paris, 2017,

p. 12). For example, “When instructing select readings, they should include

selections of reading from diverse authors” (peer view from Qin Chen).

b) Mental health: teaching students and keeping their mental health is

important. Generally speaking, the healthier a student is psychologically,

the better his study will be. (Hooks, 1994).

c) Learn what students are interesting: students can choose what they are

going to learn and what they do not want to learn. (Neil, 1960)

6. The best policy

a) Chinese contemporary policies are becoming increasingly inappropriate in a

transition from redistributive to market economy. So Chinese policies have

some problems right now. If the problems can be changed, the policies will

be good (Li & Yang, 2013).

b) The policy to realize the assumption of education (Anyon, 2011). The first

is “the U.S. should fully fund and otherwise support all low-income

students who are accepted by a college or university” (Anyon, 2011, p. 79).

The second way is we should provide meaningful vocational options for

these students who cannot go to college while they study in high school

(Anyon, 2011).

7. What is the barriers and how to eliminate these barriers

a) Racism – the purpose of schooling is closely making youth perform white

middle- class norms is the most common problem. It is kind of unfair issue

for youth or communities of color. “White skin people have more education

than other racial groups” (peer view from Sophie Guan). For solving these

problems can extend pluralist (Alim & Paris, 2017). “The CPS can decenter

white gaze in the curriculum by having curriculum based on the students”

(peer view from Becky Chanthaphone).

b) Education do not improve — In China, although its recent economic

increase fast but that doesn’t led to equal improvements in education. The

increasing of economic even makes some get disadvantage. For example,

minority is poor and many left-behind children, more private education and

international schools (Ryan, 2019).

c) Government intervention (video “ban of Muslim headscarves in French”)—

The ban in French does not give freedom to the children and people, and

that may make parents to pull their children out of school. “ Given this

predicament, justification of the ban on religious symbols based on the

principle of protecting individual basic rights may have the unintended

consequence of creating worse circumstances for those girls’ future

autonomy” (Gereluk, 2005, p. 267). The French legislation of this is too

tough, that may oversteps. For solving this, government should give

freedom to the people and step back. For example, only ban it in public

school without a tough altitude (Appiah, 2011).

8. Good life should be no worry, and we can live in a no racism and equality society.

Guidelines for the Comprehensive Essay

2

0 pts. total. Due Monday March 16 by 11:59 p.m.

Word count: write between 1500 and 2500 words.
Falling below 1500 words will result in an automatic 5 pt. reduction.

1. Mechanical Features (5 pts.)

a. font: Times New Roman 12 pt. Use whatever spacing you like, single or double.

b. page numbers: the pages of your essay should be numbered, but no page number on the first page. (how to avoid a page number on the first page: in Word, at the top of the document click “Insert”; then click “Page Number”; a drop down menu will appear; click “Page Number” in the drop down menu; uncheck the box next to “Show number on first page.”)

c. citations: see In-Text Citation Checklist.
Failure to use a sufficient number of citations will result in an automatic 5 pt. reduction. Failure to employ in-text citation correctly will result in a loss of 1 pt. for each incorrect citation, though you can lose no more than 5 pts. total for incorrect citation.

d. works cited page. This page will be the separate, final page of your essay, and it should list all the readings you reference in your essay. At the top of the page, you should have the title, Works Cited, centered and in bold, and you should list the works below, left justified, in alphabetical order. See the “Works Cited List” document for a sample of what a Works Cited page looks like as well as for a list of all the readings, videos, and links. Simply cut and paste from this document to construct your own personalized Works Cited page.

2. Structural Features (5 pts.)

a. substantive title: be as specific as you can with your title. Definitely do not entitle your essay something like, Education and the Good Life (you should put your title in bold).

b. two component introduction:

1. first, you should have a statement of topic: “In what, follows I discuss x” where x is some statement or statements that encapsulate what you discuss in the essay.

2. second, you should have a statement of structure: “I begin with a. I then move to b…I conclude with c.” See “Sample Introductions and Conclusions” document.

c. substantive section headings that correspond to your statement of structure. Section headings should be numbered and also put in italics, and in something like the following manner: 3. Race and Autonomy in the Native Mascot Controversy

d. conclusion: you should summarize your account in new language and in a way that wraps things up. Do not simply repeat your introduction. See the “Sample Introductions and Conclusions” document.

3. Content (10 pts.)

We will be grading on the following general components:

a. thorough and explicit description of what the good life and/or good society is.

b. thorough and explicit description of the curriculum, pedagogy, and policy instrumental to the achievement of the good life and/or good society as well as some indication, in particular, of how it is that the curriculum, pedagogy, or policy produces the good life and/or good society you describe.

c. relevant inclusion of a specific opinion or personal experience.
Incorporate at least one opinion or personal experience that is relevant to the topic you are discussing
. You may, of course, pull from your research and reflection assignments. You may also incorporate more than one relevant opinion or personal experience, but no more than three.
Failure to incorporate a relevant opinion or personal experience will result in a loss of 2 pts. Alternatively, a paper which is all opinion and personal experience, showing little to no engagement with the formal content of the course (readings, videos, class discussions), will result in an automatic loss of 7 pts.

Ultimately, the minimum requirement suggests that you must incorporate at least 5 readings total, 2 videos, and 3 different peer views from 3 different peers into your essay. Recall, however, the “above and beyond” clause we discussed in class. If you would like to be eligible for the grade range 17 – 20 for this essay, you must do more than the minimum in at least two categories. For example, an essay that incorporates 6 readings and 4 peer views will be eligible for a grade 17 – 20. Sticking to the minimum (5 readings total, 2 videos, and 3 different peer views from 3 different peers into your essay), by contrast, means that the highest grade you can get is a 16.

[Note: no one has expressed interest in the dialogue option, so I have not included it here. If you want to discuss this option, contact me: cfives@uw.edu]

2

Anyon, J. (2011). Marx and education. New York: Routledge.

[p. 67]
Barak Obama, who campaigned on a platform of liberal-sounding change, has adopted an approach to the jobs crisis that is remarkably similar to that of conservative former President George Bush. That is, both regimes have counted on education to solve the problems of unemployment and increases in poverty.

This chapter argues that Race to the Top, and its antecedent No Child Left Behind, are policy substitutes for economic reform—reforms like the creation of good jobs for low and middle income workers, including the requirement that employers pay decent wages, provide health care, and pensions.

Employers big and small would find these requirements onerous, as such legislation would decrease the decision- making freedom and the profits of business. Moreover, economic reforms like these are often (wrongly) labeled ‘socialism’ by conservatives, to forestall their enactment.
[p. 68]
Neither Democratic nor Republican administrations seem willing to fight for economic reforms that would substantially benefit low and middle income employees. Instead, education reform replaces needed economic change…

In the Introduction, I mentioned that corporate and political elites often argue that education must be reformed because it is a prime determinant of U.S. economic competitiveness. While there is merit to the argument that education contributes to U.S. competitiveness, the main determinants of economic competitiveness are economic, not educational…In this chapter, I focus on a different assumption underlying NCLB and Race to the Top. This second assumption motivating the educaional policies is that more education will get a person a good job and thereby reduce poverty and inequality.

For example, former president George Bush stated that “The No Child Left Behind Act is really a jobs act, when you think about it” (Third Presidential Debate. Oct. 13, 2004).
[p. 69]
And the 2010 White House fact sheet for Race to the Top states that, “The reforms contained in the Race to the Top will help prepare America’s students to graduate ready for college and career, and enable them to out-compete any worker, anywhere in the world” (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the- press-office/fact-sheet-race-top).

One assumption underlying these statements—that more education will get people jobs and therefore raise their standard of living and decrease poverty and inequality—sounds plausi- ble enough, given the fact that those with a college degree earn more than most who have only a high school degree. However, there are serious fallacies in the federal assumption, and I believe these fallacies are fatal to the utility of education as a replacement for the actual creation of economic opportunities.

The first fallacy of the premise is that for several decades now, more education and skills—that is, higher productivity— has no longer been rewarded with higher pay. American work- ers are more productive than they have ever been, primarily because they have more education and technological skills; but wages and salaries for most have declined. The late 1990s was the only period of broad-based gains for American low and middle income workers since the early 1970s.

American families typically lose ground during a recession. The first decade of the 21st century was not the first time that middle and low-income families lost ground in a recession, nor was it the first time that their losses continued after a recession ended. But before a business cycle ends—before the next recession starts—real median incomes usually start to grow and ultimately surpass their prior high. Yet, according to labor economists at the Economic Policy Institute, in this first decade of the 2000s, the longest jobless recovery on record
[p. 70]
damaged families’ earnings capacity, and increased inequality; moreover the growth that did occur by-passed low and middle income families, going to the top few of the highest earners, leading to dramatic increases in inequality (Mishel, Bernstein, and Shierholz, 2009).

The sharp rise of income inequality has contributed to the disconnection between productivity and broadly shared income gains. The most comprehensive data on inequality demonstrates an historic rise in inequality. Data on income concentration going back to 1913 shows that “The top 1% now holds 23% of total income, the highest inequality level in any year on record, but one: 1928. In the last few years alone, $400 billion of pretax income flowed from the bottom 95% to the top 5%, a loss of $3,660 per household in the bottom 95%” (ibid.,3). (Changes to the tax system under former President Bush have exacerbated the problem by lowering tax rates of those at the top of the income scale much more than those in the middle, or at the low end.) U.S. low and middle income job holders are relatively highly skilled; and they work more hours than in other advanced capitalist countries; but they are not being given the proceeds of their increased productivity.

The second fallacy in the assumption underlying NCLB and Race to the Top (that increased education and skill will be rewarded by better jobs and higher pay for most students) is that there are in fact very few jobs that pay well or that demand high cognitive and technological skills. The jobs the U.S. economy has been producing for the last few decades are primarily poverty and low-wage jobs (low-wage being income slightly above the poverty level). The economy creates relatively few highly paid positions—making it increasingly less certain that more education will assure that work pays well…

[p. 76]
I have alleged that NCLB and Race to the Top are federal legislative substitutes for policies that would actually lower poverty and inequality—legislation that would create jobs with decent wages and benefits for those who do not have them. My critique has been that an assumption underlying these policies, that increased educational achievement will ultimately reduce poverty, does not prove valid for large seg- ments of the population. I want to make a further point here.

If businesses were mandated by law to create jobs for those who need them—and if businesses had to pay decent wages and benefits—the costs to business owners would be enor- mous. As we know, neither small nor large corporations pay such costs now. Instead, the costs of the poverty produced by insufficient and poorly-paid employment are passed on to the
[p. 77]
tax-paying public in the form of programs to compensate: public tax dollars pay for welfare, food stamps, the costs of incarceration, and Medicaid—among other publicly-funded programs that attempt to ameliorate the individual and social pain of unemployment and underemployment (see Anyon and Greene, 2007).

When the federal government and the business communities rely on education to reduce poverty, the social costs of the failure of such an approach are enormous, and taxpayers shoulder the burden…
[p. 78]
… public funds subsidize the research and develop- ment, technology, infrastructure and education that the corporate community says it needs…NCLB and Race to the Top are part of this process of social- izing the costs of poverty. When the Acts assume—even implicitly—that poverty is a result of low scores on standard- ized tests, rather than a result of the fact that there are not enough decently paying jobs, it lets the business community off the hook. It saddles the poor with unrealistic expectations and the rest of us with unwitting support of corporate irresponsibility.

Instead of the federal attempt to use standardized testing, merit pay, and charter schools (all required by Race to the Top) to fight poverty, I would suggest (in addition to the cre- ation of good jobs) two education policies that might provide
[p. 79
] traction in assisting low-income students in their efforts to climb the socioeconomic ladder.

First, as I have already mentioned, the U.S. should fully fund and otherwise support all low-income students who are accepted by a college or university. Rewarding Strivers, edited by Richard Kahlenberg (2010), provides details on ways some universities are already assisting low-income students. These schools could be models for federal support. In addition, there is a historical precedent for funding the post-secondary educa- tion of those who cannot pay. After the Second World War, the federal government funded the education and support of over 8 million returning soldiers and their families. I see little reason we could not do the same for our college going low-income youth today.

The second education policy I recommend flies in the face of the ‘college for all’ mandate so prominent today. A low-income student who graduates from high school and is not able to complete the college degree has few if any economic options. We might begin to think about providing meaningful vocational options for these students while they are still in high school. Ideally, this policy would accompany the creation in urban areas of good jobs where the graduates of high school vocational programs would be hired. In New York City, for example, where I live, there is an extreme shortage of skilled auto mechanics. High schools in the area with large numbers of low-income students could offer up to date instruction in this subject for their non-college going youth, and pair the students with local high end employers. These policies are complementary: fully fund those students who get into college so they can finish; and provide real vocational preparation for those who do not attend college.

WHITE PRIVILEGE AND MALE PRIVILEGE: A Personal Account of Coming to See
Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies (1988)

By Peggy McIntosh

Through work to bring materials and perspectives from Women’s Studies into the rest of
the curriculum, I have often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are over
privileged in the curriculum, even though they may grant that women are
disadvantaged. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that
men gain from women’s disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being
fully recognized, acknowledged, lessened, or ended.

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon with a life of

its own, I realized that since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most
likely a phenomenon of white privilege that was similarly denied and protected, but alive
and real in its effects. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as
something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its
corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are

taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what
it is like to have white privilege. This paper is a partial record of my personal
observations and not a scholarly analysis. It is based on my daily experiences within my
particular circumstances.

I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets
that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain
oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions,
assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass,
emergency gear, and blank checks.

Since I have had trouble facing white privilege, and describing its results in my

life, I saw parallels here with men’s reluctance to acknowledge male privilege. Only
rarely will a man go beyond acknowledging that women are disadvantaged to
acknowledging that men have unearned advantage, or that unearned privilege has not
been good for men’s development as human beings, or for society’s development, or
that privilege systems might ever be challenged and changed.

I will review here several types or layers of denial that I see at work protecting,

and preventing awareness about, entrenched male privilege. Then I will draw parallels,
from my own experience, with the denials that veil the facts of white privilege. Finally, I
will list forty-six ordinary and daily ways in which I experience having white privilege, by
contrast with my African American colleagues in the same building. This list is not
intended to be generalizable. Others can make their own lists from within their own life
circumstances.

Writing this paper has been difficult, despite warm receptions for the talks on
which it is based. For describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we
in Women’s Studies work reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their

power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, “Having described it,
what will I do to lessen or end it?”

The denial of men’s over privileged state takes many forms in discussions of curriculum
change work. Some claim that men must be central in the curriculum because they
have done most of what is important or distinctive in life or in civilization. Some
recognize sexism in the curriculum but deny that it makes male students seem unduly
important in life. Others agree that certain individual thinkers are male oriented but deny
that there is any systemic tendency in disciplinary frameworks or epistemology to over
empower men as a group. Those men who do grant that male privilege takes
institutionalized and embedded forms are still likely to deny that male hegemony has
opened doors for them personally. Virtually all men deny that male over reward alone
can explain men’s centrality in all the inner sanctums of our most powerful institutions.
Moreover, those few who will acknowledge that male privilege systems have over
empowered them usually end up doubting that we could dismantle these privilege
systems. They may say they will work to improve Women’s status, in the society or in
the university, but they can’t or won’t support the idea of lessening men’s. In curricular
terms, this is the point at which they say that they regret they cannot use any of the
interesting new scholarship on women because the syllabus is full. When the talk turns
to giving men less cultural room, even the most thoughtful and fair-minded of the men I
know will tend to reflect, or fall back on, conservative assumptions about the inevitability
of present gender relations and distributions of power, calling on precedent or
sociobiology and psychobiology to demonstrate that male domination is natural and
follows inevitably from evolutionary pressures. Others resort to arguments from
“experience” or religion or social responsibility or wishing and dreaming.

After I realized, through faculty development work in Women’s Studies, the extent
to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of
their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from
women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to
understand why we are justly seen as oppressive, even when we don’t see ourselves
that way. At the very least, obliviousness of one’s privileged state can make a person or
group irritating to be with. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin
privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence, unable to see that
it put me “ahead” in any way, or put my people ahead, over-rewarding us and yet also
paradoxically damaging us, or that it could or should be changed.

My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an
unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to
see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. At
school, we were not taught about slavery in any depth; we were not taught to see
slaveholders as damaged people. Slaves were seen as the only group at risk of being
dehumanized. My schooling followed the pattern which Elizabeth Minnich has pointed
out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average,
and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will
allow “them” to be more like “us.” I think many of us know how obnoxious this attitude
can be in men.

After frustration with men who would not recognize male privilege, I decided to try to
work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my
life. It is crude work, at this stage, but I will give here a list of special circumstances and
conditions I experience that I did not earn but that I have been made to feel are mine by
birth, by citizenship, and by virtue of being a conscientious law-abiding “normal” person
of goodwill. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat
more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographical
location, though these other privileging factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can
see, my Afro-American co-workers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into
daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place, and line of work cannot count on
most of these conditions.

1. I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the
time.

2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who
have learned to mistrust my kind or me.

3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in
an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

4. I can be reasonably sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or
pleasant to me.

5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, fairly well assured that I will not be
followed or harassed by store detectives.

6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people
of my race widely and positively represented.

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown
that people of my color made it what it is.

8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the
existence of their race.

9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white
privilege.

10. I can be fairly sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only
member of my race.

11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another woman’s voice in a
group in which she is the only member of her race.

12. I can go into a book shop and count on finding the writing of my race
represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods that fit with my cultural
traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can deal with my hair.

13. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to
work against the appearance that I am financially reliable.

14. I could arrange to protect our young children most of the time from people who
might not like them.

15. I did not have to educate our children to be aware of systemic racism for their
own daily physical protection.

16. I can be pretty sure that my children’s teachers and employers will tolerate them
if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not
concern others’ attitudes toward their race.

17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.

18. I can swear, or dress in secondhand clothes, or not answer letters, without
having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the
illiteracy of my race.

19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
22. I can remain oblivious to the language and customs of persons of color who

constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such
oblivion.

23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and
behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

24. I can be reasonably sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be
facing a person of my race.

25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I
haven’t been singled out because of my race.

26. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and
children’s magazines featuring people of my race.

27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat
tied in, rather than isolated, out of place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a
distance, or feared.

28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more
likely to jeopardize her chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.

29. I can be fairly sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or
a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my
present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.

30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn’t a racial issue at hand, my
race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will
have.

31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist
programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find
ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these
choices.

32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of
people of other races.

33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing, or body odor will be taken
as a reflection on my race.

34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or selfseeking.
35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my

co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.
36. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode

or situation whether it has racial overtones.
37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and

advise me about my next steps, professionally.
38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative, or professional,

without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do
what I want to do.

39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.
40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race

cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against
me.

42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of
rejection owing to my race.

43. If I have low credibility as a leader, I can be sure that my race is not the problem.
44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions that give attention only to

people of my race.
45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to

experiences of my race.
46. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or

less match my skin.

I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For
me, white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to
avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are
true, this is not such a free country; one’s life is not what one makes it; many doors
open for certain people through no virtues of their own. These perceptions mean also
that my moral condition is not what I had been led to believe. The appearance of being
a good citizen rather than a troublemaker comes in large part from having all sorts of
doors open automatically because of my color.

A further paralysis of nerve comes from literary silence protecting privilege. My
clearest memories of finding such analysis are in Lillian Smith’s unparalleled Killers of
the Dream and Margaret Andersen’s review of Karen and Mamie Fields’ Lemon Swamp.
Smith, for example, wrote about walking toward black children on the street and
knowing they would step into the gutter; Andersen contrasted the pleasure that she, as
a white child, took on summer driving trips to the south with Karen Fields’ memories of
driving in a closed car stocked with all necessities lest, in stopping, her black family
should suffer “insult, or worse.” Adrienne Rich also recognizes and writes about daily
experiences of privilege, but in my observation, white women’s writing in this area is far
more often on systemic racism than on our daily lives as light-skinned women.

In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of
daily experience that I once took for granted, as neutral, normal, and universally
available to everybody, just as I once thought of a male-focused curriculum as the
neutral or accurate account that can speak for all. Nor did I think of any of these
perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated
taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for
everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant,
and destructive. Before proposing some more finely tuned categorization, I will make
some observations about the general effects of these conditions on my life and
expectations.

In this potpourri of examples, some privileges make me feel at home in the world.
Others allow me to escape penalties or dangers that others suffer. Through some, I
escape fear, anxiety, insult, injury, or a sense of not being welcome, not being real.
Some keep me from having to hide, to be in disguise, to feel sick or crazy, to negotiate
each transaction from the position of being an outsider or, within my group, a person

who is suspected of having too close links with a dominant culture. Most keep me from
having to be angry.

I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of
assumptions that were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece
of cultural turf; it was my own turf, and I was among those who could control the turf. I
could measure up to the cultural standards and take advantage of the many options I
saw around me to make what the culture would call a success of my life. My skin color
was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as
“belonging” in major ways and of making social systems work for me. I could freely
disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural
forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely. My life was reflected
back to me frequently enough so that I felt, with regard to my race, if not to my sex, like
one of the real people.

Whether through the curriculum or in the newspaper, the television, the economic
system, or the general look of people in the streets, I received daily signals and
indications that my people counted and that others either didn’t exist or must be trying,
not very successfully, to be like people of my race. I was given cultural permission not to
hear voices of people of other races or a tepid cultural tolerance for hearing or acting on
such voices. I was also raised not to suffer seriously from anything that darker-skinned
people might say about my group, “protected,” though perhaps I should more accurately
say prohibited, through the habits of my economic class and social group, from living in
racially mixed groups or being reflective about interactions between people of differing
races.

In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and
oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and
alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence,
which I was being subtly trained to visit in turn upon people of color.

For this reason, the word “privilege” now seems to me misleading. Its
connotations are too positive to fit the conditions and behaviors which “privilege
systems” produce. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether
earned, or conferred by birth or luck. School graduates are reminded they are privileged
and urged to use their (enviable) assets well. The word “privilege” carries the
connotation of being something everyone must want. Yet some of the conditions I have
described here work to systemically over-empower certain groups. Such privilege
simply confers dominance, gives permission to control, because of one’s race or sex.
The kind of privilege that gives license to some people to be, at best, thoughtless and,
at worst, murderous should not continue to be referred to as a desirable attribute. Such
“privilege” may be widely desired without being in any way beneficial to the whole
society.

Moreover, though “privilege” may confer power, it does not confer moral strength.
Those who do not depend on conferred dominance have traits and qualities that may
never develop in those who do. Just as Women’s Studies courses indicate that women
survive their political circumstances to lead lives that hold the human race together, so
“underprivileged” people of color who are the world’s majority have survived their

oppression and lived survivors’ lives from which the white global minority can and must
learn. In some groups, those dominated have actually become strong through not
having all of these unearned advantages, and this gives them a great deal to teach the
others. Members of so-called privileged groups can seem foolish, ridiculous, infantile, or
dangerous by contrast.

I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power
conferred systemically. Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is,
in fact, permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are
inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or
that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society
and should be considered as the entitlement of everyone. Others, like the privilege not
to listen to less powerful people, distort the humanity of the. holders as well as the
ignored groups. Still others, like finding one’s staple foods everywhere, may be a
function of being a member of a numerical majority in the population. Others have to do
with not having to labor under pervasive negative stereotyping and mythology.

We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages that we
can work to spread, to the point where they are not advantages at all but simply part of
the normal civic and social fabric, and negative types of advantage that unless rejected
will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the positive “privilege” of
belonging, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans
say, fosters development and should not be seen as privilege for a few. It is, let us say,
an entitlement that none of us should have to earn; ideally it is an unearned entitlement.
At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. The negative
“privilege” that gave me cultural permission not to take darker-skinned Others seriously
can be seen as arbitrarily conferred dominance and should not be desirable for anyone.
This paper results from a process of coming to see that some of the power that I
originally saw as attendant on being a human being in the United States consisted in
unearned advantage and conferred dominance, as well as other kinds of special
circumstance not universally taken for granted.

In writing this paper I have also realized that white identity and status (as well as
class identity and status) give me considerable power to choose whether to broach this
subject and its trouble. I can pretty well decide whether to disappear and avoid and not
listen and escape the dislike I may engender in other people through this essay, or
interrupt, answer, interpret, preach, correct, criticize, and control to some extent what
goes on in reaction to it. Being white, I am given considerable power to escape many
kinds of danger or penalty as well as to choose which risks I want to take.

There is an analogy here, once again, with Women’s Studies. Our male
colleagues do not have a great deal to lose in supporting Women’s Studies, but they do
not have a great deal to lose if they oppose it either. They simply have the power to
decide whether to commit themselves to more equitable distributions of power. They will
probably feel few penalties whatever choice they make; they do not seem, in any
obvious short-term sense, the ones at risk, though they and we are all at risk because of
the behaviors that have been rewarded in them.

Through Women’s Studies work I have met very few men who are truly
distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so
one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we
will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred
dominance and if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more
work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. We need more down-to-earth
writing by people about these taboo subjects. We need more understanding of the ways
in which white “privilege” damages white people, for these are not the same ways in
which it damages the victimized. Skewed white psyches are an inseparable part of the
picture, though I do not want to confuse the kinds of damage done to the holders of
special assets and to those who suffer the deficits. Many, perhaps most, of our white
students in the United States think that racism doesn’t affect them because they are not
people of color; they do not see “whiteness” as a racial identity. Many men likewise
think that Women’s Studies does not bear on their own existences because they are not
female; they do not see themselves as having gendered identities: Insisting on the
universal “effects” of “privilege” systems, then, becomes one of our chief tasks, and
being more explicit about the particular effects in particular contexts is anther. Men need
to join us in this work.

In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we
need to similarly examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic
advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual
orientation. Professor Marnie Evans suggested to me that in many ways the list I made
also applies directly to heterosexual privilege. This is a still more taboo subject than
race privilege: the daily ways in which heterosexual privilege makes some persons
comfortable or powerful, providing supports, assets, approvals, and rewards to those
who live or expect to live in heterosexual pairs. Unpacking that content is still more
difficult, owing to the deeper imbeddedness of heterosexual advantage and dominance
and stricter taboos surrounding these.

But to start such an analysis I would put this observation from my own
experience: the fact that I live under the same roof with a man triggers all kinds of
societal assumptions about my worth, politics, life, and values and triggers a host of
unearned advantages and powers. After recasting many elements from the original list I
would add further observations like these:

1. My children do not have to answer questions about why I live with my partner
(my husband).

2. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our
household.

3. Our children are given texts and classes that implicitly support our kind of family
unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.

4. I can travel alone or with my husband without expecting embarrassment or
hostility in those who deal with us.

5. Most people I meet will see my marital arrangements as an asset to my life or as
a favorable comment on my likeability, my competence, or my mental health.

6. I can talk about the social events of a weekend without fearing most listeners’
reactions.

7. I will feel welcomed and “normal” in the usual walks of public life, institutional and
social.

8. In many contexts, I am seen as “all right” in daily work on women because I do
not live chiefly with women.

Difficulties and dangers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since

racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantages associated with
them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to isolate aspects of
unearned advantage that derive chiefly from social class, economic class, race, religion,
region, sex, or ethnic identity. The oppressions are both distinct and interlocking, as the
Combahee River Collective statement of 1977 continues to remind us eloquently.

One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active
forms that we can see and embedded forms that members of the dominant group are
taught not to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as racist-,because I was
taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my
group, never in invisible systems conferring racial dominance on my group from birth.
Likewise, we are taught to think that sexism or heterosexism is carried on only through
intentional, individual acts of discrimination, meanness, or cruelty, rather than in
invisible systems conferring unsought dominance on certain groups. Disapproving of the
systems won’t be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if
white individuals changed their attitudes; many men think sexism can be ended by
individual changes in daily behavior toward women. But a man’s sex provides
advantage for him whether or not he approves of the way in which dominance has been
conferred on his group. A “white” skin in the United States opens many doors for whites
whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual
acts can palliate, but cannot end, these problems. To redesign social systems, we need
first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials
surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about
equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance
by making these taboo subjects. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to
me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while
denying that systems of dominance exist.

Obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage,
is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of
meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most
people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of
people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same
groups that have most of it already. Though systemic change takes many decades,
there are pressing questions for me and I imagine for some others like me if we raise
our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we do with
such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we
will choose to use unearned advantage to weaken invisible privilege systems and
whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power
systems on a broader base.

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Citizenship and Education in Liberal-Democratic
Societies: Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and
Collective Identities
Kevin McDonough and Walter Feinberg

Print publication date: 2003
Print ISBN-13: 9780199253661
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2005
DOI: 10.1093/0199253668.001.0001

LIBERAL EDUCATION: THE UNITED STATES
EXAMPLE
K. Anthony Appiah

DOI:10.1093/0199253668.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords
Anthony Appiah’s essay on liberal education in the United States begins by
identifying a distinctive feature of classical liberalism – namely, that the state
must respect substantial limits with respect to its authority to impose
restrictions on individuals, even for their own good. Nevertheless, Appiah points
out, the primary aim of liberal education is to ‘maximize autonomy not to
minimize government involvement’. Most of the essays in this volume, including
Appiah’s, are attempts to address the question of what the liberal commitment
to maximize personal autonomy means when it comes to the teaching of what
Appiah refers to as ‘identity-related claims’. The aim of this chapter is to suggest
how one might begin to think about some questions in the philosophy of
education, guided by the liberal thought that education is a preparation for
autonomy, and to show that this tradition is both powerful enough to help with
this difficult question and rich enough to allow answers of some complexity.

Keywords:   education, liberal education, liberalism, personal autonomy, personal identity, philosophy
of education, United States

Liberalism starts with views that are both modern and radical. We are all equal
and we all have the dignity that was once the privilege of an elite. When John
Locke speaks of “dignity” (in e.g. his draft of the constitution of Carolina) he
means the title and privileges of hereditary land owners; it is something
associated with a particular station in life. For him, dignity is as much something

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that the ordinary person does not have as something that belongs to “persons of
standing”: for modern liberalism, in striking contrast, dignity is something that
is to be respected in every human being. Dignity is still, then, as it was for
Locke, an entitlement to respect. But now everyone shares that entitlement.
Dignity is now human dignity: you get it just by showing up. That is what makes
liberalism radical.

But liberals also believe that recognizing individual human dignity entails—in
language we owe to Kant—respecting every person’s autonomy. The distinctive
thought of liberal political philosophy is that individual autonomy is at the heart
of political morality. That is what makes it modern.

Kant first articulated autonomy as a philosophical principle, and romanticism
lived a peculiarly intense version of this vision.1 But the central notion is the
special province neither of philosophers nor of poets: the claim, put simply, is
that what the good is for each of us is shaped by choices we ourselves have
made.

This general moral conviction has profound consequences for thinking about the
state. Simply put, liberalism values political liberty—freedom from government
intervention in our lives—because it holds (p.57) that each person has the right
to construct a life of her own. That right is not unlimited; it must be pursued
within moral boundaries shaped, among other things, by the rights of others. But
it is fundamental; and every limitation of it is, for liberalism, to be conceded only
in the face of a powerful argument.

This picture grew up with Protestantism; which is what accounts for the sense
that it is a creature of the West (and, more particularly, of Germany—Kant—and
England—Locke). For Protestantism taught, as Locke put it in his “Essay
Concerning Toleration,” that worship was a “thing wholly between God and me
and of an eternal concernment.”2 This notion that the most consequential
questions were to be decided individually by each person, searching in his own
heart (so that conformity to outer forms was less crucial than inner conviction)
placed what mattered most in human life decisively beyond the reach of the
government. Locke’s major argument in the essay is that state regulation of
religious belief is wrong because it is impossible, “[T]he way to salvation not
being any forced exterior performance, but the voluntary and secret choice of
the mind. …”3 Locke wants religious toleration because the only things the
government can regulate—the outward and visible signs—are simply not what
matters; like Kant he thought that virtue lies in why you do things not (or not so
much) in what you do. This makes him an ancestor of modern liberalism; but our
concerns are, I think, somewhat different.

For the modern liberal objection to regulation of religion argues that the choices
I make and the understandings I come to in my own search for religious truth

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are important in part because I chose them in the course of my own search. The
modern point is not Locke’s—which is that goodness (piety, in this case) is a
matter of motive and intention more than behavior; it is that what is good for me
to do depends, in part, on my reflective appropriation of the beliefs and values
by which I guide my life. Merely adopting views “in gross”, as Locke put it,
assuming religious “opinions … all at once in a bundle,“4 is not enough.

It is a crucial point that this moral conviction is not only modern but also, on a
world scale, decidedly controversial. It is not the view of the Ayatollahs in
Teheran or the Party leaders in Beijing; it is not even the view, to come
somewhat closer to home, of His Holiness and the various eminences of the
Vatican. For all of these people hold that what is morally required of people is
given in advance—by an eternal order for the Ayatollahs and the Curia, by the
truths of Marx for the heirs of Mao Tse Tung. All of these positions recognize (p.
58) that one can have obligations that arise out of choice: they recognize
promises as binding and duties particular to vocation; and they recog-nize that
roles bring obligations. But none of them agrees with the liberal that sometimes
the right thing for me to do is right because I have decided that doing it fits with
my chosen sense of the meaning of my own life: none of them therefore accepts
the political consequence that in forcing me to do what is best for me according
to someone else’s conception, you may do me not good but harm.

Notice that far from being relativist or indifferent to moral truth, the claim of
autonomy, as made by the liberal, is a universal moral claim: it is something we
believe the Pope and the others are wrong about. There is no general answer to
the question how one should live one’s life: not everyone should be a priest or a
poet or a pipe fitter; there are lives worth living that focus on family, and others
that center on work. Liberals are pluralists about human flourishing, holding
that there are many ways for human beings to live good lives and many projects
worth pursuing.5

But sensible antiliberals are pluralists too. What is distinctive in the liberal
vision is that it holds that there may be an internal connection between what is
good for you and the choices you have made: in particular, that your good may
depend on the identities you have reflectively appropriated and the values
embedded within them. Liberals do not deny that there are some values that are
essential components of any good life: honesty, loyalty, and kindness are virtues;
and cruelty, thoughtlessness, and unwarranted hatred are vices, no matter what
choices you have made. But this essential moral core does not fix everything that
matters; nor does it determine how these virtues and vices should weigh against
each other in every situation.

Liberalism is a political morality which flows, like all substantial political ideals,
from an underlying vision of human life. But, as a political creed, it does not
claim to answer every ethical question, every shallow puzzle or deep mystery

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about how one should live. It stakes out a position about the ethics of relations
between the state and the individual, a position that flows from a vision of
human life; and that vision proposes that living up to the many values is best
when it flows, in two respects, from the “voluntary and secret choices” of your
own mind. First, it is best if people do what is right because they recognize that
it is right (but this is a point on which the Curia concurs); second, what is best
for people depends, in part (but only in part) on what they have chosen. That is
why the liberal state has its most distinctive feature: a regime of individual
rights, limiting what the state may require of us, even for our own good.

(p.59) Liberals are not relativists, then. Nor need we be skeptics. We need not
argue that each should be allowed by the state to make her own choices because
there is no knowing who is right. I may, as a liberal, regard it as proper for the
state to allow you to do what is, in my judgment, plainly wrong, provided that, in
doing so, you interfere with no one’s rights and have freely chosen to do it in
pursuit of your aims and in the light of your own knowledge, your best
understanding.

This is a separate point from the one about the dependence of the good for you
on your choices. Sometimes what is good for me—committing myself to the
nationalist struggle against imperial domination—is good because I have
reflectively appropriated a nationalist identity; and that identity now gives
meaning to much of my life. (Perhaps if I had not developed that identification, a
life in the struggle would be worthless, a sham.) But the point I am making now
is that sometimes the government should let me do what I have decided to do in
the light of my own best understanding, even though what I have decided is
wrong. Letting people do something does not, for the liberal, reflect agreement
with them. Even when someone is wrong, the state has to have a compelling
reason to intervene. And if someone asks why, I would say because it is her life.

It is sometimes said that liberalism is not perfectionist, in the sense that it does
not aim to shape the citizen to a vision of human good. I think this is somewhat
misleading. Autonomy is a vision of human good; and the liberal state will aim to
help the citizen exercise her autonomy, by, for example, providing information
and encouraging rational public deliberation. What a liberal will not do is use
the coercive power of the state against anyone, except to protect the rights of
others.6 The liberal surgeon-general tells you that cigarettes kill and requires
tobacco companies not to sell their products to those, like minors, who are not
fully capable of autonomous decision. But if an adult person chooses cigarettes,
knowing the harm they do, the most the liberal state may do is limit her access
to health care for those harms, if the state does not have the resources to
provide it.7

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Modern American liberalism, as an approach to the realities of politics, goes
back to the New Deal, when to the classical liberalism of rights was added a new
set of economic commitments: the federal government accepted clearly, for the
first time, a national responsibility to guarantee a basic minimum level of
welfare to every citizen. This undertaking occurred, of course, in response to the
Depression: a massive failure on the part of the private economy to deliver the
jobs and the income that were now recognized as a precondition for enjoying the
fundamental civil rights—democratic representation, liberty of (p.60) religion,
expression, and association, security of property, equality before the law.

This pious simplification of history ignores a great deal. The New Deal welfare
state, for example, did not spring full-fashioned from the brow of the Roosevelt
administration. There were already provisions for the poor and the destitute in
colonial Massachusetts; there were federal Civil War pensions for veterans and
war widows; there were hundreds of charitable institutions, supported by
churches and by secular philanthropy, often with tax-exemption from the
government, aiming to help people in a thousand kinds of trouble. Still, it was
clear to everybody that the New Deal took government provision for the worst
off to a new level.

It is natural to see this concern with basic welfare as simply a new addition to
the liberal register, not as something growing out of the basic liberal vision. But
I think that is wrong. Basic welfare provision flows from the same fundamental
concern with dignity. In a world where land has all been parceled out (so that no
one can simply acquire land to work by moving into uncharted territory); a world
where money is essential for adequate nutrition and proper shelter; where a job
(or so much money you do not need one) is increasingly a condition for minimal
social respect; guaranteeing that everybody has access to a place to live, food to
eat, and a form of work, is simply making sure that everyone has access to the
possibility of a dignified existence. It is increasingly clear, I think, that a
guarantee of access to health care should be underwritten by the state as well.
And, because everybody is equally entitled to dignity, whatever minimum
conditions the state must guarantee, it must guarantee to everyone.

More than this, autonomy requires, as we have seen, that people be able to
shape a life for themselves, to make choices among options. And this requires,
naturally, that there be such options—real choices to make; and that the person
has some sense of the way the world actually is.

Each of these conditions is hugely important. The existence of real options is
something that argues for multiculturalism within states and cosmopolitanism
across them.8 And the importance of the truth entails that the government has a
role in propagating knowledge. To do my will, to act freely, I need not only to
have goals but a sense of how I can achieve them. You can undermine my
autonomy not only by resisting what I will, but also by depriving me of

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information—truths—that might allow me to achieve what you desire. Respect
for autonomy goes with truth telling, therefore; respect for autonomy entails a
concern with knowledge.

(p.61) There are hard questions here, questions that, as we shall see, matter
enormously for the politics of education. Respect for your autonomy means that,
where your aims are morally permissible, it is best if you are able to do what you
choose. But you choose to do things for reasons, and those reasons are
dependent not only on your aims but also on how you believe they can be
achieved. Characteristically, in reasoning out what I want to do, I consider what
my aims are and what means are available to achieve them. Suppose, then, you
know what my aims are, and you know that in pursuing them I am relying on an
erroneous belief. Suppose, for example, that I am seeking to abate my fever, and
I take the herbs the traditional doctor in my village concocts; and suppose you
know that the herbs are mortally toxic in the long run and that I can be cured
with the erythromycin in your pocket. If you secretly substitute your authentic
medicine for my (as you think) bogus “medicine,” are you respecting my
autonomy—helping me to the health you know I am after—or failing to do so—by
ignoring my clear (but, as you think, fatally misguided) desire to take this stuff
that the medicine man provided?

The answer, I believe, is that what respect for your autonomy requires is neither
of these things; what it requires is that you tell me what you believe is true (thus
putting me in a position to realize my fundamental aim by engaging my goals
with the way the world really is). You can urge on me the medicine that will cure
me, offering me reasons to believe that it will cure me; but if, in the end, I reject
your reasons, if I do not trust you, respect for my autonomy requires that you let
me take the worthless portion I believe in. Just as respect for autonomy requires
me to recognize your reasons for your choices in matters that affect you, so it
requires me to address your beliefs with evidence and reasons; I may not
manipulate you into believing what is in fact the truth by offering you phony
“proofs” and faked “evidence.”

Now I hasten to add that respecting my autonomy is not the only thing that is at
stake when I am sick and considering what treatments to undertake. There is
also the matter of my physical well-being, which is something that I require for
most of my projects and which makes more likely the satisfactory achievement
of almost all of them. In dealing with me in these circumstances, you may rank
my survival over my autonomy, hoping, perhaps, that once the crisis is over you
can persuade me that you have done the right thing. This may be an especially
plausible choice if you have a special responsibility for my health—the
responsibility, say, of my doctor—or a special concern for my well-being—the
concern, say, of my friend or my parent. But even if you make this choice, it
should be clear that you have done (p.62) so against the weight of an important

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consideration: respect for me, treating me with dignity, surely entails respect for
the reflective choices I make, even when they are mistaken.

I have considered this case as if it were one in which your choice was an
essential private (i.e. non-state) matter. But if your relationship to me were that
of an official to a citizen, then, I think, autonomy would have to loom larger.
Governments may not force citizens to do what is good for them, once they have
explained why it is good for them and offered them the choice. Provided I am
capable of exercising autonomy— provided, that is, I am not mentally incapable
at the time that I must think the issue through—my government should let me
die, if I choose.

Liberals are not libertarians—our aim is to maximize autonomy not to minimize
government involvement. Liberals will normally allow you to take whatever
chances you like, once you know the risks; but not if the risk is to your
autonomy. Thus, they may regulate access to drugs that threaten—through
addiction—the autonomy of every user. In becoming an addict you would give up
your autonomy; if you did so willingly, you would be making a mistake from
which the liberal state might attempt to save you. This would not be a
perfectionist policy: it is not a matter of the state choosing to make you a better
person than you would make yourself. Rather, it is the state guaranteeing that
you can continue to make the choices that are the substance of your freedom.

I have tried to exemplify what respect for the dignity and auto-nomy of each
person means for a liberal politics. But when we turn to education, we are faced
with an immediate problem. We are not born as autonomous adults. We are born,
in the Bard of Avon’s happy phrase, “mewling and puking”, incapable of an even
moderately independent existence. Liberalism speaks of respecting the self-
chosen projects of others, and of allowing them to pursue them in the light of
their own knowledge and their values. But we are born neither with projects nor
with knowledge. The fundamental idea of a liberal philosophy of education must
be that we need to guide each child from hopeless dependency into an
autonomous maturity. Preparing someone to be autonomous requires that we
give them access both to values (and the capacity to form projects) and to
knowledge (and the ability to learn more). But now there are so many hard
questions: who is the “we” here? And which projects should “we” help the child
to grow into? And who is to decide, in cases of controversy, what is knowledge
and what false opinion?

Many people will say that the “we” that has primary responsibility for our
development into autonomy is our parents. It certainly (p.63) seems right to
see this as one of the duties (and pleasures) of parents. There is every reason to
think that a loving family is the best place to grow into an autonomous adult. No

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government has found a way to do better that parents generally do: prudence
suggests that states interfere only when they must.

But, as hardly needs saying, my parents can be an obstacle to the development
of my autonomy. And when they are, so it seems to me, the state has a duty to
intervene.

Just as the New Deal recognized an extensive system of welfare provision as a
condition (p.64) for a dignified adult life in the modern world, so the
development of public education reflects the need for a wide range of skills,
knowledge, and values, as a condition for an autonomous modern life. These
essential prerequisites of autonomy—the elements of a basic education—require
time and expertise to teach properly; and in a world where most adults must
work for a living, parents cannot be expected to provide them on their own.
Further, the elements of a basic education are necessary for all who are not
severely mentally disabled: every person, every child, therefore is entitled to a
guarantee of at least this minimum. This is why, despite the liberal’s general
hostility to state intervention in what we ordinarily call private life, the very
widespread development of state-funded, state-controlled education, with its
intrusion into the relations between children and families, is something liberals
are bound to welcome.

Public schools do many things that not every parent agrees with. This seems to
me just right: for these liberal reasons. If parents had the right to determine
what their children should learn, it would be indefensible that we require
parents to chose between public education and publicly licensed private
education. That we do require it is a reflection of the fact that we believe
children have a right to an education that prepares them for autonomy as adults;
and we recognize that this is something many parents cannot, and some parents
will not, provide. To the extent that states in the United States license private
schools that explicitly aim to limit the child’s preparation for an autonomous
adulthood, this is a breach of the liberal understanding of the state’s obligations
to the young.

I do not know whether the framework I am suggesting is likely to seem too
radical or too conservative. I suspect that it will seem to many too conservative,
in this abstract formulation. I should like to end with a consideration of what it
might mean in practice; and here, I suspect, many will find it too radical. But I
should like to say that it seems to me that in working out how to proceed in
educating our children for adulthood, the notion that we should prepare them
for a dignified and autonomous maturity is one that ought to gather support
from a very wide range of Americans. This basic idea is, as I have suggested,
philosophically liberal: but it is not a liberal idea in the sense in which liberal
and conservative are now contrasted in our politics. If contemporary
conservatives are skeptical because I have spoken so much of rights, I should

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remind them that respect for autonomy also entails holding people responsible
for their acts and that the existence of rights entails forms of constraint as well
as kinds of freedom.

The basic liberal picture lies at the root of democratic thinking: we are each
allowed an equal share in shaping the destiny of our nation, subject to the
constraint that we acknowledge what flows from the dignity and autonomy of
others. This means that the liberal democracy constrains what majorities can do,
by the familiar mechanism of a system of legal rights, enforced by a judiciary
that is relatively independent of the contemporary majority will. But it also
means that the liberal democracy’s values are not mere majoritarianism, but
public deliberation in which each of us is addressed as a reasoning creature and
invited to think through, in the light of his or her own projects and
understandings, the choices facing our politics. The exercise of autonomy, as
Kant formulated it, was the exercise of reason: I have been developing a picture
of autonomy that is not Kant’s; but I want it to share this feature of Kant’s theory
(albeit with a more indulgent understanding of reason).

It follows (unsurprisingly) that liberal democracy is one of the notions that
belongs to the core of the liberal conception of political morality, and that
teaching it is, therefore, a matter of giving to each child a proper understanding
of politics. But we need to give each child not only a grasp of these general
notions but an understanding of the particular form through which our political
institutions instantiates, in a rough and ready way, these general abstractions;
and we need to give her, too, the tools with which to explore the ways in which
the current political institutions of our society fail to meet the basic constraints,
so that she can, if she chooses, contribute to the citizen’s work of improving
them.

The key to a liberal education is the development of an autonomous self. But
there is a regular misunderstanding of what this means, one to which liberals
themselves have contributed: a concern for autonomy is often wrongly seen as
inconsistent with valuing sociality and relationship. This is a mistake that should
be immediately rejected. An autonomous self is a human self, and we are, as
Aristotle long ago insisted, creatures of the polis, social beings. (p.65) We are
social in many ways and for many reasons. We are social, first, because we are
incapable of developing on our own, because we need human nurture, moral and
intellectual education, practice with language, if we are to develop into full
persons. This is a sociality of mutual dependence. We are social, second, because
we humans naturally9 desire relationship with others: friends, lovers, parents,
children, the wider family, colleagues, and neighbors. This is sociality as an end.
And we are social, third, because many other things we value—literature, the
arts, and the whole world of culture; education; money; and, in the modern

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world, food and housing—depend essentially on society for their production. This
is instrumental sociality.

To have dignity and autonomy as values is not, therefore, to refuse to
acknowledge the dependence of the good for each of us on relationships with
others. Indeed our selves are, in Charles Taylor’s fine phrase, “dialogically”
constituted: beginning in infancy, it is in dialogue with other people’s
understandings of who I am that I develop a conception of my own identity.
Furthermore, my identity is crucially constituted through concepts (and
practices) made available to me by religion, society, school, and state, and
mediated to varying degrees by the family. Dialogue shapes the identity I
develop as I grow up: but the very material out of which I form it is provided, in
part, by my society, by what Taylor has called its language in “a broad sense.”10

It follows that the self whose autonomous desires liberalism celebrates is not a
presocial thing—not some inner essence independent of the human world into
which we have grown—but rather the product of our interaction from our
earliest years with others.11

As a result, educating children for autonomy requires preparing them for
relationship, not just preparing them to respect, as liberalism requires, the
autonomy of others.

Let me exemplify what an education guided by these ideas might be like in the
most practical terms, by describing two classroom practices with elementary
school children that would, I think, embody the ideals I have been discussing.12

The first practice is this: we establish a rule that no discussion is complete until
everyone has spoken. The idea, of course, is that everyone is of equal worth, and
is, therefore, equally entitled to express her opinion and receive respectful
attention. This does not mean that what everyone says is of equal merit: and it is
perfectly consistent to ask everyone to play her role in the discussion and, at the
same time, to recognize that some contributions move the discussion forward
better than others. In practice, living by such a stand-ard requires small
discussion groups or long discussions. No doubt (p.66) in the over-sized
classrooms of many schools this will not be possible. But learning that such
practical limitations shape real political life is important, too. So saying that a
discussion cannot be completed properly because there has not been enough
time to let everyone speak or insisting that a discussion be continued later for
the same reason might be the best we can practically do.

In the second practice, the teacher makes a habit of asking children to explain
what other children have said. This, too, teaches that a dialogue of equals
requires listening as well as speaking.

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These practices are ways of communicating equality of respect and the place of
discourse and reason in the relations of people who respect one another. I am
sure that many teachers do both of these things (and many more just like them)
already. And they are important because they introduce children to practices of
respect, rather than simply announcing to them principles of respect. A child
who has learned spontaneously to attend to what other children say and who
expects a discussion of a question to be one that requires everyone’s voice is
learning about dignity and respect and learning to live with them. Such a child is
in a better position to understand what the principles I have been talking about
mean, when it becomes appropriate, as she grows older, for us to articulate
explicitly what she has already implicitly learned through such classroom
practices and at home.

What I have just said is, I suspect, likely to seem uncontroversial to many. But it
already raises problems in our multicultural society. Not every social group in
this country believes that children should be encouraged to speak up: some
Chinese–American families teach children that the proper behavior for them is
attentive silence in the presence of adults—and the teacher is an adult. Children
know nothing, after all; or, at least, nothing of importance. They are in class to
learn. From the perspective of certain ways of socializing children, the practices
I have just described look guaranteed to produce children who chatter and
expect to be listened to; children, in short, who are ill-mannered.13

Our liberal principles help us here, too. The raising of children is something in
which parents plainly have the central role. I have insisted that the state rightly
intervenes to protect the child’s growth to autonomy; if the sorts of practices I
have described are necessary for that purpose, they may be warranted by that
fact. But the parents do not lose their role because the state’s experts have a
good-faith disagreement with them about what is best for their children. And
because they are entitled to the treatment owed to persons with equal dignity,
the proper approach, if such procedures are necessary, (p.67) is to discuss with
the parents the ideas they represent and the theories that guide them.

We should go carefully in such encounters. I have already pointed out that the
centrality to liberalism of the idea of choices among options (and its correlative,
the reflective appropriation of identities) means that we have a strong reason for
encouraging the development of many richly socially embedded forms of identity
both within nations—multiculturalism—and across them—cosmopolitanism. If a
social group takes the attentive silence of its children as the proper and
necessary preparation for them to have well-mannered adult lives, then, if they
are right, that kind of childhood may be a condition for developing the adult
identity embodied in that social group. Because we value the maintenance of a
variety of such reflectively appropriated identities, we have a special reason to
be careful that we are right in thinking that practices in schools that appear to
threaten those identities are either not genuinely threatening, on the one hand,

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or, on the other, important enough that they warrant the reshaping of the
identities they will bring. We need, in particular, to be careful that we are not
simply being ethnocentric when we suppose, in our talkative modern Euro-
American way, that children’s talk really develops autonomy and respect for
autonomy, because it is how we have come to want to treat our children.

I do not think that my attraction to the practices I have described is mere
ethnocentrism: facility with language and its use in social life requires a lot of
practice; children who are talked to and reasoned with do better, on average, at
cognitive tasks that are broadly useful in modern life. But Chinese–Americans
have not been having a hard time preparing their children to perform well at the
cognitive tasks by which our schools measure their success and failure; and it is
not an unreasonable hypothesis that the capacity for careful attention and for
sustained intellectual work are connected with being able to sit quietly in the
presence of adults. I think it is important, therefore, that the practices I have
described place value on listening as well as on speaking: and that both of them
are consistent with, for example, insisting that children also learn to work
quietly together and alone.

At the other extreme from these very practice-based ideas, which have to do
with the form of our pedagogical practices, are concerns about the content of the
curriculum. How should a liberal state decide curricular controversy?

There are two major kinds of problems here. First, there are topics in which the
controversy is about what the truth is. Religious education is the obvious case
here; as is moral teaching on questions, (p.68) like abortion and homosexuality,
about which there is substantial (often religiously based) controversy. To these
issues I shall return.

But there are also questions about what weight to place in education on
different topics or different approaches. How much American history should
children in America know? Within that history, should the focus be on individuals
or on social processes; on America’s failures or her successes.

Such questions are extremely concrete. We can agree that Frederick Douglass
was a slave who brilliantly articulated an ideal of freedom: but we must also
accept that that ideal was expressed in terms that made masculinity—and the
freedom of men—more central than the freedom of women. Frederick Douglass
was by the standards of his day progressive on “the woman question.” But by
our standards there is something unacceptably masculinist in the central
opposition of his narrative between slavery and manhood—with its emblematic
moment in Douglass’s physical resistance to the slave-breaker Covey: “You have
seen how a man was made a slave,” Douglass writes; “you shall see how a slave
was made a man.” The question is, at what stage (if ever) do we teach the

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problem with Douglass. The issue is not what the facts are, but which ones to
focus on, which ones to play up.

My example here focuses on a figure who is much taught these days within the
framework of multicultural education; but this sort of question has often been
raised recently in resistance to multicultural education. Lynn Cheney objects to
a history curriculum that has too much of Harriet Tubman and not enough of
Thomas Jefferson. But she also objects to a curriculum whose discussion of
Thomas Jefferson focusses more on his betrayal of liberty—in his persistent
failure to emancipate his slaves—than on his place, as the author of the
Declaration of Independence, as liberty’s champion. No doubt a focus too lop-
sided shades off into simple untruth: but the real debates here are not about
what happened but about what narratives we will embed them in; they are about
which of the many true stories we will tell.

From the point of view of liberal political principle, these questions are relatively
easy. We need to prepare children with the truth and the capacity to acquire
more of it. Because they cannot absorb the whole truth, in all its complexity, all
at once, we must begin with simplified stories; sometimes, even, with what is
literally untrue. The obvious model where untruth prepares the way for truth is
physics: the easiest way, we think, to prepare children for Einstein and
Schrödinger is to teach them Newton and Maxwell first. But (p.69) Newton and
Maxwell did not know about relativity or about the indeterminacy of the
fundamental physical laws: and so their physics, which assumes absolute space
and the infinite divisibility of matter, is just not true. The teaching of history is
full of cases in which we can delve deeper as we grow older into stories we first
heard, in simplified versions, in first grade. It is because it is on the way to the
truth, or because it is the closest thing to the truth that, at a certain age, they
can understand, that these forms of what is, after all, strictly speaking,
misinformation, can be seen as aimed at helping children develop toward an
autonomy rooted in the best available understanding of the world. To say that
these questions of principle are easy to lay out is not to say that the decisions
about what to teach (let alone how and when to teach it) are easy to resolve in
practice: it is just to say that the disputes about which truths to teach are to be
settled by appeal to the notion of a preparation for an autonomous adulthood.

The hard cases for liberal principle, I think—with which I want to deal in closing
—are the ones in which the controversy is about what the truth is.

The greatest contemporary controversies about what truths should be taught
arise about claims that are, in one way or another, connected with powerful
collective identities. At the moment, for example, there is controversy about
what shall be taught about evolution, abortion, contraception, and
homosexuality; and, if the first amendment did not prohibit the teaching of
particular religions in public schools, there would certainly be controversy about

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that too. It is clear enough that the controversy about evolution flows from the
fact that neo- Darwinian accounts of the development of species in general—and
of the human species in particular—are at least prima facie inconsistent with the
account of human origins proposed in the Old Testament. Some people do not
want their children taught that “we are descended from apes” at least in part
because they want their children to be, for example, good Baptists; and being a
good Baptist requires, in their view, assent to the biblical account. But it seems
to me that the controversies about sex and sexuality also have the intensity they
do in part because American religious traditions have well-developed moral
ideas about the proper use of sex and the proper form of sexuality; and
conformity to these prescriptions is also seen as essential to being, say, a good
Catholic. And those, on the other side, who are themselves homosexual and have
come to celebrate a gay identity, are particularly outraged if it is proposed that
children should be taught that their sexuality makes them morally depraved.

(p.70) So far as the teaching of morality is concerned, all of us plainly have a
reason to want children to be taught what we take to be morally true, whether
or not we associate conformity to those norms and assent to those moral claims
as central to an identity we share. Kant’s stress on universalizability as the key
mark of the moral reflects the way that treating an assertion as a moral claim
entails believing that everyone should conform to it.14 We want our fellow
citizens to know what is morally required and what is morally forbidden because
we want them to do what they should and abstain from doing what they should
not. But it is noticeable that the greatest controversies surrounding what moral
ideas should be taught occur when people feel that their own children are being
taught things that are inconsistent with claims that are crucial marks of their
own collective identities; or when other people’s children are taught things that
challenge their own identities. I shall call a claim—whether moral or not—that is,
in this sort of way, implicated with a certain collective identity, an identity-
related claim.

The currency of controversy about the teaching of identity-related claims is not
particularly surprising in this age of what Charles Taylor has dubbed the
“politics of recognition.” The development, which I have already insisted on, of
the liberal idea of an identity, has meant that a great deal of politics—especially
nationalist and ethnic politics, but also, for example, a lesbian and gay politics
that is somewhat modeled on ethno-national politics—turns on the state’s
acknowledging a person’s identity and protecting each person’s ability to
flourish while publicly expressing that identity. Each of these state acts
recognizes an identity, conferring upon it a certain social respect. Martin Luther
King day expresses the state’s recognition of African-American identity;
antidiscrimination law allows people to express their religion, their ethnicity, and
their sexuality in public without the threat of loss of employment or access to
housing or assault. As Taylor insists, there is a widespread conviction (which
comes, as he also says) from the ethics of authenticity, that, other things being

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equal, we have the right to be acknowledged publicly as what we already really
are. Much debate about what shall be taught in the schools on the teaching of
identity-related claims is thus centrally concerned with insisting on the state’s
recognition of some identities (Christian, say) or its non-recognition of others
(lesbian and gay).

Now it will be immediately clear why the notion of raising children to autonomy
—with its corollary that we should equip them with the truths they need—does
not help much in deciding what should be taught about these particular
questions. It does not help (p.71) because there is substantial social
disagreement as to what the truth is; and such disagreements, we can predict,
will not be settled by the appointment of commissions of experts to resolve them,
in the cases where the claims in dispute are identity related. In the case of moral
claims, this is because most modern people do not recognize the exist-ence of
experts—perhaps because moral autonomy requires that each of us makes up
her own mind about these questions. In the case of the dispute about evolution,
it is claimed by some that they are simply operating by different epistemic
standards: the authority of the Bible is not, for them, something that could be
overridden by other (scientific) sources of evidence.

The constraints of truth do some work, however. Some of the theses of “creation
science” (those, in particular, that are not themselves directly biblically derived)
might be shown to be false by standards everyone agrees on; and some of the
claims made about homosexuality by its enemies—claims about the
“recruitment” of children to homosexuality—are completely without serious
evidential foundation.

Nevertheless, this does not get us very far. And the question arises: how we can
develop, on the sorts of liberal principles I have been articulating, a policy for
public education in the cases where the dispute about the facts remains
unresolved?

You might think the answer should be to stress the democracy in liberal
democracy. Let us have public debate among equals and then vote for what
should be taught. This seems to me how we must decide these questions, in one
sense. But among the options in that public debate will be one that says that on
some topics we may require the state to step back and leave the matter to the
parents. It is not the case that the only option is to teach what the majority
believes to be true. I should like to defend that option in cases where identity-
related beliefs are in dispute.

We must begin by recognizing that the role parents play in the raising of
children gives them rights in respect of the shaping of their children’s identities
that are a necessary corollary of parental obligations. We do not believe that
social reproduction should be carried out as it is in Brave New World. We believe

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that children should be raised primarily in families and that those families
should be able to shape their children into the culture, identity, and traditions
that the adult members of the family take as their own. One liberal reason for
believing this is that this is one way to guarantee the rich plurality of identities
whose availability is, as I have said, one of the resources for self-construction.

There are imaginable other ways. If the state took over the raising of children
and did not aim to raise them all to a singular identity, (p.72) it would have to
assign children, effectively arbitrarily, to one of a range of identities. Once the
state had taken over this role, respect for autonomy would require it to teach
only such truths as it could decide on; teaching children falsehoods in order to
give them “interesting” identities would be a paradigm of treating them as
means (to the maintenance of a rich range of identities) rather than as ends. The
resources for self-construction available would depend solely on the imagination
and the will of the state and its servants, along with whatever “spontaneous”
inventions would occur among the adults in such a society. Skepticism about this
alternative, however, is surely in order. The intimacy of family life; the love of
children for parents (and other relatives) and parents (and other relatives) for
children; the sense of a family identity, family traditions: all these would be lost.
More than this, the state would be invested with quite an enorm-ous power in
the shaping of the citizenry; a power whose potential for abuse is obvious
enough.

But once we have left the raising of children to families, we are bound to
acknowledge that parental love includes the desire to shape children into
identities one cares about, and to teach them identity-related values, in
particular, along with the other ethical truths that the child will need to live her
life well. A state that actively undermined parental choices in this regard in the
name of the child’s future autonomy would be a state constantly at odds with the
parents: and that would be unlikely to be good for the children. A compromise is
therefore necessary: where identity-related propositions are at stake, parents
are permitted to insist that their children not be taught what is contrary to their
beliefs; and, in return, the state will be able to insist that the children be told
what other citizens believe, in the name of a desire for the sort of mutual
knowledge across identities that is a condition for living productively together.

Thus, it seems reasonable to teach children about the range of religious
traditions in the communities within which they live (indeed, in the world),
without requiring them to assent to any of them, so that, to begin with, at least,
they will assent only to the religion they have learned at home. This allows the
children the knowledge to make identity choices as they themselves grow to
autonomy; but it gives parents a special, primary place in shaping those choices.
Only when a parent’s choice seems to compromise the possibility of an

LIBERAL EDUCATION: THE UNITED STATES EXAMPLE

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autonomous adulthood—as would be the case with a refusal, on religious
grounds, to allow one’s children to learn to read—must the liberal state step in.

I have tried to suggest how one might begin to think about some questions in the
philosophy of education, guided by the liberal (p.73) thought that education is
a preparation for autonomy. My aim has been to show that this tradition is both
powerful enough to help us with this difficult question and rich enough to allow
us answers of some complexity. But these are only beginning ideas: and a liberal,
who respects his fellow citizens, will offer them into the public debate expecting
to learn from others where he is wrong.

Notes:

(1.) For better or worse, however, Kant’s understanding of autonomy was more
universalizing and rationalist than the understanding most people now have of
it; it will not be a Kantian view that I sketch here.

(2.) David Wootton (ed.), Essay Concerning Toleration in Political Writings of
John Locke (New York: NAL/Dutton, 1993), 188.

(3.) Ibid., 189.

(4.) Ibid., 197.

(5.) One reason for this is that what makes sense for me depends, very often, on
the choices of others: if everyone ceased to care about film, the movie-making
career I have set my heart on is going to cease to make sense.

(6.) I mean here to include, of course, the right to basic welfare and the child’s
right to an education to autonomy, which I discuss below.

(7.) There are issues here that are quite complex. My thought is that, if a state
cannot afford to provide the most extensive health care provision that is
currently technologically possible, then, in rationing access to health care (or in
charging for health care beyond what is available free to all), it may take into
account whether the sufferers knowingly accepted the risk of the disease.

(8.) See my “Cosmopolitan Patriotism,” Critical Inquiry 23 (Spring 1997) pp.
617–39.

(9.) I mean it is natural to us only in the sense that a normal human upbringing
produces creatures with such desires.

(10.) The broad sense “cover[s] not only the words we speak, but also other
modes of expression whereby we define ourselves, including the ‘languages’ of
art, of gesture, of love, and the like.” in Multiculturalism: Examining “The
Politics of Recognition.” An essay by Charles Taylor, with commentary by Amy
Gutmann (ed.), K. Anthony Appiah, Jürgen Habermas, Steven C. Rockefeller,

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Access brought to you by:

Michael Walzer, Susan Wolf (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994),
32.

(11.) See my “Identity, Authenticity, Survival: Multicultural Societies and Social
Reproduction” in Multiculturalism: Ibid., 149–64.

(12.) I am conscious of having come to these ideas in conversation with school
and college teachers over the last few years, and in reading about education,
without being clear as to where exactly they came from. So, either I made them
up (which strikes me as unlikely) or I got them from someone, though I have
forgotten when and from whom. If the latter is the right hypothesis, I apologize
to my source: come forward and I will be happy to acknowledge you.

(13.) I am especially conscious of the dependence of what I say here on a
discussion with the “Pentimento” group.

(14.) In recent years, Bernard Williams has argued that there are ethical norms,
central to the ways in which we construct our lives that do not belong to the
universalizing institution of morality; see Bernard Williams, Ethics and the
Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985). So, if he is
right, not every important ethical conviction will share this universalizing logic
of moral belief.

Interrogating institutionalized establishments: urban–rural
inequalities in China’s higher

education

Mei Li • Rui Yang

Received: 8 June 2012 / Revised: 22 March 2013 / Accepted: 13 April 2013 / Published online: 23 April 2013

� Education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 2013

Abstract China’s urban–rural disparities are a funda-

mental source of China’s overall educational inequalities.

This article addresses the issue with data collected through

interviews with members at various Chinese higher edu-

cation institutions. It interrogates China’s current policies

together with the socio-political institutional arrangements

that underlie them and assesses the effectiveness of exist-

ing schemes to support higher education students. Based on

China’s experience, it challenges market transition theory’s

claim and debates the classical economic theory which

postulates that expansion of education will reduce

inequality. Believing that the educational gap is only part

of China’s urban–rural disparities, of which many resulted

from social institutional arrangements, it calls for changes

to established institutions and a reconsideration of the role

of private financing mainly through tuition fees.

Keywords Urban–rural disparities � Educational
inequality � China � Higher education

Introduction

Since the economic reform started, two major changes in

China’s higher education system have been enrollment

expansion and tuition hike. While increased opportunities

for higher education have raised the benefits for those who

attend colleges and universities, an increasing financial

burden of tuition fees has greatly hindered higher education

for some college-/university-worthy youth. There has been

recent outcry over growing disparities in higher educa-

tional equality, especially between urban and rural areas.

Higher education attainment closely relates to earlier

access to publicly and privately supported education at

lower levels as well as to the capacity of borrowing money

to pay direct and indirect higher education costs. Equity

challenges in China’s higher education finance need to be

addressed urgently, as sustaining China’s rapid economic

growth in the future depends in large part on the quantity

and quality of its human resources.

Educational inequalities are manifested in various forms

in China. Yet, urban–rural disparities are a fundamental

source of China’s overall educational inequalities (Qian and

Smyth 2008). Discussions tend to be confined to the matters

at issue without much theoretical orientation, although

Rawls’ (1971) principles of equality of opportunity are

frequently cited. Focusing on urban–rural disparities, this

article examines such a gap in the literature by interrogating

China’s current policies together with the socio-political

institutional arrangements that underlie them. Based on

national and institutional statistics and Chinese and English

literature, it investigates the extent and trend of China’s

higher education inequalities, with critical discussions on

the concentration of wealth in urban centers and the impacts

of this on higher education provision. It incorporates

empirical data collected through interviews with academic

and administrative staff at Chinese higher education insti-

tutions of various types: Shanghai Jiaotong University

(hereafter SJU, one of China’s oldest and most prestigious

national flagship universities in Shanghai), Anhui Medical

M. Li (&)
Institute of Higher Education, School of Educational Science,

East China Normal University, No. 3663 North Zhongshan

Road, Shanghai 200062,

People’s Republic of China

e-mail: limeiwang@yahoo.com

R. Yang

Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong,

People’s Republic of China

e-mail: yangrui@hkucc.hku.hk

123

Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. (2013) 14:315–323

DOI 10.1007/s12564-013-9262-0

University (hereafter AMU, located in the capital city of

less developed Anhui province), and Maanshan Teacher’s

College (hereafter MTC, a 3-year tertiary institution at a

medium-size city in Anhui). These institutions were selec-

ted because they belong to different categories of research

universities, provincial higher institutions, and regional

junior colleges, respectively, representing the larger sce-

nario of China’s higher education system. They were

accessible to the researchers during their fieldwork.

Both focus group interviews and individual semi-struc-

tured interviews were conducted during June–July 2010 to

elicit views from academic and administrative staff on

urban–rural (in)equities in higher education. In each insti-

tution, seven to eight staff were interviewed, including two

administrators at the institution level in charge of student

affairs and finance, one to two managers at the school/

faculty level in charge of student affairs and recruitment

and four academic staffs. Therefore, there were three focus

group sessions in every case institution.

This article first reviews the social and policy contexts

to investigate the status of disparities with China’s recent

major institutional reforms. It then assesses the effective-

ness of existing schemes to support higher education stu-

dents. Through some critical analyses of the underlying

values of and responses to China’s longstanding urban-

biased policies, it critiques the priorities unfairly given to

urban populations by Chinese public policy-makers.

Locating China’s current practices into historical, social,

and policy contexts, it argues that Chinese contemporary

policies are becoming increasingly inappropriate in a

transition from redistributive to market economy.

Social and policy contexts

China’s current educational disparities are resulted from its

long-term policy options. When the communist republic

was founded in 1949, its new democratic education policy

was in principle for the masses, representing the funda-

mental values of education equity. Yet, as a country with

poor financial conditions and a huge population, educa-

tional development was not only confined to the political

system and ideologies, but also hindered by its socio-eco-

nomic development level and ready resources. Under the

guidance of the new political ideologies, with aims at fast

industrialization, China was confronted with a number of

dilemmas and had to make hard policy choices.

Elite education versus mass education

Education for the broad masses was the basis for China’s

policy-making in the early 1950s. In addition to the

expansion of working people’s educational rights, another

urgent task of the new republic was to train professionals

badly needed for economic development and national

defense (People’s Daily 1950). The dilemma faced by

education was vacillation between equity and efficiency, a

matter of mass or elite education, with implications for

educational policy-making to decide the priority between

basic and higher education. During the 1950s and 1960s,

China’s actual policy opted to elite education. National

investment concentrated on higher education. Distribution

of institutions and disciplinary structure were heavily

imbalanced with particular emphases on major capital cities

and science and technology subjects. A number of institu-

tions were selected by the government to invest focally,

designated as key-point institutions under the jurisdiction of

the Ministry of Education or other ministries.

The most obvious advantage of such a policy option was

to provide strong intellectual and personnel support for

industrialization and national defense. Its major problem

was the imbalanced distribution of educational resources,

causing longstanding ignorance of basic education, dam-

ages to the majority people’s educational rights, and a huge

educational gap between urban and rural areas. The allo-

cation of educational resources was based entirely on

national development goals that prioritized fast industrial-

ization (People’s Daily 1952), with little consideration of

local needs, causing regional disparities. Few national key

institutions were in Central and Western regions. The

monopoly of educational resources by and the limited

financial capacity of the central government determined the

unfortunate combination of stress on higher education and

weak rural education.

Mao Zedong’s ‘‘educational revolutions’’

During the initial days of the republic, the broad masses

were endowed with educational rights directly by political

revolution. Popularization of education was idealistically

expected to rapidly change the educational outlook of

Chinese workers and peasants, an emphasis on basic edu-

cation for the majority people that immediately con-

tradicted with the goal to train specialists to develop heavy

industry. As the leaning to the Soviet Union went further,

the Soviet model of planned economy and a highly cen-

tralized higher education system were established.

Mao Zedong, however, opposed the overwhelming

dominance by Soviet-style education and initiated ‘‘edu-

cational revolutions’’ in the 1960s, based on his educational

ideals and values. With his main attention to the educa-

tional rights of working people’s children especially in

rural areas, he tried to achieve these goals through

smashing up examinations, shortening length of schooling,

relaxing the limits for university entry, and devolving

administrative power to lower levels of government to

316 M. Li, R. Yang

123

utilize multiple sources and methods to develop education.

The actual effect was a great damage to the majority

people’s educational rights. His personal obsession with

family origin led to wide-ranging deprivation of non-

working class people’s educational rights and created

injustice of other sorts.

Dengist discriminatory xianfu theory

China’s rapid expansion of inequality is directly resulted

from the economic reforms since 1978. With the reforms,

economy was redirected to the market, and its opening was

limited to specific areas, such as special economic zones in

coastal regions. Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour Lectures

in 1992 gave further impetus to the transition from redis-

tributive, egalitarian to market-based, meritocratic system

(Hannum 1999), leading to substantial changes in the

income inequality structure. The reforms prioritized mac-

roeconomic growth, even if it sacrificed equality of income

distribution and opportunities, as illustrated by Dengist

xianfu theory, which states, ‘‘Allow some people and areas

to get rich first.’’ Such discriminatory treatment justifies

income disparity, embraces the penetration of the market

mechanism into the Chinese economy, and accelerates

income gap between urban and rural areas. The xianfu

theory encourages marketization (Okushima and Uchimura

2005) and treats urban and rural areas unevenly.

A cost-sharing financing mechanism

Until the late 1990s, China’s public spending on higher

education was high by international comparison. Govern-

ment allocation per student was generous until the mid-

1990s. During the past years, the government has imple-

mented a series of reforms to reach a financing mechanism

where higher education cost is shared between central,

regional, and local governments, as well as with society

and individual students. Public spending per student has

been decreasing while educational costs per student have

increased substantially. Public funding of higher education

accounted for 29 % in 1984 and 19 % in 1994 of total

public education expenditures (World Bank 1997). Gov-

ernment subsidies declined as a share of total financing

from 64.6 % in 1990 to 53.1 % in 1998. The share of

financing contributed by tuition fee rose from 15.06 % in

1996 to 29.29 % in 2003 (Du 2007).

Policies of marketization, decentralization, and privati-

zation since the 1980s have significant equity implications

and increase inequalities in access across regions, espe-

cially as the poor regions have reduced capacity to finance

education at all levels. The private cost of higher education

is substantial. The average cost per student to study and

live on campus for an academic year far exceeds the

average family annual income of the country. In 2004,

higher education tuition fees grew to 5,000 RMB, accom-

modation costs increased to 1,000–1,200 RMB, a student’s

living costs rose to 4,000–5,000 RMB, making the total

expense of university study around 40,000–50,000 RMB,

which amounted to 4.2 and 13.6 years net income for an

urban dweller and a rural resident, respectively (Guo

2010).

Manifestations of inequalities in China’s higher

education

Inequalities in China’s higher education remain structural,

reflected in various dimensions of China’s higher education

system (Li 2011; Wang 2011) and caused by a number of

factors (Wang 2010; Liu et al. 2012).They are manifested

strikingly between urban and rural areas in terms of

access

to higher education. Recent changes in public financing and

increasing reliance on tuition fees further reinforce this

trend. Urban students are over represented in higher edu-

cation while their share in the population is the opposite.

With better-educated parents in high-skilled occupations

and better family economic situation, they are more heavily

weighted to the upper social strata than their rural coun-

terparts. Students from better-off urban families are well

prepared to enter high-quality public universities which are

also the cheapest, while much disadvantaged rural students

are more likely to attend poor-quality second-tier or private

institutions which charge high fees.

Opportunities for receiving higher education

China’s urban–rural inequalities in higher education are

directly resulted from its urban–rural dual social structure,

a political institutional arrangement built on an unfair

household registration (hukou) system. They are also an

accumulative result of those in primary and secondary

schools. For decades, higher education opportunities

remain highly controlled by the central government, and

their distribution has been extremely imbalanced. The

planned enrollment figures of higher education institutions

are distributed with privileges given to major centers such

as Beijing and Shanghai nationally and to the capital cities

within provinces (Zhang and Kanbur 2003).

The admission system of higher institutions remains

centrally planned and segmented based on the administra-

tive and geographic unit of provinces/municipalities. Each

institution is designated a quota of students by the central

government. The nationwide admission system is divided

by province/municipality, with a quota unevenly distrib-

uted to each province/municipality. In 2004, for instance,

provincial enrollments reached 26.82, 51.94, 67.29, 53.85,

Interrogating institutional 317

123

20.81, 20.81, and 39.12 % at Peking, Fudan, Zhongshan,

Wuhan, Central South, and Sichuan Universities, respec-

tively (Wang 2011).
1

Research repeatedly confirms the negative impacts of

reforms on educational opportunities for rural population in

China (Hannum 1999; Tsang 1994). While the disparities

are widely acknowledged, the actual situation has been

described differently. A large-scale study, undertaken

jointly by the World Bank and the Ministry of Education in

1998, surveyed 70,000 students enrolled in 1994 and 1997

in 37 universities at various levels (Zhang 2004). It showed

that on average, the difference of educational opportunities

between urban and rural areas was 5.8 times nationwide,

with 8.8 and 3.4 times, respectively, in national key and

provincial universities. This was bigger than the income

disparity of 2.8 times. Fan’s (2008) research shows the

urban–rural access opportunity differences in various

higher education institutions after the expansion of

enrollment (see Table 1 below).

Zhang and Liu (2005) reveal an inverted pyramid shape

of the disparities among different social strata in Chinese

higher education, based on the data of the undergraduate

students in the 1990s collected from Peking and Tsinghua

Universities shown in Table 2 below. They found that the

more prestigious the institutions are, the lower percentage

of rural students is. The trend continued until the mid-

2000s, as shown in Fig. 1.

As family financial situation becomes increasingly

important in determining young people’s access to higher

education, the number of students from rural background

decreases in both the peak and the bottom of the hierarchy

of Chinese higher education institutions, as shown by

Tables 3 and 4 below:

This trend was also frequently confirmed by our

respondents. Interview-1 from SJU pointed out that about

20–30 % of our students were from countryside. Interview-

3 from the same institution further explained that more than

half of their students were from Shanghai.

The situation is different in provincial institutions. Both

the other selected case study institutions have a high pro-

portion of rural students. Interview-1 from AMU pointed

out that the regional university had the bulk of its students

from rural, workers, and peasants families. This was con-

firmed by Interview-3 based at MTC where ‘‘most students

are from rural, less developed areas.’’

A closer scrutiny of the situations shows some inter-

esting changes to the proportion of rural students in relation

to their peers from urban family background: While AMU

has managed to maintained its high percentage of rural

students (see Table 3), the proportion of rural students at

MTC has substantially dropped from 60 % in 1995 to 30 %

in 2010, as shown by Table 4.

Enrolled students from poor rural families

The issue of university students from impoverished rural

areas began to catch people’s attention since 1997 when

Chinese universities began to charge students tuition and

accommodation fees. Rising tuition fees have substantially

increased the difficulties of poor rural families in sending

their children to universities. The total private cost of one

student for a year in university during 2000–2001 exceeded

an urban resident’s annual income and was 4 times that of a

rural dweller. In 2006, undergraduate programs in science

and liberal arts in independent colleges charged 12,217 and

12,034 RMB, respectively, and 11,100 and 10,500 RMB in

private institutions, doubled those by the nation’s most

prestigious institutions (Zang and Shen 2010).

For those already enrolled, it is extremely difficult to

complete their university education. According to a survey

conducted by China Youth Development Foundation in

2006, about 26 % (4.05 million) of the total national

enrollment of 15.61 million by August 2005 were from

families with financial difficulties. The average amount

needed for a student’s basic living was around 6,780 RMB

while the average income of their families was 4,756 RMB

(Zhang 2008).

The Chinese governments at various levels and higher

education institutions have worked together to have some

policies on stage. However, within a globalized context of

corporate culture in higher education worldwide, ‘‘effi-

ciency’’ has been given the highest priority in China (Yang

2004). Such a policy orientation seems to be justified when

Table 1 Urban–rural access opportunity differences in various
higher education institutions after the expansion of enrollment, 2004

University type Urban-rural access

opportunity rate

Project 985 institution
a

2.42

Public key institution 1.85

Public ordinary institution 1.41

Public specialist institution 1.56

Private institution 3.85

Private specialist institution 2.76

Independent institution 4.97

Source Fan (2008). Cited from Wang (2011)
a

Project 985 institutions refer to the first tier public universities, and

project 985 is a Chinese government policy launched in May of 1998

at the centennial anniversary of Peking University

1
The striking differences of percentages of local students between

Peking and Fudan are mainly due to China’s unbalanced distribution

of national flagship universities. Although Shanghai is the nation’s

financial center, its concentration of higher education resources is far

behind Beijing. Beijing hosts 8 ‘‘985’’ and 26 ‘‘211’’ universities,

while Shanghai has only 4 and 9, respectively.

318 M. Li, R. Yang

123

the central authority decides to hand responsibility to other

tiers and new actors, especially individual institutions and

local governments (Bray and Borevskaya 2001).

It is worthwhile mentioning that in the tough competi-

tion with their peers of urban family background, rural

students remain disadvantaged throughout their entire

education including their employment at graduation, as

illustrated by Interview-6 from AMU, ‘‘Most students from

countryside have much more limited chance to compete

with their fellow students from cities to find employment at

graduation because they do not have the same social and

family connections in cities.’’

Existing schemes to support higher education students

According to the Higher Education Law brought into effect

in January 1999 (Standing Committee of the People’s Con-

gress 1998), students from families with financial difficulties

may apply for subsidies or reduction in or exemption from

tuition fees (Article 54). The state establishes scholarships

and encourages higher education institutions, enterprises,

organizations, and individuals to establish scholarships in a

variety of ways in accordance with relevant regulations to

award students of good character and academic performance

(Article 55). A range of financial assistance measures have

been introduced nationwide.

The loans system was piloted in 1996 and fully imple-

mented in 1999, 2 years after the official unitary tuition

charge. Endorsed by the State Council, the Ministry of

Education, the Ministry of Finance, and the People’s Bank

of China launched loan programs. A total of 700 million

RMB were set aside to help cash-poor students in 136

institutions, but only in urban centers including Beijing,

Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Wuhan, Shenyang, Xi’an,

Table 2 Percentages of rural students of total undergraduates at Peking and Tsinghua Universities, 1990–1999

Years Peking University Tsinghua University

Total enrollments Rural students Percentages (%) Total enrollments Rural students Percentages

(%)

1990 – – – 1994 433 21.7

1991 – – 18.8 2,031 385 19.0

1992 1,810 403 22.3 2,080 381 18.3

1993 910 168 18.5 2,210 352 15.9

1994 – – 20.1 2,203 407 18.5

1995 2,089 436 20.9 2,241 451 20.1

1996 2,164 425 19.6 2,298 431 18.8

1997 2,211 420 19.0 2,320 452 19.5

1998 2,240 415 18.5 2,462 510 20.7

1999 2,425 396 16.3 2,663 506 19.0

Source Zhang and Liu (2005)

Fig. 1 Ratio of new students by household registration in Peking
University, 2000–2005, Source: Liu et al. (2012)

Table 3 Urban and rural undergraduate students at Anhui Medical
University

Years Urban students Rural students

Enrollment

number

Percentages

(%)
Enrollment
number
Percentages
(%)

2000 2,871 54.98 2,351 45.02

2005 5,507 60.46 3,601 39.54

2006 5,856 59.52 3,983 40.48

2007 6,447 58.26 4,618 41.74

2008 7,006 57.12 5,259 42.88

2009 7,582 55.48 6,083 44.52

Source Based on on-site collected information in July

2010

Interrogating institutional 319

123

and Nanjing. They were expanded to more areas over the

next few years, targeting students from poor families and in

rural areas. Loan recipients were required to repay loans

with discounted interest within 4 years of graduation,

though the loan system offers students a 50 % discount on

interest. The amounts vary depending on the levels of

tuition fees charged by different institutions and regions,

with a maximum of 8,000 RMB for one student a year.

Implementation of student loan programs only started in

early 2000. By March, the loans taken had only absorbed

1.3 % of the 700 million RMB budgeted for the program,

and only 0.2 % of the total students with serious financial

difficulties received loans (Huang 2005). Actual start of

student loan programs and their detailed regulations dif-

fered among regions. In relatively less affluent areas, local

governments launched their student loan programs after

2001. The maximum amount of a student loan was reduced

to around 6,000 RMB per academic year, with an eligibility

quota of less than 20 % of student population.

Traditionally, Chinese people are reluctant to have debts

(Johnstone et al. 1998). While such values are still visible

as some students’ families try to avoid borrowing as long

as they can manage, a recent change in students’ attitude

toward debt is evident: They no longer think that ‘‘taking

loan is embarrassing’’ and exhibit confidence in their

ability to repay loans in the future. Huang’s (2005) study of

the Southwest Region showed that loan programs had

reached 32 % of the students and covered less than 50 % of

the costs of those students.

There have been problems with the implementation of

loan schemes because of the high default rate. Owing to high

subsidy element of the loans and the resulting low profit for

providers, the loans are poorly managed. Furthermore, banks

in Beijing and Guangzhou reported that at least 10 % and

38 % university graduates, respectively, were in arrears with

their payment (Du and Mao 2003). In 2004, a new system of

student loans was initiated to guarantee the continuation of

student loans. The government subsidizes the interest before

the student’s graduation from university. Students pay back

the loans within 6 years after graduation, but there is no

threshold for repaying. To mitigate the risk of bad payment to

the bank, the government and university jointly set up a risk

compensation fund for the bank, approximately 6 % of the

contract value. Government and university pay 50 % of the

compensation fund, respectively, to the contract bank. In

July 2006, the Ministry of Education and the Bank of China

finalized the financial arrangements between government,

university, and bank (Sun and Barrientos 2009).

China’s existing loan schemes are often criticized for the

small proportion of students they have covered and for

their low level of support (Huang 2005; Sun and Barrientos

2009). In 2008, enrollment in China’s regular higher edu-

cation institutions totaled 20.1 million. Among them, 4.74

million were from low-income families. Only 0.67 million

were able to receive loans (Cui 2012). Zang and Shen

(2010) reported only less than 10 % students were on

loans. Due to the lack of social trust and effective penalties

for dodging creditors, compensation for costs and risks for

banks cannot be guaranteed. There have been difficult

discussions and negotiations between higher education

institutions and banks. Moreover, loan schemes favor the

enrollments in public regular higher institutions. They are

less accessible for those students in private institutions and

independent colleges.

Another major part of the support system is scholarship

schemes established for all undergraduate candidates in

1986–1987 and later extended to postgraduate candidates

in 1991. Compared with loan programs, the impact of

scholarships is more limited especially for rural students.

This is due to the number and amount of available schol-

arships which reach only to a small number of best aca-

demic performers. Introduced in May 2002, the National

Scholarship Scheme targets 45,000 students annually and

provides up to 6,000 RMB per year per student, with

academic merit rather than family financial difficulties as

its foremost criterion. Scholarships are more a subsidy than

a grant, often beyond the reach of many in bad need of

support.

Table 4 Urban and rural
students enrolled at Maanshan

Teacher’s College

Source Based on on-site

collected information in July

2010
Years Urban students Rural students

Enrollment number Percentages (%) Enrollment number Percentages (%)

1995 274 40 411 60

2000 262 52.09 241 47.91

2005 2,177 59.99 1,452 40.01

2006 2,962 60 1,975 40

2007 3,402 60 2,268 40

2008 4,259 70 1,825 30

2009 4,546 70 1,948 30

2010 4,510 70 1,933 30

320 M. Li, R. Yang

123

Findings from fieldwork

Our data show that while expansion has overall created more

opportunities for some students to receive higher education,

China’s contemporary higher education policies are based on

established institutional arrangements and have led to some

further inequalities between jurisdictions and urban–rural

areas. Tuition fees are causing great financial burden to many

rural students, despite that loans and scholarships amend

urban–rural inequality to a limited extent. The following

serves as a summary of major findings:

Impact of expansion on higher education access

While it is generally more difficult for rural students to

enter universities, some students have successfully man-

aged to get there. As remarked first by SJU Interview-1,

‘‘Our annual undergraduate admission is around 4,000.

About 20–30 % is from rural poor families. While one can

question the percentage as still a minority, we believe this

is quite substantial already.’’ This was confirmed by AMU

Interview-2: ‘‘Access to higher education for rural students

has been considerably increased after the expansion.’’

Impact of admission policies on higher education

access

Equality has generally been better achieved in undergrad-

uate admissions based mainly on scores of the national

entrance examination. However, some question the justice

of the examination, especially because there have been

regional variations and disparities. For instance, students in

Jiangsu and Zhejiang tend to score much more highly than

their peers in other provinces. Meanwhile, students in

major cities such as Tianjin and Shanghai can get into

universities with much lower entry scores. As commented

by SJU Interview-7 in a defensive way, ‘‘These (local,

enrolled with lower entry scores) students have their own

strengths such as better English proficiency and a higher

level of all-round development.’’

In contrast, AMU Interview-2 complained that ‘‘It is true

that equality in higher education remains a tough issue.

Within a national context of expansion, different situations

are in different areas. In our province, if one scores over

500 in the national entrance examination, she/he can never

enter the good universities in Beijing or Shanghai. She/he

can only choose low-tier institutions instead.’’

Impact of tuition fees on aspiration of rural students

to higher education

With the great difficulty in receiving high-quality tertiary

education, there has been wide-spread common practice in

rural areas that tertiary studies are useless, as explained by

SJU Interview-7: ‘‘There is a huge imbalance between

investment and return. If young rural people cannot get

admitted into good universities, they would rather give up

higher education and travel to cities to find jobs. Otherwise,

it would be difficult for them to get satisfactory return from

the education they receive from low-tier institutions.’’

Interview-2 from AMU echoed this judgment with more

positive view about China’s financial support system:

‘‘Tuition fees have little impact on those from middle-class

or above, but more on the very poor. However, with the

(financial) support policy, things are getting much better.’’

Effect of loans and scholarships on higher education

chances for rural students

Although students’ opportunities to secure their scholarships

and other forms of financial assistance vary, such schemes

have enhanced higher education chances for some rural stu-

dents. The positive signs of China’s existing support schemes

are well acknowledged first by SJU Interview-1: ‘‘In our

University, those eligible for financial assistance never have

problems in getting them;’’ then echoed by AMU Interview-3:

‘‘Due to the financial support measures such as student loans,

scholarships, aids and grants, and part-time work arrange-

ments on campus, all students enrolled in this university could

manage to pay their tuition fees;’’ and further confirmed by

MTC Interview-1: ‘‘Loan schemes are very helpful to support

our rural students and those who are from poor families.’’

The situation varies from institution to institution.

Financial issues are generally much less serious for those

admitted into the most prestigious universities, as SJU

Interview-1siad, ‘‘Due to our status, we promise our stu-

dents their educational opportunity wouldn’t be affected by

tuition charges.’’ The same view was expressed by Shang-

hai Jiaotong Interviews 2–7 who further pointed out that

inequalities are not a serious issue there as the institution

provides every student with sufficient financial support.

It is not surprising that our two other case study insti-

tutions are in very different situations. AMU Interview-2

said that ‘‘Scholarship opportunities are too limited. Insti-

tutions like us are very different from those major ones in

Beijing and Shanghai. Most of our students are from rural

background. We don’t have enough scholarships to meet

their need.’’ Institutions at the bottom of the Chinese sys-

tem are in an even more different situation, with much

heavier reliance on financial assistance.

Concluding remarks

In China’s long history, higher education belonged to high

class. Birth origin determined an individual’s social status.

Interrogating institutional 321

123

After a variety of radical actions taken by the communist

government to fight against such traditions for decades,

today’s Chinese higher education has once again become

an institution of social stratification. Mao’s attempt to

fashion a mass-based educational system catering to the

needs of the peasantry is being transformed into a triumph

of middle-class ideology (Kelly and Liu 1998). The

expansion of education in China has not reduced inequality

(Hannum and Xie 1998) and has thus failed to contribute to

income equality. Our study challenges the claim by market

transition theory that market will replace state redistribu-

tion as the primary allocative mechanism of resources (Nee

and Metthews 1996). It also debates the classical economic

theory which postulates that expansion of education will

reduce inequality by increasing the supply of skilled

workforce (Kuznets 1955; Gottschalk and Smeeding 1997).

The educational gap between urban and rural segments

reflects both the widespread disparity in the level of eco-

nomic development and the longstanding historical and

socio-cultural differences between cities and countryside.

Students from rural areas face strong structural inequality

in educational opportunity (Postiglione 2006). It is insti-

tutionally legitimized and further enhanced as reforms go

on. As part of China’s urban–rural disparities, it is resulted

especially from the longstanding dual structure featured by

the great divide between cities and countryside and inher-

ited from the planned system.

This study has evident implications for China’s future

reform policies for marketization and privatization. The

growing educational inequality especially at the upper level

of schooling will fuel greater earnings inequality between

urban and rural communities. The government has just

started to tackle this only because it sees the possible grave

consequences of political instability (UNDP 2005). How-

ever, how successful its response could be remains highly

doubtful as this is not only a challenge to its imagination and

administrative skills, but a challenge to the power of many of

those within the system. It calls for a reconsideration of the

role of private financing mainly through tuition fees.

Our discussion of China’s experience sheds light on the

practices in some other Asian societies with similar issues

of shortage of educational opportunities for rural popula-

tion and imperfection of institutional development in the

process of marketization. For such societies, there is an

urgent need for changes to established institutions.

Researchers are duty-bound to alert policy-makers to the

existence of widespread educational discrimination against

rural people. This becomes an arduous and pressing task in

a context of globalization, something always used by

governments to legitimize their emphasis on economic

growth over the development of new social relations,

including more equal distribution of goods and services

and educational opportunities.

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Interrogating institutional 323

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Should Muslim headscarves be banned in
French schools?
d i anne g e re luk
Roehampton University, UK

ab st rac t

The recent ban of ‘conspicuous’ religious symbols in French state schools has
received international attention, especially the uncertainty of whether Muslims
will comply with the ban. The issue, however, raises a number of philosophical
dilemmas regarding toleration in a liberal democracy, the notion of a ‘neutral’
public space in state schools and the protection of girls’ rights in traditional
communities. I examine each issue accordingly and argue that the French state is
unjustified in banning religious symbols.

keyword s autonomy, individual rights, neutrality, pluralism, religion,
toleration

i nt roduc t i on

Th e re c e nt F re nc h government’s ban of all conspicuous religious
symbols in French state schools has refuelled a contentious debate about
religion and its place in schools. The justification for the ban is the claim that
there should be a strict separation between church and state, known in French
as laïcité. The legislation applies to the restriction of all religious symbols in
the public sector. This article focuses on the ramifications it has on children
and schools, and in particular, the issue of Muslim headscarves (the hijab).
While the legislation has similar ramifications for other faiths, national and
international debate has centred on the Islamic faith.

Defenders of the ban claim the following: France has historically had a strict
separation of church and state, briefly following the French Revolution, and
subsequently reflected in legislation in 1905. In recent years this legislation has
been applied when a number of Muslim girls were expelled for wearing the

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hijab in 1989 and during various periods in the 1990s. Defenders point to a
policy of neutrality inside the boundaries of the school. The protection of
individual rights plays out in the context of Muslim practices. Muslim girls
may be vulnerable as members of a hierarchical tradition and may thus
warrant certain protection, provided by the state, to ensure their capacity to
become free and equal persons. Some initial surveys indicate that close to 50
per cent of Muslim women are in favour of the prohibition, which raises
suspicion that at least some Muslim women may see the state as an ally in
their pursuit of gender equality (Economist, 2004).

However, reservations about the legislation abound. The implementation of
laïcité is often applied in the prohibition of schools providing religious instruc-
tion. Historically, laïcité did not apply to individuals wearing religious symbols
to schools. Only in 1937 was a law put in place that prohibited the wearing
of ostentatious religious symbols (Gutmann, 1996). Even so, the law has thus
far only extended to ‘conspicuous’ religious symbols such as the hijab, with
little consensus on other forms of religious symbols, such as small crucifixes
or yarmulkes. Second, the nature of the increasing pluralist society in France
does not necessarily warrant the curtailment of other individuals’ rights. In a
pluralist society, reasonable doctrines should be allowed under the principle
of toleration. Finally, the practice of wearing headscarves should not auto-
matically assume that Muslim girls’ autonomy will be compromised. One of
the rationales given for wearing headscarves is to protect girls from sexual
harassment and, more generally, having girls viewed as sexual objects. Further-
more, some, especially older, girls are capable of making judgements about
these matters for themselves, so that the law is a restriction of their freedom.

These issues question several philosophical dilemmas regarding toleration
in a pluralist society (Rawls, 1993, 2001), special protection for minority groups
through collective rights (Kymlicka, 1989, 1995) and concerns about internal
practices in faith groups that may inhibit vulnerable members (Moller-Okin,
1999; Gutmann, 2002). I argue that France has taken an unreasonable stance
and is unwarranted in prohibiting girls from wearing headscarves. I will address
these concerns accordingly.

tole rat i on i n a p lural i st s oc i ety

One question is whether laïcité infringes on individual rights to freedom of
association and freedom of religion. Let one assume that banning adults from
wearing religious symbols in public institutions is an infringement of basic
human rights. The specific enforcement of laïcité on children and their atten-
dance in state schools raises three points for consideration: first, whether the
state is justified in banning religious symbols to protect children’s future

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autonomy; second, whether parents have the right to raise their children in a
particular way; and third, whether a child’s future autonomy requires exposure
to different ways of life. Each point calls into question the limits of tolera-
tion, the balance of parents’ rights to raise their children and the state’s obli-
gation to protect children, and children’s capacity to develop informed
judgements about how they wish to lead their life.

Liberal political theorists are not of one mind concerning the limits of
toleration in a pluralist society. John Rawls (1993: 59), for instance, does not
provide clear criteria in distinguishing what is reasonable and unreasonable,
and instead remains fairly and purposefully ambivalent on the matter.
Conversely, he contends that states should heed caution before restraining
doctrines that may be unreasonable, ‘otherwise our account runs the danger
of being arbitrary and exclusive’ (1993: 59). Doctrines, according to Rawls,
may be unreasonable in two ways: (1) there is ‘a present or foreseeable threat
of serious injury, political, economic, and moral, or even of the destruction
of the state’ (1993: 354); and, (2) that the particular doctrine ‘proposes to use
the public’s political power – a power in which all citizens have an equal share
– forcibly to impose a view affecting constitutional essential about which
many citizens as reasonable persons . . . are bound to differ uncompromisingly’
(Rawls, 2001: 183). In neither case would the state suggest that Islam poses a
serious threat to the state, nor that they are trying to impose a view forcibly
on other citizens.

Some people may argue that the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001
in the USA reflect the Islamic faith and thus pose a serious threat to the state.
But of course, Islam itself is, like all religions, diverse; taking the actions of
fundamentalist Islamic organizations such as the Taliban as exemplifying the
Islamic faith would be similar to suggesting that the IRA exemplifies Catholi-
cism. Terrorist actions are obviously not to be condoned nor ignored. Stating
that Islam is ‘unreasonable’ is a burdensome position to take – one that has the
requisite consequence of banning a group – not simply the certain practices
that we deem unacceptable.

Another interpretation of Rawls, however, might suggest that the case is
not so clear-cut.While Rawls’ definition of reasonable doctrines offers a wide
scope of permissible doctrines, he does have a stronger conception when he
guarantees individuals’ primary rights through the political conception of the
person.Rawls posits three ‘fundamental intuitive ideas’ as the basis of his entire
theory, particularly the crucial idea of citizens being free and equal persons
possessed of the capacity to develop and exercise a conception of the good
(Rawls, 1993: 178). Developing one’s capacities to make informed judgements
about how to lead one’s life is a fundamental concept in liberal aims of
education. If the French state believed that either the exposure of symbols in

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schools would compromise children’s future autonomy, or children who wore
the religious symbols were being compromised in their ability to develop
and exercise their capacity for a conception of the good, the ban might be
justified.

If we consider Rawls’ criteria for the reasonableness of doctrines, banning
religious symbols in state schools is not justified. State intrusion onto children’s
and families’ ways of life through the restriction of religious symbols goes
beyond the parameters of protecting the state from unreasonable doctrines.

The issue of the state’s role in protecting children’s primary interests,
however, may be more contentious. If there is a concern that children’s
primary interests may be compromised by their upbringing, then the state may
be justified in restricting various religious traditions, as a way of allowing
children to exercise and develop a capacity for a conception of the good. If,
for instance, the French state was particularly concerned about girls being
forced to wear a hijab by their parents, the state may be concerned that those
girls may be compromised in their ability to make informed judgements about
how they wish to lead their life.

Yet, according to Muslim tradition, wearing the hijab is a voluntary act of
religious observance. Further, unlike the crucifix, which is generally thought
of as a religious symbol, the hijab is often considered to be an integral part of
the Islamic way of life (similar to the yarmulke in Orthodox Judaism). If the
state believes that the hijab is a symbol of oppression for women, the state has
not explicitly used this argument to support the ban. The religious doctrines
in question – that of Christian, Judaism and Islam – do not prima facie fall
under the liberal notion of an unreasonable doctrine. It is the burden of the
state to demonstrate otherwise, which it has failed to do.

While the ‘unreasonable doctrine’ argument does not provide the French
state with a justification to ban religious symbols, the suggestion that it is
appropriately balancing the rights of parents to raise their children in a
particular way with that of the state’s obligation to guarantee children’s future
autonomy may have more promise. The Yoder and Mozert cases exemplify how
this tension is played out between state protection and parents’ wishes to limit
their children’s exposure to different ways of living, which I do not wish to
reiterate here (see Peshkin, 1986; Reich, 2002). I believe that this is not the
issue in this case because what is happening is not a case of the parents restrict-
ing children’s exposure to different ways of living, but of the state’s restric-
tion on exposure of religious symbols in public institutions. I do, however,
wish to focus on the potential damage that this ban could have on children’s
future autonomy.

I will start with the assumption that one of the aims of a liberal education
is to facilitate a child’s capacity to develop and exercise a conception of the

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good; simply put, to develop children’s future ability to make informed
decisions about how they wish to lead their lives.1 Given that children will
learn and adopt many of the customs and traditions of their parents, and their
parents’ local communities, children will be inducted into a particular way of
life prior to even entering school. This induction into a particular community
is not necessarily bad, and in many ways, provides children with their parents’
values and customs that may be inherently important to them both in the
present and in the future. However, schools provide a unique opportunity to
expose children to different ways of living that may broaden the child’s experi-
ences from the familial setting to the broader public sphere. Meira Levinson
(1999: 62, 144) aptly points out that schools provide a public space in which
children can be distanced from the commitments and values to which they
are accustomed both at home and in their community. In one way, schools
provide a space in which children can begin to realize the commitments of
which they are a part; in another way, they can be exposed to different back-
grounds and values brought by other children to the school. Trying to negate
children’s different religious backgrounds at school compromises this ideal
environment in which children can develop their capacity for autonomy.

This leads to a second concern. If the school maintains its ‘neutral’ status2
as a secular institution, parents may send their children to private schools.
Harry Brighouse (2005) conjectures this in the context of contrasting US and
UK stances of faith schooling. The first potential concern is similar to
Levinson’s in that schools provide a way in which to expose children to differ-
ent ways of life by being around children who come from different com-
munities and subject to different doctrines. The second concern is that parents
who decide to send their children to private schools will create more homog-
enous settings in both public and private institutions; children who attend
secular schools may not have opportunities to be around other children who
hold religious views; conversely, children who attend private faith schools will
not be exposed to children who may be atheist or agnostic. However, it is
conceivable that parents who hold strong religious beliefs may still choose to
send their children to state schools so long as schools provide some minimal
concessions to respect their faith. However, forced to make a decision of
severely compromising their own faith, parents may choose a private school
and create further divisions between them and the public culture of that
society (Brighouse, 2005). This is not a far-fetched conjecture. In the UK, for
instance, Muslim parents who cannot find single-sex schools for their ado-
lescent girls are often tempted to send them back to Pakistan during this
period of their life (Halstead, 1993). Similarly, in the USA, growing numbers
of fundamentalist Christians segregate themselves from mainstream society by
establishing their own physical communities and schools. Policies that push

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religious parents into private schools may limit schools’ ability to develop
children’s future autonomy.

Now this may be less of a concern from the point of view of the French
government. As it stands at present, there is currently one Muslim private
school that was established in 2003 in Lille called Lycée Averroes (Michaud,
2003). However, the main option for Muslims who wish to leave the secular
state system is to enroll their children in Ecoles Confessionel, which are most
often Catholic private schools. In their eyes, it is a lesser evil: a school that
believes in a higher Being, rather than the total exclusion of religion in state
schools.

In all three cases, the French state does not have a strong position to justify
the ban. I acknowledge that this is not a position that the French government
has used, so I now turn to the issue of neutrality and the protection of the
secular state in France.

ne ut ral i ty and p rote c t i ng th e f re nc h way of l i f e

While the diversity argument does not bode well for justifying the ban of
religious symbols in state schools, the idea of neutrality might support it.
Unlike the USA,where the separation of church and state is based on a notion
of neutrality of equal inclusion – that meaning, all conceptions of the good
are accommodated in schools (at least in theory) – the French state bases its
notion of neutrality on equal exclusion. This means that students and teachers
are to shed their private conceptions once they enter the school as public
equals (for a more comprehensive and comparative account of the American
and French models, see Levinson, 1999: 116–30; Judge, 2004). The principle
behind the notion of ‘equal exclusion’ is that a ‘secular and national ideal is
the very substance of the Republican schools and the foundation of its duty
of civic education’ (Levinson, 1999: 124). The principles of neutrality date
back to the French Revolution and the subsequent breaking up of the clerical
monopoly on education; in its stead the newly formed secular Republic
wished to create an ideal of equal citizenship under the ideal of egalité. The
hope was that people would unite under a defined national character within
the public space of France.

However, assuming a notion of equal exclusion by detaching one’s private
conceptions within public institutions is not actually what occurs for all. By
embracing a civic secular tradition over religious conceptions, the state creates
a default non-neutrality of secularism. The notion of neutrality is defeated in
its acceptance of secularism over other conceptions of the good. Further, the
ideal of equal exclusion fits conveniently with Christian ideals, unlike the
Jewish or Islamic faiths. For instance, holidays coincide with Christian

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holidays, and individuals from the Christian faith do not have a conflict on
the day of their worship being on Sundays. It is much easier for Christians to
uphold their faith without seriously compromising their beliefs than it is for
non-Christians. It is easy for the French state to enforce a supposed ‘neutral’
state education system, which also falls alongside Christian calendar practices.
Those who follow non-Christian faiths may be placed in more compromis-
ing positions – challenging their practices and their faith.

There also seems to be an undertone of distrust of Islamic traditions.Under
the proviso of neutrality, state schools have been strict in enforcing the ban of
the hijab. Yet, bans of small crucifixes and small yarmulkes are inconsistently
enforced, with many state schools turning a blind eye to similar religious
symbols. This raises a worrisome question of why some religious symbols are
not being prohibited, while other religious symbols are being strictly banned.

One possibility is that the increase of Muslim immigrants to France creates
a concern about protecting the secular (and Christian) French way of life.
Approximately 5 million Muslims currently live in France. The ban on
religious symbols was rarely enforced until 1989, when the headmaster of a
school barred girls who wore the hijab from entering. The girls would be
permitted to wear a scarf that covered their head and neck, but not the face,
in the school ground, but would be required to take it off when they entered
the school. After three months of standoff, the girls gave in, and followed the
terms laid down by the school of when they could wear the hijab.

This particular incident raised the profile of a larger national debate over
the right to express their private conceptions in the public sphere. The second
incidence occurred in 1993, when four girls were banned from wearing the
hijab. This time, however, as a sign of support, 700 girls began wearing the
hijab support that peaked with 2000 girls wearing the hijab (Levinson, 1999:
126). During the autumn term of 1994, 68 girls were suspended from school
for wearing the hijab.

A change of policy in the spring of 1995 from the Conseil d’État rescinded
its decision to ban the hijab, and stated that the hijab was not necessarily an
ostentatious religious symbol. The issue escalated up until the latest legislation
made in February 2004, whereby a strict enforcement of laïcité in the public
sector is now in force.

Unlike the issue of wearing the hijab in schools, such volatility has not
erupted in the case of children from other faiths. It leads one to speculate why
there is such a strict policy on the ban of hijab whereas other religions have
faced lesser enforcement. Whether the events of September 11th have influ-
enced other countries’ nervousness about Muslims is difficult to ascertain, yet
have the events of September 11th been a catalyst for legislation such as laïcité,
toward less toleration, in the hopes of preserving democracy? The USA, for

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instance, has introduced much more invasive legislation that breaches the
privacy of individuals in the name of security. Why should not one consider
that the French legislation of laïcité is a form of legislation that attempts to
secure the civic republican sentiment in France?

We see similar issues arising in The Netherlands, which previously had very
generous immigration policies.Yet, the large number of Muslims entering the
country has raised concern about whether such immigration patterns could
drastically change the progressive way of Dutch life. The rise in popularity of
Fortuyn, a reactionary candidate for the Dutch elections (who was subse-
quently assassinated prior to the election), was in part due to his strong anti-
immigration policies (particularly anti-Islamic immigrants) and a preservation
of the Dutch way of life.

The immigration of Muslims to France (and to The Netherlands) raises an
important issue about whether groups have a fundamental right to protect
their collective identity – in this case the French way of life. Kymlicka (1989)
argues that individuals have a primary right to have access to cultural member-
ship. Specifically,

(1) that cultural membership has a more important status in liberal thought than is
explicitly recognized – that is, that the individuals who are an unquestionable part of
the liberal moral ontology are viewed as individual members of a particular cultural
community, for whom cultural membership is an important good; and

(2) that members of minority cultural communities may face particular kinds of dis-
advantages with respect to the good of cultural membership, disadvantages whose
rectification requires and justifies the provision of minority rights. (1989: 162)

Kymlicka suggests that to ensure this, external protection for cultural com-
munities is acceptable in order that they can be sustained and fostered within
the larger plural society.

Does Kymlicka’s argument hold in the case of France and the French way
of life? Does the constraint of banning all religious symbols preserve the
French civic republican nature of the public sphere? On the one hand,
preserving the French way of life, through both the secular public sphere and
the French culture, may warrant certain constraints to uphold that way of life.
On the other hand, the Muslim community is not in the majority, and
constraining their right to association of religion may curtail their own
cultural rights.

There is a further, and difficult, question concerning what constitutes the
‘French’ way of life. Any time we begin to try to label or identify an indi-
vidual or a group of people by certain criteria of what it means to be ‘black’,
‘woman’, ‘Chinese’, ‘American’, ‘English’, and so forth, we begin to make
judgements or distinctions, overgeneralize or label – all of which put indi-
viduals within or beyond the boundaries of that particular identity (Gutmann,

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2002). At times, individuals find strength in belonging to a particular group,
and at others, are hostile at being categorically and, perhaps unwillingly,
lumped into a group. In trying to define a group we, ‘tend to treat cultural
groups as monoliths – pay[ing] more attention to differences between and
among groups than to differences within them’ (Moller-Okin, 1999: 12).
Defining what is meant by being French creates similar dilemmas and tensions.
Does being French mean drinking wine and eating pâté? Is it determined by
skin colour, or by linguistic competence? Is it defined by location? I am not
trying to be facetious here, but am trying to make the point that it is not clear
that there are definitive criteria for what constitutes a French person, and
setting up such criteria leads us along a dubious path.

It is not within the scope of this article to settle this dilemma. To do so
would require investigation of whether the Muslim community has threat-
ened the French way of life either through the actual numbers of Muslims
living in France, or through changing the nature of public policy in the
country. However, if I were to guess, I would think that the French are threat-
ened at present neither by a growing Muslim community, nor by their influ-
ence on public policies in the country to a degree that would warrant
constraining external members’ rights in order to protect a collective minority.

Unless stronger empirical evidence suggests that religious groups (and
particularly the Islamic faith,which seems to be receiving the strictest enforce-
ment) are threatening the French way of life, the argument of collective rights
does not hold much sway. In any case, I am not convinced that the ‘traditional’
French way of life (as is stereotyped), should be an ossified construct, but
rather may evolve and include non-Christian ways of living.

While preserving the French way of life does not appear to be a strong
defence of laïcité, protecting individual rights, and especially children’s rights
offers the strongest argument for enforcing laïcité. I turn to the issue of protect-
ing individual rights in this final section.

i nte rnal fa i th p rac t i c e s and c h i l dre n ’s r i g h t s

One of the strongest arguments for constraining certain internal faith prac-
tices is that of protecting individual basic rights. One apparent reason for this
constraint is that basic fundamental rights of an individual are arguably necess-
ary for a person’s wellbeing. Without basic fundamental rights individuals are
significantly constrained in their ability to lead the life of their own choosing.
If individuals are denied access to schooling, maltreated, oppressed or unable
to voice their opinions and concerns, they have little hope of being able to
change the circumstances of which they are a part. In Is Multiculturalism Bad
for Women? Susan Moller-Okin (1999) argues that whereas advocates of group

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rights focus on protecting practices and ideologies within the public sphere,
these protections spill over to shield non-innocent practices within the private
sphere. By accepting the practices of certain groups as simply a part of their
tradition or belief system, we may abandon those who are vulnerable (usually
women and children) within the entrenched roles of power in an established
hierarchical community or tradition.

This has particular resonance in the case of the hijab. The concern is that
dominant members of a community may hold considerable and undue pressure
over vulnerable members of a community – in this case,women and, in particu-
lar, girls. The Islamic faith attracts warranted suspicion with respect to practices
directed at women and girls. From an outsiders’ perspective, the hijab may be
seen as a form of oppression; Muslim girls being unable to choose whether
they wish to cover their heads. We can point to numerous narratives to illus-
trate this concern. In Azar Nafisi’s (2004) account of the oppression of women
in Tehran where she taught as an English lecturer after the early days of the
Iranian revolution, she recounts how the hijab stood as more than a voluntary
symbol of the Islamic faith prior to the revolution, but had evolved into a
symbol of oppression and suppression of women’s thoughts and actions. Jan
Goodwin’s (1994) research into the lives of Islamic women in 10 Islamic
countries tells of similar human rights abuses including physical and mental
abuse, inability to own property, inability to receive education or to work and
other atrocities that have been imposed on Islamic women and children.Unfair
treatment, exploitation and violation of basic human rights of Islamic women
and children strike at the core of basic fundamental principles of equality and
liberty.

From more fundamentalist Islamic perspectives, the hijab is not a form of
oppression, but is a vital component of being an Islamic woman. Muslims
argue that they recognize the importance of established differences in the roles
of boys and girls, albeit both vitally essential and equal in status (Halstead,
1993: 63). These roles are not seen as hierarchical between men and women,
but rather are advocated as complementary to the relationship between
husband and wife in Muslim society.

Muslim girls and boys are not allowed to intermingle outside the extended
family once they reach puberty. For Muslims, adolescence is a period in life
where girls and boys are particularly vulnerable, and one in which proper
guidance from the family is essential to their development. Any exposure to
sexual relationships, ranging from sexual harassment to premarital relations, is
potentially very damaging. In one way, the hijab is significant in covering the
girl, not as a sign of oppression, but for the girl to be seen as a human being
rather than as a sexual object.

In France, the rise in girls’ wearing of the hijab also seems to indicate a

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voluntary act of support, rather than a sudden mandatory change within the
Islamic communities in France. While one can easily point to anecdotes of
girls being forced to wear the hijab, other incidents indicate girls’ decision to
wear the hijab. It is difficult to know whether girls’ decisions to wear the hijab
are reached independently and by their own informed judgement. Whether
adults apply pressure, or whether pressure is felt from the larger Muslim
community, is difficult to ascertain.

The issue here is whether wearing the hijab does compromise girls’ future
autonomy as adults. Two considerations seem to be relevant at this point. The
first is whether the banning of the hijab will protect those girls, for whom
pressure is placed on them by their family or communities. The second is
whether by banning the hijab we do a disservice to those fundamentalist
families who may in fact force the girls to wear the hijab. By pushing them
away from state schools, the state exacerbates the problem with those girls
potentially dropping out of school. Let me consider both in turn.

If we knew that banning the hijab in state schools did deter parents from
forcing their daughters to conform, and more importantly, if we knew that
these same parents did not withdraw their daughters from school as a result
from the policy, then the justification for laïcité would seem to hold under the
‘basic rights’ principle. However there is no reason to believe that this is the
case. The concern is that there is the potential for fundamentalist parents to
withdraw their daughters from schools as a result of the policy. If this is the
case we must balance the two: whether the ban of the hijab is a sufficient
deterrent for parents to abide by the policy; or whether it will cause parents
to withdraw their children. Given the two possible scenarios, the potential for
parents to withdraw their daughters from state schools seems to be a much
greater disadvantage for those daughters than if they are currently being forced
to wear the hijab.Access to education is a strong indicator of a person’s future
autonomy and jeopardizing that opportunity for those girls would be far
worse than the internal pressures that they face in their private lives. Given
this predicament, justification of the ban on religious symbols based on the
principle of protecting individual basic rights may have the unintended conse-
quence of creating worse circumstances for those girls’ future autonomy.

conc lu s i on

The bold legislation of laïcité has raised a number of philosophical issues about
the way in which we reconcile collective interests and individual rights in
liberal societies.Defining the limits of toleration in a pluralist society is relevant
in this case, as is protecting collective interests both from that of the French
perspective and from the Muslim minority in France. Finally, attempting to

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protect children’s basic rights becomes much more complex when we hypo-
thetically play out the potential consequences.

In the light of the considerations I have advanced it is difficult to justify
the French government’s action. The French context does not warrant the
constraint of ostentatious religious symbols. The fervour with which the
French government and some particular heads of school have enforced this
policy concerning the hijab, suggests a particular intolerance to Muslims. It
also jeopardizes the wellbeing and autonomy of the girls it is apparently trying
to protect, by risking a serious backlash among Muslim parents against public
schooling. Such legislation takes a hard line that comes dangerously close to,
and perhaps oversteps, the reasonable limits of liberal principles that are
supposedly at the heart of France.

ac k nowle dg e m e nt

I would like to thank Ron Best, Michael Hand, Jo Peat and, in particular, Harry
Brighouse, for their comments and suggestions.

note s

1. I am not going to belabour this point in this article. For an articulated and well-
argued stance, see Brighouse (2000).

2. I will address the issue of neutrality in the following section.

case s

Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education (1987) 827 F.2d 1058.
Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) 406 U.S. 205 (U.S.S.C.).

re f e re nc e s

Brighouse, H. (2000) School Choice and Social Justice. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Brighouse, H. (2005) ‘Faith Based Schools in the UK: An Unenthusiastic Defense
of a Slightly Reformed Status Quo’, in R. Gardner, J. Cairns, and D. Lawton
(eds) Faith Schools: Consensus or Conflict? London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Economist (2004) ‘The war of the headscarves’, Economist 5 February: 25–7.
Goodwin, J. (1994) Price of Honour:Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence on the Islamic

World. London: Warner Books.
Gutmann, A. (1996) ‘Challenges of multiculturalism in democratic education’, in

R. Fullinwider (ed.) Public Education in a Multicultural Society: Policy, Theory,
Critique, pp. 156–79. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Gutmann, A. (2002) Identity in Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.

Halstead, J.M. (1993) ‘The case for single-sex schools: a Muslim approach’, Muslim
Education Quarterly 3(3): 49–69.

Judge, H. (2004) ‘The Muslim headscarf and French schools’, American Journal of
Education November: 1–24.

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Kymlicka,W. (1989) Liberalism, Community and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Kymlicka, W. (1995) Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Levinson, M. (1999) The Demands of Liberal Education. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Michaud, P. (2003) ‘France to get its first Muslim high school’. Available at http://
www.algazeerah.info/News%20archives/2003%20News%20archives/July%
(accessed 12 September 2004).

Moller-Okin, S. (1999) Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, ed. by J. Cohen,
M. Howard and M. Nussbaum. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Nafisi,A. (2004) Reading Lolita in Tehran:A Memoir in Books.London: Fourth Estate.
Peshkin,A. (1986) God’s Choice:The Total World of a Fundamentalist Christian School.

Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Rawls, J. (1993) Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rawls, J. (2001) Justice as Fairness:A Restatement, ed. by E. Kelly. London: Belknap

Press of Harvard University Press.
Reich, R. (2002) ‘Opting out of education: Yoder, Mozert and the autonomy of

children’, Educational Theory 52(4): 445–62.

b i og raph i cal note

d i anne g e re luk is Senior Lecturer at Roehampton University, London, UK.
Her forthcoming book, Education and Community (2006), considers how Rawls is
useful in developing a philosophical conception of community for discerning and
promoting particular types of communities that we may wish to foster in
education policy and practice. Correspondence to: Dianne Gereluk, School of
Education, Froebel College,Roehampton University,Roehampton Lane, London,
SW15 5PJ, UK. [email: d.gereluk@roehampton.ac.uk]

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