Liberalism, Pluralism, and Political Education: Paradox or Paradigm?

Author(s): Meira Levinson

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 25, No. 1/2, Political Education (Mar. - Jun., 1999),
pp. 39-58
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Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 25, Nos. 1&2, 1999

<PUB

Liberalism, Pluralism, and Political Education:

paradox or paradigm?

MEIRA LEVINSON

Inspired by concernabout promotingcivic participation and preservingthe

liberal democratic state, political theorists have recently reignited a debate about the
nature of political education in a liberal society. These theorists'argumentsin favor of
teaching toleration are significantfor the progressof education reformscurrentlybeing
debated and implementedin current liberal democraciesand some emerging nations.
Despite the increasingattentionpaid to the value of liberal civic education, however, its
specificcontentis typicallyleft virtually blank. This article aims to redressthis gap in the
literatureby developinga coherentand comprehensive(albeit still very general) curriculum for liberalpolitical education. To this end, Section I analyses the nature of the ideal
liberal democraticstate and developsa general curriculumfor liberalpolitical education
based on the type of citizens needed to preserveand take advantage of such a state. It
concludesby introducingtwo potentially illiberaloutcomesof this curriculum:children's
forced developmentof the capacity for autonomy, and the reductionof diversity in the
state. Section II argues that the developmentof autonomy is actually central to liberal
theoryand liberaleducation more broadlyconceived,while Section III suggeststhat civic
and social diversity will persist, but rightlyplay a secondaryrole to the goals of liberal
political education. The article concludes,therefore,with a reassertionof the content and
importanceof liberalpolitical education.
ABSTRACT

There has recently been a resurgence of interest in citizenship education among liberal
political theorists. After a disturbing decades-long hiatus, liberals have again started
seriously to consider the nature of political education in a liberal society, inspired by
concern with promoting civic participation and preserving the liberal democratic state.
Political liberals such as Stephen Macedo and diversity-favouring liberals such as
William Galston have been particularly vocal in this regard, arguing that state-regulated
civic education is critical to ensuring the stability and sustainability of the liberal state
(Macedo, 1995; Galston, 1995; see also Rawls, 1993, p. 199). Although they disagree
about how strong or substantive this education needs to be, they agree, rightly, that the
maintenance of liberal democratic institutions is an essential prerequisite of the maintenance of liberalism itself, and that part and parcel of this is the creation through
education of liberal democratic citizens who exercise the virtues of citizenship adequately and responsibly. Thus, education for citizenship must be provided for in any
system of liberal political education.
Despite the increasing contemporary consensus about the value of liberal civic
education, however, its specific shape and content are usually left alarmingly fuzzy.
Most liberal writers (Gutmann, 1987, 1995; Galston, 1995; Macedo, 1995, 1996;
0305-4985/99/010039-20

$7.00 ? 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltd

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Kymlicka, 1995) correctly presume the need to teach toleration, and some also
emphasise teaching mutual respect (Gutmann, 1995; Macedo, 1995). But additional
facets of civic education are generally only vaguely referred to, with the content of such
education usually being casually assumed rather than carefully described [1]. To put it
bluntly, liberal political education is left to drift.
This state of affairs would not matter so much if liberal theory-and, concomitantly,
liberal educational theory-were irrelevant to modern politics and education. But, to
the contrary, they are extremely relevant. I suggest this is so for three reasons. First, I
would hazard that most readers of this article currently live in states that are more or
less liberal democracies. None matches the ideal liberal state, of course, which I
describe below in 1.1. But Britain, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Holland,
etc., all display in significant (albeit non-ideal) ways most of the attributes of liberal
democracies. To this extent, the relationship between education and the reigning
politics of liberal democracy should matter to readers of this article. Second and
relatedly, education theory, policy, and praxis are all undergoing increasing scrutiny
and criticism in many of these states. Schools and educators are being challenged to
justify their aims and effectiveness, to reorient to a market-driven conception of
education, to address and implement new or revised national curricula, to set higher
standards, to reconceive in some cases the relationship between state and private
schools, and so forth. In so far as the states in which these debates are taking place are
(or believe themselves to be) liberal democracies, citizens' conceptions of the nature
and practice of liberalism play an important role in shaping the political and educational debate. It is thus important that both liberalism and liberalism's relationship to
education be understood correctly.
Third, and possibly most importantly, many states across the world aspire to become-and/or to be publicly acknowledged as-liberal democracies. With the collapse
of the USSR and the Iron Curtain, the democratisation of Latin America, the continuing transformation of East Asia, and the increasing development and democratisation
of many African nations, liberal democracy has become a touchstone that many
countries, politicians, and citizens seek to give them legitimacy both internally and on
the world stage. As is evidenced by the many American and Western European
politicians and law professors who have been invited to write constitutions for new
countries, or for old countries getting on the liberal democratic bandwagon, theoretical
conceptions of liberalism-and of liberal education, which is frequently being written
into new constitutions-have
enormous practical import for many people and countries. For this reason, too, it is important that as both theorists and practitioners we
fully understand and are able to evaluate recent liberal thought on liberalism and
education. This article aims to contribute to this effort.
In Part I, I discuss the defining characteristics of the liberal state and develop a
portrait of the kind of education necessary to maintain this state. The conception of
education that I develop, however, is thought to succumb to a deadly paradox: namely,
children-in the attitudes, skills, and
that by merely educating future citizens-i.e.
habits of character necessary to maintain a healthy and vibrant liberal democracy,
liberal political education simultaneously fosters two significant illiberal outcomes.
These are: (1) the imposition of the capacity for autonomy on future citizens, and (2)
the reduction of social diversity via the transformation and/or destruction of many
traditional communities. I conclude Part I by presenting the argument for this paradox.
Parts II and III are devoted to clarifying, analysing, and refuting this purported
paradox in order to establish the conception of education presented in Part I as a new

Liberal Political Education

41

paradigm for liberal education. In Part II, I show that liberalism is coherent only if it
values (and therefore promotes) children's development of the capacity for autonomy.
Liberal political education fosters outcomes that may be extra-political, I argue, but are
nonetheless intrinsically-and paradigmatically-liberal.
Correlatively, I argue in Part
III that in so far as children's development of the capacity for autonomy is a proper goal
of liberal political education, the resultant reduction of social and cultural diversity is
not an improper outcome of liberal political education. Maximal pluralism is not the
hallmark of maximal (or maximally desirable) liberalism; rather, liberal education
(political and otherwise) should preserve the political community but otherwise focus
on protecting individual rather than communal freedom. Ultimately, therefore, I argue
that liberal political education not only does not spell a 'paradox' for liberalism, but
actually illuminates a paradigm both for liberal education and for liberal thought as a
whole. I conclude with a brief discussion of the relationship between political education
and political culture and identity.

I. THE CHARACTER

OF LIBERAL POLITICAL EDUCATION

1. What Characterises the Liberal State?

I mentioned at the beginning of the Introduction that although many liberal theorists
have written recently about the value-even necessity-of liberal political education for
the maintenance of the liberal state, they have said little about its substance. I suggest
that this is because few writers take the time in articles about liberal political education
to discuss what commitments liberalism itself entails. Although theorists such as
Galston, Macedo, and Kymlicka (Kymlicka, 1989; Macedo, 1990; Galston, 1991) have
all written significant works about liberalism itself they strangely do not connect their
writings specifically about liberalism with those about education. The former only
vaguely inform the latter. As a result, since liberalism is itself left fuzzy, with its general
shape occasionally outlined but its content rarely filled in, liberal political education is
left equally indeterminate, floundering somewhere among respect for others, promotion
of diversity, and low-level toleration for others. I argue, by contrast, that in order to
characterise liberal political education clearly and carefully, we first need to characterise
liberalism itself clearly and carefully. In this section, therefore, I describe liberalism by
addressing the following question. How can we distinguish a liberal state from another
type of state? In other words, what do we mean when we say that a state is liberal?
I suggest that we generally mean five things when we characterise a state as being
liberal [2]. First and foremost, a liberal state has a characteristic set of legal, judicial,
and social institutions. Liberal states are democratic, and ideally are constitutional
democracies, where the function of the constitution is primarily to limit the power of
the state. Some states that we would generally identify as liberal, such as Great Britain,
do not have a formal or codified constitution, but in such cases common law or judicial
precedent has gained the normative or legal force usually attributed to a more formal
constitution. (Some reformers in Britain, too, argue for the adoption of a codified
constitution precisely in order to bring it more in line with liberal political ideals.)
Second, liberal states guarantee (constitutionally or via legislation) a number of
characteristic liberties, including: freedom of speech; freedom of religion, association,
and conscience; freedom to own a certain amount of private property; freedom over
one's own body; freedom from undue coercion by the state or by others; and far more
vaguely, freedom to do anything that does not violate some version of a Millian harm

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principle [3]. Liberal states' obligation to protect these various liberties has frequently
been interpreted also to bind the state to providing citizens the means positively to
exercise their liberties, as opposed simply to safeguarding negative liberties. This,
however, is contested, and is currently falling into empirical disfavor as the welfare state
is coming under attack in the USA, Australia, Britain, and much of the rest of Europe.
Third, it is empirically (rather than normatively) true that contemporary liberal states
are, and will continue to be, highly diverse. Pluralism, of course, is a characteristic of
the population of many states, liberal and illiberal alike. Modem, industrialised nations
generally have an extremely diverse set of citizens when measured by race, ethnicity,
age, religion, culture, socio-economic status, beliefs, conception of the good, and
general way of life. How the state and its citizens confront and/or accommodate such
pluralism, however, is in many ways what distinguishes liberal from other political
orders. Thus, the third defining normative characteristic of liberal states is that they
both tolerate and respect citizens' differences, and ensure that their citizens tolerateand preferably respect-each
other's differences as well. (I discuss the relationship
between toleration and respect in the next section.)
Part of accommodating deep and irremediable pluralism is guaranteeing the aforementioned liberties to all people within the liberal state, regardless of their differences
from the mainstream. But liberal toleration of difference is also taken to mean more
generally that difference should not be linked with opportunity. Individuals' backgrounds-be they distinguished by race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, sex, religion,
be independent from their life-chances.
culture, or conception of the good-should
a
commitment
to
of
Thus,
equality
opportunity is a fourth characteristic of modern
liberalism-even though it is highly imperfect in the real world, and even its meaning
is highly contested in theory and practice.
Finally, it is at least theoretically characteristic of liberal states that they be able to
justify their actions, legislation, and even very existence, on non-sectarian grounds. As
part of respecting citizens' many differences, the liberal state and its representatives
should not make laws or engage in other action that can only be justified on sectarian
religious, cultural, or other contestably value-laden grounds. In addition, the very
constitution of the liberal state (where 'constitution' refers to the state's basic institutions and make-up as well as to the more formal, written document) is intended to be
equally free of bias; its justification, too, should be based on reasons that can appeal to
all reasonable people. This last requirement is famously difficult to achieve even in
theory (the impressive contortions of some brilliant political philosophers notwithstanding), and sets a standard that no actual state meets in practice-at the very least,
historical contingency gets in the way. But the idea that current legislation and political
institutions, at least, should be justifiable in this way is still rightly significant for liberal
theory and practice.

2. What Type of Political Education is Required to Maintain the Liberal State?

Liberal states are thus quite demanding both of their public servants (who comprise
at any one time the contemporary instantiation of the state) and of their citizens
more generally. To summarise the previous discussion, liberal political orders must
be democratic, limit state power via a formal or informal constitution, protect a wide
range of individual liberties, tolerate and respect individuals' differences over a vast
array of measures, promote non-discrimination and equality of opportunity, and

LiberalPolitical Education 43
be consistently justifiable on grounds that can appeal to all reasonable citizens. In
addition, as with all well-functioning states, they should be economically and politically
stable.
Many of these characteristics are built into the structure of the liberal state, but their
realisation will always depend on the character and commitments of its citizens. For
example, as I will discuss further, even the most stringent anti-discrimination laws in
service of equality of opportunity, applied conscientiously and consistently by politicians and other employees of the state, cannot overcome the insidious but lethal effects
of private prejudice and discrimination. Likewise, as American history amply demonstrates, for example, democratic structures do not guarantee democratic outcomes if
some segments of the population are routinely marginalised, or if many citizens are
simply disaffected and uninvolved. Public accountability and decision-making require
that the public be involved, and that they hold the representatives of the state
accountable. To put it another way, the liberal state is a collective good, sustained via
the collective practices of active citizens. It depends for its stability and preservation on
there being a sufficiently high percentage of citizens who behave in public and private
in ways that advance democracy, toleration, and non-discrimination. By contrast, if too
many people take a passive or anti-democratic stance toward politics or towards their
fellow citizens, then the social order may quickly become illiberal and the political order
become dominated by an unrepresentative, often fanatical few who compete to shape
the state to their own, illiberal ends. In such a case, the stability and sustainability of
the liberal state will be threatened.
As a result, the characteristics of the ideal liberal state discussed earlier have
important consequences for the character of liberal citizens, and thus for liberal political
education. First, in so far as liberal states are democratic, future citizens (children) of
a liberal state must learn to participate in and uphold democracy. This means not only
that they must learn about their democratic rights, but also develop the skills and habits
of character to exercise their democratic responsibilities. On the rights front, students
should learn that as citizens of a liberal state, they possess (or will at the age of majority
possess) the following rights: to speak freely; to associate with whomever they choose;
to follow their own religious beliefs; to blaspheme and/or reject their own or other
people's religion; to marry whom they wish; to accept any legal job offer they wish; to
own private property; to develop their own sets of values and conceptions of the good;
and so forth. They should also learn about their rights to campaign and vote freely for
their favorite candidate or party, or even to become candidates for public office
themselves.
Democracy brings obligations, however, as well as rights; students thus need also to
develop the skills, attitudes, and habits that will make them effective defenders of their
and others' liberal democratic rights and responsibilities. In part, this means that
children should be taught to respect the democratic process, the constitution, and the
constitutionally or legislatively protected liberties that help establish the basic structure
of the liberal state. Although they will rightly become more critical over time, future
democratic citizens should also develop an intuitive, seemingly natural, inclination in
favor of democracy and liberal constitutionalism. They must accept liberal constitutional democracy as a legitimate and valuable form of government. In order to
become effective liberal citizens, children should also develop democratic habits such as
paying attention to public issues, voting, and exercising their rights as citizens. As I have
noted, liberal democracy weakens with disuse, and one of the best antidotes to disuse
is producing more citizens who take democracy seriously and have developed the habit

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of public involvement. Finally, children must learn to evaluate the arguments made in
a democratic and political world. They should be able to evaluate different candidates
or political platforms, and to distinguish between solid and misleading arguments.
From welfare policy to campaign finance reform, industry privatisation to funding for
the arts, and local bond issues to global environmental treaties, citizens are faced with
an enormous number of complex issues. In practice, this means that children need to
learn to read and write, to understand at least basic history, economics, civics, political
science, mathematics, and science, to separate style from substance, and overall to
think critically and carefully. If they cannot do these things, then they will not be able
to analyse and take thoughtful positions on these (and many other) issues as adults, and
therefore will not be ideal democratic citizens (although they will be citizens-with the
In sum, if children are to develop into adults
powers accorded to them-nonetheless).
who both fulfill the responsibilities and take advantage of the rights of democratic
citizenship, they must be given a good, formal education that teaches them to value the
liberal, constitutional democratic process while reading, writing, understanding, and
reflecting critically about political complexities from historical, economic, scientific,
political, ethical, and other perspectives.
This is a tall and complex order for liberal political education-but
even more is to
follow. In addition to learning about their democratic rights and responsibilities,
coming to value liberal constitutional democracy, absorbing a broad range of traditional
academic knowledge and skills, and developing critical thinking skills, students also
need to learn to tolerate and respect other citizens and their differences. As I noted
earlier in I. , toleration is one of the defining hallmarks of a liberal state. But it cannot
simply be built into the laws and constitution of the state. If a state is truly going to
realise 'the principled refusal to use coercive state instruments to impose one's own
views on others' (Galston, 1995, p. 528) as Galston defines toleration, then its citizens
must adopt such principles as their own.
Furthermore, Amy Gutmann makes a compelling argument that political education
cannot stop at teaching toleration, but must also extend to teaching 'mutual respect-a
reciprocal positive regard among citizens who pursue ways of life that are consistent
with honoring the basic liberties and opportunities of others' (Gutmann, 1995, p. 561).
Toleration may help guarantee that individuals or groups do not try to use state power
(including legislative power) to impose their conception of the good on other citizens.
But as Gutmann points out, it does not guarantee that individuals or groups will not
discriminate against each other in the private sphere, or that people will experience
equal opportunity. Tolerant people, under Galston's characterisation, may still discriminate against individuals or groups from different backgrounds, religions, races, or
cultures in job hirings, housing, club memberships, and other spheres. The state may
not engage in such discrimination, because that would be tantamount to using 'coercive
state instruments' to push one view, way of life, or racial, cultural, or ethnic group over
another. But even private action can have extremely deleterious public and political
consequences. If white and black people (or Protestants and Catholics, long-time
residents and recent immigrants, etc.) tolerated but did not respect each other, for
example, then they would 'live and let live', but presumably not hire each other, attend
similar private schools [4], or socialise together. Any pre-existing social, economic, or
other inequalities would at best remain, and more likely be exacerbated, by such a
situation. Public life would become stratified as well, and while equal opportunity
might remain theoretically institutionalised, it would be stripped of any meaning in
practice. As Gutmann persuasively argues:

Liberal Political Education

45

A government cannot effectively enforce nondiscrimination in hiring in a

social context of widespread disrespect among members of different races,
ethnicities, religions, or genders. Even the minimalist understanding of
fair equality of opportunity as nondiscrimination in hiring is therefore
unachievable without mutual respect among citizens. (Gutmann, 1995, p. 561)
Thus, liberal political education must include education for mutual respect as well as
toleration. This, in turn, means that students need to learn about other people's ways
of life: it is hard to develop true respect for something one knows nothing about.
Whether this means that students should attend purposefully integrated schools (as I
think they should, but will not argue for here), or simply study the history, culture, and
achievements of individuals and groups different from themselves even while attending
relatively segregated schools, children do need to be taught that there are many valuable
ways of life that differ substantially from their own. In order to develop respect for these
other ways of life, furthermore, these future citizens must also develop some measure
of detachment from their own personal commitments. Individuals can accept other
people's conceptions of the good as reasonable-and therefore as worthy of toleration
and respect-only if they are able to see their own background and commitments as in
some way contingent. This sense of contingency demands in turn a level of intellectual,
if not emotional, detachment from their own cultures, group affiliations, and conceptions of the good. This detachment is also useful for maintaining the non-sectarian
nature of the liberal state. In so far as the fifth characteristic of liberal states is that they
rely on non-sectarian justification for their institutions and actions, citizens should learn
to respect and preferably to use such justifications themselves.

3. Tracking the Consequences of Liberal Political Education

Liberal political education, therefore, is far-reaching. In order to support and maintain
liberal states' core commitments to constitutional democracy, toleration, nondiscrimination, equality of opportunity, and non-sectarianism, future citizens must
learn to read and write, to see their own backgrounds and commitments as contingent,
to respect people who hold beliefs or ways of life that are antithetical to their own, to
recognise their and other citizens' rights within a liberal democracy, to understand and
analyse political issues from historical, economic, scientific, ethical and other perspectives, to think critically, to treat people from different cultural, religious, or racial
backgrounds equally, to value the liberal political order, and generally to fulfill their
responsibilities as citizens of a liberal constitutional democracy.
In the past few years, many authors have suggested that this far-reaching conception
of liberal political education has equally far-reaching, and illiberal, consequences
beyond education. In this section, I will introduce two of the most significant, apparently illiberal, consequences of the political education that I have described: namely,
children's 'forced' development of the capacity for autonomy, and the reduction of
diversity within the state.
First, it is true that if instituted fully, the aforementioned system of liberal political
education would teach children more than just how to be effective citizens within the
civic sphere. It would also have significant effects on the development of children's
characters as a whole. This is in part because, as I have argued, the liberal political
order depends on more than the establishment of a basic institutional and legislative
structure populated by rule-followers. Liberal polities need active, thoughtful citizens

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who possess and act upon a variety of habits, skills, attitudes, and other characteristics.
The character of its citizens rightly matters to the liberal state because the personal
often has political ramifications (such as in cases of non-discrimination, discussed
earlier). Liberal political education also has further consequences, however, that go
beyond the political conceived in either the public or the private spheres. Children's
development of autonomy is one of these consequences.
Liberal political education teaches children to develop the capacity for autonomy
because the skills, habits, values, knowledge, and beliefs that underlie the capacity for
citizenship-for example, critical judgement, toleration, mutual respect, the ability to
read a newspaper-also underlie the capacity for autonomy. It happens to be the case
that 'most (if not all) of the same skills and virtues that are necessary and sufficient for
citizenship in a liberal democracy are those that are also necessary and sufficient for
educating children to deliberate about their way of life, more generally (and less
politically) speaking' (Gutmann, 1995, p. 573). By learning to read widely, to recognise
the reasonableness of competing ways of life, to think critically about political issues, to
respect such liberal freedoms as free speech and apostasy, and to respect people who
hold beliefs opposed to one's own, students learn, in effect, to think critically about
their own lives and commitments, and to revise their commitments if they so choose.
'[P]romoting core liberal political virtues-such as the importance of a critical attitude
toward contending political claims-seems
certain to have the effect of promoting
critical thinking in general' (Macedo, 1995, p. 477). Thus, liberal political education is
in fact liberal extra-political education: education for autonomy. This is not to say that
all students will necessarily engage in this kind of autonomous deliberation and
choice-making. But it is to say that liberal political education seems to cause students
to develop the capacity for autonomy, whether or not they choose to exercise it as
children or adults.
if the
Furthermore, the compulsory development of a capacity for autonomy-even
other
child is never forced to exercise his or her autonomy as an adult-entails
consequences that may fall outside the state's legitimate sphere of influence. Once
children develop the capacity for autonomy, it becomes impossible for them to hold
certain conceptions of the good in the same way that would previously have been
available to them. Even passively possessing the knowledge and dispositions that
underlie the capacity for autonomy radically alters the way that one approaches certain
professions of value and belief. Nomi Stolzenberg explains this point powerfully in
discussing fundamentalist Christian parents' concerns about 'value-neutral' state
education in Tennessee:
[F]undamentalists are not concerned only with the case in which their children unequivocally reject their values; they are also concerned with the case in
which their children remain attached to their parents' views, but only after
coming to see those views as such-as subjective, contestable matters of
opinion. There is a subtle but important difference between the faith that is
innocent of alternatives and that which is not. (Stolzenberg, 1993, p. 597)
She expands this point later:
The point is not simply that the objective mode of exposure exhibits options,
or even that it encourages rational selection from them. It is that even if the
children [continue to] adhere to their parents' beliefs, they do so knowing that
those beliefs are matters of opinions This knowledge enhances the likelihood
that children will form their own opinions and deviate from at least some of

Liberal Political Education

47

their parents' beliefs. It also transforms the meaning of remaining (or in the
case of children, becoming) attached to them. It is one thing for beliefs to be
transmitted from one generation to another. It is another to hold beliefs,
knowing that those beliefs are transmitted, that they vary, and that their truth
is contested (Stolzenberg, 1993, p. 633)
Thus, liberal political education seems to reduce important kinds of social diversity. In
contrast to my argument in section I.1 that respect for diversity is one of liberalism's
core commitments, liberal political education seems to make a mockery of civic
pluralism and toleration. Although it does not specifically educate against particular
ways of life, liberal political education teaches children to think about their lives in ways
that makes some forms of life impossible to enter or sustain.

Transition
Political education thus seems to pose a paradox for liberalism. On the one hand, it is
necessary to teach future citizens to tolerate and even respect each other; to respect
viewpoints, beliefs, and conceptions of the good that are different from their own; and
to think critically about political matters (often including matters of history, politics,
science, the media, economics, etc.). Only in this way will a healthy, stable, liberal state
be maintained. On the other hand, these very attitudes and skills that are necessary for
the political survival of liberalism result in two seemingly extra-political and illiberal
outcomes: (1) the imposition of the development of individual autonomy on all
children; and (2) the consequent reduction of diversity or plurality within society as a
whole.
One response to this paradox might be selectively to exempt members of certain
communities from mandatory liberal political education. The Amish in the USA stand
as the classic case of this kind of exemption, although many other groups might also
rightly claim similar hardship. There are, however, two problems with this approach.
First, unlike the Amish, many if not most groups that might request such an exemption
are politically activist. Examples include evangelical Christians in the USA, Chasids in
New York, and some fundamentalist Muslims in Britain. If individuals-and especially
the communities that might request exemption-are politically active and even activist,
it is arguable that they should receive education that not only introduces them to but
even inculcates the attitudes, knowledge, and skills characteristic of (and necessary for
the preservation of) liberal democracy [5]. Second, as I shall argue in the next section,
it is actually intrinsic to a coherent liberal theory (even if rarely understood, let alone
acknowledged) that children should be taught, with the assistance and encouragement
of the liberal state, to develop their capacities for individual autonomy.
I will argue, therefore, that although these consequences appear to pose a deep
paradox both for the preservation and justification of liberalism, they in fact strengthen
liberalism's empirical applicability and theoretical coherence. This is because liberalism
is a coherent theory only if it commits itself to the development of children's autonomy,
and correlatively, because the continued existence of certain ways of life in a liberal
state actually bespeak lesser rather than greater freedom for its citizens. This is not, I
should hasten to note, because religion is itself freedom-reducing, or because holding
strong, life long commitments is suspect or incompatible with true freedom. I do not
think (or argue) this in the slightest. Rather, as I will show in section III of this article,
to allow communities every way possible to maintain themselves through the next

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generation is to restrict some individuals' (namely, children born into those communities) freedom in an illiberal fashion. Just as any individual's right to yell 'fire' in a
crowded theater, or to jam public airwaves, is limited by other individuals' rights to life,
physical safety, and free expression, so are groups' rights to transmit their values to
children fettered by children's rights to full citizenship and the development of autonomy. In essence, liberalism and liberal education have a broader purview than liberal
politics and liberal political education. The latter are components of the former, but
they do not define the boundaries of liberalism and liberal education as a whole. I will
discuss this in more detail in the following sections.

II. LIBERALISM AND AUTONOMY

1. The Institutions and Freedoms Characteristic of the Liberal State are Justified Only if it
Values Adults' Exercise of Autonomy
The political institutions, freedoms, and commitments characteristic of liberal states as
presented in I.1 are not obviously self-justifying. Rather, some further, underlying
commitment is needed to justify their presence in the liberal state and to tie them all
together. In this section, I address the justification for liberal political institutions and
argue for the necessity of grounding liberal politics within the values embraced by
liberal philosophy as a whole. Liberal political institutions, I will argue, are coherently
justified (in a normative, rather than historical, sense) on the basis of the value of
individual autonomy-where
autonomy is roughly understood to mean the capacity
self-critically to evaluate one's values and ends with the possibility of revising and then
realising them. Only because liberalism values individuals' exercise of autonomy, in
other words, do the political institutions characteristic of liberal states make normative
sense. As a result, I will argue, liberalism and therefore liberal education have a broader
purpose than our characterisation just of the political aims of liberal institutions and
liberal political education might suggest. As I will show in this and the following
sections, the conception of liberal political education I proposed in 1.2 provides a
paradigm for liberal education as a whole precisely because of its extra-political-and
autonomy-fostering-consequences.
Before turning to the justification of any of these claims, however, I should address
one important question about the structure of my analysis of liberalism. Given the
centrality I will accord in sections II and III to the value of autonomy's development
and exercise, one might plausibly ask why I did not introduce the concept of autonomy
earlier in I.1 when I was characterising the ideal liberal state. I delayed autonomy's
introduction for two reasons. First, I believe that it is important for us to understand
the necessary character of liberal political education independent of all considerations
besides sustaining a healthy liberal democracy. It is too easy for theorists (Galston, for
example) to dismiss the substantial educational content I described in 1.2-e.g. literacy,
history, economics, math, science, ethics, cross-cultural studies, critical thinking skills,
etc.-as surpassing the boundaries of what liberalism can require for children's education if it is thought to rest on a broader and inherently contestable value such as
autonomy. By contrast, I wanted to show in section I that even if one takes the political
institutions of liberalism on their own terms, with no reference to potential underlying
justifications or other liberal values, liberal political education nonetheless encompasses
a comprehensive set of educational requirements. Second, I kept autonomy separate
because I will argue that while the value of developing and exercising autonomy

Liberal Political Education

49

provides an important (even necessary) justification for the structures and institutions
of liberal politics, liberalism does not and should not require the possession or exercise
of autonomy as a prerequisite for full liberal citizenship. As a result, while I argue that
children's development of the capacity for autonomy is a desirable outcome of liberal
it is consistent with and desirable for liberal education more
political education-since
broadly-I do not wish to suggest that it is a necessary component of educating for
liberal citizenship. I will address this in greater detail later.
To return to the focus of this section, the political attributes of the liberal state must
derive legitimacy from the (normative, rather than historical) foundations of liberalism
itself. This justification is generally (and rightly) found in the importance of humans'
capacities 'to form, to revise, and rationally to pursue ... a conception of what we regard
for us as a worthwhile human life' (Rawls, 1993, p. 302). This triadic conception of
humans' good effectively justifies liberalism's commitments to constitutional democracy, guaranteed individual liberties, equal opportunity, and toleration of diversity. It is
also thought to provide a non-sectarian justification for liberal institutions (the fifth
characteristic of liberalism), although that is a matter of some debate. I will not go
through the arguments for each justification individually, as most readers, I imagine,
are already familiar with them or can construct them on their own. But, it is worth
seeing one example of how different parts of the triad-in this case, how humans'
interests in revising and their interests in pursuing their conceptions of the good-may
each support institutions characteristic of liberalism.
John Rawls marshals two different arguments in support of the freedoms of
conscience and association. In one, Rawls states:
There is no guarantee that all aspects of our present way of life are the most
rational for us and not in need of at least minor if not major revision. For these
reasons the adequate and full exercise of the capacity for a conception of the
good is a means to a person's good. Thus, on the assumption that liberty of
conscience, and therefore the liberty to fall into error and to make mistakes,
is among the social conditions necessary for the development and exercise of
this power, the parties have another ground for adopting principles that
guarantee this basic liberty. Here we should observe that freedom of association is required to give effect to liberty of conscience; for unless we are at
liberty to associate with other like-minded citizens, the exercise of liberty of
conscience is denied. (Rawls, 1993, p. 313)
Hence we see that humans' moral capacity to revise their conceptions of the good
results in a powerful argument in favour of freedom of conscience and association. The
weaker grounds of individuals' interest in pursuing their conception of the good can
also be used to justify these two freedoms, as Rawls argues in an earlier passage. Given
the fact of pluralism, individuals in society will have many, often conflicting, conceptions of what it means to live a worthwhile life. Freedoms of conscience and association
are thus essential to permitting individuals to realise these conceptions without hindrance (Rawls, 1993, pp. 310-312). Many writers offer similar justifications for other
liberal freedoms and institutions based on human beings' interests in pursuing a
conception of the good.
Not all liberal freedoms and institutional structures, however, can be justified on the
basis of the 'form and pursue' clauses alone. As Will Kymlicka persuasively argues:
It is all too easy to reduce individual liberty to the freedom to pursue one's
conception of the good. But in fact much of what is distinctive to a liberal state

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OxfordReview of Education
concerns the forming and revising of people's conceptions of the good, rather
than the pursuit of those conceptions once chosen. (Kymlicka, 1995, p. 82)

He uses the example of religion to prove his point. While freedom of conscience is
certainly necessary for people to be able to pursue their religious faith, he argues, many
other traditional liberal freedoms are not; their justification relies on the importance of
revising one's faith:
A liberal society not only allows individuals the freedom to pursue their
existing faith, but it also allows them to seek new adherents for their faith
(proselytization is allowed), or to question the doctrine of their church (heresy
is allowed), or to renounce their faith entirely and convert to another faith or
to atheism (apostasy is allowed). It is quite conceivable to have the freedom to
pursue one's current faith without having any of these latter freedoms ...
These aspects of a liberal society only make sense on the assumption that
revising one's ends is possible, and sometimes desirable, because one's current
ends are not always worthy of allegiance. A liberal society does not compel
such questioning and revision, but it does make it a genuine possibility.
(Kymlicka, 1995, p. 82)
Thus, liberalism does require all three elements of what Rawls terms our 'second moral
power'-to form, to revise, and to pursue a conception of the good-in order to justify
liberal freedoms and institutions [6].
The capacity 'to form, to revise, and rationally to pursue' one's conception of the
defined as the cagood, however, encompasses the capacity for autonomy-roughly
to
evaluate
one's
values
and
ends
the
with
pacity self-critically
possibility of revising and
then realising them [7]. The justification of substantive liberal institutions and freedoms thus relies on the value of autonomy. Rawls and some other self-defined 'political
liberals' attempt to circumvent this conclusion by emphasising that it is the existence of
the second moral power that is important and not its value or our interest in realising
it. As Rawls argues:
'[F]rom the start the conception of the person is regarded as part of a
conception of political and social justice. That is, it characterises how citizens
are to think of themselves and of one another in their political and social
relationships as specified by the basic structure. This conception is not to be
mistaken for an ideal for personal life ... much less as a moral ideal'. (Rawls,
1993, p. 300)
Because the second moral power exists, Rawls argues, the state (and individuals in their
political capacities as citizens) must accommodate via liberal institutions and freedoms
those people who wish to realise their moral capacities. But the state takes no stance on
the moral value of revising (and forming and pursuing) a conception of the good.
I assert, however, that we must have a further reason beyond the mere presence of
this capacity to regard it as an important part of even the political conception of the
person. Human beings have many capacities, after all, not all of which deserve regard
from the state or from ourselves as at all worthy of respect or aid-for example,
humans' capacity for extreme cruelty. The only reason for the state to acknowledge one
capacity over another is if the former is more worth realising than the latter. But this
is tantamount to asserting that the particular capacity has worth for all human beings
that the capacity
(within the society in which the liberal debate is taking place)-i.e.
in
his
as
much
Ronald
Dworkin
asserts
essay 'In defense
represents a substantive good.

Liberal Political Education

51

of equality'. In response to Rawls's claim that '[s]ince citizens are regarded as having
the two moral powers, we ascribe to them two corresponding higher-order interests in
developing and exercising these powers' (Rawls, 1993, pp. 73-74), Dworkin counters,
'Our higher-order interest is not an interest in exercising a capacity because we find we
have it ... but rather we develop and train capacities of the sort that [Rawls] describe[s]
because we have a certain interest' in what they have to offer us (Dworkin, 1983, p. 26).
I believe that Dworkin is clearly right here, and that one must conclude that if
Rawls-or any other liberal-is committed to the liberal state's recognising and promoting individuals' fundamental capacity to form, revise, and pursue a conception of
the good life, then he must admit the liberal state holds individual autonomy to be a
political good (and not just an indifferent capacity). Rawls even admits almost as much
(although not quite) in asserting that 'contained in the conception of a person' is the
'possibility' that 'in addition to our beliefs being true, our actions right, and our ends
good, we may also strive to appreciate why our beliefs are true, our actions right, and
our ends good and suitable for us' (Rawls, 1993, p. 313). He must take the next step
and acknowledge that this possibility is a good that the state should uphold; for if it is
not, it is totally unclear why individuals should take it, as opposed to any other
'possibility' of empirical human life, into account in justifying the liberal state.
This is not to say that the state should or even can discriminate against individuals
who do not fulfill their capacity for autonomous action. Just after making the above
assertion, Rawls is quick to note that 'many persons may not examine their acquired
beliefs and ends but take them on faith, or be satisfied that they are matters of custom
and tradition. They are not to be criticised for this' (Rawls, 1993, p. 314). If one
replaces 'criticised' with 'discriminated against', this statement is perfectly true, and is
fully compatible with the judgement that individual autonomy is a good that the state
should foster. Liberal institutions may be justified only by adopting a political ideal of
individual moral autonomy, but liberals need not assert the ideal to be proper grounds
for discriminating against those who do not live up to it. So long as people fulfil the
basic requirements of citizenship, as discussed in 1.1-2, they deserve to be treated
equally as citizens. Individuals are under no obligation to acknowledge that autonomy
has value for their own lives. But, they do need to agree as citizens that autonomy is a
value which the state should uphold.
2. Children have an Interest, under Liberal Theory, in Developing Autonomy; resolving
liberalism's first 'paradox'
In II.1, we saw that the liberal state is properly shaped by a commitment to establishing
and protecting the conditions necessary for citizens to exercise autonomy. I suggest,
therefore, that it is also proper for a liberal state to attempt to establish the conditions
especially children-to develop the capacity for autonnecessary for individuals-and
for
The
this
is
straightforward, based on an extension of Dworkin's
omy.
argument
I
have
contended
that the simple fact of possessing the capacity
argument (see earlier).
for autonomy (our 'second moral power') does not in itself give us any reason to
exercise it, i.e. to act autonomously. We all have many personal capacities that we
choose to leave undeveloped or even to suppress-capacities for anger, for jealousy, for
advancing our social standing at the expense of others, for self-absorption, and so forth.
Our merely possessing these latter capacities does not give us a reason to exercise them.
What does give us reason to exercise a capacity is our belief that its exercise has a certain
worth and value-that is, that the capacity represents a substantive good. Thus, the

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OxfordReview of Education

argument went, the liberal cannot merely invoke the human possibility for autonomy
and argue for liberal freedoms on that basis alone; rather, he must treat the capacity for
autonomy as an actual human good that the liberal state must value and foster. The
extension of this argument regarding the development of autonomy is quite simple. If
the exercise of autonomy is valuable, then its development must also be a good.
Mirroring this contrast, it does not make sense to admit that there is value in exercising
autonomy, but to deny that there is value in developing it (which development is,
obviously enough, a precondition to its exercise) [8]. As Amy Gutmann argues, 'The
same principle that requires a state to grant adults personal and political freedom also
commits it to assuring children an education that makes those freedoms both possible
and meaningful in the future' [9]. Thus, if the liberal state so values autonomy that it
works to promote individuals' exercise of it, the state should also aid people in
developing their capacity for it.
This has some potentially disturbing implications for many liberals (and nonliberals). If the state should aid people (and specifically children) in developing their
capacities for autonomy, then state control over education and the interference of
liberal education in children's and their parents' lives may be much more substantial
and intrusive than many liberals commonly think-in part because some parents would
normally resist their children developing the capacities for autonomy, and in part
because the conditions required to develop a skill or disposition such as autonomy are
both logically and empirically different from the conditions required for its exercise.
Adults' exercise of autonomy may be best protected by safeguarding a variety of
traditional liberal freedoms. But children's development of autonomy may be best
promoted by coercing children (and their adult caretakers to allow them) to attend
particular schools with defined, even inflexible, educational aims (such as the development of autonomy). I have made arguments for as much elsewhere, in fact, although
there is not room to present them here [10].
Regardless of liberals' and non-liberals' difficulties in accepting the political and
educational implications of these arguments, however, the fact remains that liberalism
is only coherent-on both a theoretical and an empirical level-if children's rights to
develop their capacities for autonomy are recognised in tandem with adults' rights to
exercise their capacities for autonomy (if they so wish and their capacities are so
developed). The characteristics that define a liberal state only make sense in this
context. Thus, an educational approach that simultaneously teaches children the
variety of habits, attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and skills to be effective liberal citizens
and helps them to develop their capacities for autonomy (as liberal education happens
to do) is actually paradigmatic of liberal education, rather than in any way inimical to
the liberal order.

III. LIBERALISM AND PLURALISM

1. Maximal Pluralism Maximal Liberalism
As I discussed at the end of Section I, liberal political education of the sort described
in 1.2 inevitably reduces social diversity by transforming and/or destroying many
traditional communities. In learning to think critically, respect other points of view,
value their political rights, read widely, and participate in democratic decision-making,
for example, individuals develop in ways that necessarily transform the character of
their membership in tradition-bound or illiberal communities. Women given a liberal

Liberal Political Education 53

political education as girls may become less willing to accept patriarchal structures in
their personal or religious lives; children who learn that beliefs and values can legitimately be questioned may turn that questioning attitude on their own beliefs; young
adults realise that their ways of life are not the only reasonable ones and thus start to
from
explore others; people learn to analyse political-and then personal-questions
alternative economic, historical, and/or cultural perspectives, thus potentially abandoning or at least reducing their reliance upon the single, given approach (or answer) to the
problem that they had previously learned to adopt. Ultimately, communities that rely
on undemocratic and/or unequal structures give way to more liberal communities;
likewise, communities that previously were characterised and preserved by members'
unthinking adherence to a set of given beliefs and/or practices are transformed into
communities that are consciously chosen from a variety of alternatives and potentially
become more flexible as a result. At the same time, ways of life that draw upon the same
values as liberal democracy grow and become stronger, further widening the gap
between traditional and more liberal communities' survival as a result of liberal political
education.
We may agree that this set of outcomes is unfortunate for traditional communities,
and that it represents a reduction in civic diversity over the long term. But is it illiberal?
I can discern five possible arguments supporting the idea that liberal political education's disparate effect on individuals' ways of life is illiberal. Four of these arguments
are easily refuted, which I do in this section. The final argument is more complex, and
I deal with it in the next and final section.
First, adults may argue that as a result of the transformative effect that liberal
political education has on their own value communities, their abilities to pursue their
own conceptions of the good are unfairly restricted. On this reading, children are
needed to perpetuate certain ways of life so that adult adherents are not forced to
change their own practices. I suggest that while it may be unfortunate for adults to have
to adjust to changing times, including adjusting to the transformation or decline of their
own valued ways of life, it is impossible to see how this can take much precedence from
a liberal perspective. Future citizens' effective participation in and perpetuation of the
liberal state-ensured by giving children a liberal political education-must
be more
than
of
adults'
dislike
important
change.
Second, it is argued that adults' ability to pass on their own ways of life to their
children is restricted by the imposition of liberal political education. While this is
certainly true, I do not see why anybody should find this illiberal. Children are not the
property or even servants of their parents. And again, children's rights to full citizenship
(including knowing about their rights and being able to take advantage of democratic
structures) in a stable liberal state must trump adults' 'rights' (?) to inculcate their
beliefs in their children. As Stephen Macedo puts it: 'The basic question of principle is,
Do families have a moral right to opt out of reasonable measures designed to educate
children toward very basic liberal virtues because those measures make it harder for
parents to pass along their particular religious [or other] beliefs? Surely not' (Macedo,
1995, p. 485).
Third, and potentially more compellingly, critics may protest that children's potential
range of ways of life is limited or restricted by liberal political education. This seems
clearly true, since as the quotation from Stolzenberg pointed out earlier, liberal
education will prevent children from being able to adopt conceptions of the good or
ways of life in the same way as they could have in the absence of such education. Joseph
Raz effectively counters this argument, however, by suggesting that 'while autonomy

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OxfordReview of Education

[or even liberal citizenship] requires the availability of an adequate range of options it
does not require the presence of any particular option among them' (Raz, 1986,
p. 410). It is true that 'denying a person the possibility of carrying on with his projects,
commitments and relationships is preventing him from having the life he has chosen'a denial that is significant in contradicting liberalism's aim to help people form, revise,
and pursue their own conceptions of the good. But this problem does not apply to
children, whose opinions and choices are still being formed.
A person who may but has not yet chosen the eliminated option is much less
seriously affected. Since all he is entitled to is an adequate range of options the
eliminated option can, from his point of view, be replaced by another without
loss of autonomy [or of his rights as a liberal citizen]. (Raz, 1986, p. 411)
Fourth, it may be argued that diversity is a good in and of itself, and therefore liberal
political education should be restricted or modified in so far as it limits diversity. It may
the claim would need to be
be true that diversity is intrinsically good-although
justified using different arguments from the three already discussed. But even so, I can
hardly imagine that diversity is a greater good, at least according to liberal theory, than
individual freedom is. Children's rights to develop their capacities for full citizenship
(let alone autonomy), plus the need to preserve the liberal state via liberal political
education, must trump any claims of diversity for diversity's sake. Ultimately and
necessarily, 'Liberal diversity is diversity shaped and managed by political institutions'
of diversity's intrinsic value.
(Macedo, 1995, p. 470)-regardless
2. Children's Cultural Coherence Will not be Destroyed Even if Liberal Political Education
Threatens the Communities in Which They Are Raised.
The fifth, and most interesting, objection to liberal political education from the
perspective of pluralism is that the reduction of certain forms of diversity (and
correlative loss or transformation of certain communities) via political education will
hinder children's acquisition of cultural coherence. Because of the minority status of
their community, or because of the fragmentation and discontinuities in families,
neighborhoods, and communities characteristic of modern life in contemporary industrialised societies, this argument goes, not all children will achieve cultural coherence
without the active support and aid of their schools. Children who grow up within
fragmented and unstable households and communities may have no available source of
identification beyond that provided by the school, because no stable and/or coherent
source of identification exists in their world. In addition, children from minority
communities may also be at risk of cultural disenfranchisement, as they try unsuccessfully to mediate between the conflicting assumptions, values, and ways of life represented by their families and home community on the one hand, and by the school on
the other. According to this argument, therefore, liberal political education should not
be forced upon all students, because human beings' need for cultural coherence takes
priority over their inculcation into the habits, knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed
for full exercise of citizenship in the liberal state.
Although this is an important and complex objection to the expansive vision of liberal
political education that I developed in 1.2, I suggest that it ultimately falls short. This
is because liberal political citizenship itself will generally offer a coherent identity that
at best builds upon, and at worst replaces, children's other cultural or personal
identities. States are cultural as well as political constructs. Civic identification

Liberal Political Education

55

inevitably includes a cultural component-usually

including a common language,
of
of
at
least
historical
(or
significant
markers), literature and music,
history
conception
myths and self-characterisation. Schools which offer children a liberal political education, therefore, can naturally and simultaneously help children achieve a sense of
cultural membership. In the best case scenario, depending upon the way in which civic
identity is constructed at the local level, children raised in minority cultures but given
a liberal political education may be able to achieve simultaneous cultural coherence in
both their home culture and the civic culture. If the civic culture values multilinguality
(e.g. Canada or Switzerland), incorporates the experiences of minority groups into the
national historical narrative (as the USA is increasingly doing), and/or simply values
social and civic diversity, then a liberal state may be able to reinforce children's
development of cultural coherence while encouraging their identification with the
liberal polity. In this case, liberal political education could serve minority children's
interests in developing cultural coherence even while educating for liberal citizenship
and autonomy. This synergy may be possible only in particular states whose construction of liberal civic identity incorporates, or is at least compatible with, minority
cultures' constructions of their own identities. But at least in those liberal states that
exhibit these characteristics, children who learned in a school that was structured by
dominant civic and autonomy-based norms might simultaneously be able to develop
their capacities for choice, cultural coherence, and liberal democratic citizenship [11].
Even in states whose civic self-conception is not so inclusive, civic identification can
potentially provide a replacement for other forms of cultural and social embeddedness.
Again, this is because of the cultural construction of civic institutions. Thus, even
children who grow up in the fragmented or culturally impoverished environments
mentioned earlier can achieve cultural embeddedness within a liberal school. Their
membership will be in the public culture taught by the school, rather than in a private,
ethnic, or religiously based cultural community. But as I discussed in III.1, the source
of this cultural identification does not matter; so long as public cultural membership
provides children with the necessary prerequisites for developing, revising, and
pursuing a conception of the good, it is satisfactory within a liberal framework.
Finally, I suggest that even if these two arguments fail in some way, education for
citizenship within the liberal state is at least as important an aim as education for
cultural coherence within a non-public culture. This is because members of minority
groups who cannot reconcile cultural with civic membership will inevitably be both
marginalised and disenfranchised within the liberal state. Such a situation is a great loss
for the majority as well as the minority community; it turns children within such
communities into 'internal exiles within the state' (Miller, 1995, p. 145) whose opportunities for any kinds of choices are extremely limited, and increases prejudice and
misunderstanding between the majority and minority groups. In addition, if there are
more than a few such minority groups, then their presence fundamentally weakens the
state; as this article has emphasised throughout, liberal democracy can be preserved
only if future generations learn to identify themselves with and act according to the
virtues of citizenship as well as with their more local communities. Ultimately, groups
which cannot reconcile cultural socialisation with liberal education cannot and should
not maintain themselves unchanged in a liberal state.
'What must happen ... is that existing national identities must be stripped of
elements that are repugnant to the self-understanding of one or more component groups, while members of these groups must themselves be willing to

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Oxford Review of Education

embrace an inclusive nationality, and in the process to shed elements of their
values which are at odds with its principles'. (Miller, 1995, p. 142; see also
Macedo, 1996)

In conclusion, liberalism is a socially activist and transformative philosophy (despite

some political liberals' claims to the contrary), and liberal political education, as well as
liberal education more broadly conceived, is consequently an activist and transformative education. Rather than shying away from the social and cultural (as well as
political) outcomes of liberal political education, we should instead embrace them as
the proper and desired results of a mutually reinforcing liberal educational and political
order.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to thank Elizabeth Frazer and an anonymous reviewer for the Oxford
Review of Education for their critical reading of and helpful comments about this paper.

NOTES
[1] One exception to this trend is Eamonn Callan (1997), whose book Creating
Citizens addresses civic education in a careful and systematic manner.
[2] There is, of course, nothing magical about the number five. I could have divided
the following list into six or 10 different characteristics, or perhaps collapsed them
into four or three. I simply wish to highlight the following characteristics, which
happen to fall into five categories, as being significant determinants in distinguishing liberal from illiberal political orders.
[3] This is, of course, merely a representative sample of traditional liberal freedoms,
not a systematic or exhaustive list.
[4] Or attend the same state schools, for that matter, if choice of school is determined
by choice of residence and residential segregation becomes the norm-as is
currently the case in the USA and presumably would be likely in a state that was
devoid of mutual respect.
[5] This is especially significant in so far as these groups are increasingly within the
center, rather than at the margins, of society. Research indicates that in the 1994
elections in the USA, the Christian Right mobilised about 4 million activists and
distributed over 40 million voters' guides. Additionally, one-quarter of delegates
to the 1992 Republican National Convention identified themselves as 'members'
or 'supporters' of the Christian Right, while self-defined 'evangelicals'-e.g.
people who share at least some of the beliefs of the plaintiffs in the Mozert case
cited earlier-made up 26% of all voters in 1994 (Green et al., 1995).
is worth noting that this argument is not put forth merely for the sake of
It
[6]
argument, as might be thought given that few people currently living in liberal
states question the political rights of apostasy, heresy, etc. If it were true that, as
Stephen Macedo believes, 'There does not seem to be any reasonable disagreement about the core meaning of the constitutional basics: the good of basic
democratic procedures and core civil liberties' (Macedo, 1995, p. 495, fn. 78.),
then one might not require the 'revise' clause to justify core civic liberties: they
could simply be assumed by reasonable people. It is wrong, however, to think that
the 'core meaning of the constitutional basics' is undisputed. The best evidence

Liberal Political Education 57

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]
[11]

for this is the careful Rowntree Reform Trust 'State of the Nation' poll in
England, conducted in 1995. In this study, over 2000 people were interviewed
about what they would include and exclude if Britain were to adopt a bill of
rights. In order, the five highest vote-getters were: (1) Right to hospital treatment
on the NHS (National Health Service) within a reasonable time (88% in favour);
(2) Right to a fair trial before a jury (82%); (3) Right to privacy in your phone and
mail communications (75%); (4) Right to know what information government
departments hold about you (74%); (5) Right to join, or not to join, a trade union
(71%). Right to practise your religion without state interference ranked seventh,
with 60% of respondents in favour. Right of free assembly for peaceful meetings
or demonstrations, by contrast, ranked eleventh, with only 59% in favour; the
rights of the press to report on matters of public interest and of a defendant to
remain silent followed behind with 53 and 32% in favour, respectively. It is
notable how ambivalent the support is for many of the supposed 'core civil
liberties' (Dunleavy & Weir, 1995).
I assume in this section that Rawls (and others) mean 'revise' to indicate an ability
to engage in internally motivated revision as opposed to simple reaction to adverse
events. For if the revision is supposed to be self-generated in some way, then
Rawls's definition of individuals' capacity for the good definitely seems to presuppose autonomy. If, on the other hand, the second stipulation merely means that
individuals should not experience an utter downfall of their personality if any
event occurs (either inner-generated or externally imposed) that forces them to
revise their conception of the good, then autonomy may not be involved. This
latter case is simply a condition of what it means to be fully human-that one
does not have a breakdown in the face of change. While this is an essential
distinction, I presume on the basis of further statements he makes in the text (see
Political Liberalism, pp. 30-31, 313-314) that he means the revision to imply what
we would refer to as autonomous action. I suggest this is true of other liberal
thinkers, as well.
This might not be the case if the exercise of autonomy were merely an instrumental good needed to satisfy an end or need that was generated only by the
possession of autonomy itself. For example, it could be argued that if one has the
capacity for autonomy, one will be unhappy if the capacity is frustrated and
unhappiness is intrinsically bad, so people with the capacity for autonomy should
be able to exercise it. But the argument for autonomy was never made in this
way-nor should it have been. It is autonomy itself that is viewed as a good, not
its exercise as a means to satisfying the burden of its possession.
Gutmann (1987), p. 30. Eamonn Callan puts the same point in slightly different
terms: '[I]f the range of liberal rights that currently commands an extensive moral
consensus does indeed presuppose the doctrine of revisability, and if that doctrine
entails the desirability of an education that fosters imaginative sympathy, then a
powerful case emerges for acknowledging a right to an education of that kind'
(Callan, 1992, p. 23).
See Levinson (1997, forthcoming 1999).
I explore these arguments in greater detail in Levinson (1997, 1999, chapter 4).

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Correspondence:E-mail. < meira.levinson@aya.yale.edu >.