The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 1998. Published by ..... Hence, a cultural community is a voluntary association to the degree ...
Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 32, No. 2, 1998
Minority Rights and Educational Authority PIET VAN DER PLOEG In pleas for the recognition of cultural minority rights, claims to educational authority often figure as concrete examples. The right to educational authority is said to be an exemplary minority right. This is striking, for of all minority rights this is one which is impossible to justify. Difficulties involved in recent attempts to reconcile cultural minority rights with liberal democracy demonstrate that educational minority rights in particular cannot be justified without underestimating civic and liberal risks and ignoring the complicated nature of the relationships between communities and `their' children and between parents and `their' children.
INTRODUCTION
In pleas for the recognition of cultural minority rights with a view to preserving cultural identity, claims to educational authority often figure as concrete examples: in order to maintain cultural particularity, minorities rightfully appeal to a greater or even exclusive say on matters concerning their children's education. The right to broad educational authority is said to be an exemplary minority right.1 This is striking, it being of all minority rights one which is as good as impossible to justify. In the present article it is argued why this is so. The difficulties involved in recent attempts to reconcile cultural minority rights with liberal political philosophy will serve as a guideline. The arguments voiced by Tomasi (1995), Kukathas (1992a and b), Kymlicka (1989) and Galston (1995) demonstrate, although they think to have shown otherwise, that education is no matter to be left to cultural minorities themselves. Ironically, the very groups that call out the loudest for educational rights, or who are most urgently in need of these according to proponents, the illiberal communities, are least entitled to them. Among philosophers of education too there is a tendency to underestimate the problematic nature of educational minority rights. An illustrative example is the contribution of Yael Tamir to the special issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education on Democratic Education in a Multicultural State (1995). My argument can be read as a critique of Tamir's generosity towards illiberal cultures. & The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 1998. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 01248, USA.
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LIBERAL AND CIVIC RISKS
When rights are assigned to cultural communities striving for protection and preservation of cultural identity there are risks involved. The protection of individual freedom and rights may be compromised. Furthermore, social and political unity may be jeopardised, as well as interaction and tolerance. Hence, cultural minority rights come at two kinds of costs: costs in a liberal sense and costs in a civic sense. In other words, they have two sorts of risks, liberal risks and civic risks. These risks are also present when claims of cultural communities concerning the allocation of educational authority are honoured. On the surface there is nothing wrong with educational minority rights. Modern democracy is liberal and plural: it protects rights and freedoms and respects diversity. Educational minority rights do justice to both: they acknowledge the right of freedom to educate one's own children or to have them educated according to one's own particular truths and values (parental rights, rights to religious freedom, etc.) and they offer ample scope for difference between groups with particular ways of life and beliefs (plurality, tolerance, respect). But on closer examination educational minority rights do prove to be problematic in democracy, since some cultural communities show little or no regard for rights of freedom and for diversity; and some pedagogies, curricula and educational methods do more harm than good to the causes of freedom and tolerance. There are at least four reasons why democracy should be wary of educational minority rights. The first and the fourth are liberal concerns and the second and third are civic concerns. 1) Education can repress and frustrate children's ability to think and judge for themselves, instead of developing and enhancing it. This could hinder the development of autonomy. Democratic government must protect children from such education, because of its obligation to safeguard their future autonomy. For why should the current freedom of parents warrant protection (for example parental rights and freedom of religion) while the future freedom of children does not? 2) One could teach children in such a way that they become intolerant towards representatives of other ways of life and alternative beliefs, or so that they remain ignorant of what inspires and motivates others. That would generate intolerance and a lack of understanding. Such education conflicts with plural democracy. 3) A crucial feature of democracy is broad political participation. Everyone has a say in the processes of deliberation and decisionmaking. In order to participate in a meaningful way, certain skills and insights are required, as well as knowledge of relevant matters and some general knowledge. Children do not acquire these skills and this knowledge by magic. They rely upon education. When there is too little public authority over & The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 1998.
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education and too much private and sectional authority there is a risk that not all children will be offered the opportunity to learn enough. The future of democracy is at stake. 4) In a technical culture and a complex society education constitutes a basic need. It would be hard to live in that world without learning. Sufficient learning therefore is a fundamental human right and a right of children (also according to international treaties such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child). In a liberal democracy the government should concern itself with meeting the basic needs of each and every child. When educational authority is given away, this task cannot be properly performed. Do the civic and liberal concerns mentioned, together with their specific risks, necessarily entail that cultural minorities should be allowed hardly any educational authority? No, because it all depends on the perception of the concerns and risks involved, the weight they are given. Groups that do not care about individual rights and freedoms, and show little appreciation of plurality, tolerance, integration, broad political participation, etc., will not care about liberal and civic concerns and not be disturbed by the liberal and civic risks. And usually these are the very groups that lay a claim to such collective cultural rights as educational minority rights: precisely because they are ill-disposed towards the prevailing values and dominant truths. Classic examples are the Amish (the Yoder case)2 and the Christian fundamentalists (the Mozert case).3 How should liberal plural democracy handle such illiberal communities? By remaining tolerant to the end and granting them cultural rights anyway, educational rights included? Or by limiting tolerance and withholding cultural rights for the sake of protection of individual freedoms and rights and/or in order to guarantee continuance of liberal plural democracy itself? TOMASI: NON-LIBERAL RESPECT
An author who is very lenient towards illiberal communities is Tomasi (1995).4 He is in favour of affording cultural minority rights particularly to groups for whom (what I call) liberal risks are not important. The liberal risks are not relevant when `individual members . . . tend not to think of themselves (and do not care to think of themselves) as holders of the same set of individual rights that figure prominently in liberal societies' (pp. 598, 601, 602). Groups whose members do not perceive themselves as individual bearers of rights are in a sense `outside of liberalism' (p. 600). It is obvious that collective rights are innocent, in the eyes of those concerned here. But why should liberal-democrats and the liberal-democratic state approve? According to Tomasi it is a matter of respect. Their being nonliberal is not at odds with their deserving respect: `some cultures that are importantly unlike ours may yet be & The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 1998.
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worthy of our respect' (p. 600). `There are nonliberal forms of respect for individuals that even liberals might use as a justification for their actions and policies. For example, there is respect for individuals in virtue of the importance to each of the attachments he has to his own cultural community' (pp. 602, 603). Tomasi argues that when a person's cultural community is illiberal and his relations to it are of vital importance, he deserves to be exempted from the protection of individual rights that put in danger the preservation of his own culture. This explains his remarkable suggestion concerning groups `outside of liberalism': `We best respect the group members by not insisting on respecting them as individual holders of the full set of liberal rights' (p. 603). In such cases there would be no objection to collective cultural rights, including educational rights. Tomasi's outlook is untenable, and not only because he fails to consider the civic risks involved. The most serious problem is how to determine which groups qualify and whether a group qualifies for collective cultural rights at the expense of individual rights. In Tomasi's opinion the matter is very simple: this is the case when a group defines itself as such; if a community claims collective rights, it is entitled to them. After all, `the call for collective measures defines the group in terms of what authority it thinks the majority or leadership of the group has to evaluate and reject even the most basic elements of the life plans chosen by its own individual members. . . . A group in which a strong majority insists on the appropriateness of . . . liberty-limiting measures . . . within the group, seems thereby to be insisting on being recognised as a nonliberal group' (pp. 600, 601). My objection to this line of reasoning is that it is never the group itself speaking, but of course representatives, and it is always uncertain who they actually represent. When the leaders, the representatives, or the majority of members (however substantial the majority) declare that members of the group do not appreciate certain individual rights, it does not necessarily hold that no members at all value those individual rights. And if there are members (even if only a few) who wish to retain individual rights, the democratic state cannot honour the aspirations of either the leaders, the representatives or the majority. Not even as far as Tomasi is concerned Ð I presume, in the light of his argument. Because in that case it plainly is not a group whose members discount liberal risks and for whom for instance (certain) individual rights count for less than cultural preservation. At the very most this would apply to a subgroup: the leadership, the representatives or the majority. The desired collective rights should then only be given to this sub-group, being rights destined to apply solely within the sub-group itself. Whether or not a certain person is a member of such a sub-group can only become apparent when he voluntarily, explicitly and personally expresses his agreement. How can it otherwise be ascertained whether someone `tends not to think of himself and does not care to think of himself as holder of the same set of individual rights that figure prominently in liberal societies?' & The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 1998.
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When this is taken into consideration and used as a starting point for an alternative argument, the justification of cultural minority rights shifts towards a perspective in which such rights are perceived as derivatives of the individual right to freedom of association. A wellknown advocate of this line of argument is Kukathas. Before this approach is examined, I would like to add another critical comment to Tomasi's suggestion. It is not just the relationship between those who claim collective rights `in the name of the group' and the group as a whole that poses problems: the relationship between the group and its children is also a problematic one. At least a cultural minority's claim to educational authority cannot be justified in the way Tomasi proposes for collective rights in general. When a group claims and is granted collective cultural rights, including educational rights, one takes it for granted that the group's children may and must, indeed, in one way or another, be considered as part of the group. This assumption is incorrect. We sometimes speak of `the cultural tradition into which one is born',5 but it does not follow that people are born as members of a cultural community. They are born in the midst of members and their culture. Newborns are not bearers of a culture: it is only through socialisation and education that children gradually become such and so become members of cultural communities. Whether they become bearers of a particular culture and members of a particular cultural community is therefore partly the result of education. And the kind of education children are to receive is precisely the focus of the discussions on conflicts concerning the division of educational authority. Consequently, it is incorrect and unreasonable to allocate children to a specific cultural community as a matter of course Ð certainly when that community is granted collective rights at the expense of the protection of individual rights. It is equally unwarranted to base the educational authority of cultural minorities on expected cultural membership, while the expectation itself is based upon a certain allocation of educational authority. Those who attempt to refute this by arguing that children `belonging to' a cultural group become bearers of the group's particular culture as a matter of course, and therefore can, in a certain sense, be considered members of the group at hand, underestimate the role of socialisation and education. Furthermore, they misjudge the rationale of claims to educational authority. It is often for good reason that cultural minorities striving to conserve cultural identity claim educational rights: the broader and more exclusive the educational authority of the community, the greater the opportunity to ensure that the children `of' the group do indeed become bearers of the particular group-culture. Finally, those who would like to add to all this the suggestion that in some cultures people simply believe that one's children are destined to belong to one's cultural community or in a certain sense are part of one's cultural community at or before birth and therefore must already be included in it, also by outsiders and the state, would (perhaps implicitly) be appealing to a principle unacceptable in democracy. They would be & The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 1998.
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setting out from the assumption that the government ought to cease to protect individual rights when private myths prescribe this, private myths on the relation between blood-bonds and culture which are not held in common by all individuals whose individual rights are (then) in danger of being pushed aside. After all, unborn and newborn children know nothing of such myths and whether or not they will come to believe them depends, in part, on socialisation and education.6 KUKATHAS: VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS
Tomasi explicitly perceives and defends cultural minority rights as collective rights. The failings of this approach have just been pointed out. Kukathas (1992a and b)7 voices a similar critique in his reaction to work by van Dyke, who, from the mid-1970s onwards, has been arguing for the acknowledgment of minority rights as collective rights.8 Kukathas by no means denies that concern for `the cultural health of minority communities' is justified (p. 107) and can fully appreciate cultural communities' striving to preserve their cultural identity. Moreover, he believes that the democratic state should not take an indifferent stand in these matters. What he does contest, however, is the conclusion that it is therefore necessary to furnish minorities with collective rights. Collective rights pose insurmountable problems. According to Kukathas the most serious of these is that `groups are not fixed and unchanging entities' (p. 110) and that `most groups are not homogeneous at any given moment' (p. 113). The demarcation, composition and nature of groups may, for instance, be subject to change, and often are a result of outside influence, e.g. political influence. This makes it extremely difficult to define groups as unities, let alone as potentially right-bearing, unequivocal and clear-cut unities. Furthermore, groups often lack homogeneity: `there may be important differences and conflicts of interest' (p. 113). Among other things Kukathas refers to potential controversies between eÂlites and the masses within groups, indicating possible differences of opinion on the desirability `to preserve cultural integrity' (p. 114). The possibility of internal conflict prompts the liberal-democratic state to be very cautious. When there is `a conflict between the interests of the cultural community as a whole Ð at least as conceived by eÂlites within it Ð and those of (groups of) individual members' the state is not to `give precedence to the views of those who claim to speak in the interests of the cultural community as a whole, even if they are in the majority, because the interests of the minority cannot be discounted' (p. 115). That collective rights are no good is not a disaster. We can do without. Kukathas proposes that we understand and defend minority rights in terms of individual rights. We can view cultural communities as `voluntary associations', in other words: `as associations of individuals whose freedom to live according to communal practices each finds acceptable is of fundamental importance' (p. 116). Cultural communities & The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 1998.
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are voluntary associations `to the extent members recognize as legitimate the terms of association and the authority that upholds them'. And it is easy to determine to what extent this holds: `All that is necessary as evidence of such recognition is the fact that members choose not to leave' (p. 116). Hence, a cultural community is a voluntary association to the degree the members are `free to leave'. According to Kukathas such a minority is entitled to `a great deal of authority' (p. 117). The only individual right which must be protected publicly is the right to be free to leave. One of his conclusions is that extreme educational authority ought to be permitted: `The wider society has no right to require particular standards or systems of education within such cultural groups or to force their schools to promote the dominant culture' (p. 117; cf. p. 126). Can cultural minority rights indeed be justified as seemingly collective rights without liberal risks? And does this indeed mean that the objections to educational authority for cultural minorities are removed? Even the objections to extensive educational rights for illiberal cultural communities, as Kukathas explicitly asserts (p. 126)? Perhaps Kukathas' approach facilitates the justification of some cultural minority rights Ð for convenience sake I shall give him the benefit of the doubt. However, educational minority rights can definitely not be justified in this way. To begin with, the civic risks are overlooked. Kukathas can hardly maintain that civic risks do not matter. According to him the freedom to leave barely makes demands on the cultural communities in terms of liberality and openness, but does require `that the wider society itself be one that could be described as embodying a liberal political culture' (p. 134). When the education of one's `own' children is left solely in the hands of particular groups, including illiberal cultural communities (Kukathas considers this to be legitimate), the liberal political culture of society as a whole comes under pressure (cf. para. 1). Such an uncritical division of educational authority threatens to generate conditions in which it would no longer be justified or wise to grant educational minority rights. The fact that Kukathas does not take civic risks into consideration is therefore a somewhat paradoxical feature of his approach. A more structural flaw is due to Kukathas's interpretation of the conditions of voluntariness and the freedom to leave. He argues that a cultural community qualifies for minority rights if cultural membership is voluntary and the proof of voluntariness is non-leaving as long as one is free to leave. An obvious question would then be: can illiberal cultural minorities be characterised as voluntary associations? The answer seems simple. Voluntariness of membership and freedom to leave presuppose a cultural context of sufficient education and openness. And illiberal cultural communities do not fit the bill. This disqualifies them from minority rights. Without an education which improves knowledgeability and furthers critical thinking, and in a non-questioning atmosphere of closed and unambiguous beliefs and morals, actual compliance to a particular way & The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 1998.
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of life and particular values can hardly count as free choice. It rather is a matter of the force of habit and ignorance, and so due to the lack of worthwhile, meaningful and accessible alternatives.9 Therefore, the conditions of voluntariness and freedom to leave imply that cultural communities fail to qualify for cultural rights, unless their education meets certain educational requirements and their ideological and moral climate is sufficiently liberal. This ought to be taken into account when it comes to the division of educational authority. The claims uttered by illiberal communities would not be honoured. Kukathas is not susceptible to such criticism. His concept of freedom is too broad: his concepts of `voluntariness' and `freedom to leave' are extremely superficial. The conditions for voluntariness are met when one simply realises a particular way of life and practises particular values and truths. It is immaterial how one came to do this or whether one did it rashly or reflectively, out of resignation or as a matter of conscious preference (pp. 124,, 125, 677, 678). The freedom to leave is equally empty: there is already `a substantial freedom to leave' (p. 133) when `wider society . . . is open to individuals wishing to leave their local groups' and embodies `a liberal political culture' (p. 134). The shallow concept of freedom behind all this renders Kukathas's approach immune to any criticism rooted in a positive appraisal of critical and knowledgeable autonomy. At least, it seems that way. At a second glance there is a weak spot. However illiberal cultural communities may be, if they aspire to qualify for cultural minority rights they are not at liberty to go to all lengths in enforcing group loyalty. If they wish to qualify for cultural minority rights `slavery and physical coercion' and `cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment' are not allowed (p. 128). Why does not Kukathas disallow every form of enforcing group loyalty? After all, enforcing group loyalty necessarily leads to involuntary sympathy and agreement and unfree non-leaving. Kukathas himself acknowledges that coercion in whatever form can definitely not be tolerated. This follows from his statement that freedom of association also entails that `No one can be required to accept a particular way of life' (pp. 125, 126). Enforced cultural membership can indeed hardly be deemed free membership. It makes no difference whether the force was physical or psychological and how humane or inhumane it was: coercion produces unfreedom. Consequently, it does matter how someone came to adopt a particular way of life and came to agree with particular values and truths. An unhistorical and unqualified concept of freedom, as defended by Kukathas, is clearly unsuitable. The way children are brought up is relevant. If development and learning are curbed or forced in a certain direction, if the increase of self-activity and the ability to cope and think for oneself are frustrated, if the acquisition, development and/or maturation of abilities are restricted, if cognitive capacities are limited and narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness are encouraged, if children are thus systematically morally stunted by impressing upon them particular virtues and rules Ð in short: when children are not & The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 1998.
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adequately educated or not educated at all, their cultural loyalty (sympathy, agreement and non-leaving) is forced upon them and is no matter of free association, not even of free acquiescence. The conditions of voluntariness and freedom to leave do assume a cultural context of adequate education and openness. And this turns out to match with some assumptions in Kukathas's perspective. Therefore it can scarcely be denied that cultural communities should only be entitled to cultural rights if their education meets certain pedagogical requirements and if their ideological and moral climate is sufficiently liberal. Neither can the following consequence be rejected: when this is seriously taken into account while dividing educational authority, illiberal communities would stand little chance of receiving the degree of educational authority some groups, according to Kukathas rightfully, claim for themselves. A final critical note on Kukathas's proposal concerns the status of children. In approaches such as Tomasi's, children are implicitly and unquestionably attributed to the group and the culture among whose members and bearers they are born. Kukathas is equally tacit and unquestioning in allocating children to parents. He immediately infers excessive parental rights, almost exclusive parental authority, from parents' individual freedom of association (p. 126: he concludes here that no one, no outsider, may interfere with the education of for instance the Amish and the gypsies; cf. p. 117). Why this moral and legal identification of children with their parents? The customary justification of children's special (unequal) status, concentrates on their insufficient autonomy and rationality10 and their consequent reliance upon adult guardianship; hence they should not and do not have to be treated and considered as morally and legally independent. In spite of the clicheÂ, this line of reasoning by no means requires that the adults responsible for the child are the parents, the natural parents, or blood relations or cultural relations of the natural parents. The argument implies that the guardian is an adult, not that he is a relative. This poses a serious problem for Kukathas amongst others.11 But there is another problem, an even more pressing one. The most usual strategy of justification of moral and legal identification of children with their parents (children's lack of autonomy and rationality) fails to accommodate Kukathas's viewpoint. According to him Ð as became apparent earlier on Ð neither autonomy nor rationality is a prerequisite to moral and legal independence. If lack of autonomy and rationality is not the rationale behind the inequality between children and adults and of children's moral and legal identification with responsible adults, what is? Kukathas cannot answer this; he does not even notice the problem, which is a pity, because it is a practical and by no means imaginary issue. Just how concrete a problem it is, can be simply illustrated. Imagine the following: children of the Amish opposing their parents' wishes and expressing the desire to partake in public education until they are sixteen, or children of fundamentalist & The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 1998.
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Christians opposing their parents and voicing their wish to follow the regular reading programme.12 What prevents the democratic state from seeing these children as their parents' equals, irrespective of their age, and consequently from respecting (to a certain extent) their freedom to leave, and therefore forbidding the parents from coercing their children into complying (with respect to the relevant issues) with the rules of parental culture? Do the parents indeed deserve total freedom or do the children deserve sufficient protection? On top of this: envisage Amish or fundamentalist Christians complaining about state education, while their children do not protest themselves or on their own initiative against school or the regular reading programme, and just join in. As far as the children are concerned it is a matter of free acquiescence Ð at least, following Kukathas's line of reasoning. Should the democratic state respect the children's compliance and silent agreement as proof of those children's voluntary choice for mainstream education? Should the state wave aside the parents' complaints and consequential claims as the commotion of outsiders? If Kukathas is to be consistent, he would answer in the affirmative. Why should we not interpret children's participation as free association, worthy of protection? In Kukathas's case neither autonomy nor rationality is a condition of voluntariness: acquiescence is enough. Unless the inequality between children and adults is fundamentally not the same as the difference between sufficient and insufficient autonomy and rationality, children's acquiescence can hardly be weighed in a fundamentally different way than adults' acquiescence. Hence so long as Kukathas offers no alternative to the customary reason why children have a radically different legal and positional status than adults, it is incompatible with his view that the state honours protests against public educational demands made by parents whose children do not join the protests by themselves or on their own initiative. It is even at odds with his view that parental opinion is relevant. GALSTON: THE DIVERSITY STATE
A great improvement on Kukathas's approach is Galston's justification of affording considerable educational authority to cultural minorities (1995).13 In some respects the argument of Galston resembles that of Kukathas: cultural minority rights are justified in terms of individual `freedom of association' and they are not reserved for `liberal' minorities. Galston is preferable because his concept of `the freedom to leave' is less superficial, while he also takes civic risks seriously. In Galston's case concern for diversity takes first priority. First and foremost, liberal democracy should endeavour to protect diversity, rather than monitoring and promoting freedom of choice and autonomy and rationality. To underline this Galston labels it `the Diversity State'. It is a political model `that afford(s) maximum feasible space for the enactment of individual and group differences, constrained only by the requirements of liberal social unity' (p. 524). Cultural minorities have & The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 1998.
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extensive educational rights in such a democracy (p. 516). Galston is familiar with the liberal and civic risks (pp. 517, 518), yet he believes that neither individual freedoms and rights nor civic unity and stability would seriously suffer from diversity. How can group diversity go together with individual freedoms and rights when not all groups are liberal? At a first glance Galston's answer coincides with Kukathas's: `The state must safeguard the ability of individuals to shift allegiances and cross boundaries. But it should not seek to reconstruct practices within subcommunities in light of principles governing movement among subcommunities' (p. 522). Galston, too, calls the principle that justifies and limits group diversity `freedom of association' (pp. 531±534). Minority rights are not bound to liberal conditions as long as the state protects `freedom of entrance and exit . . . groups may be illiberal in their internal structure and practices' (p. 533). Groups may be illiberal, because liberal democracy does not have a preference for personal autonomy, says Galston. The ideal of autonomy represents a way of life no better than other ways of life (p. 523): `Autonomy is one possible mode of existence in liberal societies Ð one among others; its practice must be safeguarded; but the devotees of autonomy must recognize the need for respectful coexistence with individuals and groups that do not give autonomy pride of place' (p. 525). Cultural minority rights including educational rights are acceptable, according to Galston, as long as the state is in a position to safeguard freedom of entrance and exit. Especially `protection of meaningful exit' is required (pp. 533, 534). Contrary to Kukathas, Galston realises that an open and liberal `wider community' is no guarantee. To protect everyone's freedom of exit the liberal-democratic state must monitor `knowledge conditions', `capacity conditions', `psychological conditions' and `fitness conditions': everyone must have knowledge of ways of life other than one's own (knowledge); everyone must be capable of evaluating ways of life other than one's own (capacity); everyone must be exempt from `brainwashing' and other forms of non-physical force (psychological); everyone must have the knowledge and ability to accomplish (at least some) ways of life other than one's own (fitness). Galston does not seem to realise that this responsibility of the state is inconsistent with providing illiberal cultural minorities with broad educational authority. It is, however, easy to grasp. Concern for the previously listed conditions and their protection calls for substantial government intervention in educational matters. At the very least government should make such demands on education that no child is kept short-sighted and ignorant of alternatives to parental ways of life, that no child is prevented from forming a personal and well-informed opinion about other ways of life than those of his parents, that no child is psychologically pushed into accepting the parental way of life and that no child is solely prepared for an adult life corresponding to his parents' way of life. This means that it is up to the state to ensure that all children receive an education which contributes to their gaining & The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 1998.
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sufficient knowledge and skills and which promotes autonomy and rationality. Without broad knowledgeability and various skills the child lacks the necessary capacities and implements to know, to understand and to judge such complex things as ways of life. This would result in ignorance, awkwardness and inexperience, and would lead him to cling to things familiar and trusted, and consequently to parental and familiar group culture. Without autonomy and rationality it would be impossible to temporarily break with the power of the familiar perspective and to transcend to some extent the tailor-made patterns of what is considered ordinary. Autonomy and rationality enable one to learn about ways of life and to pass judgment on them, in spite of being confined to a certain way of life and to one's past and opinions. Lacking autonomy and rationality, the way of life one lives would be the only one conceivable and liveable, and the pull towards familiar and trusted ways of life, i.e. parental ways, would be maximal. In short, given the conditions which, according to Galston, are linked to `meaningful protection of exit', which is itself a condition for cultural minority rights, government must see to it that education sufficiently enhances knowledgeability and abilities and promotes autonomy and rationality or at least does not impoverish and frustrate them. Illiberal cultural minorities face major compromise Ð more than Galston would have us believe Ð if they wish to claim any measure of educational authority. It seems as if liberal democracy cannot completely get around promoting autonomy, and the same applies to the Diversity State, however eagerly Galston may wish for it not to be so (cf. p. 525). To give an impression of the consequences: in the classic cases of Mozert and Yoder there were educational minority rights involved which clearly go too far when one sticks to the identified standards, derived from the requirement Galston brings forward for qualifying for minority rights, `protection of meaningful exit'. The orthodox Protestant parents in the Mozert case claimed the right to temper autonomy in their offspring by hindering solid acquaintance with other ways of life. The Amish parents in the Yoder case, defended in fact by Galston himself (pp. 516±518), claimed the right to initiate their children into their own particular way of life by curtailing their education in such a way as to render other ways of life unattractive and inaccessible. On closer examination, protection of exit places the liberal democratic state under the obligation to exercise substantial public influence on education. The same applies to civic risks. Galston himself realises that civic risks prompt public interference in the field of education. He nevertheless gives the impression that a small measure of public authority would suffice. Galston is familiar with the civic risks of diversity. In the Diversity State diversity is not respected at all costs. Diversity is only the highest good insofar as `liberal social unity' permits it (p. 524). The state is allowed to interfere in the interest of unity at the expense of pluriformity. `Public purposes' providing liberal social unity are `compelling state interests that warrant public interference with group practices' (ibid.). & The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 1998.
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He gives three examples of such public purposes: `the protection of human life', `the protection and promotion of normal development of basic capacities' and `the development of . . . ``social rationality'' (the kind of understanding needed to participate in the society, economy, and polity') (p. 525). The third justifies standardisation of educational authority: `(it) would allow the state to intervene against forms of education that are systematically disenabling when judged against this norm' (ibid.). The reason why Galston fails to consider whether the second public purpose has implications for the division of educational authority remains unclear. Is it not conceivable that public protection and promotion of the development of basic capacities require the state to guard the content and quality of education? There is, for example, much to be said for perceiving autonomy and rationality as basic capacities.14 Public protection and promotion of the development of autonomy and rationality would have implications for the demands the state may assert on education; there is a high probability of these being at odds with Galston's plea. But Galston deflects this kind of problem at the outset and without further justification, by conceptualising the basic capacities in an extremely shallow way: he merely includes a few physical functions (ibid.). Therefore, according to Galston, the sole public purpose relevant to the division of educational authority is the development of social rationality. The importance of social rationality is closely related to the basic structure of the Diversity State. Typical of that basic structure is among other things `a vigorous system of civic education' (p. 528). Such education `teaches tolerance . . . and helps equip individuals with the virtues and competencies they will need to perform as members of a liberal economy, society, and polity' (ibid.). For this reason the state in a liberal democracy has `a legitimate and compelling interest in ensuring that the convictions, competencies, and virtues required for liberal citizenship are widely shared'; `the state may establish educational guidelines pursuant to this . . . interest' (p. 529). Galston seems to be mistaken as to the scope of the implications of his views in this instance. Development of social rationality and civic education include everything commonly depicted by `general and liberal education': transmission and acquisition of understanding and competencies as well as the convictions and virtues necessary for participation in a liberal democratic society, economy and politics.15 The public's say on education may or must be just enough to ensure that all children receive `general and liberal education' whatever their origin, sex, cultural or ethnic background. This very same criterion is also upheld by philosophers and educational theorists such as Gutmann, Crittenden, Meijer and Imelman who show little appreciation of illiberal minorities' claims to educational rights and who advocate a powerful standardisation by public authorities, based on pedagogical, democratic and liberal principles.16 This is indeed the implication. Participation in plural, liberal-democratic society, economy and politics is very & The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 1998.
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demanding as far as abilities, knowledge and readiness are concerned. `General and liberal education' is therefore demanding in a material as well as a formal sense. Materially it demands, for instance, a curriculum reflecting the social-cultural context, doing justice to its scope, complexity and diversity and anticipating the opportunities it offers, its problems and conflicts and the tasks it generates. And in a formal sense it for instance requires forms of education promoting reasonableness, broad knowledgeability, openness, self-criticism, the ability to deliberate, respect for people with different ways of life and opinions, a sense of responsibility and so on.17 The implicit thrust of Galston's argument here contradicts his general intent, because it means reluctance in granting educational authority to cultural minorities, to illiberal minorities in particular, and far-reaching stipulation of educational rights. On the other hand, he professes to be arguing for broad educational minority rights, because the liberal ideologies and ways of life must not be systematically favoured at the expense of their illiberal counterparts. All in all, illiberal communities are no better off with Galston than with Kymlicka, and that must irritate Galston. As is well-known, Kymlicka's justification of the protection of minority cultures (1989) leads to only liberal or liberalising communities qualifying for cultural rights. Kymlicka certainly does not deny this.18 He has been criticised on this score more than once:19 illiberal communities are the very ones claiming minority rights with an eye to preserving their traditional culture; they envision averting liberalisation with the help of cultural rights; liberalisation can therefore hardly be a condition of getting protective cultural rights as it threatens preservation of cultural identity. Galston's verdict is a harsh one. Kymlicka's proposition geared towards the protection of minority cultures results in the opposite: `what Kymlicka calls liberalization will in many cases amount to a forced shift of basic group identity; it turns out to be the cultural equivalent of the Vietnam-era principle of ``destroying the village in order to save it'' ' (pp. 522, 523). But then, as has been said, the way in which Galston himself defends educational minority rights has a similar outcome. In the end his justification of educational minority rights means that cultural communities can only claim them insofar as they adapt to distinctly liberal norms. If `general and liberal education' is the criterion or must be tolerated alongside one's own traditional education Ð and that is what Galston says Ð then no illiberal community will be at liberty to transmit its own culture in a pure, unadulterated way in order to guarantee its future. CONCLUSION
Extensive or exclusive educational authority within one's own community can hardly be defended as a cultural minority right, and this most certainly applies to illiberal communities, when individual freedom & The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 1998.
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and rights are valued, however slightly, and one is concerned for the future of democracy. Liberal risks and civic risks prompt the democratic state to set educational standards and to monitor education. This state interference is incompatible with far-reaching educational minority rights. Illiberal minorities therefore have no claim to such rights, not even when they are necessary for the preservation of cultural identity. Is this too bad? Not really Ð it is the price to pay for public concern for individual rights and freedoms and for the future of plural democracy. For illiberal minorities the price is higher than for other groups. But to quote Macedo: `a price must be paid for life in a diverse society' (1995b, p. 227). And members of such minorities are among those who will definitely profit from a political order which cares about cultural diversity. After all, what would be left of them in a political order which did not appreciate diversity? In Tamir's opinion (1995)20 in a plural liberal democracy much too much is demanded of illiberal communities (pp. 166±171). She thinks it would be a good thing for liberal cultural communities and the democratic state to be far more lenient towards illiberal communities. Instead of taking `autonomy-based liberalism', which only tolerates and respects `autonomy-supporting cultures' as a point of reference, it is preferable to take `rights-based liberalism' as one's starting point (p. 168). Rights-based liberalism is sensitive to the rights of individuals `without conceiving of those rights as grounded in autonomy-entitlement and choice prerogatives' (ibid.). Hence, such liberalism is not bothered by `decent illiberal cultures which do not foster the ideal of personal autonomy' (ibid.). This type of liberalism is noted for `a commitment to equal concern and respect for individuals, their preferences and interests, regardless of the way these were formed ' (ibid.). Tamir advocates what she calls `thick multiculturalism', a society in which liberal and illiberal communities live side by side, while resigning in each other's presence, tolerating one another and leaving one another alone: `a conditional modus vivendi based on respect on the part of the liberal cultures and compliance with their position as a minority on the part of the illiberal ones'. This means that `liberals should limit both their demands towards and their expectations of illiberal cultures' (p. 171). My aim in this article was to argue that views such as Tamir's are mistaken, however popular they seem to have become. Tamir, as well as Tomasi and Kukathas, fails to take civic risks seriously: in her eyes the children of illiberal communities do not necessarily have to receive any civic education. This marks the difference between `thick multiculturalism' and `thin multiculturalism'. Only the latter presupposes that all children from all groups receive `communal education' besides `civic education' (pp. 165. 166). What Tamir does not take seriously either, are the liberal risks. Similarly to Tomasi she fails to discern any difficulties in the (self-)definition of the groups claiming cultural rights `as' illiberal groups, rights which could jeopardise individual rights. Furthermore, her `rights-based liberalism' is based upon a similarly superficial and & The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 1998.
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ambiguous concept of freedom as those of Kukathas and Galston: it is a concept which seems to imply that neither autonomy nor rationality is a condition of voluntariness and that acquiescence is in itself sufficient indication; as if it does not matter how someone came to agree with certain ways of life or to have certain preferences. Finally, Tamir completely ignores, as do Tomasi, Kukathas and Galston, the extremely problematic nature of the relationships between communities and `their' children and between parents and `their' children. Correspondence: Piet A. van der Ploeg, University of Utrecht, Department of Educational Sciences, PB. 80.140, (NL) 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands. NOTES 1. See, e.g. Donelly, 1990, esp. pp. 56±59; Kukathas, 1992a, esp. pp. 115, 117, 126; Tamir, 1995, pp. 161±172; V. van Dyke, 1982 (see Kukathas, 1992; Kymlicka, 1989). 2. Cf. O'Neill and W. Ruddick, 1979, pp. 297±281; Gutmann, 1980, 1995. 3. Cf. LaFollette, 1989; Stolzenberg, 1993; Macedo, 1995a. 4. All page references in this paragraph are to this Tomasi article. 5. See, e.g. Stolzenberg, 1993, p. 609. 6. But imagine: in a cultural community people believe that this is not dependent on socialisation and education. What happens then? First, it would be very strange for them to claim educational authority. What have they to gain? Second, this belief would be one of the beliefs not shared by all individuals whose individual rights are threatened by compromise when they (those beliefs) would, for the government, be reason for giving up the protection of individual rights in a certain domain and in a certain sense. 7. All page references in this paragraph are to these articles. 8. See references in Kymlicka, 1989; Galenkamp, 1993, van Dyke, 1974, 1977, 1980, 1982. 9. The foregoing is similar to Kymlicka's critique of Kukathas (Kymlicka, 1992, p. 145). 10. van der Ploeg, 1995, pp. 299, 300. 11. For a critical review of many theories and arguments dedicated to this issue, see van der Ploeg, 1995, pp. 251±265. 12. Cf. the Yoder and Mozert cases. 13. All page references in this paragraph are to this article. Cf. Galston (1989). 14. Cf. van der Ploeg, 1995. 15. For theories and discussions on `general and liberal education' see, e.g. Bailey, 1984; Barrow and White, 1993. 16. Gutmann, 1987, 1989; Crittenden, 1988; Imelman and Tolsma, 1987; Imelman, 1995; Meijer, 1988; Meijer, Benner and Imelman, 1992; van der Ploeg, 1995. 17. Cf. van der Ploeg, 1995. 18. Kymlicka, 1989, pp. 167±170. 19. For instance: Kukathas, 1992a and b; Tomasi, 1995; van der Ploeg, 1995; Galenkamp, 1993. 20. All page references in this paragraph are to this article.
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