NO CHILD IS AN ISLAND: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN

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NO CHILD IS AN ISLAND: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENTAND THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN

Olivia Newman

Committee on Degrees in Social StudiesHarvard University

Abstract. In this essay Olivia Newman critically examines two opposing rights claims: the liberalclaim that children have a right to become liberal choosers and the fundamentalist claim that childrenhave a right to not become liberal choosers. These positions reflect differing views regarding the valueof critically choosing, rather than simply accepting, a way of life. Given their assumptions regardingpreference formation, both of these rights appear untenable in light of recent scholarship in psychology:we can neither select a way of life independent of our social milieu, as liberals often imply, nor can wepredict how different experiences will affect our preferences, as fundamentalists assume. Nevertheless,each position points to important concerns. Children have a substantive right of exit from constrainingsocial milieus, as liberals purport, as well as a right to respect in public institutions, as fundamentalistsinsist. When liberals and fundamentalists assert these more modest rights claims, educators can andshould strive to satisfy both.

In this essay I critically examine two opposing rights claims that are oftenmade on behalf of children. I do not believe that either rights claim can besupported as is, but each points to a set of concerns that educators should address.According to the first claim, children have a ‘‘right to an open future,’’ wherebythey can select from a wide range of options the way of life for which they are bestsuited.1 The right to an open future supposes that an important element in a goodlife is that it is freely chosen and not simply inherited or uncritically adopted. Thisright is generally asserted as part of a liberal perspective that prizes individualliberty and autonomy. I call this the right to become a liberal chooser.

According to the second claim, children have a right to live a good lifeaccording to religious values they have not chosen but nevertheless affirm. Fromthis perspective, choice is not of central value; rather, it is the substance of beliefsand ways of life that gives lives relative value. This right is generally advancedas part of a fundamentalist perspective that seeks to protect valuable ways of lifefrom external pressures to change.2 Accordingly, liberal efforts to train childrenfor critical choice are likely to loosen their moral commitments and may inducethem to abandon important religious values.3 Efforts to avoid these changes can be

1. Joel Feinberg, ‘‘The Child’s Right to an Open Future,’’ in Whose Child? Children’s Rights, ParentalAuthority, and State Power, ed. William Aiken and Hugh LaFollette (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman andLittlefield, 1980), 125–153.

2. Following Shelley Burtt’s lead, I use ‘‘fundamentalism’’ to refer to any belief system that rejects acentral role for choice. Shelley Burtt, ‘‘The Proper Scope of Parental Authority: Why We Don’t OweChildren an ‘Open Future,’’’ in Child, Family, and State: Nomos XLIV, ed. Stephen Macedo and IrisMarion Young (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 243–270.

3. Nomi Maya Stolzenberg, ‘‘‘He Drew a Circle That Shut Me Out’: Assimilation, Indoctrination, andthe Paradox of Liberal Education,’’ Harvard Law Review 106, no. 3 (1993): 581–667.

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92 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y Volume 62 Number 1 2012

understood in terms of a right to not become a liberal chooser, which is a specificarticulation of the more general right to avoid unwanted preference changes.

These liberal and fundamentalist interests (to become or not become liberalchoosers) are expressed in terms of rights because both parties regard theirinterests as not just good but essential to a good life. Expressing these interestsin terms of rights implies an obligation (whose is not always clear) to securethem for all children. But when children’s interests are asserted as nonnegotiablerights, compromise becomes very difficult — particularly when we are faced withmutually exclusive rights claims, as is the case here.

This leaves educators and policymakers in a difficult position. Even whenthey do not explicitly endorse either claim, their actions likely favor oneover the other. Recall Wisconsin v. Yoder, in which the U.S. Supreme Courtallowed Amish families to withdraw their children from public schools after theeighth grade — two years earlier than state law permitted — in order to minimizeexposure to ‘‘worldly’’ values that might increase attrition rates among Amishyouth. The Court pointed to the insularity of the Amish and their lack of politicalambition as justification, in effect promoting the right to not become liberalchoosers.4 A similar set of issues arose in a case argued before the Sixth CircuitCourt of Appeals, Mozert v. Hawkins County School Board, in which Christianfundamentalist families objected to a textbook series that they believed threatenedtheir children’s devotion to biblical truths.5 As in Yoder, these families insistedupon a right to protect their children from exposure to ideas that might erode theircommitment to their way of life. The school board insisted that they had the rightto assign reasonable texts to all students, endorsing, at least implicitly, the rightto become liberal choosers. The court affirmed the school board’s position.

In cases such as these, educators appear to face a zero-sum game. Butsome see an alternative, suggesting that the liberal aims represented by thecurriculum in Mozert — for example, encouraging toleration and developing asense of equality — can be best achieved through progressive pedagogies ratherthan curricula.6 Accordingly, gender equality is more effectively taught by treatingboys and girls equally, rather than relying on potentially controversial feministtexts.7 Moreover, while we may be sympathetic toward parents who worry thatspecific texts will challenge their views regarding gender norms, it is muchmore difficult to conjure sympathy toward families who object to the actual

4. Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972).

5. Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education, 827 F.2nd 1058 (6th Cir. 1987).

6. Joe Coleman, ‘‘Civic Pedagogies and Liberal Democratic Curricula,’’ Ethics 108, no. 4 (1998): 746–761.

7. Christopher L. Eisgruber, ‘‘How Do Liberal Democracies Teach Values?’’ in Moral and PoliticalEducation: Nomos XLIII, ed. Stephen Macedo and Yael Tamir (New York: New York University Press,2002), 58–86.

OLIVIA NEWMAN is a Lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard University; e-mail [email protected]. Her primary areas of scholarship are education and liberal democratic theory.

Newman No Child Is an Island 93

equal treatment of boys and girls. Nevertheless, this does not eliminate thebasic issue here, which is that some families resent any practices — curricularor pedagogical — that may diminish their ability to pass their religious values totheir children.8 These controversies cannot be resolved in a way that satisfies boththe rights to become and not become liberal choosers.

As I argue in this essay, however, it may not be necessary to choose betweenthese two opposing claims. We shall see that each of these supposed rights reliesupon a conception of character development9 that appears untenable in lightof recent research in psychology and a closer analysis of what each implies interms of preference formation. The right to become a liberal chooser dependsupon an ‘‘unencumbered self’’ that can choose between lifestyles and valuesindependent of any social influences. But we do not make decisions in a vacuumand the criteria with which we make decisions are themselves socially informed.We cannot extricate ourselves from what Maria Merritt calls the ‘‘sustainingsocial contribution to character.’’10 Of course, most if not all liberals reject thebaldest version of the unencumbered self.11 Nevertheless, several influential liberalaccounts of choosing and living a good life indirectly rest upon the presumptionof such a self.

The right to not become a liberal chooser rests upon similarly untenableassumptions. In particular, as a variant of the more general right to avoid unwantedpreference changes, it presumes that we can reasonably anticipate how variousexperiences will shape our character and preferences. But there are limits to ourability to predict how we will change over time. I maintain that this is not aconstraint; it is this flexibility to change in unanticipated ways that allows us togrow beyond the reaches of our imagination at any given time. Because we oftenwelcome unexpected changes and discoveries in our lives, I contend that there is

8. Amy Gutmann, ‘‘Can Publicly Funded Schools Legitimately Teach Values in a ConstitutionalDemocracy? A Reply to McConnell and Eisgruber,’’ in Moral and Political Education, ed. Macedo andTamir, 189.

9. Many philosophers and educators understand character as the presence of virtue or lack thereof.Accordingly, one ‘‘has character’’ or has, perhaps, ‘‘bad character,’’ and character education is intendedto inculcate virtues and thereby develop character. I employ a somewhat broader conception of character,taking it to be the entirety of one’s moral personality — not just the presence or lack of virtues, but alsothe architecture of this personality and how it operates. Hence, whether or not one is a liberal chooseris a crucial feature of one’s character.

10. Maria Merritt, ‘‘Virtue Ethics and Situationist Personality Psychology,’’ Ethical Theory and MoralPractice 3, no. 4 (2000): 374.

11. John Rawls, for instance, was quick to distance himself from the unencumbered self that manycritiques, like Michael Sandel’s, attribute to him. As Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift ask, ‘‘How couldanybody deny that people derive their self-understandings from the societies in which they live? Wecannot think of a single liberal theorist who asserts or even suggests such a thing.’’ Nevertheless, a versionof this unencumbered self sneaks into important liberal theories, often unnoticed and uninvited. JohnRawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Michael Sandel, Liberalismand the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); and Harry Brighouse andAdam Swift, ‘‘Defending Liberalism in Education Theory,’’ Journal of Education Policy 18, no. 4 (2003):355–373.


no reason to privilege earlier preferences over later ones. We are always works inprogress, in ways that the right to not become a liberal chooser fails to recognize.

Hence, we shall see that neither the right to become nor the right to not becomea liberal chooser can stand as is. However, each points to an important set of con-cerns. Ultimately, I argue that liberal energies are better spent pursuing the moremodest claim for a substantive right of exit from constraining cultural and religiousmilieus. Similarly, fundamentalist energies are better directed toward the moremodest claim for a right to respect in public institutions. These more modest rightsclaims are consistent with plausible accounts of character formation, and they arenot mutually exclusive in the way that the rights to become or not become liberalchoosers are. Moreover, these rights claims move us away from exaggerated lib-eral and fundamentalist archetypes, toward more realistic subjects of educationaljustice. While this will not eliminate the real and difficult tensions between thesetwo perspectives, educators may find that they are better able to accommodateboth positions when they focus on these more limited and modest rights claims.

The Right to Become a Liberal Chooser

Controversies over education are often framed as conflicts between theinterests of parents and those of the state, with little attention paid to the distinctrights of children. This was the case in Mozert, in which the conflict revolvedaround the parents’ free exercise right to pass their religion to their children andthe state’s right to establish reasonable educational requirements. But much workhas been done in recent decades to identify the distinct rights of children.12 Theimpetus for these efforts stems in large part from concerns that some families andreligious communities intentionally limit the range of preferences children mightdevelop. Liberals worry that children raised in all-encompassing worldviews willbe unable to objectively evaluate their worldview; as a consequence, their real exitoption may be severely diminished and they may find themselves in a ‘‘kind ofmental and moral prison’’ or ‘‘hermeneutic cage.’’13

Efforts to identify the distinct rights of children often begin with the ‘‘right toan open future,’’ which posits that a good life is only good if it is freely chosen froma wide range of meaningful choices. I call this the right to become a liberal chooserin order to more easily juxtapose it with the right to not become a liberal chooser.It is important to consider these educational controversies from the perspectiveof these rights because they potentially reflect the interests of children above andbeyond the interests of their parents or the state. We do children a great disservicewhen we collapse their rights into those of their parents. While the state and

12. Martha Fineman and Amy Gutmann are reflective of this growing field: Martha L.A. Fineman,‘‘Taking Children’s Interests Seriously,’’ in Child, Family, and State, ed. Macedo and Young, 234–242;and Amy Gutmann, Democratic Education (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999).

13. William Galston, ‘‘Parents, Government and Children: Authority over Education in the LiberalDemocratic State,’’ in Child, Family, and State, ed. Macedo and Young, 228; and Eamonn Callan,‘‘Autonomy, Child-Rearing, and Good Lives,’’ in The Moral and Political Status of Children, ed. DavidArchard and Colin M. Macleod (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 130.


parents are rightly invested in these matters, we should begin by considering whatis best for children independent of the interests of these other parties.

In order to satisfy the right to become a liberal chooser, children need boththe skills necessary to make autonomous choices as well as an adequate rangeof options from which to choose.14 Autonomous decision making requires thatchildren can achieve some distance from the worldviews in which they wereraised in order to critically evaluate them and compare them to other options.This also requires exposure to diversity, so that children may learn about otherlifestyles and determine which, if any, might offer their lives more meaning andsatisfaction.15

The right to become a liberal chooser requires that parents either expose theirchildren to diversity and actively develop their critical reasoning capacities or, atthe very least, not interfere with reasonable educational efforts by the state toachieve the same results. The state, for its part, must promote educational practicesthat develop these skills and expose children to diversity. Such an educationdevelops skills like the ability to rationally weigh pros and cons and questionbasic premises and assumptions. It also teaches students to seek foundations fortheir knowledge and beliefs that they can defend against challenges. Studentsare also encouraged to change their minds and shift their perspectives whenevidence induces them to do so. Such skills need not be cultivated in didacticmoral instruction; they are naturally cultivated by encouraging intellectual rigor,the critical scrutiny of evidence, and a willingness to engage various viewpointsand perspectives.16 A liberal education emphasizes these skills and encouragesstudents to apply them in and out of the classroom. This education also strivesto expose students to a wide variety of ideas and values. Such exposure canbe achieved through the study of literature, history, or comparative religions,for instance, or by encouraging students to explore diversity within their owncommunity. Ideally, this will equip each student with the capacity to choose thelife that best suits his or her character.

Some liberals support the right to become a liberal chooser on the groundsthat it will free children from all-encompassing worldviews, not so that they willnecessarily reject them, but rather so they may choose or reject them on rational,autonomous grounds. Indeed, some liberals express hope that a liberal educationwill prepare children for ‘‘well-informed critical deliberation . . . increas[ing]

14. Joseph Raz insists that autonomy depends upon a decent array of meaningful choices. RobertFlathman, conversely, suggests that autonomy is a state of mind independent of external conditions. Toillustrate this Flathman claims that when Andrei Sakharov was in prison he was denied his freedombut not his autonomy, in contrast to a sycophant who is free but not autonomous. Because the rightto become a liberal chooser clearly depends upon having an array of decent choices, it is better alignedwith Raz’s understanding of autonomy. Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1986); and Robert Flathman, The Philosophy and Politics of Freedom (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1987), 177.

15. Feinberg, ‘‘The Child’s Right to an Open Future,’’ 136.

16. Eisgruber, ‘‘How Do Liberal Democracies Teach Values?’’


the probability of a choice, secular or traditionalist, that is better for thechooser.’’17 The assumption here is that individuals possess an inherent tendencytoward either secularism or religiosity that a liberal education can help themidentify.

This understanding of innate tendencies informs many articulations of theright to become a liberal chooser. Consider Joel Feinberg’s description: ‘‘Thestandard sort of loving upbringing and a human social environment in the earliestyears will be like water added to dehydrated food, filling it out and actualizingits stored in tendencies.’’18 Richard Arneson offers a similar account: ‘‘The youngchild is conceived as containing innate propensities that in the course of ordinaryinteraction with her environment would develop into basic preferences unlessblocked by effective repression.’’19 The analogy to dehydrated food is telling, asit suggests that our character is so fully predetermined that the only optionsare a full, an incomplete, or a failed realization of it. Here is the unencumberedself — independent of the influences of its surroundings.

I do not want to deny that we come into this world with genetic dispositions,nor that our environments affect the likelihood that we will flourish later inlife. But a significant body of research has amassed in social, cognitive, moral,and developmental psychology suggesting that the formation of our character is adeeply interactive process, whereby genetic dispositions are but one ingredient ina very complicated recipe.20 Accordingly, our relationships and experiences eachleave their stamp on our character. Our environment actively contributes to theformation of our preferences, not just because it provides a supportive or harmfulcontext for an otherwise internal process, but because it provides us with theinteraction that supplies the content for many of our preferences. It is not possibleto control for the sustaining social contribution to character. To the extent thatthe right to become a liberal chooser rests upon the assumption that choice shouldsatisfy presocial preferences, independent of social constraints, it promotes animplausibly atomistic conception of the self. Indeed, both Feinberg’s and Arnesonand Shapiro’s influential accounts seem to rest indirectly upon something like anunencumbered self.

17. Richard Arneson and Ian Shapiro, ‘‘Democratic Autonomy and Religious Freedom: A Critique ofWisconsin v. Yoder,’’ in Ian Shapiro, Democracy’s Place (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press,1996), 170 (emphasis added).


19. Richard Arneson, ‘‘Autonomy and Preference Formation,’’ in In Harm’s Way: Essays in Honor of JoelFeinberg, ed. Jules L. Coleman and Allen Buchanan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 60.

20. Representative research includes Lee Ross and Richard E. Nisbett, The Person and the Situation:Perspectives of Social Psychology (New York: McGraw Hill, 1991); James Youniss, ‘‘Social Constructionand Moral Development: Update and Expansion of an Idea,’’ in Moral Development through SocialInteraction, ed. William Kurtines and Jacob Gewirtz (New York: John Wiley, 1987), 131–148; WilliamA. Corsaro and Peggy J. Miller, eds., Interpretive Approaches to Children’s Socialization (San Francisco:Jossey-Bass, 1998); and Alan Fogel, Developing through Relationships: Origins of Communication, Self,and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).


Other liberals, such as Stephen Macedo, Eamonn Callan, and Meira Levinson,recognize the sustaining social contribution to character and admit that ourpreferences change as we interact with our environment. They readily acknowledgethat becoming a chooser affects the relative appeal of different choices andis likely to disadvantage any worldview that rejects the importance of individualchoice.21 These liberals encourage us to welcome the ‘‘activist and transformative’’aspects of such an education, defending the value of becoming a liberal chooseragainst what may be considered the regrettable but necessary disadvantage thatfundamentalist worldviews will likely suffer.22

These liberals provide a more realistic account of preference development.While the outcomes they promote will be no more palatable to fundamentalists,they cannot be accused of denying the real effects of becoming a liberal chooser.Nevertheless, even when the right to become a liberal chooser is amended toaccommodate the sustaining social contribution to character, it still supports animplausible account of individual autonomy by promoting the general principlethat autonomy requires a wide range of options from which to choose. Indeed, thisis precisely the rationale that Arneson and Shapiro provide in their critiqueof Wisconsin v. Yoder, insisting that Amish youth, like all young people,must be exposed to ‘‘the widest possible variety of ways of life’’ before theycan choose the one for which they are best suited.23 But there are limitsto the number of options we can seriously entertain as socially conditionedagents.

These limitations stem in large part from the fact that any criteria with whichwe evaluate choices will themselves be socially conditioned, suggesting that wehave no truly independent standards with which to make decisions.24 The questionis whether or not this diminishes our autonomy. One promising approach to thisquestion is to move beyond an emphasis on choice and the number of optionsavailable to us, instead focusing on our capacity to achieve critical distance anddevelop second-order volitions, asking ourselves, ‘‘Do I want to want that?’’25

As Macedo tells us, ‘‘Situated autonomy involves critical reflection on inheritedvalues, personal commitments, and basic goods, not a flight from and abandonmentof them.’’26 S.I. Benn affirms this view: ‘‘To be autonomous one must have reasons

21. Stephen Macedo, ‘‘Liberal Civic Education and Religious Fundamentalism: The Case of God v. JohnRawls?’’ Ethics 105, no. 3 (1995) 468–496; and Callan, ‘‘Autonomy, Child-Rearing, and Good Lives,’’ 126.

22. Meira Levinson, ‘‘Liberalism, Pluralism, and Political Education: Paradox or Paradigm?’’ OxfordReview of Education 25, no. 1 and 2 (1999): 39–58.

23. Arneson and Shapiro, ‘‘Democratic Autonomy and Religious Freedom,’’ 158.

24. S.I. Benn, ‘‘Freedom, Autonomy and the Concept of a Person,’’ Proceedings of the AristotelianSociety (1976), 109–130; and Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1986).

25. Harry G. Frankfurt, ‘‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,’’ in The Inner Citadel: Essayson Individual Autonomy, ed. John Christman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 63–76.

26. Stephen Macedo, Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 220.


for acting, and be capable of second thoughts in the light of new reasons; it is notthe capacity for conjuring criteria out of nowhere.’’27

This seems like a more realistic approach. There is a finite set of options thatwill hold any conceivable appeal to any one of us, and we will approach this setof options with socially conditioned criteria. We cannot escape these constraints.But we can focus on developing the capacity for critical distance and second-ordervolitions, so that we may feel confident that even when our particular set ofoptions is small, we are not residing in a ‘‘mental and moral prison.’’ The right tobecome a liberal chooser is not able to adequately secure this capacity, as it is tooconcerned with unconstrained choice and an unrealistic conception of autonomy.As I argue in my conclusion, liberals do better when they limit themselves toseeking a substantive right of exit.

The Right to Not Become a Liberal Chooser

Like its counterpart, the right to not become a liberal chooser, if it can bejustified, must reflect the interests of children above and beyond the interestsof parents or the state. We can distinguish this right from parents’ interests byconsidering the distinctive advantages that might flow directly to children whenparents are able to successfully pass on their views. Fundamentalists portray this asa deeply satisfying process that provides the comfort and security of growing up ina stable and cohesive moral community.28 They contrast this deep-seated sense ofwell-being with liberalism’s ‘‘consumerist menu of spiritual possibilities,’’ whichleaves children in a position of doubt and uncertainty.29 Not only will childrenhave few tools with which to make meaningful decisions, but they run the riskof making unwise choices based upon short-term preferences when they couldinstead avail themselves of the accumulated wisdom of family and community.

For many fundamentalists, choice detracts from the intrinsic value of theirbeliefs and practices, as they feel ‘‘claimed by religious commitments they havenot chosen.’’30 Accordingly, the relative value of any given life does not flow fromits being freely chosen, but rather from the intrinsic value of that life. As ShelleyBurtt explains, a meaningful life is one that feels right ‘‘from the inside.’’31 Formany fundamentalists, there is a crucial distinction here between being immersedin one’s life — truly belonging to it — and being a perpetual outsider, whichthey regard as an inevitable consequence of being a liberal chooser. Contrast a

27. Benn, ‘‘Freedom, Autonomy and the Concept of a Person,’’ 126.

28. Stolzenberg, ‘‘He Drew a Circle That Shut Me Out.’’

29. Burtt, ‘‘The Proper Scope of Parental Authority,’’ 190.

30. Michael Sandel, ‘‘Freedom of Conscience or Freedom of Choice?’’ in Articles of Faith, Articles ofPeace: The Religious Liberty Clauses and the American Public Philosophy, ed. James Davison Hunterand Os Guinness (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1990), 87.

31. Shelley Burtt, ‘‘Comprehensive Educations and the Liberal Understanding of Autonomy,’’ inEducation and Citizenship in Liberal-Democratic Societies: Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values andCollective Identities, ed. Kevin McDonough and Walter Feinberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2003), 190.


life that feels right ‘‘from the inside’’ with this liberal account of toleration anddetachment:

Individuals can accept other people’s conceptions of the good as reasonable — and thereforeas worthy of toleration and respect — only if they are able to see their own background andcommitments as in some way contingent. This sense of contingency demands in turn a levelof intellectual, if not emotional, detachment from their own cultures, group affiliations, andconceptions of the good.32

This is precisely what fundamentalists fear: a liberal education that loosensattachments and helps us recognize how we might have turned out differently. Thisdetachment may induce some children to reject the values with which they wereraised. And even if children ultimately affirm their fundamentalist worldview,they have been subjected to the moral uncertainty that choice represents.

Liberals worry that some children are trapped in worldviews from which theycannot imagine any viable escape. But liberal accounts that liken such lives toa ‘‘kind of mental and moral prison’’ or ‘‘hermeneutic cage’’ generally fail toacknowledge that some individuals might genuinely prefer an all-encompassingfundamentalist lifestyle to a liberal one.33 Imagine the wide range of goods afundamentalist life might offer, including a sense of place and belonging; a senseof history and continuity; shared purpose and identity; clear expectations andrewards; and, not trivially for many fundamentalists, a surer path to salvation. Ifany one of these things is of intrinsic value, then children who become liberalchoosers run the risk of choosing a life that is less valuable than the one they areleaving behind. Moreover, they face the possibility that making such a choice willalienate them from loved ones.

Becoming a chooser may render some individuals particularly vulnerable,unanchored from their original values but ill-equipped to make good choices.Such individuals might not only reject fundamentalism (itself an evil from theperspective of some fundamentalists), but they may adopt a worldview that iswidely viewed as vapid, destructive, or evil. These choosers may be seduced bythe larger consumerist popular culture, or they may find themselves persuaded byevil doctrines and propaganda.34 For instance, such an individual might align him-or herself with bigotry, the promotion of violence, or the kind of nihilism thatrenders compassion and cooperation pointless.35

Most fundamentalists and liberals would rightly be disturbed by such choices.However, as I have suggested, becoming a liberal chooser entails not just thecapacity to make choices, but the capacity to do so based upon self-reflection,

32. Levinson, ‘‘Liberalism, Pluralism, and Political Education,’’ 45.

33. Galston, ‘‘Parents, Government and Children,’’ 228; and Callan, ‘‘Autonomy, Child-Rearing, andGood Lives,’’ 130.

34. Callan, ‘‘Autonomy, Child-Rearing, and Good Lives,’’ 122.

35. Lucas Swaine’s essay ‘‘The False Right to Autonomy in Education’’ (in this volume) expresses sucha concern, positing that the belief that one’s views are revisable, coupled with a commitment to purelyrational decision making, might draw some choosers to prefer cruelty or evil.


critical distance, and the consideration of higher principles. As Macedo explains,this careful scrutiny may help choosers avoid vapid or evil decisions.36 Moreover,it should be noted that fundamentalisms of various sorts have also advocated trou-bling doctrines, including bigotry and the promotion of violence. If the avoidanceof evil is the objective, then fundamentalism does not present an obviously betteralternative than liberalism; evil can be chosen or uncritically adopted.

Of course, many brands of fundamentalism are not evil, and some liberalchoosers will, upon reflection, affirm their fundamentalist worldview. Even so,the act of choosing has irrevocably changed the nature of their relation with theirviews. For many fundamentalists, this does considerable violence to their spiritualwell-being. Once a constituent part of their identity, these views come to berecognized as one of many paths they could have taken, as ‘‘subjective, contestablematters of opinion.’’37 Even when they affirm fundamentalism, the act of choosingalso affirms a central role for choice — something that many fundamentalistsreject on principle.

As I have said, the right to not become a liberal chooser is an articulationof the more general right to avoid unwanted preference changes. Of course,trying to guess what a child will want when he or she reaches the age of reasonpresents an insurmountable difficulty.38 For the sake of analysis, however, let usassume that a liberal education leads some individuals who would have otherwiseremained fundamentalist to become liberal choosers. Accordingly, the right tonot become a liberal chooser is premised upon a conflict between fundamentalistpreferences articulated by and on behalf of the person in time1 against theimagined liberal preferences of the person in time2. But we must ask why our‘‘first nature’’ should always enjoy priority over our ‘‘second nature.’’39 This seemseven more perplexing if we employ even a weak assumption that individuals’judgment improves with experience and age. The challenge is this: when asingle person holds conflicting preferences at different points in time, how do weadjudicate?

To resolve this, Jon Elster recommends a ‘‘backward-looking principle,’’whereby we judge preferences in reference to their historical development toensure that preference changes were voluntary throughout time.40 Similarly,Arneson argues that preference change is only legitimate if ‘‘the causal influencesthat shape further preference change are either voluntarily chosen . . . or voluntarilyaccepted as foreseen concomitants of [a] chosen plan of life.’’41 Accordingly, the

36. Macedo, Liberal Virtues, 252.

37. Stolzenberg, ‘‘He Drew a Circle That Shut Me Out,’’ 597n.


39. Callan, ‘‘Autonomy, Child-Rearing, and Good Lives,’’ 126.

40. Jon Elster, ‘‘Sour Grapes — Utilitarianism and the Genesis of Wants,’’ in The Inner Citadel, ed.Christman, 170–188.

41. Arneson, ‘‘Autonomy and Preference Formation,’’ 59.


person in time1 must approve of any changes in preference formation that lead tothe preferences in time2.

These conditions are too stringent. Consider a couple that agreed to marryonly on the condition that they never have children. But the couple’s love deepensand they ultimately, happily, decide that a child will complete their family. Wecould not say that this couple had a right to avoid experiences that might makethem want to have children — this is not even a coherent claim. It is impossibleto fortify ourselves against the very experiences that constitute our character.

This couple’s preference change does not satisfy Arneson’s conditions forautonomy or Elster’s backward-looking principle. As Arneson tells us, ‘‘once theagent has reached maturity, further preference change should not occur against herwill.’’42 But it is not possible to meet this condition, and we should not want to doso. We simply cannot imagine how different experiences will affect us. Even if wedid possess this perfect knowledge, it is unclear that we would choose wisely. Or toput it more precisely, it is unclear whose standard of wisdom should count — thechildless couple in time1 or the new parents in time2? More importantly, it is notat all clear that wisdom and rationality are the only or even the best factors thatshould shape major life decisions; there must be room for affective ties, intuition,happy mistakes, and the like. While Arenson and Elster understandably want toprovide conditions for avoiding manipulation and coercion, they foreclose thepossibility that we may initially reject new ideas and beliefs but later come toembrace them as intrinsic aspects of our character. Any account that does not allowfor this possibility fails to capture an essential aspect of human experience andpresents an overly rational and rigid conception of the self. We should be glad thatour lives are not constrained by the limits of our imagination at any given time.

So the right to avoid unwanted preference changes relies upon two faultyassumptions regarding preference formation. First, it assumes that we cananticipate how various experiences will affect our preference development. Second,it assumes that we should always privilege our earlier, ‘‘first nature’’ over our‘‘second nature.’’ But there is no way to establish that our earlier self ‘‘knowsbest.’’ Sometimes change is for the better and sometimes it is for the worse, butwe cannot say up front that we have a right to avoid any and all changes. We arealways works in progress — a fact that is denied by the supposed right to avoidunwanted preference changes.

This does not mean that all preference changes should be regarded as equal.Clearly, changes brought about through manipulation or abuse cannot be regardedas legitimate. Similarly, children have a clear interest in not being subjected toevil doctrines at a young and malleable age. It is likely, however, that a liberaleducation is precisely what insulates us from the threats of manipulation andseduction by evil doctrines.43 But when overt manipulation is not present, it may

42. Ibid., 60.

43. Macedo, Liberal Virtues, 252.


be impossible to establish the ‘‘authenticity’’ of any given preference. For example,imagine a woman from a fundamentalist background who affirms restricted publicroles for women after ample opportunities to revise her views (in college, say). Itwould seem, then, that this preference is genuinely hers. The problem, of course,is that she may simply never escape the ‘‘hermeneutic cage’’ that led her toendorse patriarchy in the first place. She could be mistaken at either, or both,points in time. These difficulties suggest that it is misguided to establish theabsolute priority of preferences in either time1 or time2. But this is exactly whatthe supposed right to avoid unwanted preference changes asks us to do.

Furthermore, this supposed right privileges the free exercise rights of parentsover the rights and interests of children, as it tries to settle once and for allthe question of what is best for an individual child before that child is in anyposition to weigh in on the question. Indeed, many parents explicitly promotetheir children’s right to not become liberal choosers on the grounds that this is anecessary condition for their own exercise of religion, as the Amish parents did inWisconsin v. Yoder. This objective has little to do with any understanding of thedistinct rights of children, casting further doubt on any right asserted on behalf ofchildren to not become liberal choosers.

Rethinking the Rights to Become or Not Become Liberal Choosers

As I have argued, the supposed rights to become or not become liberalchoosers cannot be reconciled with the sustaining social contribution tocharacter and a plausible account of preference formation. Nevertheless, eachof these rights claims reflects legitimate concerns that educators can and shouldaddress.

Liberals promote the right to become a liberal chooser because they worryabout individuals uncritically adopting values and becoming trapped in all-encompassing worldviews. Of course, autonomy is not something all peoplevalue; some individuals are satisfied living heteronomous lives whereby they donot submit their deepest values to critical evaluation.44 From this perspective,a compulsory education for autonomy is simply liberal overreach.45 There are,however, important concerns here that require addressing: namely, even if someheteronomous lives are quite good, some are not; some individuals are trapped inabsolutist worldviews, ill equipped to evaluate or extricate themselves from them.Even if we do not believe that all individuals must subject their lives to criticalscrutiny on a regular basis, there are few among us, I believe, who would defendcircumstances in which young people are groomed for the slavish acceptanceof values that they would not otherwise accept. This concern is best addressedby securing a substantive right of exit, rather than focusing on the loftier andultimately untenable right to become a liberal chooser.

44. Lucas Swaine, ‘‘Heteronomous Citizenship: Civic Virtue and the Chains of Autonomy,’’ EducationalPhilosophy and Theory 42, no. 1 (2010): 73–93.

45. Anders Schinkel, ‘‘Compulsory Autonomy-Promoting Education,’’ Educational Theory 60, no. 1(2010): 97–116.


A substantive right of exit requires that individuals have a place to go shouldthey choose to leave their community. This is more than a literal right ofexit, which is protected simply by living in a society in which individuals arefree to leave religious communities if they choose.46 Many communities withall-encompassing worldviews seriously compromise their members’ ability toavail themselves of outside opportunities, even when the greater society is freeand welcoming. Members may be kept in positions of ignorance or physical oremotional vulnerability, or they may be inculcated with such a deep distrust ofthe outside world that they cannot imagine ever leaving. Some Amish teenagers,for instance, regard the outside world as nothing more than a ticket to damnation,leading them to stay in the community, if only reluctantly.47 For this reason, thesubstantive right of exit requires that individuals possess accurate knowledge ofthe outside world and be intellectually and emotionally empowered enough toseriously consider leaving should their current circumstances impose high enoughcosts upon them.48

Rather than setting up the impractical task of giving students the ‘‘widestpossible variety of options,’’ as an education for autonomy (to become a liberalchooser) does, we should instead ensure that students are well-informed abouttheir society and the world. This can be achieved through the study of literature,social studies, history, civics, and the like. Such an education might still exposestudents to diversity, but it will do so not to promote liberal choosing but insteadto promote toleration. This is a more defensible objective; students need to learnhow to get along with their peers and fellow citizens.

Students must also be empowered intellectually. This does not requiredeveloping a sense of contingency and detachment, as an education for autonomydoes; furthermore, it avoids instilling in students the false belief that they canmake decisions independently of their social milieu. Instead, it cultivates instudents the ability to develop second-order volitions. This is an immanentexercise; students need not reject or distance themselves from all of their basicvalues, as the unencumbered liberal chooser must, in order to ask, ‘‘Do I wantto want that?’’ Furthermore, educators need not engage in didactic instruction inorder to teach the differences between first- and second-order volitions; they areeasily taught through the study of literature, history, and politics — to take oneexample, a teacher might ask students to consider a question such as ‘‘Did Nickwant to fall in love with Daisy in The Great Gatsby?’’ It also seems likely to methat second-order volitions may be taught through values clarification exercises,although there is not space here to fully consider this issue.

46. Jeff Spinner-Halev, ‘‘Feminism, Multiculturalism, Oppression, and the State,’’ Ethics 112, no. 1(2001): 84–113.

47. Steven V. Mazie, ‘‘Consenting Adults? Amish Rumspringa and the Quandary of Exit in Liberalism,’’Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 4 (2005): 745–759.

48. Susan Moller Okin, ‘‘‘Mistresses of Their Own Destiny’: Group Rights, Gender, and Realistic Rightsof Exit,’’ Ethics 112, no. 2 (2002): 205–230.


Finally, students must be emotionally empowered: they must feel safe, secure,and supported. This touches on issues of school violence and bullying, obviously,but it also highlights the importance of conveying to all students their equal-ity. Students must feel confident that they are all equal in the eyes of theirteachers, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, ability, race, creed, and so on.Students with a diminished sense of self-worth may not avail themselves of aright of exit if they do not believe themselves to be worthy of more attractiveoptions. So educators must be aware of how their interactions with studentsmay shape feelings of self-worth. This is not so say that students should becongratulated for poor academic performance, but even poorly performing stu-dents must be treated with respect. Students should also be informed about theircivil rights and liberties, in course- and age-appropriate ways. In summary, aneducation that supports a substantive right of exit provides the intellectual andemotional tools necessary to leave one’s community, along with a basic aware-ness of the larger society, without explicitly setting up a choice situation orelevating choice as a necessary component of a good life. This addresses themost compelling concerns liberals assert without turning all students into liberalchoosers.49

Fundamentalists assert the right to not become liberal choosers becausethey worry that their beliefs are being eroded by the liberal emphasis on indi-vidualism and choice, as well as the hedonism and consumerism promoted inthe popular culture. A common response, which I think is largely correct, isthat neither fundamentalism nor any other worldview deserves special protec-tion in the ‘‘marketplace of ideas.’’ We cannot insulate worldviews from thelong-term effects of reasonable educational practices, such as the promotion ofcritical thinking in the study of literature, even if this leads some studentsto critically evaluate their own worldviews. This is acceptable, provided thateducators do not explicitly denigrate particular worldviews. Nevertheless, fun-damentalists raise legitimate concerns about the marginalization of their viewsin the curriculum and, by extension, the alienation of their children in theclassroom. These concerns are best addressed by the right to respect in publicinstitutions.

Students are afforded or denied respect in a multitude of ways throughoutthe school day. Of course, many of students’ most salient experiences are withtheir peers, and educators cannot control how students treat one another. Buteducators bear a special responsibility for maintaining a respectful learningenvironment, which they can do in several ways. First, they can ensure thatany curriculum designed to celebrate diversity does so in an evenhanded manner.Recall the Holt textbook series at the center of the controversy in Mozert. Thesefamilies objected to what they perceived as a pervasive bias against Christianity,

49. Of course, many of the students most in need of a substantive right of exit may be those whosefamilies keep them out of public schools. I cannot address this serious concern now, but let me say this:even if the substantive right of exit does not require compulsory public education, it surely requiresmuch more stringent regulation of private schools and homeschooling.


and Protestantism and fundamentalism in particular.50 The demand for equalrepresentation is compelling, particularly within a civics curriculum that strivesto promote toleration by positively representing the diversity of beliefs in theUnited States.51 While perfect balance is not possible, significant bias is clearlyobjectionable and should be rectified.

Other curricula may raise concerns as well. For instance, when teachers beganusing the Harry Potter books, many parents objected to the use of texts that, intheir eyes, valorized witchcraft. In spite of these objections, many teachers foundthese books to be unique in their ability to encourage young people to read. Evenif schools have the right to assign reasonable texts to all students, they may electto grant exceptions for practical reasons in a case such as this, for example, sothat parents do not pull their children out of public school altogether.52 Differentschools will balance these issues in different ways, but, whatever the outcome, aclimate of respect is crucial. As one student who opted out of reading Harry Potterfor religious reasons explained, ‘‘At first I felt kind of left out, but now I don’treally mind.’’53 It is crucial that students not be alienated in these situations.54

Respect is also an important ingredient in classroom discussion. Whenstudents’ values and beliefs appropriately enter discussion (itself a thornyquestion), educators must be careful to treat them with equal respect. Thisdoes not mean that either students or teachers have to believe that all viewsare equally correct; indeed, a crucial feature of toleration is learning how totolerate and respect views even when you believe they are wrong. Teachers canand should model this for their students, suggesting that an important dimensionof the right to respect in public institutions is the comportment of teachers.Clearly this cannot be perfectly controlled for, but respectful interactions amongteachers and students should be an explicit goal in educational settings. Ensuringthat all students are treated with respect satisfies the most compelling concernsfundamentalists assert, without granting that students have a right to not becomeliberal choosers.

The substantive right of exit and the right to respect in public institutions arenotably more modest than the rights to become or not become liberal choosers and,importantly, they are not mutually exclusive. But they are able to address someof the most compelling concerns raised by liberals and fundamentalists, withoutdepending upon exaggerated archetypes and unrealistic accounts of character

50. Stolzenberg, ‘‘He Drew a Circle That Shut Me Out,’’ 596.

51. Macedo, ‘‘Liberal Civic Education and Religious Fundamentalism,’’ 487.

52. Ibid., 488.

53. Jodi Wilgoren, ‘‘Don’t Give Us Little Wizards, The Anti-Potter Parents Cry,’’ New York Times,November 1, 1999. Similar controversies have arisen surrounding the celebration of holidays in schools.It is not clear to me that the gains in terms of joviality outweigh the costs in terms of the alienation ofsome students, but I concede that different schools will find different ways to promote respect.

54. There is not space to parse out the differences here, but it seems to me that opting out of readingHarry Potter is quite a different case than opting out of biology.


development and preference formation. Both are consonant with the realizationthat no child is an island — we are each deeply shaped by the world around us inways that we often cannot control or anticipate.

Some liberals and fundamentalists may regard these rights as unacceptableconcessions toward the ‘‘other side.’’ Liberals must give up the hope that allchildren will become autonomous choosers. Fundamentalists must give up thehope that they can insulate themselves from the effects of living in a liberal society.So each side must abandon their loftier ideals in exchange for the possibility thattheir remaining claims might actually be satisfied. This strikes me as a goodtrade-off. Moreover, while these rights are narrower in scope, they are no lessexigent; these rights must be secured for all children.

Of course, these modified rights do not resolve every difference betweenliberals and fundamentalists. Many liberals will still find heteronomy andfundamentalism to pose a threat to individual well-being. Many fundamentalistswill not be satisfied with mere respect; they will wish to play a more definitive rolein establishing the values that guide educational practices and policies. But thesemore modest rights claims offer a real advantage in that they are not mutuallyexclusive. It is my hope that this might make it easier for educators to cogentlyand responsibly respond to claims from both parties, increasing the chance thatboth parties will receive some satisfaction. While the substantive right of exitand the right to respect in public institutions will sometimes produce differenteducational imperatives, we can imagine practices that satisfy both. Curriculalike the Holt textbook series can be revised to cultivate critical thinking skillswhile also encouraging toleration and respect among the many groups in theUnited States, including fundamentalists. Similarly, civic education programsthat promote democratic deliberation may satisfy both claims, as students learnhow to explain their positions while evaluating the claims of others. Such practicescan develop critical thinking skills while also modeling respectful interactionsamong students. Insofar as liberals and fundamentalists advance the more modestclaims to a substantive right of exit and a right to respect in public institutions,the best kind of education will try to satisfy both perspectives.

MANY THANKS to Nicholas Burbules, Anne Newman, Sarah Stitzlein, Lucas Swaine, and theanonymous reviewers at Educational Theory for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of thisessay.

Documents

NO CHILD IS AN ISLAND: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN