Paper presented at the Philosophy, Education and Culture Conference, Edinburgh, Sept. 1997.
This paper argues that several recent liberal discussions of multiculturalism and education embody a weak conception of education, as little more than socialization. More full-blooded conceptions of education that stress reflection, critical thinking, and such like are arguably much less hospitable to some of the practices these discussions wish to countenance.
One assumption that permits the socialization interpretation is that what is acceptable treatment for adults is acceptable also for children. We can let adults lead unexamined lives, but should we let adults do what they can to keep children from reflecting?
An argument can be given, from the conditions necessary for the sustainability of liberalism, that liberalism should endorse some stronger conception of education.
Another argument to the same end can be based on considerations Nagel once offered in explication of liberalism's way of conceiving conflicts.
The paper concludes by noticing a possible difficulty in developing Nagel's view: echoing Gutmann's query why we allow illiterate adults not to go to school, we can ask why liberalism should put up with misrecognition on the part of adults. Nagel's defence seems to push us towards what Rawls regards as a metaphysical basis for liberalism, away from a metaphysically unencumbered mechanism for conflict-resolution.
A revised version of the full paper is available here.
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HTML version prepared 4th November 1997.