Education is an ethical concept. Here is an outline of the way in which education, worthy of the name, can be grounded in the fundamental, equal intrinsic worth of all human beings. The purpose of education is an application of the principle of “respect for persons”, and the discussion explains what is at stake for all of us
The word "education" is used in various ways, with a range of meanings and implications. Most commonly, for instance (and perhaps the least profound) it simply equates to nothing more than whatever schools and teachers do, with perhaps a vague gesture in the direction of the intellect.
The word "education" is almost always value-laden, but when it is used in this vague and undisciplined way, the value is largely rhetorical. The use of the word is to anoint some teaching-and-learning undertaking with approval rather than to point to any particular kind of value for which anyone should feel ethically responsible. In this sense the word is ethically promiscuous, just like "schooling" or "teaching".
When it is used in this vague way – almost interchangeably with "schooling" the undertakings in its name can be indoctrination just as readily, and because the word has lost its power to discriminate, nobody is to be held to account to show that it isn’t. Since the word "education" is used to confer value in such cases, its purpose can simply be to legitimate something not very worthy at all, or even quite unworthy. Tyrannies have "education" systems, and they have colleges of "education" to train their teachers.
In the 1960s, Richard Peters, at the London Institute of Education, highlighted the ethical implications of the word in a particularly influential way that is worth recapturing. Education was ethical because it was about changing people for the better.
One use of the word within the family of uses stood out for its ethical significance, and was the source of that implication of value that other uses often trade upon. It was the idea of the "educated person" (in his day, the educated "man"). It is this idea that carried the weight of thousands of years of intellectual tradition – the deep ethical concern about the nature of education itself. The value of education, in this core sense, is intrinsic to it. Becoming an educated person is a good in itself.
"Changing" people for the better, probably does not convey the depth of this ethical concern as well as we should like. "Changing" might easily suggest altering something already made, rather than the wholesale making and creating that education involves, and that deepens our ethical concerns with it. That "making" and "creating" goes right into the emergence of full humanity, which is more than an ordinary "change". Humans are social beings, and though they come into the world as physical creatures with a lot of growing to do, it is the emergence into their social selves that is the completion of their humanity, and this vital aspect of their human nature is "made", or "created"; by their social circumstances and culture as these are expressed in the details of their living, and on which their lives so largely depend.
The scale and the significance of what happens here should be a matter for awe, if we stop to contemplate it. The developing human stands to learn language, and not just words, and these public languages that they encounter enable and give structure to their concepts, perceptions and powers of thought. The social processes with which they engage supply capacities to doubt, and question; and if they are lucky they go further, and supply the ability to refine doubt into serviceable doubt that enables growth – questioning that is effective and not idle, or dismissed as idle – and processes of intellectual challenge and inquiry that can lead to knowledge, doing so in areas that matter.
Our awe here should not just be for the complexities of consciousness, and self-knowledge, or for the adaptability to circumstance – for the products of intellect, or art, or technology, or comfort that human learning has made possible across civilisations and cultures – but also for what is at stake in this combination of human plasticity, learning ability, and its potential for management. It can go terribly wrong.
Though we can develop remarkable powers and create wonderful things through what we construct out of our interactions with our culture and its products, and as our care-givers work to manage our creating, the potential for disaster and destruction is equally awesome. The ability to doubt that we acquire can be a destructive doubting of ourselves. We can learn irrational fear, unbridled anger and profound hatred. We can learn scorn and contempt. We can learn to deceive. We can learn shame that can rob us of our human worthiness. We can elevate ourselves above others, and impose all kinds of restrictions in our minds and in the institutions we support in terms of who else is to count as human, or less than human. We can turn our technical reason to the development of the tools or war, or torture, or sophisticated schemes for preying on our fellows, or highly evolved systems of mind-control and propaganda; manipulating others in the service of destructive and self-serving, self-deceptive ideologies. We can destroy all of the relationships we enter into. All of these things are susceptible to deliberate cultivation.
Education is the enterprise of attempting to control and manage this emergence into the social, and the continuance through it, in the interests of making better human beings and facilitating their continuing better growth; the better growth of others, and the better growth of ourselves. Because the range of potential growth is so enormous, from good to bad, due to our plasticity and the power of learning, the ethical stakes, too, are enormous, and it cannot be left to chance.
So how are we to understand the "better human being" here, that education should be attempting to create and facilitate? The core value – the "bottom line" – is the value of the human beings themselves. Each human life is an end in itself; it is never just a means to some other end. Though people may offer their services to us as means to our ends, their willingness to stand as means in this specific instance should depend upon their free consent. The problem that such consent suggests for education in the early years of dependency creates a unique problem of educational justification (one we rarely pay the attention it deserves).
The powers of consciousness, of doubt and questioning, reflection and deliberation, together with that plasticity, and the huge range of ways in which life might be approached and lived, all mean that the value of the intrinsic worth of a human life is not met simply by sheer, physical survival. The value of human life also lies in the potential for living it well.
It is here that the fullness of our humanity incorporates our learning, and what we do with it; what we can make of and through our lives through our experiences of them. Here, the human life, the potential quality of it, and the management of experience within it all inhere together, and share that intrinsic worth of the human being. Dewey pointed out that education is not a preparation for life. It is a crucial part of the living of it, until the end.
There are four factors that determine this emergence of our social natures. The first is the natural world in which human enterprises take place – the "forces (and contents) of nature" with which our physical being must finally be reconciled. The second is the cultural world that arises within that world, of shared rules and expectation, institutional forms and practices and cultural artifacts. The third is the intervention, support and management of our lives by the care-givers in our vicinity, and how our relationships, including our authority relationships and ties of affection, pan out with them. The fourth is our active construction of ourselves in interaction with these things, an active participation that takes a huge leap in power and initiative as self-consciousness begins, and as language and the powers of thought develop.
Education is therefore one of the largest and deepest of our cultural enterprises, going to the heart of cultural values and having practical implications across the whole cultural span. Concerned as it is with how our people come to think and feel and act, it is one of the most important aspects of our culture; right up there with our sense of justice. It goes to the heart of what a person is worth, among us.
Culture is not some vast determining force before which we are powerless. In a culture where self-determination and personal responsibility are important, we are obliged to critique our culture; not merely take it for granted. Culture is what we do, and we are supposed to take responsibility for our actions and their foreseeable consequences.
Education, through involving the effort to control and manage learning out of concern for the value of the learner, creates a problematic that brings us face-to face with our responsibility for culture. It is not just about what we deliberately attempt to teach the learner. It is about what we model, celebrate, expect and demand. It is about our social habits. It is about the occasions of our interaction, and their kind. It is about the quality of the interaction that we enable, and the respect that exists within that interaction. It is about the tools and facilities that we make available. It is about the access to information and understanding.
And it is about these things, not merely in the peculiar settings of schooling and teaching, but everywhere in our societies – the institutions and infrastructures where experience is likely to be had, and where the possibility of its educational manipulation exists. It has always been this way, whether schools existed or not.
In what follows, I intend to set out a highly condensed outline of the ethical structure of the purpose of education adequate to the full significance of the educational problematic. Such a purpose, being so fundamental, should take precedence over any other agendas or purposes that might be thought fit to include somewhere in enterprises or institutions wanting to lay claim to being educational (as all should). This would mean, for instance, not only that this larger purpose should take precedence to, say, vocational education, but also that vocational education must be conducted in such a way as to conform to the ethic. The core ethical assumption and justification here will, of course, be the idea that all persons are of intrinsic worth, and equally so, commonly referred to as the principle of "respect for persons" – that all persons should, as a matter of principle, be respected equally.
We have a duty of respect towards all other persons, because they are persons. Equally, we have a duty of respect to ourselves because we are persons also. Each of us is of equal value. This respect is for the equal intrinsic worth of each of us. At the species level, there is no higher value among us than the value that we each equally possess. Though many of us may want to place various spiritual values higher, respect-for-persons is likely to be as high as we can expect to reach with the sufficiently widespread agreement that justification of our shared institutions will require in a pluralistic society.
The activities of respect that we perform in order to carry out our duty of respect for ourselves are those that enable us to live good or worthwhile lives. What our good life is, and how to achieve it, is the responsibility of each of us – the core responsibility that follows from the duty of self-respect.
Whether or not it is true that the unexamined life is not worth living, it certainly is true that we cannot devise a good life, or maintain it, or even tell that it is good, without examining it. Knowing and understanding the goodness of it is crucially dependent upon being able to examine our own lives, and the lives of others, with competence and with skill. "Knowing what we are doing" when we make decisions about our lives, depends upon the quality of the inquiries and the reflection that we have learned to undertake. In order to do this well, our minds have to have been developed appropriately.
Our duty of respect towards others consists in respect for their own moral requirement, equal to our own; their duty and their responsibility, to develop, to plan and to live their lives well. We must not hinder them in this, or take it over from them, just as they may not hinder or take over ours. Indeed, other things equal we must support their efforts and act to favour their possibility, just as they must support and favour ours. We will be obliged to stand against processes that distort, corrupt or coerce in the conditions that control learning or manage behaviour through it. Taking responsibility for our own good, being able to understand the task and think it through well are matters of learning and experience. The connection between the development of mind and social relationships is so intimate that mental development is dependent, vitally, on the appropriate social conditions for their effective realisation. Out of respect for others, and for the sake of ourselves we must therefore ensure that these conditions are secured throughout our institutions and across the culture – as a matter of justice. Though each will, out of the uniqueness of their own experiential histories, and in keeping with their self-determination, no doubt resolve their own good living differently, the greatest source of wealth available to the inquiry of each will be the diversity of experience and intelligence shared by their fellows in their community.
Educating a human being is the primary undertaking of respect for them, simply because they are human. It is to equip them, so far as possible, with the capacities necessary to invent, construct, choose, develop and maintain their good for themselves, and to avoid, so far as we can, any imposition of our preferred conceptions of the good on each other, or preempt the right of any of us (which follows from our duty and responsibility to ourselves) to choose, devise and maintain our good for ourselves.
To this end, the understanding and control of educational development must be transferred into the hands of the learner as early and as fully as possible, consistent with their level of development. In the past, the problem of good living has been addressed by the older generation passing on to the young a substantive conception of good living, based on convention and agreed authority. This has become less and less viable since the European Reformation, resulting in any serious questions about good living being avoided as too contentious. The solution to this traditional dilemma is to replace the passing on of a substantive conception of the "Good Life" with the cultivation of disciplined inquiry into good living – giving the priority to the development of processes that enable self-determination. It is the direction towards self-determination on the part of the learner that counts, placing them in due course in a position of moral equality with their former care-givers. Teaching the wisdom of the older generation undermines the integrity of that ultimate equality. Teaching nothing, because teaching substantive content would be too contentious, is an attempt to evade moral responsibility, but it does not avoid it. The core content of education is, therefore, education itself; the taking charge, by learners, of their own education.
Educationally subordinate enterprises – those enterprises that are conceived of as limited to only one aspect or part of a life, such as vocational education, recreational education, health, religious, political or sex education – must conform to the principles of respect that govern the whole. They must continue to support (and must not circumvent) the development of those capacities that enable the learner to exercise their duty to themselves.
Commentary
Selfishness
It is likely to be felt by some that the emphasis on "self-respect" in this account is an invitation to selfishness. On the contrary, selfishness is readily understood as a breach of the equality of respect, and would fall outside the ethic. I think that it can be shown that a robust respect for other people is dependent upon a robust concern and capability for respect for one’s own equal worth, and indeed, that a morality that is weak or vague about self-respect but strong on respect for each other has already fallen into a form of social control. Where our own worth is seen as disregarded in favour of "good behaviour", morality is readily perceived as hypocritical, encouraging public conformity and private selfishness so long as one isn’t found out.
More deeply, however, the selfishness can also be seen as a fundamental misunderstanding of what is involved in securing one’s own best interests, since it undermines our abilities to think well about our own good living, and deprives us of the resources that would enable us to do better for ourselves. Selfishness corrupts our ability to learn for our own sake. See The Tyrant’s Choice.
Atomistic individualism
Related to this is the possible accusation that the emphasis on "self-respect" and "self-determination" represent Western "atomistic individualism". Atomistic individualism has particular characteristics, and is not to be confused with just any discussion of the individual, or the inner life, as so often happens. The mistake often seems to occur where people have studied sociology, but not psychology – an intellectual imbalance that arises as a result of specialisation, and is also possible within the range of options that a conventional liberal education makes available. Psychologists tend to underrate the social as well, of course, which is the reciprocal flaw that much frustrates the sociologists. "Human nature" bridges both subjects, and its is a mistake to dichotomize them, let alone turn them into warring parties in ideological competition over human nature.
Atomistic individualism is a form of Western individualism that is associated with the rise of capitalism. Individuals are thought of as sufficient unto themselves, pursuing a narrow, egotistical form of self-interest as they pursue very personal, capitalist ends in societies conceived of as consisting of individuals merely aggregated together. As such it ignores not merely the fabric of interdependencies that make life possible for everyone, and that such individualistic capitalists will exploit to their own advantage while giving little other thought to those on whose labour they depend. It ignores the deep interdependencies that make public language, and minds, possible at all, including the the self-determination and powers of thought upon which such individualists pride themselves.
Because atomistic individualism reduces human nature, confining it to a narrow shell of experience and discounting the numerous ways in which the individual is socially formed and connected in the deepest aspects of thought and feeling, it over-simplifies human motivation and, particularly, human action and achievement. It is firmly at home in meritocratic thinking, with its simplistic notions of achievement, reward, and even hard work. It is a source of blame for the inadequacies or inabilities of others, who become "losers", and could do just what I have done if only they weren’t so lazy, and put their minds to it.
Atomistic individualism is one of a variety of forms of attempting to understand things through analysing them into separate little bits, presuming a foundation of reality in the smallest individual pieces of which they seemed to be composed, and losing the significance of organic connections and their organisation in the process. Logical atomism in the philosophy of science, and behaviourism in psychology, are other examples.
Individualism more broadly is, perhaps, an emphasis more toward the individual end of the spectrum between individual and collective, some cultures being more individualistic or collectivist than others. Cultures at either extreme are probably unimaginable. At the extreme of the individual, there could be no culture, and we would be hard pressed to imagine such a being as human, or discover much in the way of a mind there. Equally, a culture completely lacking in the individual could not have conversation or debate, and probably could not invest authority in individuals. Everything would have to be done in unison.
The West does indeed tend more toward individualism than most traditional cultures. Though the European Middle Ages were full of interesting individuals, more ancient forms individualism re-emerged in the Renaissance – from Republican Rome, from Classical Greece, and from Judeo-Christian tradition. Our modern concern for the preciousness of every human life, and our concerns for democracy and human rights reflects these strong emphases on the individual.
In any event, a concept of education that focussed only on groups, and did not prioritize the experience of each individual learner, being cavalier about the value of discrete individuals, would be a very strange thing indeed. Some of the most important criticisms of schooling are in this regard. It is why the perpetuation of a factory system of schooling should be unacceptable. But even in school, we grade individual work and expect it to be different. And we do place some emphasis on discussions in which we encourage individuals to speak, preferring not to return to the chanting of catechisms – although it is true that, even here, that all too often we are seeking an unhealthy conformity in their responses. Individual difference matters, and not just group difference.
The right to education
It is common, today, to have added a right to an education to the list of human rights. If the ethic presented here has any credibility, then we should have an ambivalence to the commonplace understanding of this right, since it usually means a right to conventional schooling and teaching.
On the one hand, it would seem churlish to be opposed to this, and to deny that it is in the interests of justice. Because of the strong connection that has been developed in almost all countries between schooling credentials and employment, schooling is clearly the access-way to desirable work-satisfaction, positions of power, and the possibilities of better income.
Conventional schooling has increasingly become the most vivid gate-keeping mechanism for access to these goods that societies have to offer their members (though there are other less visible ones, such as discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity, social class or caste, age and disability at the point of employment). As a consequence, where there is discrimination in access to schooling, this is a very serious injustice, and there are many places in which such injustice occurs. Even where "access" seems open, there can still be differences in provision that favour some groups unjustly over others.
It is therefore a matter of great ethical significance when, for instance, access to schooling through to the highest levels is opened up for young women in countries that had formerly denied them. Given the existence of the gate-keeping mechanism that has so much to do with the way in which opportunity is distributed, we should applaud. But that is to accept the rightness of the mechanism when we do so, and we do so largely because such mechanisms are ubiquitous, and have their home in the West and are such a common experiences in so many of our lives.
Our joy can only be unalloyed by sustaining a denial of the inappropriateness of the mechanism, and of the harm to the development of the person that conventional schooling does; a harm that is well-known, but that we choose to ignore. Because of this, we overlook entirely what education should be as a right. We miss what is really at stake, and are complicit in a fundamental failing of the whole project of human rights that depends upon it.
All of the human rights that we value have as their purpose the equal protection of the ethical exercise of self-determination on the part of each equally valuable human being. Freedoms of thought, speech, assembly, the press, of habeas corpus, equality before the law and a fair trial all have this underlying purpose. But the value of any or all of these things can be defeated, thwarted, evaded, rendered superficial and diminished in value simply by the way that we go about preparing the minds of those people to whom they are supposed to apply, and even where they do formally apply.
The full value of the rights and their exercise is entirely dependent upon the sort of education that would be consistent with the ethical principles advanced in this manifesto. That is the education to which we all should have a right, just because we are human beings. Because its absence can vitiate any of the other rights, it is the fundamental right, and prior to the others. In my book Education – as if our lives depended on it, I have included a chapter on slavery and education, in which I described the practice, in ancient Rome, of schooling up slaves to be house slaves, with various technical accomplishments, and then selling them for a profit. I then proposed an educational test for schools. What is it about conventional schooling that we would exclude if our purpose was simply the production of hi-tech house slaves for today? I think it is a good test of the value of the right to education, as it is currently conceived.
"Respect for the intrinsic human worth of the learner" should trump and regulate all other agendas
At the end of the introduction, above, I remarked that education meeting the requirements of the ethic I have been presenting should rule all other agendas that people might think to propose as having a place in the larger educational enterprise. "Respect" should take precedence over anything else that might be thought valuable, and those proposed "good things" must be developed to realize educational respect, or they have no place in education at all.
Schooling, typically, is the target for all sorts of ideas that enthusiasts for worthy causes want the next generation to think, or do, or believe. However worthy they are, and even if they can be claimed to flow from respect in their own right, none of them should justify propaganda, or indoctrination, or abridge the developing intelligence of learners, or circumvent their powers of choice and challenge. If their proponents arrived at their conclusions through extended, free, critical inquiry, then they can justify no less for their would be learners. If they didn’t, then their authority to advocate for their cause is compromised.
Vocationalism, as a most problematic area that dominates schooling, has already been discussed, but there are numerous others. Patriotism that is achieved through inculcation or emotional manipulation, and is not subject to challenge in our growing up, debases the very idea of popular sovereignty in democracies.
Health education and sex education, too, can easily be coopted by national health goals which may have little to do with respect for the well-being and self-determination of learners themselves, who become lost to the abstractions of keeping health costs down and productivity up. The latest trend in this direction is the use and advocacy of complex algorithms and "nudging" technologies to push people to behave as their "betters" think they should.
To think of education downstream, as we do with schooling – both narrowing it to schooling and restricting it, in that schooling, largely to vocationalism, consumerism and "acceptable" behaviour is not to have a worthy idea of education at all. It is a form of alienation from education – to live lives and have minds that are alienated from it. It is to deny ourselves self-understanding and understanding of others in our lack of awareness of the fullness of the educational ecology – and its profound human significance, and possibility.
Education is an ethical concept. Here is an outline of the way in which education, worthy of the name, can be grounded in the fundamental, equal intrinsic worth of all human beings. The purpose of education is an application of the principle of “respect for persons”, and the discussion explains what is at stake for all of us 
