A liberal education – Part II: why it needs replacing

A liberal education – exit stage right.

Part II: why it needs to be replaced

I would sometimes take my students through a linguistic exercise to help them see what the idea of an educated person involved.

They were to imagine meeting up with their friends in a pub, eager to tell them about this person who was such a new interest in their life. Among the things that seemed to describe the new person well, was the fact that he or she was an “educated person”. What would they be trying to convey? We would imagine various mistakes.

“No I don’t just mean that he has a degree! People can get degrees without any sign of being educated at all. Gosh, Kevin’s got a degree, and it didn’t make much difference to him. He hasn’t cracked a book since he left, so far as I know”

“Well, yes, she’s a brain surgeon, but that wouldn’t mean she is educated. Just because you are highly trained in an elite profession doesn’t automatically mean that you know much about anything else”.

“No I didn’t mean that he just knows a lot of facts. I don’t know how good he’d be at trivial pursuit or a pub quiz.”

All very leading, I know. Rarely did I have time for the sort of sustained discussion that would have enabled students to clear the way for themselves. There is so little consciousness of whatever education might be about if it isn’t just about whatever schools might happen to do, that students came into courses wholly naive about the making of any distinctions. It is quite likely, as many often remarked, that they had reached adulthood without ever having felt the need to describe anyone as an educated person. The concept was there to be extracted from the language they used – their linguistic intuitions were more or less intact – but they were largely unaware of the concept or its implications.

After such ground-clearing, they would begin to give a sense of what the expression evoked. Widely read, particularly across the academic disciplines, and with an enlarged perspective; sensitive to the arts, especially the traditions of the higher cultural arts of music, the fine arts traditions, and literature; committed to the pursuit of truth for its own sake and scientifically literate. Cultured, cultivated, sophisticated. Morally,and politically aware.

As they built this picture, a certain sadness descended on the room. The students were there for more than career fodder. They knew that they had to get vocational advantage from their time at university, but they wanted more. They came to change their lives, break out of a rut, escape the limitations of their pasts. They came in some sort of hope of some sort of real growth that be worth all the effort and the cost – that would make a real difference. They had a sense that universities, in contrast to conventional schools, might do this. There is a romance about universities, and it is different from the romances that people indulge about schools.

But they weren’t here to become an educated person. Not like this. They weren’t here to acquire some social class pretension, and it made them uncomfortable.

I have already talked about the way in which the idea of a liberal education – and that really does mean our core understanding of education – describes a feature of a conception of a good life, the life of the traditional European ruling elite. To advocate for the liberal education tradition is to advocate for that life. A liberal education is supposed to change you. (Any genuine conception of education should involve bringing you to something different than you would have become otherwise). You are supposed to become committed to certain things – pursuits and modes of behaviour. The problem with the liberal education tradition is the kind of way in which you were to change. It was to settle certain questions of good living, not to problematize them, or keep them open.

My intention in this post is not to rehash that ground, but to argue that the liberal education is not truly adequate to any other purpose, because it is too loosely and vaguely conceived. This is not a problem when its purpose is to fit seamlessly into an existing conception of the good, since it then just becomes a part of the conventions and habits that we live by – many of them unthinking and unexamined. While that is acceptable enough when we describe a ruling class culture, it is entirely inadequate if we need to do something more rigorous, such as justify and articulate the education that would be required for democratic citizenship.

There is no clear line, in the description of the good life of which a liberal education is a part, between being well read in the right books, and walking as you might with them balanced on your head, or knowing which fork to use, or appreciating fine wine, or speaking with the appropriate accent and knowing the correct forms of address. This is what was bothering my students. Annan was right when he said that:

If the object in life was to become a gentleman, the purpose of education was to guarantee that one did so. [Annan]

But that isn’t what my students were after. To a large extent, it is what they repudiated.

Others in the past have sought it quite fiercely, however. For centuries, those who have come from the “wrong background” and wanted to become gentlemen or ladies couldn’t re-engineer their genes so that they came from the right “blood”. But they could learn the appropriate culture. They had to learn enough of it to pass as gentlemen or ladies. Since the motives and aspirations for upward mobility have been huge – not just wealth and power but acceptance – the processes of acquiring the appearances of the ruling sub-culture have been major preoccupations within the larger culture. Among the accomplishments, learning what books to read may not be nearly as difficult as acquiring the right accent. The sub-culture of the ruling elite also tended to be meticulous about picking out those who were not “our sort” and distinguishing them from “our kind of people”. All that cutlery – all those forks – performed an elaborate gate-keeping function. There was a good deal at stake. You didn’t want your daughter marrying “one of them”. You wanted her to marry “one of us”.

Hence, though we might be quick to agree that the “pursuit of truth for its own sake”, or a sensitive appreciation of the best in music are higher values than possessing the right accent, or wearing just the right clothes, there is also a sense in which they aren’t. As a feature of a conception of a good life which marked out a particular social class and to some extent set it apart, a liberal education fulfilled numerous purposes that were not necessarily all that compatible – or equally noble.

This is where an ambiguity about its value begins to emerge. As the conception of the worthwhile way of life for the ruling elite of Europe, the value of that life was a sub-cultural presupposition. It is just what we are, and how we live, and that too is intrinsically worthwhile. A social class of independent means did not work for money. They did many, many things for the value that they saw as inherent in them, and not because they were “useful”. That is what you do when you don’t have to work for a living. You might hunt foxes, you might attend balls, you might administer great houses and estates as an obligation to your dynasty. You might buy a commission in the army. You might study philosophy or physics, you might patronize the arts. These are the sorts of things you did because of who you are. You are supposed to be a gentleman or lady of letters.

The idea of “pursuing truth for its own sake”, or “knowledge for its own sake” is so often advanced as a crucial characteristic of a liberal education that it needs closer attention. Part of the problem rests on the (deliberate) vagueness of the words “knowledge” or “truth”. The problem isn’t about defining these things – it is the question of “what knowledge”?, “what truth”?

Knowledge isn’t a “thing” that exists external to human beings, and possessing, of itself, a property – intrinsic value. Knowledge is something that exists in our actions and activities – it is something that we construct and reshape in our undertakings and doings, something we forget and discard as we proceed. The value that it has is the value that we confer on it. If I seek out knowledge for its own sake, it means that I attempt to improve my grasp of something just for the satisfaction that comes from achieving a better grasp of it.

I fly fish. I started tying my own flies to save money – particularly since I wanted to be able to risk flies by casting them in places where I was likely to lose them. In time, however, I became more and more to enjoy tying them and studying up on them. In fact my skill in using them has never been that great or advanced very much. My appreciation of their effectiveness is largely theoretical. I read widely about them and study videos about tying them – even flies I will never tie, let alone use. When anything about trout flies appears in my field of attention, I go on alert. This will continue to happen even if I never fish again.

My father was a photo-engraver – a trade that no longer exists. He always wanted to work in colour – not so that he would earn more money or get a promotion, but simply because the thought and the process fascinated him. He was only a very occasional reader, but he poured over technical books on colour photo-engraving.

The kinds of areas in which we might pursue knowledge for its own sake are virtually limitless. Given any activity that might be done better, or understood better, it is a likely candidate for the disinterested pursuit of truth – for somebody. What starts out as a desire to improve something, or understand it for practical reasons, can easily turn into something that someone just gets satisfaction from knowing better – without there being any practical point to the knowledge being acquired. Though it is no doubt some sort of virtue to be in favour of having a better grasp of something rather than a worse one, the value of the intrinsic pursuit of any old truth for its own sake is rather empty. It simple leaves the core educational question intact – what knowledge is of most worth? There has to be some further discrimination – something about the kind of knowledge.

Where a liberal education is concerned, it seems to be academic disciplinary knowledge. This certainly is a good candidate for important knowledge, though its merits can be overstated. Sometimes it has been suggested that this sort of knowledge is foundational, in some sense, to all other knowledge, and that its processes and standards are almost definitive when it comes to judging the quality of knowledge. This overstates its case.

The more that academic knowledge speaks directly to human living or human action, the more questions we can raise about the limitations of what it has to offer. Though it would be wrong to underestimate the potential value of its contribution, that contribution pales when it comes to decisions about a suitable partner, or how we should deal with our grief, or the best ways of exercising personal leadership of a political movement or religious group. Philosophy has a field called “practical reason” – which is contrasted, for instance, with “theoretical reason”. If you want to be more practical in your daily life, you will look long and hard before you find much help here.

At the same time, it would be unwise to overlook the value to a culture of its past experience preserved and explored in intellectual disciplines. The disciplines are supposed to pursue the truth “regardless” of political, social and personal agendas and regardless of where it may lead. This doesn’t mean that all sorts of agendas don’t enter into the motivation of the participants, but it does mean that they have to prove themselves on the basis of evidence and argument mustered according to independently agreed standards, and that they can be challenged robustly by alternative views. The methods of the intellectual disciplines are supposed to be highly critical and self-critical. Again, this does not mean that some of the aspirations and claims to objectivity have been anything more than fantastical in the light of the conventional wisdoms and myopias of any age. It does mean, however, that the ideas and understandings of the intellectual disciplines are far better tested, critical and politically independent than the ideas and doctrines that prevail among the wider public, including those in power, with all their distortions of ideology and vested interest. The intellectual disciplines, in their independence and their “disinterest” provide a much needed balance to political power, a much needed social conscience and self-criticism, and a much needed controlled testing of experience that have benefited not only technology, but the development of social, legal and constitutional institutions as well.

All of this should tell us why the intellectual disciplines, as collective, institutionalised enterprises, should have, as a prime purpose the “pursuit of truth (or better, or improved knowledge) for its own sake”. If we find that they are also valuable as means to ends – as providing excellent procedures for developing better technological toys, or better tools for surveillance, we are likely to be using its methods of self-criticism and controlled testing that depend, in turn on that commitment to independence and disinterestedness that lie at the core of the intellectual pursuits themselves, and on which the integrity of their results depend. If these core values are undermined, so too (eventually) will be our faith in the results. Indeed, it is hard to imagine Western culture at all without these institutions.

What is the connection between the institutionalized intellectual disciplines and both the ideas of the educated person and a liberal education? The intellectual institutions have depended on an educational culture. For most of Western history the collective intellectual enterprises have existed because enough of the leisured upper classes spent their time pursuing these things and discussing them with like-minded members of their class, and they pursued them for their own sakes. The educated person was a cultural ideal, and if they didn’t actively pursue these fields themselves, they were familiar with them, supported them and admired their achievements. From this large base of educated people came the recruits to the intellectual disciplines.  Just in the course of becoming educated, as their class required, some people acquired more than a taste for one or more of them, dedicating their leisure time to their intrinsically valuable pursuit. Some of those whose time was drawn to other things became patrons.

There are, then, three sources of the intrinsic value that is characteristic of a liberal education. Firstly, there is its possession as a valuable sign of membership of the leisured ruling class who could contribute appropriately to the right conversations. Valuing these things is just a part of “what we stand for”. Secondly is the dependency of the content of this education on academic disciplines which disinterestedly pursued  “truth” (or, in the case of the fine arts, of beauty) for its own sake. Grasping the “point” of these studies was part and parcel with studying them properly. Finally, there is the possibility that the individuals who engaged in these studies might actually develop a taste for some of them, and pursue them just for the satisfaction they might find in doing so. All of these combine in the intrinsic value of education, which is a part of its meaning.

A secondary but still important value that a liberal education provided the educated person was a whole range of additional instrumental benefits. This instrumentality may not be a part of the definition of a liberal education since that value does lie in its global improvement of the person as a whole. But since this improvement has to be actual, it has to make a difference to the way in which the person functions across their whole life (improving, as it does, the whole person), this means that it will be improving for the pursuit of a whole raft of ends. Because of this, a liberal education is far from merely decorative, and it is unlikely that the institution would have persisted with such support for so long if the enterprise, intrinsically valuable in itself, did not also routinely show its value in copious, indiscriminate instrumentality. Even when we cast that intrinsic value in terms of “the pursuit of truth” through a wide and interconnected range of academic disciplines, then that broad interest and accomplishment must cash itself in in the wider world of life, and not only as an entry visa to the ruling class. The instrumentality is not, however, reducible to some small set of ends. Its contributions are very diverse, and even, we may say, “open-ended”.

Just as it had for the ancients, It provided insights, metaphors, stories, allusions, ways of viewing and precedents that proved to be valuable in all sorts of careers, from law, to politics, to religion, to medicine. It developed persuasive abilities – both written and spoken. It provided clerical abilities and organizational skills. It provided forms of disciplined, critical discussion and inquiry. Generals drew on their knowledge of ancient wars. Even as recently as the last forty years – and despite Annan or Margaret Thatcher – there have been business leaders who preferred to hire people with classics or philosophy degrees rather than those from Management Schools, because the former “had been taught how to think”.

It has often been said that the study of moral philosophy doesn’t seem to make the student (or the philosopher) a more moral person, or that the evidence that the study of the arts are “improving” is thin. Such remarks are rarely accompanied with an account of how the morality of people – something that has to be learned –  is improved through learning, however. If we give that any attention at all,  and make any concession to the role of learning (instead of reducing morality to innate good character) we will very likely place emphasis on two things. Firstly, we will emphasize the importance of the training of good character – something that would have to begin and be carried out properly from a very early age, before character traits become settled of their own accord. If this is done poorly, then it is, indeed, very likely that a belated introduction to the liberal arts and sciences will do little to rescue a rascal, or an incontinent life riddled with self-deception.

The second element, however (and given that a basic character of stable and consistent moral habits or virtues such as respect and truth-telling have already been established) would usually involve the extended discussion and exploration of moral issues and cases, examining the implications of increasingly complex considerations. Without this element it is hard to see how people could achieve moral autonomy, taking a mature responsibility for their own moral convictions. Though warnings against the “improving” value of various kinds of study are necessary cautions against ideas of moral superiority or expertise, they should not be taken as justifications for the elimination of moral education itself. Few, surely, would want to argue against thoughtfulness in morality, or to deny that thoughtfulness can be cultivated. This is the sort of process that a liberal education can do very well when the right subjects are available, and they are taught in the right way.

This, of course, applies to a whole raft of issues in life – personal, social, managerial, recreational, financial. It surely always helps when these issues are approached thoughtfully, when we can see beyond the recipes and cliched solutions of our day because we know that people handled these things differently in other times and places. Thoughtfully, too, when we have explored the issues  and the assumptions behind them, sometimes through the in-depth cases provided by drama and novels, and when we have a rich fund of metaphors and stories to help recast our experience. A liberal education, valuable no doubt just because the disinterested pursuit of truth is good in itself, also turned out to be “good for us” in so many ways, quite apart from whether we ever had the slightest inclination to become “intellectual”.

This brings us to the heart of its central problem, however. On the one hand, a liberal education can be made out to be good for just about everything. But because this diffuses its effects, the thing justified by them is too much left to its own devices, and internal justification, in the sense of educational planning, is very poor. Its benefits have been assumed, but they have not been planned for. The benefits are very weakly implemented, and this has been ignored because the idea of a liberal education carried a certain mystique, and was embedded in a taken-for-granted conception of the good life.

It seems obvious that a liberal education, as institutionalized in universities and pubic schools, and dominated by the study of Latin and Greek and the texts of the ancient world, barring the door to science, but also modern languages and literatures, was deeply out of step with the idea of the educated person, who, in addition to the classics, was familiar with European history and philosophy, and the achievements of Europe in the sciences and the arts. It seems an obvious step to bring all these things into the curriculum of the liberal arts and sciences so that the curriculum is more congruent with the idea of the educated person – particularly if that education is to be democratized – available to a much broader population that includes those whose leisure is limited. The problem is the impossibility of achieving all that breadth and depth within the confines of a university degree. Much of the breadth and depth achieved by the educated person was achieved in other cultural locations and over spans of time much longer than their undergraduate years. Resources such as lavish private libraries, art collections and artistic performances no doubt played a part.

When the range of subjects within the liberal arts and sciences expand, breadth and depth become selective, and are achieved by various “requirements”. Typically, breadth is achieved by students being required to take at least one major subject, several minors or “supporting subjects”, and a number of individual “electives”. Depth is achieved by the majors and the minors. As the subjects included in the arts and sciences expand, meeting the requirements inevitably means that every student will miss some subjects. The greater the expansion, the more they will miss.

The Twentieth Century saw an accelerating proliferation of academic fields and specializations, with an intense lobbying for inclusion. “Studies” developed – fields that focussed on a domain of special interest in ways that were initially spoken of as “interdisciplinary” or “multidisciplinary” – gender studies and cultural studies being two obvious examples – and these too fought for their place in the list of approved subjects.

The consequence is that two students could take a liberal arts programme with little overlap in subjects, and without crossing over in any courses. Further, since there is no curriculum process that ensures contact with knowledge of, say, ethics (to pick on just one of the potential “benefits”, or “spin offs”), or that ensure that a study of literature explores ethical issues (let alone what kinds of ethical issues) then the possibility that a liberal education will speak to ethical matters is entirely left to chance. Again, courses may explore some of the great political ideas of the West, and establish serious contact with some of the seminal thinkers, or they may do little more than allude to them in passing surveys.

Faculty aren’t hired for their commitment to a liberal education, or in expectation of an understanding of it. They are hired to flesh out the specialties covered in their departments, and to “teach their subject”. Though some have always been committed to the life-challenging ways in which their subject can be taught, and have endeavoured to do so, it is not a requirement. There is no planning process to ensure that it will happen, and many programmes do not. A predictable response to the question of whether we are doing enough to develop critical thinking isn’t likely to begin with a thoughtful discussion of what critical thinking might involve. Faculty run for cover instead, sensing a potential invasion of their autonomy. “We all teach critical thinking” whether we have given any real thought to it or not.

Then, too, there is nothing binding on departments to pursue knowledge that is thought to be “beneficial” in some of the many ways that a liberal education is often found to be beneficial – or to teach such knowledge. Their commitment is to the discipline and its reproduction, not to some educational notion that transcends their discipline. The unfettered “pursuit of truth for its own sake” is more likely to be their ideal, protecting, as it does, their autonomy and independence, which will also most likely express itself in terms of the latest fashionable topics and themes within their field.

Thus literature might be pursued with an interest in disclosing the ideologies of the age in which it is written rather than the challenge it might offer to our own experience or the insight into human nature, or exposure of  ethical complexity. Or, in just that way that a preoccupation with text has dominated the liberal education tradition as a consequence of the victory of the rhetorical tradition, it might have to do with data mining the huge production of texts of any age regardless of the relative worth of the insights the texts may contain, an enterprise that could hardly offer less from literature to the educational enterprise.

A recognition that too much can be missed by the loose requirements probably lies behind those compulsory “Western Civilization” courses in American universities, no doubt designed to ensure too many key thinkers weren’t missed in the loose organization of student degree-patterns – “Western-Civ” courses that became the prime targets in the “culture wars”. The institutions we have may indeed be patriarchal and Western, and they may have been fashioned from the thought of dead, white males, but understanding the thought behind our institutions is part, of understanding why they are the way they are, and understanding them is a prerequisite to changing them for the better. To abolish that understanding is to abolish one side of the conversation that needs to be engaged.

In the end, the “programme” of a liberal education comes out almost as unplanned – barely deserving of the name of an “educational theory”. It is little more than a “good things might rub off” theory. It constitutes a collection of academic disciplines taught for their own sake under their own autonomy – and too often by people who have scorn for other disciplines rather than being capable of drawing connections and relationships among them. It is held together by loose requirements that force a certain amount of depth at “something”, while requiring no more than a diversity in the name of breadth – there is nothing in place, or in practice, to ensure an enlarged view or perspective at all. The acquisition of such a perspective is quite like the “rubbing off” aspect of the theory – dependent on luck.

The effectiveness of all this can perhaps be seen, not only in the fading, in the wider culture, of reference to the idea of the educated person in favour of the abundantly credentialed person, but also in the lack of any concern, among the wider public that the institutionalization of a liberal education is being systematically dismantled, and with it, the idea of education itself has been withering away. Academics may hold up their hands in dismay  at the destruction, of course, but nothing much seems to come from all those degreed people out there in the wider population – including those who were supposed to have had something good rubbed off on them from the liberal arts. Nothing speaks more loudly to the failure of the liberal education tradition than that these people have, for some time now, been voting for the destruction of education itself.

The weaknesses of a liberal education resting on its vagueness and lack of coherent or systematic planning for any particular benefit is easier to see if we consider what might emerge if we did actually plan for one of them, and the political may serve as a suitable example. The emergence of modern democracies, for instance, have been accompanied by an appreciation of the need for an education in democratic participation as extensive as the franchise. If a political process is to be representative – or participatory, then those who would participate or be represented need to “know what they are doing”. They would need to be an “informed” populace – informed about the issues that politics would address, and about the proposals to which they may give or withhold support.

In practice, all that is really considered in the way of political education consists of two elements; basic “civics” courses, perhaps at the primary or secondary level, with the ability to participate responsibly and in an informed manner to be filled out by a liberal education, beginning at the secondary level and persisting into university.

The “civics” component usually consists of an uncritical account of some constitutional matters, together with the structure of the formal institutions – parliaments, congresses, multiple houses, presidencies, elections and the like, plus the civic responsibilities to vote. This is politics as it is s’pozed to work. Descriptive, sanitized, uncritical. It might appeal to certain Enlightenment values such as freedom and respect, and it might be coupled with a relatively celebratory history of the establishment of the institutions and (for instance) the progressive expansion of the franchise – a whiggish sort of history of political progress. This is essentially an induction into the existing political institutions. It does not problematize them, and is not intended that the learner be equipped to choose them – something that the legitimacy of a democracy takes for granted, and which therefore leaves them unable to be vigilant and vigorous in its defence. As such it is essentially indoctrinatory. If the political institutions happen to be in decline in some way, this introduction will not equip the citizenry to do anything about it, except to become cynical and disaffected.

The liberal education component should, of course, give us strong access to the nature and origins of democratic and anti-democratic thought, some reasonable depth in understanding of the ideas of the principal players in the tradition, a critical look at the histories and practices of inclusion and exclusion, of resistance, control and power. We should have a good insight into the ways in which systematic features of social and organizational life – and educational history – tend towards thwarting and perverting democratic ideals and practices. We should, particularly, have examined the ambivalent relationship between economic and democratic thought and practice. Capitalism is associated with the rise of modern Western democracies, and facilitated them, but it is also hostile to democracy in many respects, particularly so when it is unfettered. For this reason, it would be important to understand the histories of social class, and of labour.

In addition, a liberal education should enable us to be informed enough about issues of policy to contribute effectively to collective decision-making. This would involve abilities to think critically, to read relevant documents, to ask intelligent questions of the science and technology and to have some insight into social issues.

Could we expect a liberal education to deliver these things? My undergraduate degree was in the faculty of Arts. I did a double major in English literature and education – the latter being an Arts subject, and not teacher training. It involved studying the history of Western educational thought (touching on some material, in passing, that is relevant to our interest here), the history of New Zealand schooling, and copious amounts of psychology – mostly developmental and educational, but also that relevant to various sorts of testing and of disability. Doing a double major meant that I didn’t do a minor, but I did do three electives – a first-year course in sociology, a first -year course in New Zealand history, and a first-year course in religious studies. Not a very broad coverage of the right sorts of things here, but other patterns would have had other equal deficiencies.

I distinctly remember why I avoided philosophy. I recall believing that it was largely just about logic, and when I noted that the philosophy department ran courses on ethics, I simply couldn’t understand how such a thing could be effectively studied. I was convinced that ethics was just a matter of personal values and opinion. I did not even have the slightest idea what a philosophical question might be, except worthlessly imponderable. The absurdity and poverty of my understanding here is now worthy of my awe, but of course there was nothing in my schooling or growing up that could possibly have challenged it. That same inability to understand the philosophical issues that riddle all our practices and modes of thinking, and that same lack of appreciation of what there is to be achieved with philosophical skill is born witness to almost daily among the pronouncements of scientists and many social scientists. Small wonder, if your education never included it.

After a variety of challenges to the scope of my understanding at the doctoral level, and making my own educational judgment, I balanced my psychology with extensive attention to my limitations in sociology, and social and political theory. My doctorate also gave me a chance to engage with the history and philosophy of science. And I did a lot of work in ethics. By working throughout in education, I was able to maintain an awareness of social issues and policy, and I filled gaps in my appreciation of classical history and philosophy. I did more history.

All of this filled out the liberal education spectrum, but that wasn’t why I did it. By the time I chose to do these things, I could see the problem with each deficiency, and how it was going to affect the work I wanted to do. If it is thought, moreover, that “filling it out” on your own is simply what we should expect from an undergraduate degree done well, it is important to remember that I was not only very much on a vocational track that I took to be a “calling”, but that I had the graduate study, the career time and the ready access to a university library to make it a possibility.

If education is essential to democracy we certainly didn’t have an education adequate to the task when I went through my schooling – but even that was more adequate than the nothing that we have now. If we are cynical about our democracies now, then here is one good reason why democracies have never been as good as they should be, and why we should be expecting their decay. We haven’t properly implemented democracy, and we are starving that which we have of the intelligence it so desperately needs.

Interestingly, if we did have an education that was a proper preparation for a genuine democracy, we would also  be well on the way to an education that would enable learners to carry out their duty of respect for themselves. We would be well on the way to respecting them – to putting the learner first. Democracy enables each citizen to participate in the decision-making about how their lives are to be regulated. It should enable them to hold their political system accountable. It should enable them to contribute their own intelligence to decisions that affect them. An education for democracy opens all this up. It opens up their access to the legitimacy of the rules and laws and constitutional conventions that collective respect for each citizen should depend upon. It should enable access to the very sort of intelligent debate that they need, both to clean up the social world in which they live, and to keep it clean.

Dewey saw democracy both as a process of intelligent collective decision-making and a form of education of the best sort. The fact that our current “democracies” are nothing like this does not make him wrong. Participation in thoughtful, intelligent discussion of all kinds is essential, not only to democracy, but to our abilities to make good decisions in our lives, to our relationships, and to pursue the complex activities we may participate in to more advanced levels. An education for democracy is not a separate thing from an an education designed to enable us to develop and implement our own conception of our good, and it is not a subordinate, instrumental project like vocational education. An education for democracy would be a part of a larger undertaking which we should engage in for each of us as a matter of basic respect for the intrinsically valuable person that we are. Its absence, too, speaks volumes about the exploitative, manipulative and corrupt educational world that we continue to tolerate. Without a proper education, all of our talk of human rights makes no sense.

[1] Noel Annan. “Gentlemen vs. Players.” The New York Review of Books, September 29, 1988. P63 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1988/sep/29/gentlemen-vs-players/?pagination=false&printpage=true.