Center for Liberal Leadership

Liberalism and Education

By Prof. Jan-Argy Y. Tolentino

A rough characterization of the liberal spirit might be “live, and let live”. A friend would always remind me that it would be illiberal to insist on everyone following Socratic rule to examine and reflect on what is valuable. Liberals must let people live unexamined lives; their concern arises only when such people try to stop others getting on with their own preferred life-style.

If liberals should let people get on with their lives, always, except infringements on the equal liberty of others, it might seem that liberals should let people get on with bringing up their children, pretty much how they like. Unexamined modes of life can be reproduced. Let people get on with it.

An important value for liberals, which is often forgotten and yet is implicit in many of the things liberal strive for is Education. Education is a central liberal value. The liberal commitment to the individual doesn’t stop at the notion that the individual is the best judge of his/her own interest. The commitment to the individual includes commitment to maximizing opportunities and commitment to self-fulfillment.

It is a truism that the educational literature is replete with conceptions of education that tell us that in this context of bringing children into the human fold we have some special obligations to them that we do not have towards adults. Even when education is viewed as little different from any other mode of socialization, educators are not likely to advocate exposure to prostitution or child abuse as part of their offerings. Fortunately or unfortunately, what schools offer is colored by normative conceptions on everyone’s view.

But the important point is that within this range of conceptions of education are some which stress intellectual detachment from what is socially given and promote intellectual independence and autonomy. It is likely to cut people somewhat adrift from their social moorings. Nor is it a particularly congenial site for toleration. We liberals want learners to get things right, not just do any old thing that occurs to them or is customary in their social milieu.