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Autonomy
Autonomy has been a central concern of philosophers since the time of the Ancient Greeks, as an aspect of the enquiry into the nature and significance of freedom in human experience and social and political life. The term is derived from the Greek auto (self) and nomos (rule or law) and as such has obvious connections with the political idea of self-government. The autonomous state is self-governing. The autonomous person, then, is self-legislating, as opposed to the heteronomous person, whose choices and actions are determined overwhelmingly by others. For Kantian philosophers, the ideal of the autonomous individual is connected to the notion of rationality, as to be autonomous is to make choices based on one's own rational deliberation. Autonomy is thus often conceived as the practice of reflecting carefully upon one's choices. The educational position most closely associated with this philosophical tradition was articulated in the 1960s and 70s by analytic philosophers of education such as Richard Peters, Paul Hirst and Richard Dearden, who argued:
A person is autonomous, then, to the degree that what he thinks and does in important areas of his life cannot be explained without reference to his own activity of mind. That is to say, the explanation of why he thinks and acts as he does in these areas must include a reference to his own choices, deliberations, decisions, reflections, judgements, plannings or reasoning (Dearden, 1972).
In an educational context, understanding the meaning and nature of autonomy can play a crucial role in debates on, for example, the autonomy of individuals within the learning process, the autonomy of parents to determine their children's education, teachers' professional autonomy, the autonomy of schools, and so on. In recent years, however, philosophers of education, especially those associated with the liberal tradition, have focused on the development of an account of autonomy as an educational aim, which was the main concern of Dearden's seminal essay. The commitment to individual autonomy is a central – some would argue the central – value in liberalism, as reflected in the classic Millian view that individuals have a basic right to determine and pursue their own visions of the good life. Thus, theorists like Meira Levinson have developed accounts of education in liberal states in which the promotion of children's autonomy is the principle aim. For many theorists, autonomy is also an aspect of human flourishing , and thus intrinsically valuable. John White has defended this view in the context of education, thus following Mill's argument that autonomy is “one of the elements of well-being” - although he acknowledges that this may not be universally true (see White, 1990, Education and the Good Life ) .
In the context of educational policy, one of the main arguments from the liberal commitment to individual autonomy is that public education in a liberal state must refrain from laying down prescriptive programmes that favour, or aim to further, particular substantive conceptions of the good life. The account of the aims of education developed in line with this position generally emphasises the need for curricula that are both broad and well-balanced, and that emphasise the rational capacities deemed necessary for the exercise of autonomy. The point will generally not be to give children opportunities for choice in a kind of cafeteria curriculum but rather to initatiate them into those forms of reasoning that will enable them to exercise choice in the future.
While the classic liberal view condones a degree of paternalism towards children, this is often justified on the basis that children possess “anticipatory autonomy rights” – in other words, they have the capacity to develop into rational, autonomous individuals. On this view, it is not only the right, but also the duty of the liberal state to ensure that they develop this capacity – even if this means restricting their immediate sphere of freedom of choice. Liberal philosophers, therefore, will usually defend compulsory state education and some form of core compulsory curriculum. Similarly, they will generally justify overruling the educational choices of parents and communities when these are seen as violating this right of the child insofar as they effectively prevent her from developing into an autonomous individual, or induct her into a non-autonomous way of life. For some writers, this idea takes the form of the child's “right to an open future” (see Feinberg), and thus the child's interest in developing as a rationally autonomous individual is seen to trump, for example, parents' rights to bring up their children in particular substantive conceptions of the good.
Debates around this issue highlight the importance of developing careful analytic accounts of autonomy and related concepts, such as freedom, liberty and authenticity.
Most contemporary philosophers of education, whether or not they are committed to political liberalism, acknowledge the value of individual autonomy, if not as a prime educational aim, at least as an important aspect of the process of education. They thus reflect the Enlightenment idea of freedom and the associated educational traditionsthat, following thinkers such as Rousseau, rejected the traditional view of education as the uncritical inculcation of facts or beliefs, and emphasized the need to respect the individual learner, encouraging her to critically engage with and develop her own understanding of the subject matter in question. For many theorists within the radical and child-centred tradition, such as A.S. Neill, this respect for individual freedom led to an insistence that the learner should be entirely free to determine the form, content and method of her own education. For some theorists, such as Robert Wolff, a strong commitment to individual autonomy must logically lead to a rejection of all forms of authority. This has led, for some, to a rejection of all institutional forms of education, along with other aspects of the nation state.
For contemporary philosophers of education, then, enquiry into the meaning and role of autonomy can be seen as part of the concern to defend a normative account of educationthat, while acknowledging the complexities of these issues, will achieve a balance between respect for the interests and needs of children, of adults and of the broader political community.
For further reading on autonomy in political and moral philosophy and philosophy of education, see:
Dearden, R. “Autonomy and Education”, in Dearden, Hirst and Peters (eds) Education and the Development of Reason , Routledge.
Levinson, M. (1999) The Demands of Liberal Education, Oxford University Press.
Mills, C. (2003) “The Child's Right to an Open Future?” in Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. 34. no. 4. http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1467-9833.00197
“personal autonomy”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personal-autonomy/
Mill, J. S. On Liberty (1859), online text: http://utilitarianism.com/ol/one.html
White, J. 1990, Education and the Good Life , Kogan Page.
Wolff, R. (1970) In Defense of Anarchism , http://www.ditext.com/wolff/anarchy.html
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