Teaching Identity and Autonomy

Abstract

Liberal theorists often link autonomy and identity together, since, these liberals argue, an education that bestows a particular identity on children undermines their autonomy. The charge of schools ought to be to teach children to be open to a variety of identities. Encounters with diversity and cosmopolitanism are good, since they encourage students to think deeply about their own identity, while traditional religions and nationalism seek to impress a particular identity on students. This standard liberal account, echoed in some of the essays in this book, underplays the ways in which education is a cultural practice like many others. Moreover, as other essays in this volume point out, there are good reasons to want aspects of a common culture to be transmitted in schoolsin democratic states we want citizens to be able to understand one another, and to have some understanding of important historical events in the countrys history. Yet schools that teach an honest history of ones country, and that teach about the countrys political principles, will impress upon students only a partially shared identity. That this identity be only partly shared is important: it allows for differences among students, differences that ought to be understood, at least to some extent.