Education, liberty and authority: Justifying compulsory education

Abstract

How can the compulsory nature of education ever be justified? If we accept that compulsion cannot be justified by instrumental reasons alone, then the requirement to submit to compulsory education must be regarded as authoritative, that is to say, legitimate. Educational authority therefore becomes a particular element of more general political authority. But, what is the basis of this authority? I wish to sketch out an outline of a theory of educational authority, based on liberty. That is, the justification of educational authority proceeds from a certain conception of liberty which not only justifies the authority to educate but also furthers the cause of liberty itself. The concept of liberty I will be examining is known as republican liberty, a conception that can be traced back to Roman antiquity, Renaissance Italy and seventeenth-century England. In order to illustrate the workings of educational authority, based on liberty I will, in the final third of this chapter, focus on the particular case of teacher authority.