Eamonn Callan Common Schools for Common Education

SPECIAL SECTION
/
SECTION SPÉCIALE:
COMMON SCHOOLS FOR
COMMON EDUCATION
Eamonn Callan
Common Schools for
Common Education
Discussion / Débat
Tasos Kazepides, Mark Holmes, Robin Barrow,
Stephen Macedo, & Eamonn Callan
ARTICLES
Daniel Turcotte
La participation des enseignants du secondaire à l’encadrement des élèves:
une analyse stratégique
Patrick Brady
Two Policy Approaches to Native Education: Can Reform Be Legislated?
Renée Forgette-Giroux, Marc Richard et Pierre Michaud
L’influence du climat psychosocial de l’école et le concept de soi des élèves
William J. Smith & Charles Lusthaus
The Nexus of Equality and Quality in Education: A Framework for Debate
Angéline Martel et Daniel Villeneuve
Idéologies de la nation, idéologies d’éducation au Canada entre 1867 et 1960:
le “bénéfice du locuteur” majoritaire ou minoritaire
Contents /
Table de matières
Special Section / Section spéciale
Common Schools for Common Education
Article
Eamonn Callan 251
Common Schools for Common Education
Discussion / Débat
Tasos Kazepides 272
The Logic of Educational Policy
Mark Holmes 284
Common Schools for a Secularist Society
Robin Barrow 297
A Common Education
Stephen Macedo
304
Eamonn Callan 315
Liberal Civic Education and Its Limits
Rejoinder: Pluralism and Moral Polarization
***
Articles
Daniel Turcotte 333
La participation des enseignants du secondaire
à l’encadrement des élèves: une analyse
stratégique
Patrick Brady 349
Two Policy Approaches to Native Education:
Can Reform Be Legislated?
Renée Forgette-Giroux, 367
Marc Richard et
Pierre Michaud
L’influence du climat psychosocial de l’école
et le concept de soi des élèves
William J. Smith & 378
Charles Lusthaus
Angéline Martel et 392
Daniel Villeneuve
The Nexus of Equality and Quality in
Education: A Framework for Debate
Idéologies de la nation, idéologies de l’éducation
au Canada entre 1867 et 1960: le “bénéfice du
locuteur” majoritaire ou minoritaire
Special Section / Section spéciale
Common Schools for Common Education
Eamonn Callan
university of alberta
Recent decades have witnessed a striking decline in our commitment to the ideal of the
common school. At least part of that decline may be explained by our impoverished
understanding of the common education that befits a diverse society in which citizens
aspire to live together on a basis of mutual respect. The widespread assumption that a
common education in these circumstances must be confined to the lowest common
denominator of moral commitment leads to a distorted vision of the proper purposes of
common schooling. I argue that a richer vision of the purposes of such schooling can be
inferred from the principle of equal respect, using Rawls’s account of liberal democratic
virtue. I use that argument also to clarify the kinds of separate schooling that are commendable or at least acceptable from a liberal democratic perspective.
Au cours des dernières décennies, l’idéal de l’école commune a connu un net déclin, ce
qui peut s’expliquer, du moins en partie, par notre compréhension appauvrie de l’éducation commune pouvant convenir à une société diversifiée au sein de laquelle les citoyens
aspirent à vivre ensemble dans le respect mutuel. Le postulat courant selon lequel une
éducation commune dans ces circonstances doit être restreinte au plus petit commun
dénominateur en matière d’engagement moral entraîne une perception déformée des buts
souhaitables de l’éducation publique. Faisant appel au concept de vertu démocratique de
Rawls, l’auteur soutient qu’une vision plus exhaustive des buts de l’éducation commune
peut dériver du principe du respect mutuel. Il en profite en outre pour analyser les
différents types d’éducation distincte qui sont recommandables ou du moins acceptables
du point de vue de la démocratie libérale.
Almost a hundred years ago John Dewey (1897/1972) announced that the progressive teacher was the “prophet of the true God, and the usherer in of the
kingdom of God” (p. 95). The religious language is not to be read at face value.
Dewey’s divine kingdom was simply a Utopian version of democratic society.
Progressive teachers in the common school were cast in the roles of prophets and
creators of that Utopia, and Dewey would provide them with the necessary script
for wise prophesy as well as with the right pedagogical methods to do their
sacred work.
Dewey’s faith in schools as the route to democratic salvation seems quaint and
foolish as the twentieth century draws to a close. We have taught ourselves to
expect far less of schools than Dewey hoped for. The common school in par251
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ticular has come to be widely regarded as an institutional anachronism that is
gradually being undermined by educational arrangements more responsive to
private preference and cultural diversity. Of course, the erosion of the common
school is viewed with alarm in some quarters. One concern is that many policies
purporting to respect personal choice, for example, will damage the education of
the poor by deflecting resources away from the schools to which they send their
children. But typically this argument seems to defend the common school by
warning us against policies that might make a bad situation worse. The disdain
for the institution among its detractors is almost matched by the disenchantment
of its defenders. Both lack the faith that inspired Dewey and the leading educators of his generation.
Our collective loss of faith in the common school is perhaps one of the most
significant shifts in educational thought and practice during this century. But I
suspect our current attitude may look as wrong to our descendents as Dewey’s
democratic ardour seems to us. For our current attitude attests to a crude and
unambitious understanding of what a common education might be and an insensitivity to the difficulties of supplying the common education worth having without
truly common schools. In these respects at least, Dewey’s visionary idea of an
education for all that ennobles the common school is preferable to our own dour
pessimism. This is not to commend the specific content of Dewey’s vision; it is
merely to say that he posed the right question by asking what suitably rich and
inspiring view of a shared educational venture could inform common schooling
in a diverse and democratic society. I do not offer here a comprehensive vision
of what that venture should be: this paper is not a blueprint for the pedagogical
prophets and creators of a new democratic Utopia. But I shall argue that an
adequate vision of common education for the citizens of a liberal democracy
warrants a sober faith in common schools as a potentially powerful instrument
of social good, and that it should also make us deeply wary of public policies
that would undermine them. However, I hope to develop an argument for common schooling that is sensitive to considerations supporting the acceptability,
even the desirability, of some kinds of separate schooling.
EDUCATION AND SCHOOLING
The cardinal distinctions in the argument that follows are between common
education and common schooling on the one hand, and separate education and
separate schooling on the other. The distinctions matter because rival policies for
common or separate schooling are confusedly entangled with competing conceptions of common or separate education.1
A conception of common education prescribes a range of educational outcomes — virtues, abilities, different kinds of knowledge — as desirable for all
members of the society to which the conception applies. How members might
differ on criteria of religion, ethnicity, first language, or any other standard
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distinguishing them from their fellow citizens is irrelevant to the basic content
of common education. A school is common if it welcomes all students of an
appropriate age, without regard for these differentiating standards. It must welcome all children not only in the formal sense of forswearing differentiating
criteria in its admission policy; it must also offer a learning environment genuinely hospitable to the credal and cultural diversity the society exhibits within
limits fixed by the constitutive political morality of that society. Schools that
accept diversity formally but not substantively are de jure but not de facto
common schools.
A conception of separate education prescribes a range of educational outcomes
as desirable for some particular social group distinguished according to religion,
ethnicity, or the like. A school is separate if it welcomes only members of the
society who belong to groups distinguished in these ways. A de jure common
school may be a de facto separate school if the absence of differentiating criteria
in admission requirements coincides with a pedagogy and ethos explicitly or
implicitly contemptuous of particular groups. Conversely, a de jure separate
school may grow more like a de facto common school as it relaxes doctrinal or
other selective criteria of admission and develops a pedagogy and ethos that are
no longer uniquely appropriate to the social group for whom that school was
originally intended. Something of this sort is may have happened in some
Catholic schools in Canada and the United States in recent decades (see Callan,
1987; Laplante, 1987).
The possible connections between the two categories of educational conceptions and two kinds of schooling are more complex than they might initially
seem. To begin with, the success of common education in a diverse society does
not necessarily require common schooling. The clearest example of this is easily
imagined: a society with an overwhelmingly powerful and pervasive political
tradition supporting the ends of common education has no need to make any
special institutional provisions to promote them, and so any partiality toward
common schooling in state policy would be arbitrary at best and discriminatory
at worst. On the other hand, the success of separate education need not require
separate schooling in all circumstances. The prospects of success in Catholic
separate education were perhaps rather better for the typical Catholic family
under Communist rule in Poland than they were for comparably devout families
in the seductively secularized societies of western Europe during the same
period, despite the ready availablity of separate Catholic schools in western
Europe and their absence in Communist Poland. Furthermore, it is possible and
perhaps often desirable for common schools to become a vehicle of separate
education while retaining an overarching commitment to common education. The
provision of optional language programs for linguistic minorities, or even specialized religious instruction, are ways in which common schools may attempt to
create an educational environment that instantiates de facto and not merely de
jure commonality.
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The distinctions I have made help to formulate two claims that should be
widely acceptable. First, what is ultimately important is success in whatever
common or separate education is worth having, and the institutions of common
and separate schooling matter only derivatively as they promote or hinder that
success. To think otherwise makes as little sense as supposing that hospitals are
good or bad in a way that is independent of their effects on the health of patients. Second, any morally defensible approach to education in a culturally
diverse liberal democracy must acknowledge both the necessity of some common
education and the acceptability of at least certain kinds of separate education for
those who would choose them. The necessity of a common education for all follows from the need to secure a sufficiently coherent and decent political culture
and the prerequisites of a stable social and economic order. The acceptability of
at least some kinds of separate education follows from the need to respect
different convictions and cultural affiliations and the divergent educational
aspirations that flow from these.
The sharp line I have drawn between education and schooling is not intended
to beg the question against those who would insist on a very intimate connection
between certain varieties of separate education and separate schooling. Nothing
I have said so far rules out the view that a satisfactory separate education of
some particular kind cannot be supplied without separate schooling in current
social conditions. I consider a possible way of defending that view in the following sections. Yet once we reject the absurd idea that a common education can be
completely repudiated, the partisans of separate schooling must do more than talk
of what is needed for an adequate separate education; they must also show how
a satisfactory common education can be given to children who do not attend
common schools. Those who advocate separate schooling are often voluble on
the question of why it is necessary for separate education and laconic on the
issue of why common schooling is not needed for common education.2 An interesting way of answering both questions can be constructed, though it is an
answer that raises serious difficulties about the alleged dispensability of common
schooling.
THE SEPARATIST ARGUMENT
Suppose we choose an educational end for our children which, so far as it is
achieved, brings about a near ubiquitous transformation in how they will live.
Suppose further that the end cannot be conscientiously endorsed by many members of the society we inhabit, so that it must belong to one conception of
separate education among others rather than a vision of common education that
all could reasonably be expected to affirm. Religious ends are the most obvious
example here, but transformative aims are also embraced when ethnic or racial
identity takes on the significance of a unique and all-inclusive world-view, as it
does in certain versions of Afrocentric education (e.g., Asante, 1980, 1991).
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The proposal that our separate educational aim could be effectively accommodated without separate schools, either by providing appropriate curricular options
inside common schools or by encouraging separate educational practices outside,
should be viewed with some scepticism. A separate educational aim that has a
pervasive and transformative effect on how people live cannot be effectively
pursued in a school that necessarily aspires to welcome all students, regardless
of the ideals of separate education to which they or their parents might subscribe.
To be sure, separate educational aims that have a more limited scope, like
competence in a particular language or identification with some highly assimilated ethnic group, might find a comfortable place within the ethos of common
schools because such aims readily cohere with learning with and from others
who do not accept the aims for themselves. That is not so in the case of the kind
of educational aim we are considering. The consequences of commitment to the
aim must saturate how one studies or teaches literature, how one thinks about the
choice of a career or the nature of human intimacy, and virtually any other issue
of consequence in a human life. The achievement of such an aim would seem
to be threatened in a social setting where one is educated by and with people
who do not accept the aim for themselves, however respectful they might be of
the convictions of those who do. For the hidden curriculum of the common
school must suggest that at least in this environment one can and perhaps should
study literature, discuss moral problems, and so on, in a way that sets aside
commitment to separate educational values which, for their adherents, can never
justifiably be set aside. The problem is not merely that many participants in the
common school cannot themselves exhibit the personal transformation that is
desired; they will inevitably be exemplars of ways of living that reject the
transformative aim, and to that extent their influence will be anti-educational and
not just educationally neutral. The danger this poses will be especially great for
the advocate of separate schooling who emphasizes the corruption of those who
reject the transformative aim. But even when a benign view is taken of these
others, common schools’ inability to accommodate the aim in a way that acknowledges its transformative character may create a pressing need for separate
schooling. This completes the first stage of the argument for the provision of
separate schools designed for certain kinds of separate educational ends. I call
this the separatist argument.
A rough but important distinction can be drawn between radical and moderate
versions of the separatist argument. On the radical version, common schooling
poses an unacceptable threat to the transformative aim of separate education at
any point in the educational process, and therefore all schooling for those who
embrace the aim must be separate. Moderate versions of the argument will stress
the need for separate schooling during the early stages of the educational process,
when the aim has at best a precarious purchase on the child’s life. But the need
is regarded as decreasingly urgent as the child grows in whatever understanding
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and commitment the aim entails. Exponents of the argument in its moderate
versions will regard common schooling as acceptable at the later stages of the
educational process; they may even be persuaded to regard it as desirable on
grounds of common education.
Yet as I noted earlier, establishing the need for separate schooling because of
the distinctive character of some aim of separate education can be only the first
stage of a cogent separatist argument. We also need to be convinced that whatever common education is necessary for us can be adequately served by separate
schooling. That task will be more challenging for those who take the radical
rather than the moderate separatist tack. The radical will need to show that all
the aims of common education can be well served by schooling that remains
separate from beginning to end. To assess the separatist argument in either
version, we need to know what the appropriate aims of common education are.
I shall argue that on one widely assumed conception of common education, the
case for even radical separatism looks strong. But that conception fares very
badly under critical scrutiny.
COMMON EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CONSENSUS
The difficulty of reconciling the separatist argument, especially in its radical
version, with the requirements of common education is disguised by the widespread assumption that these requirements are minimal and uncontroversial.
Common education can doubtless be easily implemented in separate schools once
we grant that civic education is reducible to the inculcation of respect for law,
and that all other aims derive from a shared concern with economic productivity
and competitiveness. To interpret common education in that way is to endorse
what I call the “consensual conception” of that concept. For adherents of the
consensual conception, the proper content of common education is given by
whatever corpus of substantive educational values can be supported by a highly
extensive agreement in our society.
Even if empirical research showed that many separate schools were currently
ineffective in implementing the consensual conception, the sensible inference
would be that they need to be improved in that respect, not that they must be
abolished and replaced with common schools. For nothing in the forms of separatist argument and practice that are familiar in our society is seriously at odds
with goals like obedience to law, literacy, and scientific competence. This is not
to deny the notorious friction between religious fundamentalism and scientific
orthodoxy on many questions. But that is irrelevant to scientific competence of
the sort that is part of the consensual conception in the sense I have specified.
In that context, scientific competence is understood as a tool for technological
exploitation, and since modern religious fundamentalism has made peace with
that narrow use of science, where the separatist argument is used on behalf of
fundamentalism it still poses no substantial danger to the pursuit of this particular
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educational aim. You can be taught that God made the world in six days a few
thousand years ago and still grow up be a model employee in the research
division at IBM. Similarly, where literacy is construed expansively to include a
command of the imaginative or morally speculative uses of language, serious
conflict with some influential conceptions of separate education will certainly
occur, but it is a far more austere and technical notion of literacy that belongs
to our consensual conception.
Once common schools are dedicated to nothing more than the consensual
conception, they will inevitably tend to become unacceptable to the adherents of
separate education and uninspiring to those of us who once looked to the common school with fervent social hopes. That is so because consensual common
education can embody no more than the lowest common denominator in a
society’s understanding of what its children should learn, and the more diverse
the society is, the lower that common denominator will necessarily become. This
means that common schools shackled to the paltry and uncontroversial aims of
the consensual conception must offer an education that is at best seriously
incomplete and at worst dangerously distorted. It will be seriously incomplete
because individual citizens naturally have much more substantial convictions
about what is worth teaching and learning than the lowest common denominator
can include; it may be dangerously distorted because by excluding all except the
lowest common denominator a mistaken view of even that small common ground
is apt to become embedded in the hidden curriculum. A conservative Christian,
for example, may think that teaching the work-ethic in an institution where work
is not publicly interpreted as ministering to the greater glory of God is profoundly misleadingly because without that religious context the values of diligence and
productivity become contaminated by the rampant greed of secular society.
I have argued that when common education is understood in consensual terms
it is easily reconciled with the forms of separate education and separate schooling
we are acquainted with. I have also suggested that once common schools see
their mission exclusively as the implementation of the consensual conception,
they will naturally become an unattractive institution in conditions of cultural
diversity. So the separatist argument looks persuasive even in its radical version,
and our collective disenchantment with the common schools looks inevitable,
once it is assumed that the consensual conception is the best conception of
common education.3 The obvious question now is whether that is true.
CONSENSUS AND EQUAL RESPECT
The appeal of the consensual conception is easy to understand. Since the creation
of state-sponsored schooling on a massive scale in the nineteenth century, the
problem of forging a sufficiently cohesive society in circumstances of diversity
has typically been addressed by imposing a conception of common education that
expresses the culture and advances the interests of politically dominant groups.
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The imposition has frequently been a terrrible injustice to those outside the same
groups, and contemporary discourse about common education is overshadowed
by a powerful sense of collective shame regarding the experience of politically
marginalized groups in de jure common schools.
I suggest that what fuels our sense of collective shame is the thought that
justice for a democratic people entails that all citizens are entitled to equal
respect. How are we to provide that respect in common schools? An obvious
answer is that whatever common education we require must include nothing that
any substantial social group, including those groups who have traditionally been
disempowered and marginalized, would repudiate. A conception of common
education that endorses values unique to some powerful minority, or even
confined to a substantial majority of citizens, will be an affront to the dignity of
people who think and live otherwise. Therefore, nothing short of the consensual
conception can provide the equal respect that all citizens are owed. The resultant
common education may indeed be meagre because it must be limited to the
lowest common denominator of social commitment, and if the common school
is confined to those limits, it will cease to be an appealing institution. Yet all this
is perhaps a price we must pay to abide by the principle of equal respect in our
interpretation of common education.
The fatal weakness of this argument is its naïve reading of the principle of
equal respect. A useful way to expose the naïvete is by exploring a feature of the
consensual conception that some readers may already have found puzzling. I
defined the consensual conception in terms of an extensive social consensus on
the content of common education. That definition is (deliberately) vague, but it
suggests a range of educational aims that have a degree of public support lying
somewhere between a bare majority and complete unanimity. Why mark the
boundaries of common education between these poles? A bare majority would
be unacceptable because enforcing a common education based on that would be
flagrantly oppressive toward minorities. Yet complete unanimity would be an
impossible requirement because in any large and complex society virtually
nothing can be expected to secure that level of agreement. Not everyone is
enamoured with the goal of ceaseless economic growth upon which contemporary educational discussion is almost obsessively focused, even though the vast
majority are. There are also more explicitly sinister departures from unanimity.
Respect for religious and racial diversity, even in the weakest and least controversial interpretations of those ambiguous ideals, is rejected by some in our
midst. A common education that expresses unanimity is not a feasible social
aspiration, and therefore we must settle for something less than that while at the
same time eschewing majoritarian tyranny.
Unfortunately, in settling for something less than unanimity, the absurdity of
the claim that the consensual conception can be derived from the principle of
equal respect becomes starkly exposed. The claim presupposes that equality of
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respect is violated once common educational aims are imposed by a majority or
a powerful elite upon others. But that is precisely the imposition endured by avid
racists, for example, whose children are taught respect for racial diversity in the
name of consensual common education. From the standpoint of the consensual
conception, the only possibly relevant difference between that case and the plight
of a First Nations child, for example, whose cultural identity is reviled in the
classroom is that Native culture might belong to a more substantial minority than
racist attitudes. But why should the mere size of a minority be a relevant, much
less the decisively relevant criterion of when oppression occurs in the imposition
of an educational aim? There is no credible answer to that question. The size of
a minority whose way of life is unjustly disparaged through the imposition of a
particular common educational aim certainly affects the scale of the injustice, but
on the prior question of whether injustice has occurred it is entirely irrelevant.
We are perhaps fortunate in having rather more than a bare majority in support of respect for racial diversity. But a consistent advocate of the consensual
conception would have to concede that if support for the ideal declined so that
substantial minorities embraced overt racism, then respect for racial diversity
could no longer form part of the consensual conception, and attempts to enforce
the ideal through common education would oppress racists. This is a ludicrous
implication, and what it really discloses is the contingency of the connection
between consensus and equality of respect. A massive consensus on an aim of
common education is no guarantee that it expresses equal respect, and by the
same token, an aim widely and emphatically rejected may express an equality of
respect for all citizens that a given society sorely lacks.
As long as we care that citizens are treated with equal respect, the consensual
conception of common education cannot be endorsed. That conclusion might
seem trivial since the consensual conception has not received serious theoretical
defense, and a standard temptation for scholars in education is to confine their
critical attention to ideas which have. Yet the consensual conception deserves our
scrutiny because it makes explicit a familiar thread of thinking that links together
trends in common schooling that have helped to sap our faith in that institution.
I have in mind the tendency for teachers and administrator to capitulate to
demands for censorship whenever a vocal majority (or minority) objects to what
is taught, and the reduction of values education to the promulgation of banalities
or, worse still, the policy of suppressing it as far as possible.
Of course, the moral bankruptcy of the consensual conception does not mean
that we should be indifferent to whether the best interpretation of common
education can win a strong consensus: what it means is that we cannot determine
the best conception just by asking what would now secure that consensus. I shall
note later on an important connection between equal respect and the effort to
create a certain kind of moral consensus in the midst of diversity, but the relevant consensus cannot be complacently identified with the one we happen to
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have at this moment in history. Current moral agreement is one thing; the moral
consensus we would have if we lived together on a basis of equal respect is quite
another.
The fact that a thoroughly separate system of schooling should have little
difficulty implementing the consensual conception does nothing to support the
radical separatist argument because that conception is utterly inadequate. In the
following section, I make some claims about aims an acceptable common education must include, using the principle of equal respect to defend my claims.
The separatist argument can then be measured against some of the requirements
of a defensible common education.
RAWLS AND COMMON EDUCATION
The principle of equal respect is our point of departure in answering the question
of what a common education should include. Some superficially appealing
conceptions of common education cannot be reconciled with any acceptable
interpretation of equal respect. That is what we saw in the case of social consensus as a basis of common education. Similarly, reflection may show that
certain things must be included in a common education that conforms to the
principle of equal respect. I claim that common education must include the aim
of reasonableness, understood in a sense that draws on John Rawls’s work on the
liberal theory of justice.
The necessity of this aim is easily established, even from the standpoint of
liberalisms that would diverge from Rawls’s. But Rawls is an especially appropriate focus, and not merely because his work has set the agenda in political
theory for a generation of scholars. For Rawls’s most recent work expounds a
liberalism that purports to respect the plurality of values citizens affirm, and their
aspiration to perpetuate those values across generations, in a far more radical
way than liberalism has traditionally done (Rawls, 1993). What Rawls calls the
“comprehensive liberalism” of Kant or Mill, for example, accommodates diversity only so far as diversity results from the exercise of ideals of autonomy or
individuality regarded as constitutive of the good life and politically privileged
in the institutions of a free society. Rawls’s narrowly political liberalism, on the
other hand, purports to be as far as possible neutral between comprehensive
liberalism and other values that can be found in extant democratic societies. A
Rawlsian approach to common education would seem to allow for the legitimacy
of approaches to separate education which the ethical liberalisms of Kant or Mill
could not countenance (Rawls, 1993, pp. 199–200). These would be approaches
that deny the tenets of comprehensive liberalism while accepting the constraints
imposed by liberal political justice. So it is not surprising that when Rawls
(1993) addresses the question of separate education in families and communities
with an ethical orientation at odds with comprehensive liberalism, he is far more
sympathetic than many contemporary liberal philosophers are (p. 200). If we
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261
want to find a powerfully argued rationale for common education that both fits
the democratic principle of equal respect and completes the second stage of the
separatist argument, Rawls’s recent work would seem the obvious place to look.4
Reasonableness as a virtue of persons involves two related aspects. Acceptance
of the principle of reciprocity is the first of these. Reasonable persons are predisposed to propose fair terms of cooperation to others, to heed the proposals
others make in the same spirit, to settle differences in mutually acceptable ways,
and to abide by agreed terms of cooperation so long as others are prepared to do
likewise (Rawls, 1993, pp. 49–50). Given a context of pluralism, the terms of
cooperation that meet the crieria of reciprocity must be settled by arguments that
abstract from many of the differences in religious creed, ethnic identity, or
ethical conviction that distinguish one reasonable person from another (Rawls,
1993, pp. 225–226, 242–243). Political arguments that insist on the superiority
of some religious or anti-religious creed, say, cannot instantiate reciprocity where
the creed is not shared by some reasonable citizens. This fact about reciprocity
under the conditions of pluralism naturally suggests the second condition. Reasonable persons must accept what Rawls calls the “burdens of judgment.”
The idea of the burdens of judgment is devised to fulfil two complementary
theoretical tasks: it explains the fact that some disagreements about the good and
the right among reasonable persons are strictly irreconcilable; it also justifies
toleration and mutual accommodation whenever such disagreement threatens to
destroy ongoing social cooperation (Rawls, 1993, pp. 54–58). The core of the
idea is the truism that many sources of conflict about the good and the right
cannot be ascribed to the vices of unreason, such as closed-mindedness, logical
bungling, or ignorance. For example, moral concepts are notoriously subject to
hard cases, so that equally reasonable persons will often apply them in divergent
ways, irrespective of how open-minded, logically competent, or knowledgeable
they might be. Our claims about the right and the good are coloured by contingencies of personal history whose effects we cannot completely escape, and
therefore different personal histories will tend to yield different judgments, even
among persons who are equally reasonable. Similarly, disagreement may stem
from the fact that opposing conceptions of the good select from an array of
values which do not admit a single reasonable ordering.
Rawls (1993) lists several other burdens of judgment, though he does not
pretend to be exhaustive (pp. 56–57). The crucial issue is not the completeness
of the list but the practical implications that flow from the general condition of
being subject to the burdens of judgment, given a desire to live with others on
a basis of reciprocity in a pluralistic society. In that setting, we must acknowledge that many of our fellow citizens subscribe to ethical doctrines at odds with
our own without being any less reasonable than we are. Setting the basic terms
of social cooperation in a way that imposes the doctrines we favour becomes unconscionable intolerance because it puts the weight of political authority behind
values that others reasonably reject. Rawls’s notion of public reason — that is,
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the canons of argument that befit discourse about basic justice among a democratic people — is constructed so as to express and foster the virtue of reasonableness, and his celebrated theory of justice as fairness is now presented as but
one way in which public reason might succeed in answering the most fundamental political questions (Rawls, 1993, pp. xxvii–xxx). But there is no need here
to pursue the intricacies of Rawls’s interpretations of public reason and justice
as fairness. Indeed, we may disagree with him on many features of these
interpretations and still concur with his stress on the centrality of reasonablenes
to any adequate understanding of equal respect.5
Why is reasonableness central to the practice of equal respect? Suppose we
belong to some powerful social group defined by shared religious conviction, and
in settling terms of cooperation with outsiders, we seek to make maximum use
of our power. Our capacity to dominate means we can insist on arrangements
that favour our own values, despite the fact that others reasonably reject these.
It follows that we fail to satisfy the Rawlsian conditions of reasonableness. Of
course, we might still agree to extend a certain minimal tolerance toward outsiders, and this might even be a morally grounded rather than a merely pragmatic
tolerance. We might believe it is wrong, for example, directly to coerce others
to conform to the faith we share, but subjecting infidels to discrimination in
education, employment, and the like is acceptable to us as a way of expressing
our antipathy for their way of life and our determination to contain its evil
influence. That example is instructive because it shows that a certain anaemic
kind of tolerance can obtain which falls far short of the requirements of equal
respect, and what makes it fall short is precisely the absence of the virtue of
reasonableness. Although we could plausibly claim that we evince a minimal
tolerance in these circumstances, we could not say with any show of reason that
we extend to others a respect equal to what we would demand for ourselves. The
discriminatory practices we engage in can only be countenanced by flouting the
requirements of reciprocity and using our power to extract terms of cooperation
untenable from any perspective that acknowledges the burdens of judgment. In
short, the moral of the story is that no credible conception of the principle of
equal respect seems to be available that does not presuppose the virtue of reasonableness, and therefore, a common education that is faithful to the principle
must make that virtue one of its necessary ends.
A common education that promotes the virtue of reasonableness entails an
aspiration toward consensus, though it is a consensus both more elusive and
more morally serious than what we find in the consensual conception of common
education. The contrast can be captured through James Fishkin’s (1992) useful
distinction between brute and refined political consensus (pp. 53–67). Fishkin
develops the distinction within the context of philosophical argument about
political legitimacy, but the distinction is readily extended to debate about
common education. The brute consensus to which the consensual conception
defers is merely whatever common values the members of a society can agree
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on at a particular time, and these may be shaped by processes of socialization
and political manipulation that violate the claims of moral reason. A brute
consensus on the acceptability of a political regime does not establish its legitimacy because we have no grounds to believe that the processes by which it was
formed would produce a legitimate outcome, and for just the same reason, a
brute consensus on the content of common education does not establish the
desirability of social practices which transmit that content. On the other hand, a
political consensus is refined so far as the processes by which it is created and
subject to ongoing revision are designed to ensure agreements that deserve our
respect, and a common education dedicated to the end of reasonableness is
plausibly viewed as one process necessary to an adequately refined consensus.
For such an education would filter out of political deliberation the many unreasonable views that citizens might be tempted to impose on each other, and
among the many equally reasonable views possible under the circumstances of
pluralism, mutual accommodation and understanding would be fostered. The
political consensus toward which a pluralistic society tends when the virtue of
reasonableness is broadly and deeply diffused among the citizenry may well be
rejected by this or that particular citizen. What is hard to see is how it could
reasonably be rejected by any citizen.
Two aspects of a common education that promotes reasonableness need to be
stressed. The first of these concerns the processes by which reasonableness might
be fostered, and it draws on the familiar Aristotelian thesis that virtues, like
skills, are acquired through their exercise (Aristotle, 1973, 1103a–1103b). The
Aristotelian thesis is that virtues and skills in their most refined forms are the
fruit of educational processes in which we exercise them as more primitive
habits, becoming ever more adept and discerning as we practise, reflect, and then
practise again in light of what the prior practice and reflection have taught us.
Now the exercise of reasonableness presupposes a deliberative setting in which
citizens with conflicting values and interests can join together to create a morally
grounded consensus on how to live together. Reciprocity in the Rawlsian sense
can have no application in our lives without that setting. Therefore, the development of reasonableness as a virtue requires that reciprocity be practised in a
dialogical context of this kind, and the common school is an obvious way of
creating the necessary context. Of course, the context might be simulated with
some success in separate schools, although a dialogical setting that really includes students and teachers whose diverse ethical voices represent the pluralism
of the larger society would as a rule be preferred. Where a dialogical setting
excludes diverse voices, as a separate school must do by welcoming only those
who adhere to its separate educational aims, we are compelled to create imaginary interlocutors if we are to “practise” reciprocity, but imaginary interlocutors
are a pallid substitute for the real thing.
Second, in learning to be reasonable, human beings will have to learn to
accept the burdens of judgment and the implications for reciprocity that these
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entail. Religious and ethical doctrines do not enter the world with fixed labels
enabling us to classify them as reasonable or not. The reasonableness of convictions learned in the family or elsewhere can only be established on the basis of
searching examination that is open to the possibility that received convictions are
in fact unreasonable. Moreover, acceptance of the burdens of judgment means
that even if my convictions meet the criteria of reasonableness, I must also
acknowledge the possibility that many of the opposing beliefs of my compatriots
may do so as well, and I must become able to discriminate the ones which do
from those which do not. I must come to see how many points of divergence
between their political judgments and mine may be hard cases to which the same
normative concepts can be reasonably applied in different ways; I must learn
how contingencies of personal history may colour political judgment in ways that
cannot be entirely eliminated by the development of our common capacity to
reason; I must learn how the comprehensive religious or ethical ideal I subscribe
to selects from the diversity of human goods and organizes these in ways to
which there are reasonable alternatives. All these educational tasks require a
serious intellectual and imaginative engagement with the plurality of values to
which my fellow citizens adhere, and again, there is surely at least a presumptive
case for undertaking the tasks in a social environment where the plurality of
values is really embodied in the lives of different participants. That is to say,
there is at least a presumptive case for common education in common schools.
I have argued that any conception of common education that is faithful to the
principle of equal respect must include the aim of reasonableness, and I have
suggested that the pursuit of that aim requires a particular kind of deliberative
context, as well as a critico-imaginative encounter with the ethical diversity our
society currently includes. These educational implications of commitment to the
aim of reasonableness create a presumptive case for common schooling. How
strong is that presumption?
RECONCILING SEPARATE AND COMMON EDUCATION
A successful separatist counter-argument must defeat the presumptive case for
common education. The counter-argument needs to be completed in two stages.
At the first, the need for separate schooling to achieve some transformative aim
of separate education must be established; at the second, the separate schooling
characterized at the first stage must be shown to cohere with the requirements
of common education. If the requirements must include the promotion of reasonableness, serious difficulties arise for any attempt to complete the radical separatist argument, at least in current circumstances, although the prospects for
completing the argument in its moderate version are much better.
The major obstacles to the completion of the radical argument correspond to
the two aspects of common education I stressed earlier. First, how is the particular deliberative context that the development of reciprocity requires to be
COMMON SCHOOLS FOR COMMON EDUCATION
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supplied to children whose schooling is separate from beginning to end? The
question would not even interest us in a liberal democratic Utopia where powerful institutions for collective deliberation exist outside the boundaries of the
school, and everyone can be expected to learn to participate in ways that conduce
to reasonableness. But we simply do not inhabit that Utopia, and so the question
must worry us. A partial simulacrum of the relevant deliberative context might
be provided in separate schools where the claims and interests of citizens who
reject the separatist orthodoxy can be addressed with some sympathy and openmindedness. But notice that once the aims of separate education have been
liberalized in this way, one premise necessary to the radical separatist argument
becomes glaringly implausible — that is, the proposal that any departure from
separate schooling is an unacceptable threat to the ends of separate education.
For the only “threat” that a common schooling dedicated to the aim of reasonableness could pose would be the sympathetic and open-minded exploration of
rival convictions, and ex hypothesi, the value of that exploration is affirmed in
liberalized conceptions of separate education. Alternatively, if the ends of
separate education are defined so that their achievement requires a dogmatic and
contemptuous rejection of whoever rejects them, then any attempt to create the
deliberative context of reciprocity would certainly be antagonistic to those ends.
But the same ends could not be acceptable from the perspective of an education
that prescribes the virtue of reasonablenes, and so the radical separatist argument
would founder at the second stage because it could not be reconciled with the
exigencies of common education.
A parallel dilemma regarding the burdens of judgment confronts the advocates
of radical separatism. Once separate education is interpreted in a way that
acknowledges the burdens, it becomes incomprehensible that schooling must be
separate from beginning to end for the sake of the liberalized separate education
which gives the institution its rationale. On the other hand, the incompatibility
of common schooling with varieties of separate education that repudiate the
burdens of judgment might be easily established. But precisely because the
burdens of judgment are rejected, these forms of separate education must fail to
cohere with the requirements of common education.
A retreat to a moderate version of the separatist argument enables exponents
of liberalized separate education to escape these dilemmas. For those who
subscribe to illiberal ideals of separate education — for example, those who
repudiate the virtue of reasonableness — that escape is not available. They will
hardly be attracted to the moderate version of the argument to begin with, and
even if they were, a separate schooling of even brief duration which works
against the necessary ends of common education must fail at the second stage.
But it might be objected that the moderate argument is untenable even when it
is aligned with separate educational values that have been tempered by liberal
social principles. If the ends of separate education are understood in a way that
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accords with the requirements of common education, why does schooling have
to be separate during even its early stages for some future citizens? There could
be nothing inherently objectionable about this kind of separate schooling since
it accommodates the demands of common education. But in the absence of a persuasive answer to the question just posed, it must seem that separate schooling
protects no vital interest of the students who attend or their parents. Therefore,
the grounds for state sponsorship seem weak or non-existent, and the case for
restricting access may often be strong since no powerful moral consideration
could weigh against reasons of efficiency or the like when these support limitations on access.
To bring out the force of the moderate separatist argument against this line of
objection, we need to reflect more deeply on the virtues of practical reason.
Reasonableness is only one aspect of competence in practical reason; its companion is practical rationality, which is evinced in the individual’s pursuit of her
or his own good. Although Rawls (1993) insists, rightly in my view, that neither
virtue of reason can be derived from the other, there is clearly a sense in which
the rational is prior to the reasonable (p. 52). If I am to be capable of reciprocity
and acceptance of the burdens of judgment, I must have a secure understanding
of what it is to have a conception of the good and to pursue it rationally; otherwise I cannot understand what is at stake for the good of individuals when they
try to settle the terms of cooperation on a fair and reasonable basis. The logical
priority of practical rationality does not mean there must be a tidy developmental
sequence, with rationality reaching a full ripeness before reasonableness can take
hold in our lives. On the contrary, it is much more plausible to imagine a tightly
integrated process of psychological development, within which an increasingly
complex and discriminating reasonablenss draws on an evolving rationality,
which is in turn enriched by our developing reasonableness. Reasonableness, as
Rawls understands it, is a highly sophisticated virtue, which imposes heavy
intellectual and emotional demands on us, and it has obvious origins in simpler
dispositional precursors. The mutuality of beneficence a child learns to show and
enjoy in a loving family foreshadows the more demanding mutuality that develops later, if all goes well, in somewhat larger-scale associations, and this in turn
foreshadows the reciprocity of Rawlsian citizens who attempt to create a fair
scheme of cooperation in the midst of radical disagreement about the good
(Rawls, 1971, pp. 462-479). Similarly, acceptance of the burdens of judgment
has obvious antecedents in propensities to recognize the fallibility of one’s own
judgments and to moderate individual demands in response to disagreement. At
these more primitive levels as well, the antecedents of a developed reasonableness and rationality are subtly interwoven. For example, the young child who
learns to temper claims for parental attention in light of the needs of a new
sibling is learning to acknowledge the good of another, and this presupposes a
primitive recognition of her own distinct good.
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Rawls’s rather sparse idea of rationality is expounded without serious attention
to the ways in which individuals achieve an initial understanding of their good
in a specific cultural setting, where the good is conceived according to a traditional moral vocabulary that fixes the normative content of roles and the social
practices they sustain. Although this point is commonly thought a fatal objection
to the understanding of rationality and the good on which liberal theories like
Rawls’s are based (MacIntyre, 1981; Sandel, 1982), I would argue that the point
can be easily absorbed into the fabric of such theories. We can acknowledge that
initiation into a particular, established view of the good life is indeed the natural
starting-point of the development of rationality, and also that whatever kinds of
mutual goodwill and cooperation characterize that view are the foundation for the
development of reasonableness, without thereby giving up on the cardinal principles of the liberal democratic tradition and the need to transmit them through
common education (Kymlicka, 1989, pp. 47–73).
The claims I have made about the interdependent development of rationality
and reasonableness, and its natural starting-point in received roles and traditions,
are the basis for an appealing version of the moderate separatist argument.
Separate schooling of limited duration, created for the sake of separate education,
may be regarded as one way of creating the developmental antecedents of the
mature liberal virtues. From the standpoint of parents who embrace some transformative educational aim for their children, the early years of schooling may be
seen as a crucial stage in securing a robust initial understanding of what their
way of life means. From the standpoint of the state, the experiences that schooling furnishes may be seen as laying the groundwork for the rationality and
reasonableness that characterize the fully virtuous citizen by cultivating the
psychological precursors of such virtues. Given this continuity between the
values of the family and the ethos of the separate school, it may even be a more
solid groundwork than common schools could typically provide.6 Yet the force
of this argument from the state’s standpoint depends decisively on its being a
moderate separatist argument. Because those who might press this argument are
willing to accept a schooling system that is common in its culminating years,
their separatist demands are easily reconciled with the need for schools to create
the deliberative context for full-blown reciprocity at an appropriate developmental stage and to challenge received ideas of the good and the right in the
manner required by acceptance of the burdens of judgment. The dilemmas that
defeat radical separatism are thus evaded, though at the cost of retreating to a
form of separatism much weaker than many extant varieties.
FROM PRINCIPLE TO POLICY
So far I have argued for three closely interlocked normative principles: an
acceptable common education for the citizens of a liberal democracy must
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include the cultivation of reasonableness; that aim creates a presumptive case for
common schooling; and the presumptive case can be defeated under certain
specified conditions. The argument provides a framework of principle within
which many issues of educational policy can be addressed. How are we to make
appropriate inferences from the principles I have outlined to the questions of
policy upon which they bear? I want to press two claims in response to that
question. First, the relevance of the argument for the state regulation and sponsorship of separate schools is uncertain and likely to vary substantially from one
social context to another. Second, the argument has implications for the task of
transforming de jure into de facto common schools.
The principles I have outlined might seem to have one striking implication for
the regulation of separate schools: all separate schools committed to educational
ends at variance with the requirements of reasonableness should be prohibited.
But even that seemingly obvious prescription does not immediately follow from
my argument. It is one thing to say that a necessary end of common education
is the promotion of reasonableness; it is quite another to claim that no children
or adolescents should be permitted to attend schools that pursue ends at odds
with the requirements of reasonablenness. The gap between the two claims is
created by a number of considerations. First and most obviously, the political
vitality of no society requires that all citizens develop the virtues that inform its
distinctive political culture — warrior societies can endure with more than a few
cowards in their midst, and liberal democracies can and do thrive with their share
of intransigent bigots. Furthermore, one crucial difference between the warrior
society and the liberal democratic state lies in the attitudes they foster toward
those who fail to evince their constitutive political virtues. For the liberal state
is distinctive in requiring a substantial forbearance toward those whose would
affirm values in conflict with its ideals, including people who would seek to
perpetuate those values across generations. That forbearance can be defended
through independent instrumental and non-instrumental moral arguments.
Any extant liberal society will harbour more or less powerful cultural pressures that are pitted against its ideals, and these may be evidenced in controversies about what can permissibly be taught in separate schools regarding race,
gender, religion, and the like. Suppose we have compelling grounds to agree that
some views that are commonly taught in certain separate schools are in clear
conflict with the criteria of reasonableness.7 If our interest is in securing the
eventual triumph of liberal ideals over time, it would not automatically follow
that the blunt instrument of coercive law should be used to suppress efforts to
teach the offending views. Coercion may exacerbate the political alienation of
those who are on the receiving end of suppression, and encourage the continuance of illiberal values that would gradually fade in a more indulgent environment. This instrumental moral argument for a limited forbearance is thus
grounded in scepticism about the universal efficacy of political coercion in
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containing the advocacy of social evils in educational as in other institutions. No
doubt scepticism about the universal efficacy of toleration is equally appropriate.
My point is merely that any coercive political response to groups who reject the
requirements of common education depends in part on difficult predictive judgments about the effects of coercive regulation in particular social circumstances,
and since we might expect the effects to vary from one situation to another,
coercion cannot be endorsed as a matter of general principle.
The non-instrumental case for a selective forbearance is different and less well
understood, and I can only sketch its main outlines here. One burden of judgment
Rawls (1993) stresses is the inevitable partiality of anyone’s conception of the
good, given the vast diversity of human values worthy of election (p. 57). In
embracing a life that revolves around teaching, scholarship, and familial intimacy, I choose one honourable way to live at the cost of many other worthwhile
possibilities. A common claim about liberal democratic societies is that their
distinctive mode of government is neutral between different conceptions of the
good, and so unlike in theocratic or other illiberal states, the many ways of life
citizens practise are free and creative responses to the diversity of goods from
which a decent and fulfilling life can be constructed (Ackerman, 1980; Dworkin,
1978a). But this way of trying to capture what is distinctive of liberal politics is
suspect, in part because modern liberal societies exert powerful constraints on the
lives we lead, making many possibilities decreasingly viable even when they
involve no injustice toward others. The thought that not all good lives can be led
within the welcoming aegis of liberal society often colours our half-envious or
admiring response to some who partially withdraw from it, like certain religious
groups, or those whose ancient traditions may be threatened by it, like some
Aboriginal communities. I think Rawls is right to say that one reason for liberal
forbearance in the face of diversity is our acknowledgement of the ethical
selectivity and partiality that afflict all our lives. But the same point can be
pressed further. Our recognition that some conceptions of the good go against the
grain of liberal politics may also support a limited tolerance of ways of life that
repudiate the liberal virtues and the educational practices that go with them. This
must be a strictly limited tolerance if our commitment to common education is
to mean anything at all. Nevertheless, the fact that the ends of common education
may be resisted because of a fidelity to goods which liberal societies cannot fully
accommodate may moderate the zeal with which we prosecute those ends in
dealing with established communities and cultures who reject them.
For those of us who maintain a faith in common schools for common education, however, the crucial practical task is not the policing of separate schools but
rather the transformation of de jure into de facto common schools. So long as
our public schools are in the grip of the consensual conception of common
education, they do not really welcome the credal and cultural diversity of our
society on the only shared basis worth affirming — the basis of equal respect. A
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schooling system that ignores the deep questions that divide us and stresses
instead the increasingly shallow set of substantive values on which almost all of
us can currently agree is really contemptuous of who we are because it evades
the truth that our identities are deeply implicated in rival answers to ethically
divisive questions. A common education for common schools might instead
address those questions in a forthright way, while at the same time cultivating
a shared reasonableness that would enable us to live together in mutual respect.
This may not be the grand project of realizing a democratic “kingdom of God,”
but it is perhaps the only responsible educational faith we can still endorse.
NOTES
1
I use “conception” here in the sense central to much of the most important political and legal
philosophy produced over the last couple of decades (e.g., Dworkin, 1978b, 1986; Rawls, 1971).
Rawls’s capsule explanation of the difference between concepts and conceptions is useful:
“Roughly, the concept is the meaning of a term, while a particular conception includes as well
the principles required to apply it” (Rawls, 1993, p. 14n).
2
A notable exception is Brian Crittenden (1988). Yet I think even Crittenden is insufficiently
sensitive to the possibility of radical conflict between the conceptions of religious faith, for
example, around which many versions of separate education are constructed and the emphasis on
critical reason that public virtue in a liberal democracy requires. This point has been perceptively
pursued against Crittenden by Strike (1990).
3
If the consensual conception were the only or the best one, the case against common schooling
would be overwhelming. Mark Holmes’s (1993) argument against common schooling is based on
the assumption that the consensual conception is the only one.
4
I have argued elsewhere (Callan, in press) that Rawls does not succeed in distinguishing comprehensive from political liberalism. Nevertheless, his recent work is of great interest partly because
it is an attempt to devise a liberalism maximally hospitable to ethical diversity.
5
The idea that reasonableness is central to civic virtue in a liberal democracy is shared by writers
who do not interpret its requirements quite as Rawls does. Stephen Macedo’s (1991) account of
the liberal virtue of moderation fits this pattern (pp. 69–73). So too does the account Amy
Gutmann has been developing of the virtues of democratic deliberation (Gutmann, 1993; Gutmann
& Thomson, 1990). For a brilliant essay on public reason that differs sharply from Rawls’s in
finding a substantial place for religious argument, see Waldron (1993).
6
My argument here converges with Terry McLaughlin’s (1992) subtle defense of separate schooling within a liberal democratic framework, although he does not make use of my distinction
between radical and moderate separatist arguments.
7
It should be noted that such grounds are often elusive. As McLaughlin (1992) has noted, it is
often difficult to find a sharp line between values outside and values inside the liberal democratic
tradition. But the practical significance of that point is ambiguous. Our frequent uncertainty about
where lines should be drawn means we should be cautious about claims that coercive intervention
is justified. By the same token, it also means we should be equally cautious about claims that
forbearance is the justified course. So McLaughlin’s premises do not support any general reason
for favouring forbearance over coercion.
REFERENCES
Ackerman, B. A. (1980). Social justice and the liberal state. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
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Aristotle. (1973). Aristotle’s ethics (J. L. Ackrill, Ed.). London: Faber and Faber.
Asante, M. K. (1980). Afrocentricity. Buffalo, NY: Amulefi.
Asante, M. K. (1991). The Afrocentric idea of education. Journal of Negro Education, 60, 170–180.
Callan, E. (1987). Religion, schooling and the limits of liberalism. In N. Kach (Ed.), The state and
future of education: Selected proceedings of the Alberta Universities Educational Foundations
Conference (pp. 135–138). Edmonton: University of Alberta, Faculty of Education, Department
of Educational Foundations.
Callan, E. (in press). Political liberalism and political education. The Review of Politics.
Crittenden, B. (1988). Parents, the state and the right to educate. Melbourne: Melbourne University
Press.
Dewey, J. (1972). My pedagogic creed. In J.-A. Boydston (Ed.), The early works of John Dewey:
Volume 5. Early essays (pp. 84–95). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. (Original
work published 1897)
Dworkin, R. (1978a). Liberalism. In S. Hampshire (Ed.), Public and private morality (pp. 113–143).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dworkin, R. (1978b). Taking rights seriously. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dworkin, R. (1986). Law’s empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Fishkin, J. (1992). The dialogue of justice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Gutmann, A. (1993). The challenge of multiculturalism in political ethics. Philosophy and Public
Affairs, 22, 171–206.
Gutmann, A., & Thompson, D. (1990). Moral conflict and political consensus. Ethics, 101, 64–88.
Holmes, M. (1993). The place of religion in public education. Interchange, 24, 205–223.
Kymlicka, W. (1989). Liberalism, community and culture. Oxford: Clarendon.
Laplante, R. (1987). The changing Catholic school in Alberta. In N. Kach (Ed.), The state and future
of education: Selected proceedings of the Alberta Universities Educational Foundations Confernce
(pp. 110–124). Edmonton: University of Alberta, Faculty of Education, Department of
Educational Foundations.
Macedo, S. (1991). Liberal virtues. Oxford: Clarendon.
MacIntyre, A. (1981). After virtue. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press.
McLaughlin, T. H. (1992). The ethics of separate schools. In M. Leicester & Monica Taylor (Eds.),
Ethics, ethnicity and education (pp. 114–136). London: Kogan Page.
Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Rawls, J. (1993). Political liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
Sandel, M. (1982). Liberalism and the limits of justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Strike, K. (1990). Review article: Parents, the state and the right to educate. Educational Theory, 40,
237–248.
Waldron, J. (1993). Religious considerations in public deliberation. San Diego Law Review, 30,
817–848.
Eamonn Callan is in the Department of Educational Policy Studies, Faculty of Education, University
of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2G5.
Discussion / Débat
The Logic of Educational Policy
Tasos Kazepides
simon fraser university
Although I am sympathetic to some aspects of Callan’s general arguments about
the need for “common education” and the importance of the early training of the
young, I strongly disagree with his quick conclusion for “limited separate
education.” The best way I can show my agreements and disagreements is by
sketching briefly what I consider to be the logic of educational policy.
EVERY POLICY AIMS AT SOME GOOD
Every policy of every kind is logically parasitic on its specific subject which has
intrinsic or instrumental value. It is, for example, one thing to talk about health
or welfare policy or planning and another thing to talk about educational policy
or planning. That “education” suggests a fairly well demarcated and important
area of public concern is evidenced by a multitude of ordinary locutions: we talk
not only of educational institutions, programs, and planning but also of educational values, reasons, goals, problems, and arguments. That it is the only
normative concept among educational terms is made clear by the fact that when
some of its norms are violated we talk about miseducation, whereas we do not
talk of misteaching, mistraining, or missocialization.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO GET CLEAR ABOUT EDUCATION?
The first reason we must get clear about education is that rational educational
planning requires the clarification and defense of our educational ideal. We
cannot choose the content, methods, and institutional arrangements appropriate
for education unless we know what is the character of our educational ideal.
Educational policy that is not based on a clear, coherent, and defensible view of
education is usually chameleonic, serving the interests of the political, religious,
and economic status quo.
A second, equally important reason for the need to become clear about the
concept of education is that such an understanding is necessary for determining
and demarcating the character and scope of the prerequisites of educational
development as well as the methods appropriate for teaching them to the young.
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DISCUSSION
/
DÉBAT
273
Some rationalist accounts, especially of moral education, commit what I would
like to call the fallacy of the ideal; they concentrate all their attention on the
sophisticated and complex achievements of the ideally educated person and
ignore their prerequisites, that is, the beliefs, attitudes, dispositions, and habits
that underlie such achievements. I consider the distinction between education and
its prerequisites of enormous importance for education and I have defended it
elsewhere (Kazepides, 1991). Our criteria of education must put some clear
constraints on what constitute appropriate educational prerequisites; these prerequisites require ways of teaching markedly different from the sophisticated
intellectual acts appropriate for educational tasks. The problem in educational
theorizing is that the distinction between education and its prerequisites is usually
ignored or denied. When it is hinted at by some educators, it is casual, unclear,
and inaccurate, whereas when it is totally ignored, it renders education a useless
all-embracing concept more or less synonymous with socialization.
THE DEMANDS OF REASON
There is no inherent reason why common schools ought to be educational
institutions. There have been and still are societies where public schools are
committed to training, indoctrinating, and socializing the young into the dominant
culture. Once we decide, however, that our public schools ought to function
mainly as educational institutions, certain things follow. Their primary objectives
ought to be the establishment of the prerequisites of educational development, to
the extent that they are missing, and the provision of education. The training and
socializing functions of schools are secondary and cannot become substitutes for
education; indoctrination, on the other hand, is ruled out because it is a serious
form of miseducation that violates the knowledge criterion of education. All this
presupposes, of course, that our ideal of an educated person that guides our
thinking is the person who has come to recognize the demands of reason within
each form of human experience and has had his or her mind disciplined by the
standards of excellence embedded in the various disciplines of thought and action
as we know them today. The fact that those standards are not always clear and
that the demands of reason are not always easy to articulate does not mean we
can abandon our search for them; such an alternative is not available to us. The
main purpose of institutions committed to education, then, is to show the young
that civilized human life cannot violate the demands of reason and to point out
to them what those demands are.
The epistemological and value criteria of education serve to remind us that the
intellectual and other achievements of humanity that constitute the substance of
education are forms of knowledge and understanding — not mere skills of knowing how to get along in life, not matters of personal taste or doctrinal, superstitious, or mythological accounts of the world and human experience. Whatever
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reservations one might have about the epistemological status of scientific
theories, aesthetic judgments, historical explanations, or mathematical or moral
claims, the truth is that no one can get an education without engaging in a
conversation with some of these traditions of thought, which constitute the “holy
ground” of education, including all the controversies within these forms of
human discourse. Outside such traditions or in the absence of similar traditions
we cannot talk about education today, unless we want to use “education” in a
totally different sense. It seems to me that only some form of historical and
cultural blindness would lead one today to refer to the Homeric Achilles or the
“wise man” of an ancient tribe as educated. Our concept of education is inseparable from our achievements mentioned above and in this important sense it is
ours. Those who want to escape from our world should be allowed to do so,
unless they plan to undermine the demands of reason or unless they are young
children; about young children we care very much and we cannot abandon them
to their ignorance and innocence in a world full of misologists and lunatics.
EDUCATIONAL PLURALISM
The domain of worthwhile knowledge and understanding that falls within the
demands of reason is heterogeneous, vast, rich, and complex. Within this multitude of worthwhile human achievements we should be able to construct countless
educational programs to fit the idiosyncrasies, preferences, talents, and needs of
every human being, as long as these programs do not violate the varied demands
of reason. Ceteris paribus, then, only radical educational pluralism is justified.
But since other things are rarely equal, we can say that the onus should always
be on those who want to impose specific common curricula and objectives on all
children, to justify their homogenizing or restricting recommendations. So, I am
not saying that no recommendations can be made regarding the educational
worthwhileness of certain forms of understanding, only that they require educational justification — which means that they ought to be in the long-term interest
of children.
Our concept of education, which lies at the heart of an open pluralistic society,
does not require predetermined objectives, specific programs of study, or official
curricula — that is what professional training and indoctrination require. Education requires only justified principles, canons of inquiry, and standards of
excellence, which are embedded in countless worthwhile human achievements
(Kazepides, 1989). Given that individuals may have different talents, inclinations,
abilities, opportunities, and educationally legitimate preferences, our educational
paradise must be pluralistic; there are many different ways people can save their
educational souls. The important distinction that must be made, then, is not
between common and separate education — that distinction does not make much
sense given the character of the educational ideal I have described — but between
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educational, non-educational, and miseducational programs. Such radical
educational policy, however, presupposes, among many other things, a continuous public dialogue on the nature and dimensions of our educational ideal, and
superbly educated, deeply caring, and committed teachers who can assess the
educational value of various activities and guide the young accordingly. Without
such an ideal as an “end in view” I cannot see how we can engage in worthwhile
educational policy. It is that great debate which is missing today from our
society and consequently from our educational policy. R. M. Hare observed in
1952 that when we ask the question “How shall we bring up our children?” we
inescapably confront our most fundamental ethical decisions. I suggest that this
question is the most important one every civilized society must ask constantly,
because the educational ideal of a society is the most important and the safest
criterion of its quality of life and its excellence. Callan’s proposal in the end
bypasses that great debate and tries to settle people’s preconceived parochial and
uninformed views about educational priorities outside or in the absence of such
a debate. I suggest that the temporary political settlements he proposes about
“limited separate education” are the result of a dangerous patchwork approach
that is educationally unsound and also contributes to the further fragmentation
and disintegration of our society.
FORMS OF LIFE ALLOWED BY REASON
The only things that fall outside the demands of reason, but are allowed by
reason, are matters of personal taste and preference and certain ultimate choices
of a religious or quasi-religious way of life. We can reasonably demand that all
citizens obey the laws and respect other people’s freedom but we cannot demand
that they all eat broccoli or dedicate their lives to humanity; the former behaviours, we might say, are supported or required by reason, whereas the latter are
allowed by reason. Those ultimate choices of a form of life that are allowed by
reason can be described, shown, presented, exemplified, or revealed to a person
but they cannot be explained, demonstrated, or justified, and, therefore, they
cannot be required by reason. To use one of Wittgenstein’s favourite examples:
I can say: “Thank these bees for their honey as though they were kind people who have
prepared it for you”; that is intelligible and describes how I should like you to conduct
yourself. But I cannot say: “Thank them because, look, how kind they are” — since the
next moment they may sting you. Religion says: Do this! — Think like that — but it cannot
justify this and once it even tries to, it becomes repellent; because for every reason it
offers there is a valid counter-reason. (Wittgenstein, 1980, p. 29e)
I can ask you to thank God for everything or to do everything for the glory of
God — that is intelligible and shows the kind of grateful (and so on) person I
want you to be — but I cannot tell you that you ought to thank God for some
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specific reason, because for every reason I give you, you will be able to offer me
countless counter-reasons. Such personal perspectives on life, no matter how
meaningful, noble, or fundamental to a person’s life, remain outside the demands
of reason and any attempt to justify them would be “repellent.” “It strikes me,”
says Wittgenstein (1980), “that a religious belief could only be something like
a passionate commitment to a system of reference. Hence, although it’s belief,
it’s really a way of living, or a way of assessing life” (p. 64e). Wittgenstein
(1967) repeatedly argued that religious belief “not only is . . . not reasonable, but
. . . doesn’t pretend to be” and that it is “ludicrous” to make it “appear to be
reasonable.” About those who try to make religious belief appear to be reasonable by appealing to facts or evidence, Wittgenstein says that they are “unreasonable” and that “if this is religious belief, it’s all superstition” (p. 59). I am
convinced that Wittgenstein is absolutely right.
I would like to believe that Callan agrees that a lot of what is held and practiced widely as religion is mixed to a large extent with superstition that violates
the demands of reason. The teaching of such religious doctrines as if they were
literally true does not and cannot aim at enriching and developing the human
mind but at
completely controlling the expression of all opinions. People will live under an absolute,
palpable tyranny, though without being able to say they are not free. . . . It’s almost as
though someone were to attach a weight to your foot to restrict your freedom of movement. (Wittgenstein, 1980, p. 28e)
In the search for explanation and justification, literal religious doctrines are
decision statements that are used as stoppers; that is why they are so staunchly,
albeit awkwardly, defended and preserved by the appointed guardians of the
various churches. Without them there can be no hierarchies, no political power,
no “keepers of the faith,” and no “heretics,” that is, none of the things that
Wittgenstein (1980) describes as “froth” (p. 30e). The teaching of such doctrines
is a clear violation of the knowledge criterion of education and one of the most
effective ways to undermine the building of an open, tolerant, pluralistic society.
The main reason for talking about such doctrines in educational institutions
should be to discuss the conditions under which they were created and to show
how they have been used to control and divide people, to limit and channel
thought, to disallow alternative beliefs, and to frustrate critical thinking. That is
why indoctrination is inherently and ultimately authoritarian: it claims that there
are no alternatives, whereas, in fact, there are many; it aims at legitimizing
political authority and power, silencing the opponents, and controlling people’s
lives. Callan’s proposal about “limited separate education” allows (in the sense
that it cannot exclude) this “unreasonable” indoctrination to undermine reasonableness by teaching parochial “robust” doctrines in the early years of schooling — and it does that not by oversight but by design.
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We must conclude also that although the teaching about various forms of life,
world-views, or perspectives is educationally legitimate and desirable because it
provides alternative perspectives allowed by reason, the initiation into one of
those particular ways of living and assessing life is equally arbitrary and ungrounded because it lies outside the demands of reason. Such passionate perspectives on life that are allowed by reason are intimately personal and should be left
up to the individual; we cannot engage in rational arguments about them. Even
here, however, it is not the recognition of the “burdens of judgment” that stops
me from interfering with other people’s lives but my education that enables me
to understand the sorts of things the demands of reason allow. In literature,
history, biography, and everyday life we sometimes encounter human characters
whose lives have been transformed by such passionate commitment to a frame
of reference. We may admire them and try to emulate them or we may not; what
we as educators or educated parents must not do in the name of education is try
to initiate the young into those we favour.
The impatient, the indoctrinated, the narrow minded, the unimaginative, the
reactionary, and the cowardly may panic at this conclusion, whereas I think it
calls for the ultimate celebration because it is the only way we can all protect our
individual self-expression, our self-determination, and our freedom from indoctrinated parents, closed-minded racists, paternalistic teachers, stultifying institutions and customs, and authoritarian governments — while we remain within the
domain that is allowed by reason. I cannot see how we can improve either our
personal lives or the quality of life in our society by allowing initiation of the
young and defenceless into unexamined parochial beliefs or preconceived personal perspectives and world-views. The former is, in my view, a form of cosmic
impiety and the two of them together constitute the most widely practiced
deceptive violations of the principle of respect for persons. Does Callan think
that some parents and communities ought to have such rights?
***
These, then, are some of the thoughts that I would bring into a public debate or
a quiet dialogue on what we ought to teach in all our educational institutions.
And if my interlocutors disagree with my views and want to teach their favourite
doctrines, not as metaphors that could be interpreted in different personal ways
but as literal claims that fall within the rational tradition, as many religious
proponents of “separate education” do, I do not see how I could compromise
reasonably with them without violating the demands of reason and betraying my
own principles. The only case where a compromise is possible is where we both
want to indoctrinate; then, under an agreement for “separate education” we can
indoctrinate the young into our respective doctrines! Those who argue for radical
or limited “separate education” want permission to indoctrinate their young into
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their favourite doctrines. All their other concerns (cultural, gender, linguistic, and
so on), whether required or allowed by reason, could and should be accommodated within a pluralistic educational policy as I have outlined it above; we
should try to enrich our educational programs with the presentation and examination of alternative perspectives and of controversial issues, rather than promote
social segregation along credal lines.
The fact that sometimes the Native child’s “cultural identity is reviled in the
classroom” does not constitute a reason for abandoning the demands of reason
embedded in our educational ideal; such uncivilized practices make it imperative
that we discover them and make them regulative of our way of life. It is precisely because the view of education that has been guiding educational policy is
a mushy, undifferentiated conceptual stew, like socialization, that such educational atrocities can be committed in its name. I do not think, either, that one can
make educational policy by selecting one or a few from among the complex and
polymorphous demands of reason, interpret them in a way that will support one’s
own position, and then ignore all other demands; educational policy requires not
a formula, a recipe, or a rule of procedure but a comprehensive, substantial, and
justified educational ideal. Take, for example, the fundamental moral principle
of respect for persons to which Callan appeals. We ought to respect every human
being who emerges within a human community as a centre of consciousness with
an autonomous will and the capacity to recognize rules, duties, promises, and so
on. This principle is also an important educational principle in that the only way
we can teach it is by showing it, revealing it, exemplifying it in the way we treat
the young — that is, by respecting them. But we also talk of respecting other
people for their special achievements, talents, abilities, knowledge, virtues, and
so forth. Stephen Darwall (1977) calls the first kind of respect recognition
respect, which we owe to every human being unconditionally, and the second,
appraisal respect, which we may show toward some persons depending on our
criteria of excellence and the nature of their achievements. So, I can say I respect
some people because of their achievements, either because such achievements are
in accordance with the demands of reason or because they are allowed by reason,
but I cannot say I respect them (in this second sense) unconditionally, that is,
including their extraordinary vices, stupidities, or superstitions — although I must
respect them (in the first sense) despite such failings.
THE PREREQUISITES OF EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
As I mentioned earlier, one reason we must have a clear and defensible view of
education is that without it we cannot determine education’s appropriate prerequisites; that is a matter of logic, not of convenience or preference. Callan’s
initial attempt at defining “education” appears to be intentionally vague, referring
to “a range of educational outcomes — virtues, abilities, different kinds of knowledge — as desirable for all members of the society to which the conception
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applies” (p. 252). “Education,” then, for him is a chameleonic term synonymous
with systematic socialization; whatever a particular society considers worthwhile
and attempts to transmit to its young is educational. In that sense one can talk
about education in Nazi Germany, or in modern Iran or China. But now the talk
is not about education in its important normative sense but about schooling or
socialization, about which we can always ask to what extent it is educational.
Whatever the value of the descriptive use of “education” (as schooling or socialization) for social scientists, it is simply useless for educational policy.
I think it is very unfortunate that the important work that R. S. Peters (1966,
1973) started about 30 years ago on the criteria of education and the nature of
our educational ideal has been abandoned or at least neglected — by some
because they think, wrongly, that he has had the last word on the subject, and by
others because they believe that such a task is untenable, suspect, or arbitrary.
Interestingly, nobody has been able to avoid the task completely because nobody
can avoid the demands of reason. What usually happens is that those who want
to allow indoctrination and other forms of miseducation into the schools are
selective in their appeals to reason. Callan, rightly, rejects the crude consensus
approach to common education (not, however, because of its appeal to the most
common denominator, as he claims, but because it is not based on a well
thought-out view of education) and he then proceeds to adopt Rawlsian programmatic definitions of the virtue of reasonableness and the burdens of judgment to
support his views about common education but also to buttress his “moderate
separatist argument.”
It is here that I find one of the main strengths of Callan’s argument and where
also, in my view, it breaks down. Unlike many rationalist thinkers he correctly
emphasizes the important “dispositional precursors” of the development of the
sophisticated virtue of reasonableness within a caring early environment. I agree
with Callan that early initiation into a form of life lays the necessary “groundwork for the rationality and reasonableness that characterize the fully virtuous
citizen” (p. 267). But because he does not have a perspicuous view of education,
he cannot demarcate those early acquisitions of the child that constitute the
necessary prerequisites of his or her educational development from those that
inhibit or cripple such development.
One general problem with Callan’s argument is that it is programmatically
emotive throughout. He sets the stage by talking about the common school being
“an institutional anachronism,”1 about “our collective loss of faith in the common
school,” and about “our own dour pessimism” about it. In developing his argument against the consensual conception of common education, he maintains that
common schools shackled to the paltry and uncontroversial aims of the consensual
conception must offer an education that is at best seriously incomplete and at worst
dangerously distorted. . . .
. . . The resultant common education may indeed be meagre because it must be limited
to the lowest common denominator of social commitment. . . . (pp. 257–258)
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And, finally, he finds such a conception of education personally “uninspiring.”
It is not only that after each of these claims one can respond with: “not necessarily,” “it depends,” or “how do you know?” without being an advocate of the
crude consensual view. The problem is that this emotive language is carried over
into his later arguments, which are supposed to support what he calls the “moderate separatist argument,” and there it creates more serious problems. I want to
examine that argument in the remainder of this response.
After having argued convincingly for the importance of establishing “the
developmental antecedents of the mature liberal virtues” (p. 267), Callan claims
that:
From the standpoint of parents who embrace some transformative educational aim for
their children, the early years of schooling may be seen as a crucial stage in securing a
robust initial understanding of what their way of life means. . . . Given [the] continuity
between the values of the family and the ethos of the separate school, it may even be a
more solid groundwork than common schools could typically provide. (p. 267)
These “robust” and “solid” foundations that are about “the deep questions that
divide us” (which can be secured primarily in the family and the separate
schools) Callan contrasts with “the increasingly shallow set of substantive values
on which almost all of us can currently agree” (p. 270).
The only way I can interpret these last unwarranted emotive claims is that
Callan wants to allow separate schools of unspecified limited duration to initiate
young children into particular credal ways of life, that is, to indoctrinate them!
Callan is not talking about the kind of transformation R. S. Peters made a
necessary condition of being educated and which I would expect all educated
parents to want for their children — Peters’ kind of transformation is the result
of understanding — he means transformation that is required by a particular set
of doctrines that determine a particular way of life. It is such ways of life that
can be appropriately described as “robust.” We do not talk about clarity and
charity, consistency and compassion, respect for other people, and the like as
robust — these we usually refer to as quiet values — but we do not consider such
values “shallow” either! Fanatics, bigots, racists, and similar misologists, on the
other hand, are definitely robust and one could say of such people that they are
clearly shallow.
Callan’s characterization of the “antecedents of the mature liberal virtues” as
robust, solid, and so on, shows that he does not have a clear view of the epistemological and ontological priority and the educational importance of the prerequisites of education; he confuses them with the precursors of “a particular,
established view of the good life” (p. 267). And given his repeated unwarranted
claims about the “vast diversity of human values,” it follows that there must also
be a vast diversity of these robust antecedents, which are nothing more than
handmaids of a particular credal form of life!
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I would like to repeat that one cannot decide what the appropriate prerequisites
of education are unless one has a perspicuous and defensible view of education;
a conception of education that equates it with socialization is a non-starter. We
should always be on guard when someone defines education as socialization;
under that all-embracing technical concept of sociology one can engage in all
kinds of miseducational or non-educational activities.
If educational activities are those that fall under the demands of reason, their
prerequisites must be those universal or near-universal enabling beliefs, dispositions, and attitudes that lie at the foundations of all our thinking and acting with
reasons — not the crippling credal beliefs that undermine reason, frustrate human
development, and divide people. Those educational prerequisites constitute the
necessary frame of reference for our development as rational and reasonable
people, not as Moslems or Christians, capitalists or communists, blacks or whites,
men or women. Just as any talk about the world presupposes our belief in the
uniformity of nature and every moral argument presupposes commitment to some
fundamental moral principle, our whole educational development, likewise, presupposes a host of similar prerequisites. We do not choose, doubt, accept, or
reject these countless prerequisites (the way we may choose hypotheses, theories,
or doctrines) and that is why we cannot learn them; we acquire them the way we
acquire the ability to walk and talk. It is one of the most important tasks in
education to specify and demarcate clearly these educational prerequisites.
This would be a terrifying world if the alleged “vast diversity of human
values” were true at the level of fundamental moral principles. It is a sad fact
that in our world there are institutions and people who are cruel, exploitative,
aggressive, and intolerant, but I cannot see how such people’s behaviour could
constitute a challenge to our principles of justice, caring, respect for others, and
so on — there are also people on earth who do not believe in the discoveries of
science! Whatever diversity exists in the realm of human values is of interest to
us, as guardians of civilized life, to the extent that it is within the demands of
reason or is allowed by reason. This ought to be a fundamental principle in
education that will protect us from prejudices, superstitions, doctrines, and other
forms of unreason. Such beliefs are fake prerequisites that undermine the cardinal
principles of the open society and destroy the “deliberative context” required by
common schooling. Whereas the true prerequisites of education always unite us
and enable us to grow, the fake ones invariably divide us and hinder human
progress — our world is full of such examples. There is a serious omission in
Callan’s argument for “limited forbearance” that in my view sins against this
principle and undermines his own argument. He says:
A common claim about liberal democratic societies is that their distinctive mode of
government is neutral between different conceptions of the good, and so unlike in
theocratic or other illiberal states, the many ways of life citizens practise are free and
creative responses to the diversity of goods from which a decent and fulfilling life can be
constructed. (p. 269)
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First, we are certainly not neutral to the mafia’s conception of the good and
therefore any acceptable conception of the good must be either within the
demands of reason or allowed by reason. Second, and more importantly, it is
precisely because I want to secure children’s right to “free and creative responses
to the diversity of goods” that I want to protect them from those forms of
indoctrination that would limit their own legitimate choices and ways of life.
Callan is talking about the interests, values, and perceptions of the good of the
parents, not of the children.
Callan wants to assure us that limited separate education will not allow the
proponents of radical separatism to undermine the illiberal values:
For those who subscribe to illiberal ideals of separate education — for example, those who
repudiate the virtue of reasonableness — that escape is not available. They will hardly be
attracted to the moderate version of the argument to begin with, and even if they were,
a separate schooling of even brief duration which works against the necessary ends of
common education must fail at the second stage. (p. 265)
I think the first part of this claim is unwarranted and the last part mistaken. If
I am a radical separatist and cannot achieve my first goal, I will, grudgingly but
rationally, take Callan’ s offer for limited separate schooling. The belief, however, that the false prerequisites that might be established during the first stage
can be successfully challenged during the second stage shows lack of clarity
about the character and role that such beliefs play in human development. The
reason all indoctrinators want to inculcate their favourite doctrines in very young
children is that such doctrines, successfully transmitted, determine to a large
extent their way of life — they are prerequisites of a credal life but not of
educational growth. Here, I think, Callan overestimates the power and scope of
human reason. How often do people manage to change the frame of reference
they have acquired during childhood? How often does a person who grows up
to be aggressive, exploitative, competitive, and disrespectful of other persons
become peaceful, cooperative, and caring as a result of furious ratiocination! It
has been one cornerstone of liberalism for a long time that more education would
help decrease interpersonal conflict and international antagonism and would lead
to better understanding and cooperation among people. We now know that that
optimism was exaggerated. One of the many reasons for this failure is that when
children come to school they already have a frame of reference that to a large
extent determines their future development. We do not seem to have understood
sufficiently that certain beliefs, habits, attitudes, and ways of life that children
acquire early in their lives may undermine their educational development and,
therefore, the quality of life within a community. Our rational arguments, our
evidence and our reasons will persuade only those who share the same system
of reference. Teaching, then, as rational engagement will be successful if the
young have been initiated into the frame of reference constituted of the proper
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prerequisites of education. A comprehensive and successful educational policy
ought to try to guarantee such a common system for all the young citizens for
their own good.
Many other claims in Callan’s paper require discussion (e.g., What are the
criteria of “limited forbearance”? Is not the definition of “refined political
consensus,” as that consensus “designed to ensure agreements that deserve our
respect,” begging the question?) but I am afraid I have already exceeded the
space suggested by the editor of this journal.
NOTE
1
In citations of Callan’s work, all italicization has been added by me.
REFERENCES
Darwall, S. (1977). Two kinds of respect. Ethics, 88, 36–49.
Hare, R. M. (1952). The language of morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kazepides, T. (1989). On educational aims, curriculum objectives and the preparation of teachers.
Journal of Philosophy of Education, 23, 56–57.
Kazepides, T. (1991). On the prerequisites of moral education: A Wittgensteinean perspective.
Journal of Philosophy of Education, 25, 259–272.
Peters, R. S. (1966). Ethics and education. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Peters, R. S. (1973). The justification of education. In R. S. Peters (Ed.), The philosophy of education
(pp. 237–267). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wittgenstein, L. (1967). Lectures and conversations on aesthetics, psychology and religious belief.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wittgenstein, L. (1980). Culture and value. Oxford: Blackwell.
Tasos Kazepides is in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British
Columbia, V5A 1S6.
Common Schools for a Secularist Society
Mark Holmes
warkworth, ontario
Callan develops a coherent argument for the dominant public school based on the
substantive “reasonableness” of its teaching. His starting point excludes by
definition other strong views such as those of traditional religion or MacIntyre’s
virtues. Callan is anti-democratic in that majority views of the educational core
are rejected; “reasonableness” imposes “heavy intellectual” demands. Callan
makes clear that authoritarian, public, monopolistic education is to be kept out
of parents’ hands and is to be based on neither God nor mammon, but on Rawls.
INTRODUCTION
“Common schools for Common Education” is an important statement of the
liberal perspective on education in the democratic, pluralist, English-speaking
world. Callan develops a sophisticated and internally coherent statement defending the dominance of the common school (and indirectly the forces wishing to
sustain the educational status quo). Because much that is written in defence of
the public school monopoly is riddled with inconsistency and self-serving
rhetoric, Callan’s well-argued statement is a banner behind which contemporary
liberal thinkers may well choose to march.
I am impressed at once by the tightly woven argument and by the essentially
authoritarian conclusion to which it is aimed. While thinking about Callan’s
paper, I happened to come across a reference to Callan which helps focus my
discomfort. Callan has condemned Thomas Aquinas as being closed-minded
because he displayed a radical lack of seriousness in assessing counter-evidence
to his position, despite an elaborate pretence of weighing pros and cons (Thiessen, 1993, p. 159). Thomas Aquinas, Callan claimed, sought argument to support
conclusions already reached. Thiessen (1993) points out that it is hardly unusual
for philosophers and scientists to develop arguments and seek evidence to
confirm views (or hypotheses) already chosen. Those who have read previous
work by Callan (e.g., 1992, 1994) will hardly be surprised by the conclusion he
reaches about the common school. There is nothing unusual about this, as
Thiessen points out. What is unusual about contemporary liberalism is that lofty
claims are made for its superiority and pre-eminence; claims similar to those
made in earlier times by true believers of a different kind, now disparaged by
today’s intellectual elite. Liberals may assert they are more open to refutation
than are their predecessors, but there is little evidence for this. I am not suggest284
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ing that traditionalists are more open to transformation than liberals; rather, the
entire discussion of the relative openness of left-wing and right-wing thinkers is
bereft of value, condescending at best, demeaning at worst. We should instead
examine the force of the arguments, and distrust any pre-emptive assertion of
superiority as a prelude to imposition on others. Although Callan provides a
reasonable account of the argument for the separate school, he makes no attempt
to deal with critics’ objections to the relevance (or even the continuing existence)
of the common school in the late twentieth-century pluralist democracy. It is one
thing to argue for liberalism, just as I argue for a traditional, MacIntyre school
(Holmes, 1993b), but another entirely to propose its involuntary imposition on
the children of others, without even majoritarian support.
REASONABLENESS AS THE CENTRAL CRITERION OF EDUCATIONAL WORTH
I adopt Callan’s vocabulary as far as possible in order to make discussion of
Callan’s complex argument more accessible. Thus I refer to separate schools
(schools that are not common schools) and to moderate and radical articulations
of their value.1 I accept Callan’s distinction between education and schooling.
Unfortunately, I cannot extend this practice to “reasonableness.” His unusual
definition of “reasonableness” sets up a tautology that is crucial to his argument.
Callan follows Rawls. “Reasonableness,” Callan argues, is essential for “equal
respect” among persons (p. 260). “Reasonableness,” he goes on, requires the
principle of reciprocity, which implies a predisposition to fair treatment of others.
Political arguments that insist on the superiority of some religious or anti-religious creed “cannot instantiate reciprocity” (p. 261). Further, reasonableness also
demands acceptance of “burdens of judgement” (p. 261), which include the fact
that many differences do not stem from such “vices of unreason” as closedmindedness, logical bungling, or ignorance (p. 261).
To set up “reasonableness” as the central criterion is to insist on the superiority of a non-religious creed. It is unlikely that traditional religious2 adherents will
accept “reasonableness” as the central defining characteristic of good education
or schooling. Further, it is difficult to see how a believer in the objective (absolute) truth of any set of virtues (whether or not they are based on religion)
could accept a founding proposition that sees virtue primarily in a relativist,
possibly nihilist, “reasonableness” and crucial vices in “closed-mindedness” (bear
in mind Callan’s bizarre grounds for dismissing Aquinas as closed-minded),
logical bungling, and ignorance. As an example, Callan goes on to explain that
“reasonableness” is negated if a powerful religious group seeks to make maximum use of its power (p. 262). The practical effect of his article, if it is widely
disseminated and understood, is to strengthen the power of public school monopolies to prevent the sharing of public financial support with those traditionalists
who oppose the public school’s often secularist3 dogma. Thus, if his argument
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is influential, it will boost the power already abused by public school monopolies, perpetuating the negation of “reasonableness” — except that, by Callan’s
circular creed, the traditionally religious are undeserving of “reasonableness.” His
own first principle of a limited definition of reasonableness negates “reciprocity.”
He is unwilling to accept as “reasonable” the ideas to which he is most opposed.
Having defined and explained what it means to possess the virtue of “reasonableness,” Callan completes the tautology by asserting that it is “hard to see . . .
how it [reasonableness] could reasonably be rejected by any citizen” (p. 263).
Of course, it could not be “reasonably” rejected by Callan’s definition, but it
certainly could be and is reasonably rejected by a dictionary definition.
Dictionary definitions do not concur with Rawls and Callan. To be reasonable
is to be able to reason, to be amenable to reason, and to be just and sensible. In
that normal sense of the word, developing reasonableness is one important
attribute of a good education (and a good school). Similarly, to a traditionalist,
“equality of respect” means that the essence of all human beings bears the same
value; we are all equal in the sight of God. In secular, democratic terms, we are
all equal in the polling booth and all children are born equally deserving of
education.
Reason is important as a means more than as an end of education. After all,
reason is used to advance all manner of undesirable ends: the acceptance of
dangerous criminals into our country, the relaxation of the civilized norms that
have made our country peaceful and ordered, the domination of television by
violence and human degradation, and the development of public education
systems which remove the teaching of many beliefs and values that have traditionally formed our moral foundation, and which exclude parents from significant
influence. Advanced development of reason in an intelligent and amoral intellectual, aesthetic, or political leader is a dangerous characteristic. Reason is also,
of course, put to good use in a sound, substantive context. Aquinas based his
philosophy on faith and reason. The Anglican church bases its liturgy on scripture, tradition, and reason. Reason cannot alone determine what is right, although
it may be used to moderate differing preferences. A reliance on reason is a denial
of right.
There are many more important virtues than reasonableness (if reasonableness
can be classed as a virtue at all): truth, courage, justice, consideration of the
other person, humility. Liberals object that these are “my” values, as indeed they
are. But then the precedence of a contrived form of “reasonableness” is theirs,
not mine. That is my point; we cannot agree on first principles, and it is illegitimate to force one’s own on others, and on others’ children, in a pluralist
democracy. The one exception is the consensual, majoritarian core of belief that
forms the pluralist democracy’s foundation.
Reason is one way to learn — a vitally important and necessary one, but still
just one. We learn in many other important ways — by instinct, instruction, and
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imitation, through emotions (love, anger, fear, sorrow, compassion, repentance),
by trust and faith, and as a result of empirical experience. Sometimes, these ways
of learning are moderated by reason, sometimes not. Some of us are more logical
and some more reasonable than others, but there is no strong connection between
high levels of logical reasoning and high levels of virtue. Callan has spent long
enough in academia to recognize that. Reason, it is true, is the main planned
means of learning in school, and appropriately so; but a necessary means should
not be confused with the most desirable end. Even within a narrowly defined
school context, reason should co-exist with knowledge, understanding, skills,
aesthetic expression, citizenship, and appreciation — an entire set of qualities that
does not necessarily imply virtue. Admittedly, reason is inextricably connected
to many legitimate goals of education; it is a necessary means but not the most
important end.
So, Callan’s “presumptive case” for common schooling based on “reasonableness” fails (p. 264). I cannot imagine any attempt at formal education (as distinct
from training) that excludes the process of reasoning; indeed, such exclusion
would be inconsistent with my understanding of education. At the same time and
without contradiction, I cannot imagine a true education that expressly excludes
virtue.
THE COMMON ELEMENTS OF PUBLICLY SUPPORTED EDUCATION
If one accepts that education and schooling are matters of legitimate interest for
society and parents, then it is sensible to spell out clearly what are the essential
elements, in a pluralist democracy, of a publicly supported school. Callan does
not discuss the public/private issue and I too shall leave that aside. Suffice it to
say that private schools are and will remain a reality and that the limits for their
certification by the state should certainly be no more restrictive than those for
publicly supported schools. I also, with Callan, leave aside the issue of level of
public financial support for separate schools, a matter which I have discussed
extensively elsewhere (1985, 1992).
Callan, without evidence, accuses advocates of separate education (I am one)
of being voluble on why separate education is necessary and “laconic” on why
common schooling is not needed for common education. I do agree with Callan
that a pluralist democracy must, for the good of society, and for survival of its
meaning, require common elements in all publicly supported schools, common
or separate. If Callan wishes to describe a set of common elements as common
education, so be it; if he were then to assert (as I would) that common education
also requires being educated together, then that opens up a different line of
argument. He would then have to deal with the obsolescence of common education (defined as a microcosm of the population) in the English-speaking
democracies as well as with the popularity of French immersion among Canadian
liberals.
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I have spelled out elsewhere (1992) the elements that should be required of
publicly supported schools:
a Promotion of the basic values of consideration for others, peaceful means of resolving disagreements, a tolerance for, and acceptance of world views different from one’s
own (providing that they do not contravene these common elements);
b The acknowledgment of truth as a central concept in a democracy, and therefore the
provision of reasonable access to knowledge and ideas on the part of students;
c Acceptance of democracy as the chosen means of government and the rejection of
the use of violence to overthrow legitimate, democratic government and its accompanying
rule of law;
d The importance of teaching the basic skills of literacy and numeracy and the provision of general knowledge required for effective functioning as a citizen;
e Use of the official language (or one of the official languages) as the major vehicle
of instruction, and provision of instruction in other official languages;
f Acceptance that the state will evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of
instruction relevant to these elements. (p. 144)
I went on to list a suggested set of additional elements I believe would be
acceptable to a majority or plurality of parents in the western English-speaking
democracies for mainstream public schools (1992, p. 145). Essentially, then, I
envisage three sets of mandatory elements: those required of all schools (including private schools, not under discussion here); those required of schools
receiving public financial support; and those of the mainstream public school. It
is the second set (my version quoted above) that is most relevant to Callan’s
article and to public policy on separate schools.
It is evident that some existing separate schools (I believe nearly all) would
meet the elements listed above and therefore evident that common schooling is
not required for a strictly limited form of common education. If we take the
radically separate (Christian fundamentalist) school described so vividly (and so
disapprovingly) by Peshkin (1986), the only element it might have difficulty
satisfying is the second one, provision of reasonable access to knowledge. I see
that element as substantially satisfied by the provision of free access to a comprehensive library.4 I do not know from Peshkin’s account whether Bethany
would meet that criterion; I suspect that some secularist public schools would
not. Some public schools also fall foul of the first element (violence is increasingly prevalent), the third element (naïve and irrational versions of environmentalism are sometimes endorsed). In Canada, the sixth element (public and
effective school evaluation) is effectively resisted, by provincial agencies and
teachers’ unions, in several provinces (e.g., Ontario). In short, public schools
would have as great a problem in meeting these minimal conditions as would
separate schools, if they were fairly implemented and not just used as a weapon
against minorities.
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It is possible that Callan and I would agree on several points: that the above
set of elements is, at most, a minimal, lowest common denominator, far from
being a sufficient basis for a good education; and that the many public schools
(his de jure common schools) that do not meet even these minimal standards are,
in his terms, de facto separate schools (i.e., their daily norms and ethics are so
antithetical to traditional values as to deny the schools common school status).
We differ on what follows from those agreements.
THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR
Something very close to the lowest common denominator, such as the set of
elements I provided earlier, is the only legitimate requirement to be made by the
state of all publicly supported schools in a pluralist democracy. Admittedly,
society has an interest in having much more than the basic minimum; but here
its interests substantially coincide with those of individual parents. Few want the
minimum education for their children; they want much more, they want the best.
But in a pluralist society there is considerable divergence of world-view of what
constitutes the best education — which is what makes the society pluralist. I
doubt that there is a more accurate gauge of parents’ true values than the upbringing and education they select, deliberately or not, for their children. Perhaps
there can be consensual agreement on much more than my set. If there is, by all
means let us build more into the basic set. But if there is not, then we should
make do with what a convincing majority will tolerate. Although liberals may
want to greatly strengthen my second element (dealing with educators’ academic
freedom), they should bear in mind that many parents are complaining that
students do not even learn to read and write or refrain from violence. Further,
followers of traditional Christianity already resent liberal educators’ selection of
compulsory reading material, which they believe is secularist and anti-Christian.
The question of who should and does censor (or select) text for compulsory use
in school is controversial. Diverse groups’ efforts are already reducing the
literary value of reading materials in schools. This is the real effect of diversity,
as it must be if fundamentally opposed beliefs are forced into the straitjacket of
a single school.
Nevertheless, the state (acting for society) does have legitimate interests that
go well beyond the lowest common denominator. Pluralist democracies need
historians, mechanics, teachers, veterinarians, linguists, artists, soldiers, and other
specialists and educational qualities. It is perfectly legitimate, indeed necessary,
for the state to fund, in whole or in part, the schools and postsecondary institutions required to fulfil an array of social requirements, not all of which will
necessarily have compelling consensual support.
Callan and I agree that there are common educational requirements within a
pluralist society, but we do not agree on their nature. Callan argues that the
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common set should not be limited to what can consensually be agreed upon by
the mass of the population (pp. 258–259, 263–264). Here, he is undemocratic.
It is one thing to argue for a point of view the mass of the public abhors; it is
another to develop the thesis that the state should impose one’s own favoured
educational criteria and exclusions on everybody, irrespective of whether they
have public support. This is an example of the latent authoritarianism among
liberal elites,5 particularly noticeable in Canada, where liberalism is dominant in
social (as distinct from economic) affairs. There is insufficient discussion within
the elites to prevent bad measures from receiving what appears to be consensual
approval, witness the Charlottetown Accord, endorsed by the three national
political parties of the time, the leading media, and prominent intellectuals, only
to be defeated by the people. I cannot think of another democracy where a
potpourri of vapid liberalism would receive such a resounding endorsement from
the elites and such resounding defeat from the people. (I am not arguing that
Canadian liberals have an unusual tendency to authoritarianism, merely observing
that power tends to corrupt.)
Callan uses the example of racists, whose views he says should not be accommodated. He presumably picks this example because it will be a convincing one;
after all, racism is the vice par excellence in the liberal world. As the depth of
wickedness of racism has lowered the status of other vices and sins, so the word
has gradually lost meaning. A Jewish liberal and I were together accused of
racism on a recent television program (to consensual approval of the large group
present) when we stated that Jews were more successful than Jamaican immigrants in Canadian schools and that in any society some groups are more successful than others. Even documented facts are “racist.”
Even if one narrows the definition of racism (from its current function as
all-purpose abuse) to making legal distinction on the basis of race, we in Canada
have endorsed the restriction of residence in large parts of Canada on the basis
of First Nations origin. I support that restriction, as do, I suspect, most Canadians, but it would be racist by contemporary usage were it to be proposed for
a religious group of European origin. I argue that public support for schools
should be restricted to schools that do not limit access on the basis of race
(except for Native peoples in Canada) or religion (1992, p. 150). This statement
in no way implies that separate schools should not develop strong cultural and
religious identification; those unwilling to accept the legitimate customs of a
school should expect to leave. I believe there would be strong consensual, but
not unanimous, support for my position with respect to access to separate schools
from the Canadian population. For example, I know that many Roman Catholics
agree that non-Catholics should be admitted to their separate schools in Canada,
provided that they sincerely abide by the cultural norms of the school.
Canadians hold many opinions branded as racist by the liberal left. My preferred definition of racism is the traditional one, that it consists of a belief in the
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inherent superiority of one race over another. That definition is obsolescent
today, and all manner of incivilities and discrimination are encouraged by today’s
common usage. It makes little sense to use the term without definition.
So, Callan, by introducing a popular term of liberal rhetorical invective,
without qualification, paves the way for the state to introduce a left-liberal
ideology of, say, “anti-racism,” “employment equity,” “a green environment,”
“gay equality,” and mandatory “sex education,” all terms to be defined by the
authorities and all undergirded by an implicit belief in secularism. This scenario
is not a fantasy; the Ontario New Democratic Party government and enthusiastic
supporters such as the Toronto Board of Education have moved substantially in
that direction. Needless to say, separate schools for dissenting minorities are not
part of the agenda. The left-liberal ideology is not consensually shared by the
population; even if it were, it would remain abusive of minorities. Whereas
Callan wishes to strengthen the authority of the liberal elite to impose educational conditions on the population as a whole, I should like to make mainstream
education majoritarian in nature, at the same time making accommodation for
minorities within the agreed and necessary limits of what it means to be a
pluralist democracy.
Educational policy should follow a well-tempered public will, not public
opinion, and legislators should be ever mindful of the axiom that a democracy
is to be judged on the way it treats its minorities. The minorities most typically
suffering official discrimination, in terms of access to schooling, in the western,
English-speaking, pluralist democracies today, including and most egregiously
in most of Canada, are traditional Christians, Orthodox and Conservative Jews,
and traditional Muslims. Callan’s definition of consensus (i.e., that determined
by the elite authorized to interpret “equal respect”) would encourage discrimination against groups that could conveniently be denigrated as “racist,” “sexist,”
“homophobic,” “Eurocentric,” and “bigoted.” Callan’s “reasonableness” “imposes
heavy intellectual and emotional demands” (p. 266). Some citizens obviously will
not be quite up to it; their views will be discounted by the intelligent and sophisticated representatives of the elite just as they are today by the educational
monopolies. Callan’s “reasonableness” leaves authorities no room to avoid that
pleasing responsibility.
DE FACTO SEPARATE SCHOOLS
Callan concedes that public schools (de jure common schools) are sometimes
inhospitable to the minorities that constitute the usual aspirants to separate
schools. It is evident that parents dissatisfied with public schools in Canada
typically seek some or all of the three qualities of academic excellence, strong
discipline, and strong moral or religious instruction. It is a matter of fact that
public schools in Canada have declined in academic standards since the late
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1960s and do not fare well in comparison with the best international standards
(see, for example, Economic Council of Canada, 1992a, 1992b). Alienated
parents are not just a small vocal minority (as representatives of the monopolies
and teachers’ unions like to claim). In Ontario, in 1992, 46% of the public (those
with and without children held similar views) believed elementary education had
deteriorated over the past 10 years, 30% that it had improved (Livingstone, Hart,
& Davie, 1993, p. 13). At the same time, 49% approved a system of parental
choice of school, 27% opposed it (p. 10).
Callan’s answer to the problem of de facto separate schools (a delicate way
of describing public schools hostile to parents who want traditional moral education, religion, discipline, and academic excellence) is to transform public
schools into de facto common schools (pp. 269–270). The way to do this, he
writes, is to address in an open-minded way the deep issues that divide us and
to cultivate a shared “reasonableness.” This response is not close to what
alienated religious parents are asking for. The last thing dissatisfied parents want
is equal time for good and evil, with sanctity of marriage equated to consensual
(but “safe”) sex at any age with opposite- or same-sex partners or animals. It is
the teaching of Ontario’s amoral “condom sense” to which they object. Callan
coyly remains silent on whether radically separate schools should receive
government funding (he implies not), but sees that issue as being quite secondary
to the important agenda of building de facto common schools (pp. 265–268), an
agenda built on Rawls’s and his own ratiocination, for which there is no evident
sign of support from disenfranchized religious minorities. Doubtless, Callan will
have the support of the educational monopolies.
Callan does not address the question as to why public schools alienate so
many of their clients. This is a complex question and there are many answers.
A part of the answer is that some public schools offer little beyond a lowest
common denominator; indeed, they lack even the lowest common denominators
I put forward.
But why do public schools settle for or even fail to maintain the lowest
common denominator? They are staffed with well-paid, well-educated, and
generally intelligent teachers and principals who certainly have no desire to
alienate their clients. Once again, there are many explanations. Part of the answer
lies in the public school’s dominant ideology, particularly at the elementary level
(Holmes, 1995). The ideology is progressive and secularist (precisely the concepts with which Rawls is associated). The ideology draws much from Dewey,
whose “divine kingdom” is one “we” (sic) (Callan, p. 251) have learned no
longer to expect.
Another part of the answer stems from the social context in which teachers
work today. England, the United States, and Canada are, in the main, heterogeneous societies with diverse parents and diverse children. Even if school officials
did try to give parents what they wanted in the de jure common schools (and
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many do), they would find the task impossible because all parents no longer
want the same things. These are pluralist societies. Orthodox Jews and liberal
nihilists do not agree on first principles. Neither do Callan and I.
Put simply and starkly, in most of urban and suburban Canada, there is
insufficient public and parental consensus to sustain much more than a lowest
common denominator. Some urban secondary schools are not even de facto
separate schools. Callan suggests that these schools are failed common schools,
because they alienate some of their clients (in fact, they are probably the closest
to a genuine common school). But what of the schools that have no agenda,
other than vague hopes for consideration of the other person, non-violence, a
degree of tolerance, and a wish to make it to the end of the day? It is easy to
criticize the officials who administer such schools, but it is difficult to imagine
policies to put these schools right, as their fundamental structures and purposes
are inadequate. They have to accept a wide variety of world-views, social
customs, and behaviours (expulsion is often logistically if not technically impossible). Callan might see here a golden opportunity for introducing the doctrine
of “reasonableness.” Principals who are afflicted daily by assault, the presence
of weapons and drugs, and low levels of academic interest will be cynically
unimpressed. They would be pleased if staff and students could even be assured
physical safety. I accept that my own prescription for doctrine (Holmes, 1993b)
is also irrelevant to these impossible situations, but then I am not an advocate of
a common school in a multi-religious and multi-ethnic society. I do believe that
high-doctrine mainstream schools should be available, but for them to be viable,
there must be separate schools for the disaffected — of left and right.
Callan accepts that even de facto common schools imply some affront to
parental values, but believes that the value of “reasonableness” as an educational
goal overrides it. Tellingly, he uses the example of “the goal of ceaseless economic growth” (p. 258) as one aspect of contemporary education to which not
everyone is committed. Thus anti-capitalist liberals demonstrate their commitment to common education by tolerating a capitalist educational ethos — a fine
example of tolerance to the religious enthusiasts who want separate schools.
There are several responses to Callan’s revealing example. First, it illustrates
well the cloistered intellectual background from which he writes. How many
independent schools have been set up by committed parents to promote anticapitalism? How many traditional socialists are left in the western world, outside
the university? (The publicly renowned left-wing advocates of common schools,
politicians and academics alike, who choose separate schools, often private, for
their own children, are not looking for anti-business sentiment, but for a record
of academic success.) Second, there is no evidence that public schools in Canada
are dominated by a capitalist ethos. There is evidence that teachers are at least
as left-wing as the population as a whole, probably more so (Holmes, 1995).
Third, advocates of separate schools (such as I) have no objection to public
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funding for anti-capitalist schools, providing they meet the basic criteria listed
earlier.
CONCLUSION
Callan fails to discuss the conceptual link between the common and the separate
school. In a pluralist society, the more freely separate schools are permitted to
operate (as in the Netherlands and Australia), the less genuinely common the
public schools will be. Advocates of the common school need separate school
supporters as hostages to realize their goal — “securing the eventual triumph of
liberal ideals” (Callan, p. 268). This is what I mean when I say the liberal establishment in academia, the media, and the judiciary in Canada is authoritarian.
Yet, the restriction of educational freedom in a pluralist society ensures that
the public school will only be able to maintain a minimal common denominator;
even Callan’s “reasonableness” is well beyond it.6 At the same time as the liberal
common school tends toward nihilism, an inescapable tendency within liberalism,
recognized even by some liberals (Bowers, 1985), its vacuum is invaded by the
intellectually and spiritually empty emotivism of the times.7 The safety valve of
the separate school allows the public school to become even more secularist,
with powerful animus against traditional beliefs (Kristol, 1994), but liberals
thereby risk losing their societal hegemony. The rapid expansion of Roman
Catholic schools in Ontario has probably contributed to the secularist nature of
the public schools, by removing from them the best-organized opposition. That
expansion, at the same time, paradoxically fuels liberal opposition to separate
schools for Jews, Protestants, and Muslims (who are to be kept as hostages in the
name of tolerance of diversity!).
As an advocate of choice, I would object less to “reasonableness” as the basis
for the mainstream public school if parents could freely choose alternative
separate schools to their liking. Genuine choice limits the freedom for elites to
impose their will on the people. My remaining objection would be that the policy
would likely lead to the death of the public, mainstream school altogether, which
I would regret. After all, most parents, given a choice, would rather have their
children raised in their world-view than in a fragile value vacuum (one always
open to passing, but reasonably argued, enthusiasms).
My vision of the public mainstream school, one able to compete with separate
schools, is one of high doctrine representing a significant consensus among a
large plurality (a majority in some regions) of the population (Holmes, 1992, pp.
145–149). There is a difference between a consensus based on parents’ wishes
and Callan’s artificial consensus based on discrimination between admissible and
inadmissible world-views. Liberal distrust of the people is understandable; given
a free choice, most people may not choose the liberal option. The liberal answer
is to forbid choice, or at least to forbid the choices of those who most strongly
oppose their views. Sophisticated arguments can be developed to justify French
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immersion schools and ultra-progressive schools while rejecting Christian schools
because they lack “reasonableness.” I believe valid (representative) mainstream
schools would be able to compete with separate schools because they would have
a compelling, high-doctrine world-view. Monopolies and authoritarians do not
care for choice. They care no more for public will. The experts know best.
Callan sets up the liberal expert as legislator, judge, and jury. The criterion of
education is to be “reasonableness” as defined by liberal authorities; their delegates will interpret what may “reasonably” be presented in the school program
and then decide whether or not what goes meets their standard. This prescription
is depressingly familiar to those who have fought the intolerance of the educational establishment. If there were to be any radically separate school allowed
under Callan’s plan (he is not sure yet about that detail), it would be a result of
liberals’ beneficent forbearance. George Orwell would understand that all this
would come to pass in the name of “equal respect.” Unfortunately, it sounds
exactly like the status quo.8
NOTES
1
In adopting Callan’s vocabulary, I do not accept inferences he may make. As an important
example, Callan might conveniently classify French immersion schools as common schools.
French immersion schools, with their typical lack of comprehensive social heterogeneity, are
clearly separate to me. I have argued elsewhere (notably in Holmes, 1988) that the common
school (as an approximate microcosm of the population) is obsolescent even where it was once
popular. In this discussion, however, I focus on Callan’s argument for common schools based
fundamentally on “reasonableness” and against separate schools based on absolutist ideology.
2
I use the term “traditional religion” to refer to beliefs founded on absolute values. I estimate that
the traditional religious minorities in Canada represent approximately 20%–25% of the population, more in the United States and fewer in England. They include most fundamentalist and
evangelical Christians and some members of the mainstream Christian churches as well as
members of other religions. One can of course be a value absolutist (such as Plato) without
belonging to a religion, and be both Christian and relativist (as are many voices in Canada’s
United Church).
3
I adopt Irving Kristol’s (1994) distinction between “secular” education, which is neutral among
religions, and “secularist” education, which is hostile to traditional religions.
4
I do not believe it practical or desirable to set up a special inspection system to check school
classrooms for indoctrination, but extremes of alleged intellectual abuse should be dealt with in
the same way as physical abuse. There are laws against the teaching of hatred. I have discussed
this difficult topic elsewhere (1992, pp. 90–94). Essentially, who will guard the guards? It is
perfectly possible for the person who rejects strong religious instruction as “indoctrination” to go
on to teach adolescent (or younger) girls that they have a “fundamental human right” to kill their
unborn babies.
5
“Elite” is used descriptively; there is no society without elites. My objection is to the domination
of Canada’s elites by a single ideology and by its followers’ habit of discrediting their opponents’
reasonable arguments by derogatory descriptors such as “red neck,” meaning right wing, traditionalist, or socially conservative, “bigot,” meaning a believer in absolutist values, and “racist,”
meaning, as one example, a person who attributes differences among racial and social groups substantially to home background characteristics. Those descriptors have no neutral or positive use.
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6
The restriction of educational freedom also takes unforgivably discriminatory forms. In Ontario,
the elites have managed to legally prohibit any form of religious instruction in publicly funded
schools (except in the well-established Roman Catholic schools) even though, until recently,
Christian education was mandatory — all without any publicly accountable legislation.
7
It is interesting that Bowers, whose recognition of the proximity of educational liberalism to
nihilism earned him the scorn of true believing liberals, has since found a home in radical
environmentalism.
8
In this paper, I have critiqued Callan’s interpretation of the separate school. A recently published
dialogue, not summarized here, sets out my argument in favour of separate, religious schools
(Holmes, 1993a).
REFERENCES
Bowers, C. A. (1985). Culture against itself: Nihilism as an element in recent educational thought.
American Journal of Education, 93, 465–490.
Callan, E. (1992). Tradition and integrity in moral education. American Journal of Education, 101,
1–28.
Callan, E. (1994). Beyond sentimental civic education. American Journal of Education, 102,
190–234.
Economic Council of Canada. (1992a). A lot to learn. Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services.
Economic Council of Canada. (1992b). Education and training in Canada. Ottawa: Ministry of
Supply and Services.
Holmes, M. (1985). The funding of private schools in Ontario: Philosophy, values and implications
for funding (Appendix E). The report of the commission on private schools in Ontario (pp.
109–151). Toronto: The Commission on Private Schools in Ontario.
Holmes, M. (1988). The fortress monastery: The future of the common core. In I. Westbury & A. C.
Purves (Eds.), Cultural literacy and the idea of general education: Eighty-seventh yearbook of the
national society for the study of education (pp. 231–272). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Holmes, M. (1992). Educational policy for the pluralist democracy. London: Falmer Press.
Holmes, M. (1993a). The place of religion in public education. Interchange, 24, 205–223.
Holmes, M. (1993b). The revival of school administration: Alasdair MacIntyre in the aftermath of
the common school. Canadian Journal of Education, 17, 422–436.
Holmes, M. (1995). Educated dissent: Implications of policy disagreement for educational leadership.
In K. Leithwood (Ed.), Effective school district leadership (pp. 245–280). Albany: State
University of New York Press.
Kristol, I. (1994, September 1). The new face of U.S. politics. The [Toronto] Globe and Mail, p.
A21.
Livingstone, D., Hart, D., & Davie, L. (1993). Public attitudes towards education in Ontario, 1992.
Toronto: OISE Press.
Peshkin, A. (1986). God’s choice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Thiessen, E. J. (1993). Teaching for commitment. Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press.
Mark Holmes is a writer on educational policy: RR#5, Warkworth, Ontario, K0K 3K0.
A Common Education
Robin Barrow
simon fraser university
I am in the process of coming to the sad conclusion that there is no entirely
satisfactory solution to what I shall call the problem of cultural domination either
in principle or, a fortiori, in practice. Certainly one welcomes Eamonn Callan’s
attempt to offer a dispassionate analysis of common schooling and common education in the hope of arriving at a solution. And his argument seems to me both
lucid and, in essentials, telling, on its own terms. Within reason (e.g., within
limits that are generally accepted and that he takes for granted, such as refusing
to countenance rape, murder, or, presumably, violent rebellion), he argues,
cultural groups should be free to promulgate any views, provided that they accept
reasonableness or the rational scrutiny of such views. He then suggests that for
various reasons, most obviously the need to be aware of and actually engage
with difference of opinion, separate schooling is acceptable to some extent but
must at some point give way to common schooling. But even this modest position involves three questionable assumptions. First, it presumes that rationality,
which is taken to be an uncontested concept, is a value that either is universally
shared or ought to be. Second, it gives primacy to the view that society, meaning
in effect majority opinion, should determine the nature of schooling and education for all. And third, it trades on the contingent fact that most cultures share
Callan’s view that rape, murder, rebellion, and so forth are indeed unacceptable.
I share all three presumptions, but cannot avoid noting that each one of them is
problematic.
The moderate separatist position Callan successfully defends, is not, in my
view, where the problem lies. That is to say, the person or group whose concern
is merely to preserve a culture that is not in fundamental ways at odds with or
hostile to the dominant culture, and who accepts the major tenets of that culture,
is surely not a problem. (Although even here there is the question of whether one
argument for a common education might not be the desirability of creating a
common culture, to which I shall return. If the argument is of the form that we
ought to seek a common identity and outlook for all citizens, then any degree of
distinctive sets of fundamental beliefs would need to be questioned. Suppose, for
example, it were argued that commitment to a particular minority culture was to
the disadvantage of the individual within the context of a larger society?) But the
real argument would seem to be between those who, on the one hand, advocate
a truly separate education (in Callan’s sense) and those who, on the other,
advocate a large proportion of common education. More specifically, again in
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Callan’s terms, it is between those who accept his view of the nature and primacy of reason and those who do not. I believe that one can argue that his view,
what some might call the view of the Western liberal tradition, is correct. But
one is uncomfortably aware that the argument to substantiate the position in
some sense draws on its own conclusion: the position is established by using the
form of reasoning in question. While it seems that it is incoherent to “argue”
against the value of rationality, it is not clear what ice that should cut with those
who simply are not interested in developing such rationality. The rational believer, so to speak, is a different case from the non-rational believer.
In what follows, I attempt to extend Callan’s argument by highlighting three
questions: Why do we accord value to other cultures? Is it acceptable to presume
the value of rationality? In conducting this argument and seeking to arrive at a
practical proposal for schooling and education, who is calling the tune?
Historically, different power groups have taken very different attitudes to
diversity. The Romans, for example, while no doubt self-interested, at times
brutal, and often inconsistent, are nonetheless notable for an overall remarkably
tolerant attitude to difference. They were adept at allowing their own gods and
practices to be nominally identified with those of existing and distinct cultures.
They admittedly imposed some of their own laws, they taxed ruthlessly, they
governed, yet they were willing to leave Jews to be Jews, Egyptians to continue
in their age-old beliefs and practices, and so forth. Attempts to suppress difference, such as, for example, the attempt to suppress the Druids, were rather the
exception that proved the rule. Contrast that with Nazi or Stalinist attempts to
impose a monolithic identity. And contrast both with the variety of approaches
to be found among the great colonizing powers of the last century.
In all of this there is no agreed view on the value of other cultures. Sometimes
they were stamped out simply because they were different. Sometimes they were
suppressed because they were seen as directly threatening to the dominant power.
Sometimes they were interfered with to the extent that they seemed troublesome.
Sometimes they were assimilated. Sometimes they were ignored. Sometimes they
were even accorded a degree of respect.
Given this varied pattern, it is at least interesting that today cultures tend to
be accorded respect simply because they are there, and diversity is regarded as
good in itself. But why is diversity automatically prized? And why should the
existence of a culture be regarded as a good reason for preserving it? And,
subsidiary to that question, should we consider there to be a difference between
allowing a culture to survive and artificially preserving it? (For, again historically, most cultures that currently exist do so in a form that has evolved dramatically over time, and are, so to speak, the product of random forces rather than
deliberate preservation.)
The notion that diversity is in itself good, such that the more diversity there
is the better, seems frankly untenable. A degree of diversity is to be welcomed,
partly because, among other things, we value freedom, we respect the rights of
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others up to a point, and diversity is the enemy of dogmatism. So there are good
reasons not to attempt to impose uniformity. But this is not an argument for the
sacrosanctity of any culture that happens to exist. That is why Callan can reasonably say that he does not accept the desirability of minority cultures bringing
up their young with an uncritical commitment to transformative beliefs. It is why
most of us feel it reasonable to object to a number of specific cultures (e.g.,
Nazi, Stalinist, South African, Koresh-inspired): because a culture can be condemned as morally repugnant or as antipathetic to the views and claims of the
dominant culture.
The assumption that a culture has some kind of integrity or value because it
exists is, then, inconsistent with the fact that every so often we reject a culture
as repugnant. Perhaps, therefore, few people would actually articulate the view
that any culture deserves to be preserved in virtue of the fact that it exists.
Nonetheless, our reasoning sometimes seem to trade on this assumption. But if
ever there was an illustration of the wisdom of Hume’s objection to the too-ready
derivation of an “ought” from an “is” it is here. Whether a culture deserves to
be preserved depends not on its being there, but upon some separate assessment
of its qualities.
The previous point may make it easier to introduce the idea of cultural modification. Because we live in a self-conscious age in which it is also possible to
have a dramatic impact on people’s lives in a relatively short time, the argument
is often conducted in terms of preserving (or not) a culture in precisely its
present form. But, even allowing for vast differences between, for example, a
Maori culture that insofar as it survives does so in relatively pristine form and
English culture that has been evolving for centuries, it is surely clear that to a
greater or lesser extent all contemporary cultures are already the product of a
great deal of changing times and circumstance. Cultures are in this sense naturally evolving organisms. In fact, it makes little sense to talk of English culture: one
can only talk of contemporary culture. Given that, why do we think it makes
sense to insist on the artificial arrest of various cultures in their contemporary
state? Virtually all cultures, perhaps all, are at a given time hybrids.
Given these points, it is difficult to see any a priori reason for worrying about
the continued existence of any culture in its contemporary form, still less in some
allegedly pristine form. Once again, we would seem to be driven back to the
view that culture (or aspects thereof) should be preserved only insofar as some
people wish to preserve them and there is no extraneous reason, derived from
either the interests of the wider community or the moral repugnance of the
majority, to object. On these terms, it is surely reasonable for a society to object
to certain particular practices (such as death by stoning, female circumcision, or
the severing of limbs) and beliefs that militate against the general good. Cultures
should be modified in such circumstances. But more than that, their continued
existence or development would otherwise seem to be something to be accepted,
perhaps welcomed, but not actively supported by the state. If, by way of an
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oversimplified example, a Catholic State sees a threat to its Catholicism in some
form of Protestantism, then it is entitled, by the terms of democratic government,
to take steps against the latter (though what steps are legitimate within democratic theory is another question); otherwise, it should leave Protestants to believe
and act as they will, within the laws of the state.
Callan presents his notion of reasonableness, derived from Rawls, as if it
could not be gainsaid. And yet, on at least some readings of some postmodern
thought (which has a very long history, though this is not always recognized),
the notion is rejected. Here it is difficult to know what to say, given that although I recognize that some persons seem to challenge the value of rationality,
I cannot myself make much sense of the challenge. But we should at least
recognize that some of those who are particularly concerned to defend separate
schooling for distinct cultural groups do so partly because they want a different
kind of education—not least an education that does not place the same value on
developing rational thought.
As against this position, I can only argue as follows: I know of no convincing
argument to establish that there are alternative logics in the sense that one might
be said to reason well or logically in defiance of such fundamental laws as that
of non-contradiction or ignoring the distinction between valid and invalid forms
of syllogistic reasoning. This is not to deny that some cultures may refrain from
contradiction in discussions because they believe it to be impolite, or that some
cultures may refrain from engaging in syllogistic reasoning. Nor is to deny that
such fundamental rules of logic as I am referring to, while being transcendent in
the sense that they always obtain, need to be interpreted, and that interpretation
depends upon knowledge of particular contexts. Thus to recognize a contradiction
in reasoning in physics one needs to understand physics. By extension, what is
logical in one cultural setting may not be readily apparent to an outsider.
But such observations, important as they are, pertain to the sociological
questions of how people behave and how they are to be understood. They have
no bearing on the epistemological questions of what it means to proceed rationally and whether that is possible. Nothing, it seems to me, has ever been said
to invalidate the point that if one contradicts oneself, or if one proceeds to reason
by means of invalid syllogisms, one is proceeding irrationally, nor the pragmatic
point that rationality gives us a fuller and better control of our world.
What I am suggesting here is that we should recognize that some would
challenge Callan’s basic evaluation of reasonableness, but that we can strengthen
his position by explicitly arguing that it is incomprehensible that anybody should
sincerely maintain that it is not important.
This brings me to my third point, because it is indisputable that the rules of
this discussion are those of the Western liberal tradition. Callan and I are both
trading on the primacy of rationality, both in that we attempt to argue rationally
for our view and in that our view is that everybody ought to be encouraged to
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assess their views (including their particular cultural perspective) rationally. I do
not personally have any problem with this, but we surely should acknowledge
that it is a form of cultural domination, since, although I have suggested that
none could coherently deny the value of rationality, it remains a fact that some
cultures do not or might not value rational reflection to the extent we do.
In the light of this, what now should be said about common schooling and
common education? As I said earlier, I have no principled objection to Callan’s
moderate thesis to the effect that an initially separate schooling, to allow for
immersion in a particular culture, including transformative beliefs, should be
followed by a common schooling, without which there cannot be a common
education in practice. I am, however, less sanguine than him that such a policy
will in fact prove effective. Is there not something in the Jesuit boast that if the
child be given to them in the early years they will make the adult?
Be that as it may, I should like to conclude by sketching a slightly different
view, that, having acknowledged that there is a form of cultural dominance in
play here anyway, is a bit more assertive about it. According to this view, the
two primary objects of a common schooling are to provide a degree of common
culture and to provide a common education. The common education is indeed
seen as an initiation into critical thinking or rational appraisal. To that end the
initiation into traditional modes of inquiry remains important, though I should
stress that I am not concerned to defend traditional organizations of school
subjects or traditional modes of teaching. I am maintaining, rather, that in
addition to cultivating a general will to examine matters rationally and a general
understanding of formal rules of reasoning, we need to cultivate an understanding
of logically distinct types of question and an understanding of powerful traditional modes of expression and inquiry. In essence, that is to say that all children
need to understand the difference between, say, an empirical question and a
conceptual question; further, they need to understand something of the difference
between moral, aesthetic, and religious claims. Further still, in each case they
need to understand the nature and problems of scientific reasoning, moral reasoning, mathematical reasoning, and philosophic reasoning, as well as the context
of religious claims, aesthetic claims, and historical claims.
There has been much talk in recent years of the failure of liberal education to
actually benefit the lot of all equally, and of the fact that certain groups (socioeconomic, ethnic, male/female, and so on) are not overall being advantaged to
the extent hoped. I accept that claim, but question whether it is reasonable to see
the school as a means to alleviate or get around social problems. The argument
for this common education is not that it provides an equal opportunity for all in
social terms, nor should its success be judged in terms of socio-economic benefit
to the individual. The argument is rather that all people should be equally entitled
to an education for its intrinsic value. This is to place up front the point that I
claim is implicit in Callan’s argument: it is better for a human being to have
rational understanding than not to have it. The extrinsic value that education has
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is to be seen in terms of an increased amount of choice and degree of control
over how one believes one ought to live rather than in terms of direct control of,
for instance, job opportunities and income. In addition, it is arguable, although
I do not seek to substantiate the claim here, that imperfect as it is, in the long
run a society of relatively rational beings is better off than a society of nonrational beings. Rationality alone will not bring a betterment of our lot, but it
may nonetheless be an essential factor.
Here I would observe that a schooling system that allows some to begin with,
say, an initiation into fundamentalist belief, may have problems in getting to
grips with evolutionary theory later. More generally, it seems to me that the
requirements of such an education demand more time than Callan’s policy would
allow. But then I want to add the point about a common culture. I see value in
a common culture, for purposes of social cohesion, and since I do not see any
inherent value in a culture for its own sake, I am inclined to argue for the utility
of a common schooling, precisely in order that a new common culture shall
evolve.
The question therefore arises as to what I am proposing in reference to such
minority cultures as exist within a given state. Am I proposing deliberately to
wipe them out in Stalinist mode? Certainly not. Am I proposing to let them
wither and die? Certainly not. But I am accepting that without the explicit intervention of the state to provide separate schooling, some cultures may gradually
become modified and ultimately be assimilated.
I propose a distinction be drawn between the intellect and what, for want of
a better word, I will call the spirit. The school, I suggest, is responsible only for
the intellectual development of the individual and the common expectations of
the state. The spirit is the business of the individual, the family, the cultural
group. It will presumably be argued by some that a given language that is not in
common use in the society as a whole, and a given set of beliefs, rituals, ways
of behaving, and so forth — in short a given spirit — cannot be maintained without the benefit of an appropriate schooling. The extent to which this is true will
presumably vary from culture to culture, depending upon such factors as the
strength and size of the culture as well as its nature. But it seems likely that in
many cases cultural identity would indeed gradually diminish and adapt. The
question is whether it makes sense to attempt to preserve cultural diversity by
means of deliberate policy within the context of a nation-state. There is nothing
sacrosanct about any given nation-state, any more than there is about a given
culture. And the notion of, for example, a distinctive English culture and schooling, a distinctive First Nations culture and schooling, a distinctive Asian culture
and schooling, and so forth, within the geographical boundaries of Canada is
perfectly intelligible, perhaps even desirable. But it looks to me remarkably like
a version of apartheid and it certainly raises the question of what Canada is
supposed to mean.
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My argument for a common schooling to create a common culture and provide
a common education is rooted not only in the belief that a common education of
the sort referred to is a good for all individuals, but also in the belief that
dramatic cultural differences have been shown historically to be very dangerous
when they are found within what purports to be a nation-state with a common
identity. A French Quebec that is distinctive and separate from, for the sake of
argument, an English Ontario is a quite different proposition from the attempt to
maintain the distinct cultures within the same nation-state. In sum, therefore, I
suggest that separate schooling of the type considered by Callan is not likely to
prove very effective in maintaining a distinctive cultural integrity, that it is likely
to contribute to division and lack of mutual understanding, and that it makes it
harder to create a common culture. Beyond that it is not clear why a state should
either want to or be expected to take active steps to preserve distinctive cultures
for their own sake (as distinct from recognizing and respecting some cultural
differences that do exist). Beyond that again lies the belief that throughout
history, in fits and starts, there has been slow progress toward a greater degree
of commonality and rational understanding and that this is to the ultimate benefit
of us all.
Robin Barrow is Dean of Education, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6.
Liberal Civic Education and Its Limits1
Stephen Macedo
syracuse university
Respect for diversity is one of today’s great watchwords, nowhere more so than
in education. Whether what is being advocated is multiculturalism, parental
choice, or educational privatization, support for common values and common
institutions is giving way to increasingly assertive forms of particularism. There
are often, of course, good grounds for welcoming these developments: respect
for freedom and diversity are among the deepest commitments of liberal democratic political orders. From a political or constitutional perspective, however, it
is troubling that so many of today’s proponents of diversity have so little to say
about the values and practices that should hold us together as a society. So great
is the desire to respect diversity, “difference,” and particular commitments and
identities that many seem to forget that peaceful, orderly, tolerant liberal diversity needs to be planned for: it does not come about naturally or by the
deliverance of an invisible hand.
I am unsure why so many people now seem so prone to embrace diversity
uncritically. For some Americans at least, the pathologies of public school
systems have likely given the whole idea of common education a bad name. For
others, the problem may be more deep-seated. Respect for rights and basic
freedoms is increasingly confused with a nonjudgmental attitude to the ways that
people use their freedom. Public policy, some think, should protect freedom and
promote certain (at least apparently) all-purpose goods like security and prosperity, but should otherwise be neutral with respect to the choices people make
and the aims they pursue.
Whatever the sources of the current confusion, its import is undeniable.
Modern liberal democracy has been profoundly (if incompletely) successful by
any sensible measure, but its continued health or even survival is not foreordained. Liberal self-government requires an adequate level of civic virtue among
citizens. Liberals must insist that although the extent and nature of common
schooling is always subject to reasonable debate, negotiation, and reform, the
imperatives of common education are basic and essential. Insisting on these
things requires a liberalism with spine.
There is nothing necessarily wrong with calls for school choice, privatization,
or the decentralization of educational authority. What is inherently misguided is
the failure to think about these or other reforms politically.2 The question can
never be simply how to give particular communities greater freedom to educate
children and pass along their own ways; we must always consider, as well, how
particularism is to be made to cohere with our shared political project.
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Eamonn Callan understands all of these things. His “Common Schools for
Common Education” seems to me a very helpful contribution to the process of
recovering a reasonable liberal tough-mindedness. Callan is surely right to argue
that “the partisans of separate schooling must . . . show how a satisfactory
common education can be given to children who do not attend common schools”
(p. 254). This is because there are important ways, as he rightly argues, in which
common schools — for all their problems as a matter of actual practice3 — are
especially well-suited to the task of civic education in a diverse society.
The common school ideal stands, as Callan suggests, for educational institutions that contain society’s diversity in a tolerant, respectful cooperative context.
Common schools also have a “hidden curriculum” which suggests
that at least in this environment one can and perhaps should study literature, discuss moral
problems, and so on, in a way that sets aside commitment to separate educational values
[e.g., the particular values of religious or ethnic groups] which, for their adherents [at
least in the extreme instances], can never justifiably be set aside. (Callan, p. 255)
Common schools are, Callan argues, especially appropriate vehicles for inculcating the civic virtue of mutual respect for those who differ from us in their
religious convictions or beliefs about the good life. The common school ideal
(and to some degree at least, its reality) is of a “setting that really includes
students and teachers whose diverse ethical voices represent the pluralism of the
larger society” (Callan, p. 263). All this establishes for Callan a presumption in
favour of common schools.
The presumption in favour of common schooling is not necessarily a ground
for condemning separate schools altogether. Separate education may be not only
compatible with but even a necessary prelude to common education. For a whole
variety of reasons, moreover, the presumption in favour of common schools may
not be very strong. Nevertheless, our assessment of calls for separate schooling
for particular religious, ethnic, or racial communities must turn partly on an
account of how separatism is to be made to be supportive of, or at least compatible with, the imperatives of common education.
Callan’s argument seems to me both rich and compact. I cannot do more here
than highlight some basic points of agreement and suggest certain reservations
about the extent and nature of the civic education for which Callan argues. On
the critical side, I suggest that Callan’s conception of liberal civic education is,
in certain respects, overly broad and intrusive.
***
I can start by asking what the aims of civic education should be in a modern,
diverse liberal democracy. Callan seems to me right in suggesting that important
guidance on this question is provided by John Rawls’s recent Political Liberalism
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(1993). I do not entirely agree with Callan’s claim that we can, by following
Rawls, revive John Dewey’s faith in common schools. Dewey represents exactly
the kind of overly broad “comprehensive” political morality that Rawls rightly
(on my view) rejects. Dewey’s pervasive commitment to secular humanism and
his disparagement of any transcendent or otherworldly beliefs are not, after all,
figments of fundamentalist imaginations: his political aspirations were totalistic
in scope and included the replacement of traditional religious beliefs with thisworldly political reform. He argued repeatedly that science is the “one sure road
of access to truth” (Dewey, 1932, p. 32).4 He wanted his political ideals to
pervade every corner of social life.
Rawls (1993) wants precisely to avoid basing the fundamental principles of
our shared political order on claims about the proper path to religious truth or
claims about the nature of human perfection, for these are matters about which
reasonable people permanently disagree. The basic principles of justice that limit
and guide the terrible coercive powers of the modern state should be ones we can
publicly justify to each other, while accepting the fact of reasonable disagreement
about other fundamental matters.5
Political power in a liberal democracy is, after all, the shared property of
reasonable fellow citizens who want to offer one another public reasons for the
way they seek to direct that power. These public reasons should be ones whose
force can be recognized without having to adopt a particular group’s view of
religious truth or its ideal of human perfection. No one, Rawls insists, should
expect his or her version of the whole truth to be embodied in the Constitution.
We should, instead, ground basic constitutional principles in those basic goods
that we can agree upon: goods such as peace, individual freedom, material prosperity, and the common provision of at least a basic “safety net.” The achievement of such basic aims does not represent anyone’s idea of the height of human
perfection or the “whole truth” about the human good, but they are prerequisites
of the pursuit of many “higher” goods and are widely (if unequally) valued.
Callan rightly argues that the basis of political legitimacy, on this account of
liberalism, is not mere consensus. There is no actual consensus on even the most
minimal values, such as toleration. Legitimate political power is grounded in the
hope for a reasonable consensus, or a consensus among reasonable people (a
consensus to which there are no reasonable objections). So, although some few
people will reject the good of individual freedom or the justifiability of basic
democratic institutions, we believe they have no publicly reasonable grounds for
doing so.
Callan notices what many readers of Rawls fail to see: political liberalism
does not simply push some matters (for instance, questions of religious truth or
human perfection) off the political agenda; it also positively establishes distinctive civic educational aims. Central among these aims is inculcation of the vital
but elusive virtue of “reasonableness.”
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The reasonable citizen is prepared to acknowledge that disagreement about
ultimate ideals is normal, permanent, and perfectly reasonable. The reasonable
citizen accepts, as Callan emphasizes, what Rawls calls “the burdens of judgment.” Disagreement about both religious truth and secular ideals of life is the
consequence of the fact that the relevant evidence is often conflicting, complex,
and hard to weigh, the relevant values are also plural and hard to weigh, moral
concepts are inherently vague, and our assessment of all these depends partly on
our total life experiences, which differ widely.6
Ideally, then, a liberal civic education would seek not only to expose children
to the historical fact of diversity that constitutes the history of modern polities
such as Canada or the United States. Such an education should also seek to
impress on children the political importance of respect for fellow citizens with
religious views quite different from their own. Giving children some sense of the
“burdens of judgment” (insofar as is possible) and seeking to impress on them
the normality and reasonableness of disagreement, should help further the second
aim of civic education that Callan also mentions: political reciprocity or cooperativeness, which is a willingness to affirm and support the fair governance of our
public life so long as our fellow citizens do likewise (Rawls, 1993, pp. 16–17).
***
Callan seems to me right to suggest that the civic education political liberalism
prescribes is more than the anemic “lowest common denominator” which is all
that we could support were we limited to values that everyone actually agrees
with. Indeed, as I have said, there really is nothing that everyone agrees upon
(not even the good of law-abidingness), so the hope for complete actual agreement is entirely Utopian. That, in any case, is not political liberalism’s aim: it is
rather critical and at least somewhat judgmental in its pursuit of consensus. It
aims for a consensus among reasonable people: a consensus sensitive to reasonable objections but one prepared to table unreasonable ones. As Callan puts it,
“Current moral agreement is one thing; the moral consensus we would have if
we lived together on the basis of equal respect is quite another” (p. 260). The
touchstone of political legitimacy is a consensus of reasonable views. Such a
consensus will not, unfortunately, include everyone.
Several fine lines need to be trodden by the school or teacher committed to
following the political liberal path, and it may be here that Callan and I part
company, at least somewhat. For one thing, political liberalism does not stand for
skepticism about ultimate questions of moral and religious truth. Skepticism is
a particular account of the nature of such claims: namely, that none of them is
true. Political liberalism does not deny that there is a true view, it insists only
that a democratic polity should try to respect the many reasonable views about
the good life that citizens espouse. Politics is not based on one view of the whole
truth, therefore, but it is not based on skepticism either. Political liberalism builds
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on those basic goods and principles of fairness that can gain the support of
reasonable people who disagree about the highest ends of human life. Individual
citizens will have their own various accounts of how our shared political principles fit in with their conception of the whole truth (just as the major religions
of North America converge in support of basic democratic values and liberal
rights).
So children must learn to respect as fellow citizens those who hold different
but still reasonable religious or moral convictions. Political liberalism does not,
however, require wishy-washiness. It does not require that citizens approve of the
religious convictions or moral ideals of their neighbours. It must accommodate
and not deny the reasonableness of vigorous disagreement and robust convictions
about moral or religious truth.
I worry, therefore, that Callan’s insistence on the virtue of “equal respect”
may go too far unless qualified.7 Political liberalism (as I understand and espouse
it) allows public education establishments to promote what we might call civic
or political respect, in light of our mutual acknowledgment, as fellow citizens,
of the burdens of reason. Still, this civic respect must be compatible with the
conviction that many of our fellow citizens espouse religious ideas which are
deeply false, and which we do not approve of or respect as such. As a liberal
citizen I may regard the Protestant who lives next door to me as not entirely
unreasonable since she (like me) obeys the law and acknowledges the legitimacy
of the Constitution, along with the political authority of reasons and evidence that
we can share. I may, nevertheless, regard her as deeply mistaken in matters of
religion.
It would go too far to suggest that good citizens must have positive regard for
each others’ extra-political beliefs and practices. It goes too far to say that
liberalism should encourage the “sympathetic and open-minded exploration of
rival convictions,” at least if what we have in mind are religious convictions
(Callan, p. 265).8 For political authorities to promote “sympathy” for rival
religious convictions crosses the line between civic and religious education:
public officials have no business telling believers how to comport themselves
religiously. It comes too close to espousing a “comprehensive” ideal of life as
a whole, such as autonomy, and would seem to infringe on individuals’ freedom
to disagree deeply and vigorously about religious and moral matters. Political
liberalism stands for the importance of critical self-examination in politics.
Citizens decide on their own what attitude to take toward their religious beliefs.
The issue is of more than theoretical importance. Political institutions such as
public schools may, on my view, legitimately seek to encourage political respect
among future citizens, but they must also respect the deep convictions about
religion and morality that will inevitably divide the polity. Public institutions
must respect deep religious and moral convictions even when those convictions
assert that some of our fellow citizens are deeply in error. Liberalism divides our
lives between shared political identities and differing — even deeply divergent —
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religious and ethical convictions. We should, I think, live with rather than suppress the sources of tension that inhere in this division.
I am not sure, however, that Callan agrees. He worries that powerful religious
convictions will lead some to despise those outside their church. Religious
animosity could lead some to subject “infidels to discrimination in education,
employment, and the like” in order to express “antipathy for their way of life”
and a “determination to contain its evil influence” (Callan, p. 262). The worry
that religious animosity will lead to discrimination leads Callan to promote not
simply political respect for fellow citizens as a civic virtue, but also sympathy
for the religious convictions of others.
Callan’s distress over the tension between political respect and religious
disagreement recalls the view of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who argued in the
Social Contract that
Those who distinguish between civil and theological intolerance are mistaken, in my
opinion. Those two types of intolerance are inseparable. It is impossible to live in peace
with those one believes to be damned. To love them would be to hate God who punishes
them. It is absolutely necessary either to reclaim them or torment them. Whenever
theological intolerance is allowed, it is impossible for it not to have some civil effect; and
once it does, the sovereign no longer is sovereign, not even over temporal affairs.
Thenceforward, priests are the true masters; kings are simply their officers. (pp. 102–103)
My point is not that religious intolerance is nothing to worry about, but rather
that we should address it in civil terms, and with a certain degree of equanimity
given the record of peaceful religious coexistence in recent Western history.
I agree, moreover, that private discrimination is a worry in any polity that
contains strong disagreements about religious truth and personal morality. Once
again, however, this worry seems to me to be one that we should, in certain
respects at least, live with. Promoting non-discrimination may well be an important political aim, and non-discriminatory treatment in housing and employment
may even be political rights of a sort (non-discrimination in housing and employment do not seem to me nearly so basic as core rights such as religious freedom,
speech, association, travel, and the vote). Educational institutions can certainly
suggest that these are wrong, and offer the public civil reasons for regarding
them as wrong. Public officials and institutions may not, however (and this is the
central point), use our opposition to discrimination as a basis for prescribing the
sorts of religious convictions people should hold. Public schools may seek to
inculcate the civic importance of respect for fellow citizens just as they may
insist on the civil importance of religious toleration. Political officials have no
business speaking to the religious dimensions of toleration, equal respect, or
other political questions. Public schools must not seek to inculcate religious
doctrines of tolerance or equal respect.9 The question of what religious attitude
citizens should adopt should be left to citizens individually and in their religious
communities.
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Needless to say, pressing hard on such civic virtues as equal respect or cooperativeness may make many robust religious convictions seem problematic.
Roman Catholics and many other religious communities do not provide equal
opportunities for women. Churches that foster cooperation with insiders may
hinder cooperation with outsiders. The moral education provided by individual
churches may stand in tension with the inclusive principles of liberal democracy.
A liberal state would be more placid and perhaps more generally cooperative if
everyone would convert to Unitarianism or Secular Humanism. The supremacy
of our shared political convictions could be more effectively secured if we could
secure them within the confines of religious belief itself. Political liberalism
insists, however, and I think rightly, that the state’s authority ends with the
inculcation of civic or political virtues. Deciding how to formulate religious
convictions and how to shape religious associations is a matter for citizens to
decide for themselves, on their own and in their faith communities.
The moral here seems to be that, as liberals, we should not do all that we
might like to do to promote liberal values and attitudes. Respect for diversity
and, more particularly, acknowledging the limited claims of liberal public reason,
call for certain kinds of restraint with respect to our educative agenda. My worry,
as stated above, is that Callan may not quite acknowledge the appropriate constraints.
***
And yet, Callan might well reply, Rawls’s political liberalism does not suggest
that we should simply leave children to their own devices when it comes to
formulating their religious beliefs. Rawls provides us with a shared account, after
all, of why it is that people differ about religious matters. One of the most basic
characteristics of reasonable citizens is, as mentioned above, their willingness to
acknowledge the burdens of judgment that help explain why reasonable people
disagree about religion and other matters. This account of the burdens does not
simply leave the religious dimensions of political questions aside, it might be
argued against my suggestion, but rather casts our religious disagreements in a
very definite light.
Indeed, Callan suggests that one reason for a presumption in favour of common schools is that institutions containing the plurality of the larger society will
be especially appropriate settings in which to educate children in the burdens of
judgment. In schools that actually — and respectfully — contain the plurality of
the wider society, children will learn that the “comprehensive religious and
ethical” ideals of their parents and communities of birth, select “from the diversity of human goods and organize these in ways to which there are reasonable
alternatives.” Public educators working in internally diverse schools can help
children see that “the reasonableness of convictions learned in the family or
elsewhere can only be established on the basis of searching examination that is
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open to the possibility that received convictions are in fact unreasonable” (Callan,
p. 264).
Once again, Callan and I have slightly different views of how to approach the
issue of civic education. To my mind, students who are future citizens should
certainly be taught that the diversity of religious and ethical views is longstanding, likely to persist, and “normal,” that is, something we should be prepared to
live with and not something that should form an obstacle to mutual political
cooperation, the affirmation of shared political principles, and respect among
fellow citizens. I do not think, however, that liberalism is best interpreted as
providing a mandate to public school officials to prod children into “searching
examinations” of their families’ religious convictions.
Callan seems to me, once again, too close to suggesting that the point of civic
education is to get children to think critically about inherited religious convictions. Liberalism should not (it seems to me) prescribe the path to religious truth.
Rawls’s account of the burdens of judgment is best understood as an accessory
to a civic education that seeks to leave religious matters aside, and that seeks to
respect a division of labour in which not all of the serious work is done on the
political side. So although it might be hard to accept the burdens of judgment
without being “open to the possibility” that the religious convictions of one’s
parents are unreasonable, public school educators should not seek directly to sew
religious doubt.
I said above that liberals must simply live with some tension between shared
political values and the diverse religious and moral commitments that divide us.
The tension is liable to concern not only the content of our public and private
values, but also the manner in which we hold our private commitments. It is a
civic virtue to think critically about our political convictions, that is, not to take
political principles on faith but to reason about them publicly. In spite of this, we
should be prepared to live not only with exclusive religious convictions (“only
the chosen few will be saved”) but also with dogmatic ways of holding such
convictions at odds with the spirit of public criticism (“God said it, I believe it,
and that’s the end of it”).
Liberalism is not Rousseauianism. People should be free to believe that their
fellow citizens will burn in hell for their religious views. On the other hand,
liberalism does not leave the superintendence of the religious realm altogether
aside. It is partly because we know that intolerant religious zealots must swim
against the current of the liberal social order that we can afford to grant them
some real freedom and refrain from intervening directly in their religious affairs.
So liberals should be prepared to live with some real tension between our
political and extra-political values. Such is the nature of a free society. At the
same time, we do not simply live with this tension. We will take educative
measures adequate to ensure the survival of liberal democratic commitments.
These will include measures to inculcate liberal civic virtues, such as knowledge
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of our nation’s history and political system, and a willingness to think critically
about public affairs.
Teaching children the importance of thinking critically about public affairs
may have the effect of encouraging them to think critically about religious
matters as well. Instituting schools in which children of different faiths study and
play together may well have the effect of encouraging students to develop
“positive regard” not just for their fellow classmates, but for their classmates’
religious views as well. It seems to me altogether likely, indeed, that life in a
tolerant, diverse prosperous liberal democracy will in many ways indirectly
promote ecumenical and even wishy-washy religious attitudes among adults as
well as children.10 So be it: a properly circumscribed liberal civic education is
one that does not speak directly to religious controversies, but it is also far from
neutral in its effects on the ways of life and religious convictions that prosper
within its framework. Liberalism properly understood does not claim to be
neutral and it should not try to be.
I have allowed that political liberalism has many indirect effects on the lives
and commitments of both children and adults. At this point some, such as Amy
Gutmann, will object that political liberalism does not make any difference.11
Critics will say that the distinctions on which I have been insisting — teaching
equal respect for fellow citizens but not “positive regard” among religious
beliefs, emphasizing the importance of critical thinking in political but not in
religious matters — really collapse on inspection. Political liberalism is no more
accommodating of diversity than the comprehensive liberalisms which are prepared politically to prescribe moral ideals to govern all our lives.
It does, however, seem to me that the distinctions I have drawn make some
difference; how much will depend upon the particular religious convictions we
confront. Political liberalism may do little better than the secular humanist
liberalism of John Dewey when confronting die-hard religious fundamentalists.
We should not, however, make the mistake of thinking (as some secular academics seem to do) that the only seriously religious people are fundamentalists
of one description or another. Those with more moderate but still genuine and
strongly felt religious convictions may well find the more circumscribed agenda
of political liberalism more accommodating than a liberalism that rests on a
particular claim to religious truth.
The case for political liberalism is not, in any case, primarily a matter of its
persuasive power, but rather its intrinsic justifiability. There seems to me independent merit in a political morality that does not lay claim to the whole of the
moral realm. Perhaps most centrally, Rawls seems to me right to assert that
fundamental principles of justice should secure the most basic goods rather than
the highest goods. A political morality that leaves our lives divided may require
us to draw distinctions that will often seem unclear and hard to discern, but it
also has the virtue of promoting political moderation by discouraging total invest-
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ments of moral capital in the political realm. This seems to me all to the good.
These abstract matters of high theory may, finally, seem to be very far indeed
from matters of school policy and teaching. The whole notion of the “burdens
of judgment,” for example, is extremely subtle and very likely beyond the
sophistication of all but the most extraordinary high school seniors. I do believe
with Callan, however, that the way we conceive our shared political principles
at a high level of abstraction will have “trickle-down” effects at the more mundane (but very important) level of school policy. In particular, the circumscribed
political liberalism that I advocate could, were it to take hold of the minds of
teachers and administrators, alter at least somewhat the way they approach the
vexing and difficult conflicts between religious particularity and a common
education. It would, I suggest, help encourage us to give both diversity and civic
education their proper due.
NOTES
1
My thanks to Peter deMarneffe and Leif Wenar for their comments on a previous draft, and for
conversations that clarified for me a number of matters relevant to this paper.
2
A leading example of such a failure to take the civic dimension seriously is Chubb and Moe
(1990).
3
At least in the United States — I cannot speak confidently to the literature on Canadian schooling.
4
I highly recommend Robert B. Westbrook’s excellent account of Dewey’s thought and life, John
Dewey and American Liberalism (1993). Westbrook does a very nice job of describing the
religious dimensions of Dewey’s thinking. Callan may not be especially concerned to distinguish
Rawls and Dewey because, as he remarks in his note 5, he does not believe that Rawls has
succeeded in distinguishing comprehensive and political liberalisms. I disagree with Callan here
(see Macedo, 1995).
5
This paragraph and the following one summarize some of the main claims of Political Liberalism.
6
I paraphrase Rawls in part; see Political Liberalism, pp. 56–57.
7
See especially Callan, p. 262.
8
I am not sure that Callan advocates this, since at the point at which I quote him he is describing
the attitude of a radical transformative view.
9
These matters are discussed at greater length in Macedo, “Liberal Civic Education and Religious
Fundamentalism” (1995).
10
I argue this in “One Nation, under John Stuart Mill?” (Macedo, in press). See also Herberg
(1960). These tendencies may not be part of the shared, public justification of a liberal order.
11
See Gutmann’s “Civic Education and Social Diversity” (1995).
REFERENCES
Chubb, J. E., & Moe, T. M. (1990). Politics, markets, and America’s schools. Washington, DC:
Brookings.
Dewey, J. (1932). A common faith. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Gutmann, A. (1995). Civic education and social diversity. Ethics, 105 [special issue on “Citizenship,
Democracy, and Education”], 557–579.
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Herberg, W. (1960). Protestant, Catholic, and Jew: An essay in American religious sociology. Garden
City, NY: Anchor.
Macedo, S. (1995). Liberal civic education and religious fundamentalism: The case of God v. John
Rawls? Ethics, 105 [special issue on “Citizenship, Democracy, and Education”], 468–496.
Macedo, S. (in press). One nation, under John Stuart Mill? Defending the (moderate) hegemony of
liberalism. In Y. Tamir (Ed.), Democratic education in a multicultural state. Oxford: Blackwell’s.
Rawls, J. (1993). Political liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rousseau, J J. (1983). On the social contract, discourse on the origin of inequality, discourse on
political economy (Donald Cress, Trans. & Ed.). Indianapolis: Hackett.
Westbrook, R. B. (1993). John Dewey and American liberalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Stephen Macedo is Michael O. Sawyer Professor of Constitutional Law and Politics, Maxwell School
of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, 100 Eggers Hall, Syracuse, New York, 132441090.
Rejoinder: Pluralism and Moral Polarization
Eamonn Callan
university of alberta
I am grateful to my four critics for their instructive comments on “Common
Schools for Common Education.” They have shown the need to explain my
argument in greater detail and to fortify it against some interesting objections.
My position on the appropriate roles of separate and common schools occupies
a middle ground between the views that exponents of each kind of schooling
tend to take in contemporary debate. I argue for a central role for the common
school by virtue of its intimate connection with a particular process of common
education — viz., the cultivation of what I call, following Rawls, the virtue of
reasonableness. Yet I also recognize an important role for separate schools,
because many conceptions of separate education cohere with the requirements of
common education, and I argue for caution in policies that interfere with such
schools, even when some standards of common education are flouted.
Like any moderate position adopted in the heat of a morally polarized debate,
mine provokes a range of contradictory criticisms. For those, like Kazepides,
who see the common school as a necessary bulwark against the indoctrination
practised in separate schools, my via media looks like an unprincipled compromise with those who would corrupt the process of education. For others, like
Holmes, who regard the common school as a moribund and potentially oppressive institution, the same via media looks like another attempt to shore up a
rapidly crumbling status quo in formal education. In particular, he rejects my
conception of common education as an arbitrary philosophical invention, at
variance with the democratic norms that properly determine the content of
common education.
Moderates also have misgivings. In polarized political debate, the very fact of
polarization tends to provoke doubt about the availability of any solution that
would be widely acceptable. If people disagree so vehemently and persistently
about a matter of policy, and if some even seem to reject the value of public
justification itself, then it becomes tempting to say that no solution will avoid the
political domination of one group by another. This is the most challenging worry
about my argument that Barrow’s paper suggests. Furthermore, my attempt to
weave together what has merit in the arguments for both separate and common
schooling depends on finding a delicate balance between the necessary aims of
common education and the legitimate goals of separate education. That attempt
inevitably leaves much room to doubt that the right balance has been struck.
Macedo says that my conception of common education may be too intrusive
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because I interpret the aim of reasonableness in a manner that limits diversity to
a degree not strictly required by liberal democratic virtue.
I shall address each of these major objections in turn, though I cannot within
the compass of a single response follow very far any of the lines of thought my
critics have suggested, and many of their doubts and questions will be ignored
altogether. Too often scholars who reply to criticism merely supply a list of
points on which they have been allegedly misinterpreted. I think I have been
misinterpreted from time to time in the preceding responses, sometimes egregiously so, but I assume my readers can sort that out for themselves, and besides,
there are much less tiresome things to talk about here. I shall briefly return,
however, to the general problem of misinterpretation in the final section because
I think that problem reflects something important about the obstacles to fruitful
political discussion in pluralistic societies. Sometimes there is more at stake in
squabbles about misinterpretation than the vanity of scholars who fear they are
misunderstood. Finally, readers should note that my reply will presuppose some
familiarity with “Common Schools for Common Education.”
AGAINST SEPARATE SCHOOLING
Kazepides rejects any concession to the advocates of separate schooling. He
thinks the very idea of separate education is senseless and that religious separate
schooling is almost certain to be a vehicle of religious indoctrination. I fail to
reach these important conclusions, Kazepides thinks, because I do not clearly
discern the logic of educational policy. If I paid more attention to “the multitude
of ordinary locutions” in our language that pertain to education, I would learn to
distinguish education, socialization, and indoctrination as he does. Moreover,
once I had distinguished these concepts, I would somehow be persuaded to
cherish education, to consign socialization to the research of sociologists, and to
deplore religious indoctrination as a “cosmic impiety.” For what the logic of
educational policy reveals is that education entails coming to recognize and
accept the demands of reason, that these demands are fixed by “the various
disciplines of thought and action as we know them today,” that religious commitment is properly an existential choice rather than a reasoned conviction, and
finally, that once religious propositions are understood literally and taught as
such, education gives way to the atrocity of indoctrination (Kazepides, pp. 272–
278).
One of my many disagreements with Kazepides is methodological. I do not
think that philosophy is a kind of armchair lexicography that can disclose compelling moral limits on what we should and should not teach the young. That
view is not supported by the discipline of philosophy as we know it today nor
was it supported by reputable practitioners at any point in the past. To be sure,
J. L Austin (1964) thought that ordinary language might give us the first word
in answer to our philosophical questions (pp. 41–63), but the first word is
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certainly not the last and it may well turn out to be confused and misleading.
Ordinary language analysis loomed large in Anglo-American philosophy of
education until recently, but even at the apogee of its influence, no one sensibly
supposed that analysis could bear the vast burden of moral justification Kazepides places on it.1
Even if I set aside my disagreement with Kazepides on this point and dabble
in the armchair lexicography he finds so revealing, what I see from my armchair
is very different than what he sees from his. “Education” and its cognates are not
being used in the sense Kazepides recommends when business people complain
that the graduates of our schools have not been well educated because they lack
the right vocational skills, when advocates of child-centred education decry what
they claim to be an excessive emphasis on established academic disciplines in
our classrooms, or when religious schools are created in the name of religious
education. These claims are what Kazepides would have to call “ordinary locutions”: they do not strain anyone’s sense of linguistic propriety even if we might
strongly disagree with them.
The predictable but inadequate response to my attempt at armchair lexicography is to say that our ordinary language contains more than one concept of
education, all muddled together within the complex patterns of usage of a single
word, and that by disentangling these we can identify the one which should be
accorded priority in decisions about teaching and learning. That privileged
concept — the one Kazepides singles out — deserves the honorific label “education,” whereas the others would be more perspicuously named “training,” “socialization,” and the like. The response is inadequate because it begs the question.
If our ordinary language exhibits more than one concept of education, then
merely by differentiating these we do not see which one should be fundamental
to how we rear our children. That question can only be addressed on the basis
of substantive political and moral argument. But Kazepides’s paper is bereft of
all such argument, perhaps because his fixation with ordinary language blinds
him to the need to provide any.
It does not follow that what Kazepides says against separate schooling and
education is false; it merely follows that he gives us no grounds to believe it is
true. But suppose we had strong grounds to believe many of the things Kazepides asserts. We might then be justified in saying, for example, that religious
faith is indeed a matter of existential choice, that institutional religion has always
been a deeply destructive cultural phenomenon, and that the attempts of adults
to elicit faith in their children are morally wrong. (As an atheist who grew up in
Ireland I have no great difficulty in entertaining at least some of these possibilities.) Would we then be justified in prohibiting the efforts of all members of
institutional religions to pass on their faith to their children? No. For it takes only
a little knowledge and imagination to understand that many people will reasonably adopt alternative views regarding these dark and difficult matters, even if we
continue to feel that the grounds for our views are much stronger than the
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grounds for theirs. To impose our views coercively, should we have the power
to do so, would presuppose a political monopoly on moral and philosophical
truth regarding matters of the deepest human importance where reasonable dissent is possible, and political coercion which presupposes that is sheer tyranny.
Anti-religious as well as religious ideals may inspire tyranny in educational
as in other areas of public policy, and we should be repelled by the tyranny even
if we are somewhat sympathetic to the underlying ideal. Rawls’s idea of the
burdens of judgment is plainly relevant here as it offers a powerful way of
justifying our repugnance to tyranny even when we endorse some of its underlying ethical or religious values. What Rawls’s idea supports is not moral scepticism and indifference but rather humility and a certain self-restraint when we
continue to disagree with others about the good life and the good society despite
our best efforts to reason together on a basis of mutual goodwill. For acceptance
of the burdens of judgment drives us to the humbling recognition that though our
own view may be reasonable it is not uniquely so, and we are thus restrained
from forcing our views on others who may grasp a truth that we have failed to
apprehend.2
The most disturbing aspect of Kazepides’s paper is not the absence of argument but the caricature he gives of religious believers who dare to breach the
boundaries of the Wittgensteinian mysticism he is willing to countenance. The
possibility that their views might contain anything other than stupidity and evil
simply does not occur to him. They are purveyors of superstition and mythology,
misologists and lunatics (Kazepides, pp. 274, 276). No doubt these labels do
apply to many religious partisans of separate education and schooling, but intemperate zeal may be found on the other side of the debate as well, as Kazepides
so amply demonstrates.
Charles Taylor (1991) has perceptively commented on the complacent incomprehension commonly displayed in academic circles when religious questions
arise:
I think it probably shows up a striking blind-spot in the academy, that unbelievers can
expound . . . crudities about the sources of [religious] belief, of a level which any educated believer would be excoriated for applying, say, to members of another confession.
The paradox is that the last members of the educated community in the West who have
to learn some lesson of ecumenical humility are (some) unbelievers. When these come
to talk about religion, we have all the breadth of comprehension and sympathy of a Jerry
Falwell. . . . The really astonishing thing is that they even seem proud of it. (p. 242)
Kazepides is convinced that he is “absolutely right” about the nature of religious
faith (p. 276). He is evidently convinced that he is absolutely right about a great
many other things as well. I am not convinced that I am absolutely right about
very much at all. I am not sure, for example, that we can find a satisfactory
political solution to the problem of separate and common schools. But on one
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small issue I can muster Kazepides’s enviable self-assurance. So long as our
efforts to resolve any issue of political consequence are characterized by the
narrowness of understanding and sympathy of which Taylor speaks, we never
shall find solutions nor shall we deserve to find any.
SCEPTICISM ABOUT REASONABLENESS
Mark Holmes evinces some of the tendency to reduce rival viewpoints to the
level of caricature that afflicts Kazepides. But in Holmes’s case, this only mars
the presentation of a substantial argument; it is not a substitute for argument, as
it is for Kazepides. I shall concentrate on Holmes’s argument.
By far the most interesting differences between Holmes and I hinge on my
claim that reasonableness of the sort that Rawls espouses is central to an adequate understanding of liberal democratic political virtue, and therefore, central
to any satisfactory conception of common education. Holmes denies this. He
thinks that Rawlsian reasonableness is a bogus virtue, concocted in disregard of
“dictionary definitions” and, much more importantly, at odds with the far more
modest role that the concept of reason rightly plays in our public and private
lives (pp. 286–287). If Holmes were right on this point, then reasonableness in
the way I understand it would have little or no continuity with our everyday, prereflective understanding of political virtue in liberal democracies; and the claim
that it was a cardinal virtue for polities of that kind, and not merely an ideal for
some philosopher’s Utopia, would be untenable.
So far as dictionary definitions go, “fair” and “moderate” show up as synonyms for “reasonable” in the Oxford English Dictionary, and “fair” is listed in
Webster’s. Reasonableness in this untechnical sense is a virtue we commonly
invoke in conditions of strife where people may be morally required to look
beyond the rational pursuit of individual or group goals (including altruistic
goals) and seek solutions that fairly balance the claims of contending parties.
Perhaps the policies of the Bosnian Serbs since the outbreak of war in Bosnia
have been impeccably rational, given the viewpoint of group-interest, but it
hardly follows that their position at the negotiating table has been reasonable in
the sense familiar to readers of the OED, Webster’s, and Rawls’s philosophical
writings.
I will certainly grant that the first condition of reasonableness Rawls indicates — what he calls “reciprocity” — gives us something rather more precise than
the vague and malleable concept of fairness and moderation that figures prominently in everyday political discussion. But this is what we should expect a good
theoretical account of any virtue to yield. A moral theologian should give a more
precise and articulate account of the religious virtue of charity than an ordinary
Christian believer can, but that does not make the theologian’s account a useless
academic invention, irrelevant to the real life of faith. The problem of discon-
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tinuity, however, from our pre-reflective understanding of political virtue may
appear more formidable in the case of the burdens of judgment, which Rawls
presents as the other condition of reasonableness. When we ascribe reasonableness in everyday political discussion, we do not obviously have in mind anything
close to the complex intellectual and practical disposition that constitutes acceptance of the burdens of judgment. This is the element of Rawlsian reasonableness
to which Holmes strenuously objects. He rightly points out that as an aim of
common education it will conflict with many extant conceptions of religious faith
(pp. 285–286). So even if Rawls’s entire conception of reasonableness cannot
be dismissed as a Utopian philosophical construction, might not this be said of
the idea of the burdens of judgment? That is a troubling question, but I think it
should be answered negatively.
Acceptance of the burdens of judgment is perhaps best understood not as an
independent condition of reasonableness, which is how Rawls tends to presents
it, but as a necessary application of reciprocity under the circumstances of
pluralism.3 Recall that reciprocity is the willingness and ability to appreciate
others’ viewpoints in settling the terms of social cooperation; to try to find terms
that they and we might consider fair on due reflection; and to comply with what
is agreed on should others be ready to comply. Reciprocity is a necessary element of virtue even in an ethically monistic society where all reject the burdens
of judgment. Serious social friction can arise among people who share just the
same conception of the good, for example, and reciprocity may function to
restore social harmony without challenging anyone’s assumption that all alternatives to their shared conception are intolerable abominations. But we do not
inhabit ethically monistic societies. We share political communities with people
who have conceptions of the good that may be in severe conflict with our own.
We cannot appreciate the claims others might legitimately make in collective
deliberation merely by assuming that our fellow citizens’ deepest ethical and
religious convictions mirror our own or that where these differ from ours we are
confronted with brute evil that must be suppressed. Therefore, reciprocity can no
longer permit myopic adherence to a particular ethical ideal such that all alternatives are contemptuously and ignorantly rejected, as it could under the conditions
of ethical monism. My ability to appreciate the viewpoint of others when their
understanding of the good conflicts with my own depends critically on my ability
to understand what reason might commend in that view; otherwise I am liable
to think myself justified in rejecting any accommodation with them. Perhaps
Holmes thinks I overstate the case here, but then he might try reading Kazepides
again to see the consequences for toleration of not accepting the burdens of
judgment.
Of course, Holmes is still right to be concerned about the possible political
domination of those whose way of life is deeply altered or rendered extinct over
time by a common education that aims at reasonableness. I shall have more to
say about that in my comments on Barrow and Macedo. But I hope it is clear at
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this stage that there is more to Rawls’s account of reasonableness, and to my
argument for its relevance to the project of common education, than a nefarious
conspiracy among Godless liberal philosophers to force their elitist values on
others. Rawls’s account refines and builds on values deeply entrenched in our
established ways of thinking in morality and politics, and where the account
seems to impose new and unwelcome demands on us, it can be cogently
defended, given the conditions of ethical pluralism.
This leads to a further claim that Holmes makes against me. He says that my
conception of common education is undemocratic because it is not limited to
whatever consensus on educational ends a democratic people might have at a
given moment in its history (p. 290). Well, it all depends on what is meant by
“undemocratic,” but I can imagine no competent interpretation that would make
the charge stick. There is more to democratic tradition than the will of the
people. Democracy is not the same thing as populism. Holmes recognizes this
himself when he says that policy should follow “a well-tempered public will, not
public opinion” (p. 291). The ideal of a well-tempered public will reflects an
abiding theme of democratic tradition: the claim that the will of the people is
properly informed by virtues that enable us to eschew the folly and wickedness
to which majoritarian politics, like all other politics, is dangerously susceptible.
Our democratic tradition is a rich and complex cultural inheritance, within which
the principle of majority rule coexists with ideals of republican virtue and liberal
rights. A conception of common education must aspire to capture the best of that
tradition (Callan, 1994). Forging such a conception is a daunting intellectual task,
and it is easy to get it wrong, as I may have done. But I doubt that either clarity
or dialogue are well served by dismissing me as a heretic to the entire tradition.
That dismissal makes sense only on a crudely populist reading of the tradition,
a reading that Holmes does not himself accept.
Much in Holmes’s paper deserves detailed further comment I cannot give here.
But one final point is especially important. Holmes does not adequately acknowledge the importance of common educational practices that we could sensibly
expect to support the moral cohesion of liberal democracy against the centrifugal
tendencies latent in pluralism. This blind-spot emerges strikingly at one point in
his paper.
Consider Holmes’s list of the elements that should be required of publicly
supported schools. The list is very clear and judicious, and many of its items
express common educational values I want to uphold. Among the requirements
are that all schools promote “the basic values of consideration for others . . . a
tolerance for, and acceptance of world views different from one’s own . . . [and]
the provision of reasonable access to knowledge and ideas on the part of
students” (p. 288). Although Holmes does not present this last item as directly
linked to the other two I have quoted, a close connection is obvious. I am hardly
well placed to show consideration to others, much less to tolerate or accept their
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world-view, if I am utterly ignorant of who they are, what they believe, and why
the differences that divide us do not make them my social inferiors.
Yet when Holmes says how the criterion of “reasonable access” might be
satisfied, what he suggests is a resounding anti-climax: “I see that element as
substantially satisfied by the provision of free access to a comprehensive library”
(p. 288). That is dangerously wrong, given the connection between the reasonable
access criterion and the ideal of mutual tolerance and acceptance. For it is surely
obvious that the ignorance of inveterate underachievers in religious toleration,
say, is not effectively countervailed by securing free access to a comprehensive
public library. No doubt Jim Keegstra and his students had free access to a
comprehensive public library in Eckville, Alberta during his infamous tenure
there as a high school teacher, but that did not seem to blunt either the
enthusiasm with which he taught the Jewish conspiracy theory or the persuasive
power of his teaching.
If “reasonable access to knowledge and ideas” is to be construed in a way that
really supports the tolerance and mutual understanding Holmes rightly demands
of all state-sponsored schools, then it requires pedagogical practices that will
encourage students to engage open-mindedly with the values and beliefs of those
we want them to tolerate and understand. But if he were to grant that point,
Holmes might find that he and I agree on far more than he wants us to.
REASON AND DOMINATION
I shall pursue just one of the many ideas contained in Robin Barrow’s wideranging essay. Barrow notes that many who would reject my moderate policy
prescriptions would do so precisely because they reject the underlying rationalism
of the tradition within which I speak. Yet to reject rational deliberation cannot
itself be rational. Therefore, even if the common education we have good reason
to institute is imposed on some citizens who would reject reason itself, their
rejection does not undermine the justification of the imposition. To be sure, those
on the receiving end of that imposition would be subject to domination, but our
conduct would still be rationally justified (Barrow, pp. 297–299).
I am wary of this argument mainly because, as I indicated in the final section
of “Common Schools for Common Education,” a large inferential gap separates
premises about the appropriate content of common education and conclusions
about what the state should impose on all citizens, and I indicated moral reasons
for not resorting to imposition in many cases. But Barrow’s argument raises
some additional points that I want to explore. In particular, he does not make use
of the distinction between the rational and the reasonable that Rawls makes, and
that distinction may support a somewhat different viewpoint on the problem of
domination than Barrow’s.
Rawls’s distinction between the rational and the reasonable expresses a bifurcated conception of practical reason. The reason I exercise when I ask how I
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should live, what choices I should make, and the like, gives me a perspective on
those questions that has no necessary unity. On the contrary, the rational pursuit
of my own conception of the good might incline me in one direction; and what
I see (or should see) as the reasonable course of action may be very different,
since that requires accommodating others’ claims in a way that the idea of the
rational need not. In Rawls’s work, the potential conflict between these perspectives does not rise to the surface because he focuses on the ideal of the wellordered society, where principles of justice hold that reconcile the ideals of the
rational and the reasonable in citizens’ lives (Rawls, 1971, pp. 513–587; Rawls,
1993, pp. 173–211). But in the real world of imperfectly liberal democratic
politics, the two perspectives of practical reason routinely come apart. For
example, if religiously conservative parents do not wish to send their children to
a school that encourages the virtue of reasonableness, it does not follow that their
resistance is irrational, or that the way of life they seek to defend is irrational,
even if we are right to prize reasonableness as an aim of common education.
I think philosophers of education have often been much too quick to dismiss
as irrational ways of life that are not variations on the Socratic ideal of the
scrupulously examined life, and no doubt children from conservative religious
homes have sometimes been on the receiving end of similar invidious attitudes
in our de jure common schools. If we ask seriously what is a good human life,
finding an answer will have to involve the activities of questioning, examining
alternatives, and investigating pros and cons which are the life-blood of the
Socratic ideal. But it would be wrong to infer that the answer we come up with
must endorse that ideal. The answer might be that a good and fulfilling human
life — say, a life of engrossed artistic endeavour or the life of a simple religious
believer — need not be intensely Socratic. I think Robert Nozick’s (1981) memorable comments on a famous encounter in Plato’s Republic are relevant here:
It is interesting, and perhaps a powerful point dialectically, that certain values are immanent in the philosophical activities of questioning, investigating, and examining. But it is
not of fundamental explanatory importance. When in the Republic Thrasymachus says that
justice is in the interests of the stronger, and Socrates starts to question him about this,
Thrasymachus should hit him over the head. He concedes too much when he enters the
activity, discussion, and assumes that there is some mark of correctness and rightness
other than (and superior to) strength. (p. 434)
We can imagine less brutal variations on the imaginary response of Nozick’s
Thrasymachus in confrontation with the Socratic ideal, and these variations might
represent values less obviously repugnant than the interests of the stronger. One
variation is this: “You are sinful. I have no desire to talk to you anymore, and
please stay away from my kids.” We do not show that the way of life affirmed
in that response is irrational merely because it expresses a rejection of the values
that are immanent in Socratic discussion.
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It is important to be clear about what I am saying here. I am not retreating
from my claim that reasonableness is a cardinal virtue of the common education
which a democratic people should undertake nor am I denying the obvious truth
that the cultivation of reasonableness will tend to pull our lives in a Socratic
direction. But I think we are dangerously confused if we think this entitles us to
regard those who might reject common education as irrational folk whom we can
push around with good conscience. That is why I am inclined to think the suppression of separate schooling should occur only in fairly extreme circumstances
where the most central elements of common education are repudiated — for
example, in schools where hatred or contempt of particular groups is fostered or
where intellectual standards are intolerably low. (Note that the same considerations would warrant the closure of de jure common schools in many circumstances.) My argument for acceptable separate schools in “Common Schools for
Common Education” is intended primarily as an argument about what kinds we
might accept for state sponsorship, and my explicit caveats about coercive
intervention are as important as anything else I say in that article.
Yet to argue for circumspection in the enforcement of common educational
values is not the same as arguing for an embargo on enforcement, and therefore,
some will say, the problem of domination does not go away. I just said that
schools might sometimes rightly be closed by the state, irrespective of the wishes
of their clients. Furthermore, state sponsorship necessarily has a coercive background: citizens who reject the grounds upon which sponsorship is bestowed or
denied are still compelled to pay the taxes that make sponsorship possible. Might
not many people continue to complain of domination if the policies I have
recommended regarding separate and common schooling were implemented?
Yes. But that is not a morally relevant question. The relevant question is whether
the complaint would be justified.
We need to be careful here about the ambiguities of “domination.” If someone
says that citizens are subject to domination once they are required by the state
to comply with requirements they think unjustified, we can agree, but only so
long as we understand that “domination” in this sense may have a compelling
moral justification. After all, criminals often do not see the laws they break as
justified, but that does not mean they are dominated in any morally opprobrious
sense when they are punished or deterred from future infractions. So domination,
in the broad sense of being subject to political coercion, is no grounds for moral
complaint, though people will in fact complain loudly. On the other hand, “domination” in a morally opprobrious sense implies not just coercion, but some
breach of the principle of equal respect. If policies were implemented to promote
common education of the sort I have championed, with due attention for the
caveats I have entered about the moral liabilities of coercion, would such policies
result in domination in the morally opprobrious sense? The answer would be yes
if, as Macedo says, my conception of common education limits diversity more
than the demands of liberal democracy strictly require. But I do not think it does.
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TWO KINDS OF LIBERALISM
My differences with Macedo are very subtle, and they arise in part from
divergent answers to difficult questions at the heart of contemporary political
theory. I shall sketch what is at stake between us and why I think he is wrong.
Readers without a taste for philosophical intricacies might prefer to proceed
directly to the concluding section of this paper.
My argument in “Common Schools for Common Education” is presented as
an attempt to revive our flagging commitment to the ideal of the common school.
I invoked the precedent of John Dewey as an educational theorist who tried to
understand the purpose of common schooling in light of broader and more daring
political hopes than we seem capable of entertaining in contemporary educational
discussion. But my regard for Dewey’s precedent is decidedly limited. Like
Macedo, I do not think Dewey’s particular vision of the common school is one
we should try to revive because that vision is inherently repressive. But Macedo
thinks the inadequacy of Dewey’s views reveals the defects of a more general
tradition of liberal thought, a tradition he and Rawls call “comprehensive
liberalism,” and he suggests that my interpretation of common education
embodies some of the failings of that tradition. Macedo thinks it is important to
ground the project of common education in a more narrowly “political
liberalism” and to steer clear of the repressive excesses to which comprehensive
liberalisms are susceptible.
Macedo, like Rawls, thinks that a persistent mistake of liberal political
philosophy has been the attempt to argue for the legitimacy of liberal democracy
on the grounds that some expansive ethical doctrine is superior to all rival
doctrines. Examples of such expansive ethical doctrines would be John Stuart
Mill’s ideal of individuality and the values of rational self-perfection and
enlightenment that undergird Kant’s political philosophy. Such doctrines are
expansive to the degree that they give authoritative direction to our choices in
both public and private aspects of our lives. Conceptions of liberal democracy
which are justified on the grounds of an expansive doctrine are comprehensive
liberalisms. The major problems ascribed to comprehensive liberalism are these:
no single and substantive ethical doctrine can provide more than a weak intellectual foundation for liberal democratic politics because any doctrine of that
kind can be reasonably rejected; and once political authority is exercised as the
expression of the unique truth of a particular doctrine it becomes domination (in
the morally opprobrious sense) for those who reasonably reject the doctrine
Political liberalism is now canvassed as an alternative philosophical interpretation
of liberal democracy which avoids the pitfalls of its disreputable comprehensive
cousin.4 Instead of beginning from the dubious truth of some broad ethical
doctrine, and then trying to infer the parameters of liberal democracy from these,
the philosopher of political liberalism begins from within the traditions of liberal
democratic practice itself. The resources of that tradition enable the philosopher
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to construct arguments about civic virtue, the canons of acceptable political
argument, and the principles of distributive justice we should embrace, all the
while avoiding, at least so far as possible, divisive and rationally unresolvable
questions about the good life and many other moral issues that abound under
pluralism. This endeavour will supposedly result in a theory of liberal
democracy — including a conception of common education — that is substantial
enough to give us the political unity worth defending in the midst of the diversity
worth accepting. At the same time, the preferred conception will not stand or fall
on the frail basis of any single ethical doctrine; instead, it will be acceptable to
adherents of many conflicting ethical and religious ideals, once they identify with
the tradition of liberal democratic politics from which the arguments of political
liberalism are constructed.
I want to suggest a couple of thoughts which cast doubt on the very idea that
philosophical theories of liberal democracy can be usefully distinguished according to the “comprehensive” and “political” categories which Rawls, Macedo, and
other leading political theorists currently employ. This will enable me to bring
my educational differences with Macedo into sharper focus.
First, the ethical doctrines that can be classified under the rubric of “comprehensive liberalism” are a motley bunch, and one area where they are sure to
differ is the degree to which they are expansive.5 That is to say, some doctrines
might specify the content of the good life or the principles of right conduct in
an arbitrarily restrictive manner, and this will rightly give rise to the charge of
domination when the doctrine is politically enforced. Alternatively, other ethical
doctrines that liberals might endorse are expansive to a much more modest
degree. They specify some ideal that has pervasive significance across the private
and public aspects of our lives, but the ideal might nonetheless be very openended, allowing for instantiation in many different, even conflicting ways of life
that a more expansive comprehensive liberalism would not permit. For example,
Mill (1859/1976) thought that a good human life, or at least the best human life,
would exhibit a high degree of individuality (pp. 67–90). But although individuality can take many different and laudable forms, giving it a place in the aims
of common education, say, seems a recipe for domination. Surely conscientious
citizens of a liberal democracy may reasonably and autonomously embrace ways
of life in which individuality is not a prominent trait, and so an ethical doctrine
that affirms only the centrality of autonomy to our private and public lives would
be more compatible with the diversity worth having, say, than the restrictive
ideal of Millian individuality. To be sure, autonomy is itself open to different
interpretations and some of these are less expansive that others. Autonomy has
been construed in a way that rules out the idea of obedience to authority (Wolff,
1970), but others have argued — successfully, in my view — that autonomy is
perfectly consistent with a suitably reflective acceptance of even religious
authority (Adams, 1987, pp. 123–127). In short, the abundant possible variety
of comprehensive liberalisms should make us cautious about generalizing about
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their universal deficiencies, and we should certainly not assume that the demerits
of the category as a whole are evident in the most expansive ethical doctrines,
like Mill’s individuality or Dewey’s scientism, that liberals or putative liberals
have championed in the past.6
Second, just as comprehensive liberalism is a variegated category, some of
whose members are far more accommodating to pluralism than others, political
liberalism is also a theoretical genus with many different possible species, some
of which constrain ethical diversity more severely than others. A considerable
advantage of Macedo’s political liberalism is that he is forthright about the need
to conceive the project of common education for a liberal democracy in a
“tough-minded” way. That is to say, common education must involve the cultivation of robust civic virtues that will naturally have far-reaching and constraining
effects on the moral identities that citizens form outside the public realm (p.
305). More feeble notions of common education, such as the consensual conception I critique in “Common Schools for Common Education,” are devoid of
moral credibility. But once that point is conceded, the supposed differences
between political and comprehensive liberalism begin to seem a bit vaporous.
If the most morally plausible ethical doctrines that liberals might defend in
political morality are only modestly expansive, and if the best versions of political liberalism are tough-minded in ways that significantly affect the character
of our lives outside politics, then it is hard to see how the latter accommodates
the diversity worth accepting in a way that the former cannot. The point can be
pressed a bit further. Macedo’s tough-minded political liberalism confronts a
problem of justification of the sort that comprehensive liberals have traditionally
had to address. Given that the common education he espouses likely has effects
on the ethical identity of citizens that extend far beyond the political sphere, then
it is incumbent on him to show that these effects are not so undesirable that they
outweigh the shared advantages of common education. But that means he must
answer a broadly ethical, and not merely a narrowly political, question of
justification. Moreover, since many people will think they have reason to reject
the answer Macedo or anyone else gives to that question, a common education
grounded in any sufficiently tough-minded version of political liberalism will be
open to precisely the same charge of domination that conceptions grounded in
comprehensive liberalism must confront. (Whether the charge will be justified is
another matter. My claim is only that so-called political liberalism faces
essentially the same justificatory problems as so-called comprehensive liberalism,
and that should make us doubt the whole point of the distinction.)
Yet the differences between Macedo and I do not disappear merely by casting
doubt on the division between comprehensive and political liberalism. Those
differences mainly have to do with what should actually be taught to future
citizens when we try to foster the reasonableness that he and I agree is necessary
to a common education. Macedo worries that I construe the demands of civic
reasonableness too stringently by suggesting that students be encouraged to
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explore sympathetically and open-mindedly rival conceptions of the good and to
subject the ethical or religious convictions they learn in the family to similar
scrutiny (p. 308). What I have said so far against Macedo suggests that we
cannot see that he is right merely by accepting his general strictures against both
comprehensive liberalism and the educational practices it inspires. But that does
not mean he is not right.
To explore a conception of the good or a view of moral rightness very different from my own with sympathy and open-mindedness is not necessarily to
come to sympathize, all things considered, with the beliefs and values that
constitute the subject of my exploration. At first glance, that distinction will look
like crass sophistry, but I hope an example will make it more intelligible. It is
often said of Isaiah Berlin, the great historian of political ideas, that he has an
uncanny ability to enter imaginatively into ways of thinking and feeling about
politics that are deeply foreign to our own. In his famous essay on Joseph de
Maistre, the theoretical harbinger of fascism, Berlin “demonstrates that a Jewish
liberal can manage to view the world, though with horror, through fascist or
proto-fascist eyes” (Ignatieff, 1991, p. 135; cf. Berlin, 1990). Yet if Berlin’s
emotional response to de Maistre were sheer horror he could not achieve his rich
understanding of de Maistre’s important role in intellectual history, much less
share that understanding with others. Berlin’s engagement has to be characterized
by a certain provisional sympathy, a willingness to entertain imaginatively the
thoughts and anxieties that drove de Maistre to his repellent conclusions. Yet
sympathy is only one element of this complex and delicate achievement. For
Berlin remains alert to the intellectual evasions and blind-spots of his subject, his
faulty reasoning and raw hatreds. Along with sympathy, there is the critical
acuity of the open mind,7 and in this case at least, their coordinated exercise
certainly does not issue in sympathy for de Maistre’s conclusions.
What does Isaiah Berlin’s interpretive virtuosity have to do with common
education in liberal democracies? Quite a lot. Macedo would have us bracket
questions of religious truth in common schools so far as possible. But I fear that
course has grave costs for public civility because it disables children from
coming to interpret what gives meaning to their fellow citizens’ lives with the
sympathy and open-mindedness that would nourish respectful social cooperation
in the midst of diversity. And once they begin to interpret each others’ lives in
these ways, we should naturally and rightly expect them to apply the same kind
of critical reflection to their own values. Of course, unlike the case of de
Maistre, when we succeed in understanding our fellow citizens’ conceptions of
the good or moral beliefs we will commonly find that what initially seemed
stupid or repugnant is in fact reasonable, even if we continue to think that our
own view has the better justification, and that we cannot, all things considered,
sympathize with what we have come to understand. At that point, of course, it
behooves us to recall the burdens of judgment and to practise the political
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humility and self-restraint of those who have learned to acknowledge the limits
of reasonable pluralism.
THE INVISIBLE MIDDLE GROUND
At the beginning and end of “Common Schools for Common Education,” I
suggested that my views on the common school were a matter of faith. That was
no mere rhetorical flourish. Faith is necessary not merely because I suspect that
many if not most of the de jure common schools we now have are far from
being de facto common schools. Faith is also needed because it is uncertain that
the kind of common education I advocate will find sufficiently widespread
adherence in contemporary liberal democracies. The political culture of these
societies obviously harbours powerful contradictory currents, and the virtue of
reasonableness is evinced and championed against hostile values and tendencies
which may well prevail over time.
I would like briefly to discuss one large obstacle to the widespread realization
of the kind of common education I espouse. Political discussion in pluralistic
societies, including discussion of the state’s proper role in education, must
contend with a tendency toward moral polarization. That is inevitable because
pluralism means that the spectrum of positions we sincerely defend will be wide,
and the further apart we are, the more likely we are to confront each other with
antipathy and incomprehension. The assumption of some devotees of multicultural education that politics under pluralism might aspire to the condition of
gentle conviviality we find at multi-ethnic food festivals is little short of incoherent. But even if the tendency toward moral polarization is something we must
live with, it remains a dangerous tendency which threatens to render invisible the
common political ground that people of goodwill might find were they to resist
the pathologies of polarization.
By “pathologies of polarization” I refer to a cluster of vices that undermine
serious political dialogue under the circumstances of pluralism. Prominent among
these are propensities to resort to hyperbole in expressing moral disagreement
and to depict the views of intellectual adversaries in ways that disguise all that
might be cogent in what they say. By way of illustration, we might consider the
bemused state of a reader of the Canadian Journal of Education who reads only
the papers by Kazepides and Holmes in this issue. Kazepides tells our hypothetical reader that Eamonn Callan has entered into an unholy alliance with religious
lunatics to perpetuate religious indoctrination in separate schools. Yet Holmes
tells the same reader that Eamonn Callan is the voice of some liberal authoritarian cabal, whose machinations would be appalling to George Orwell, no less,
and who would use common schools to extirpate religious faith and install a
nihilist orthodoxy in its stead. This rancorous comedy of misrepresentation would
be merely funny if it did not have the consequence of making the middle ground
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invisible, and unfortunately that is all too typical of contemporary political
debate, even when it takes the rarefied form of academic educational discourse.
Consider just one area where the invisibility of the middle ground is morally
debilitating for us all. Holmes recounts an incident in which he was accused of
racism merely because he made empirical claims about the relative academic
success of different racial groups in schools (p. 290). I do not know whether
Holmes was right or not in the particular claims he made, but even if he were
very wrong, it is easy to see that the charge of “racism” was a moral outrage.
For what that charge imputes is a kind of moral heresy: to be a racist is to be
beyond the pale of liberal democratic deliberation, with Nazis and slaveowners,
who would deny the essential moral equality of all citizens. We do not reason
with Nazis, say, as we might reason with other insiders of the liberal democratic
tradition because with Nazis disagreement occurs at the very bedrock of our
moral identity, and therefore dialogue, if we care to enter into dialogue, must be
characterized by the most extreme moral revulsion toward the views with which
we engage. So if we brand people as “racist” whenever we disagree with them
on some question about the political or educational significance of race, not only
do we debase the currency of legitimate moral revulsion, we also make serious
political dialogue about race almost impossible, because the price of disagreeing
with anyone is to be immediately declared a moral heretic on a par with Nazis
and kindred outlaws of civilization. Unfortunately, Holmes assumes that because
I take racism to be a grave social evil that schools should address, I must be
ready to commend everything done in the name of anti-racist pedagogy (pp.
290–291). Nothing could be further from the truth. Like his ill-mannered and
ignorant accusers, Holmes seems incapable of seeing anything that might lie in
the middle ground.
I believe that secular liberals and many other citizens of liberal democracy
might find common ground in other areas of educational policy — for instance,
sex education — where comedies of mutual misrepresentation currently hold the
stage. But perhaps to see that we need a reasonableness that we ourselves
possess only fitfully and partially, and so it may be an idle faith to believe that
we can teach it to our children.8
NOTES
1
Kazepides might pay more attention to his two philosophical heroes on this point: “But, to
paraphrase Wittgenstein, conceptual analysis leaves everything as it is” (Peters, 1972, p. 14).
Analysis of the minutiae of ordinary language has evidently not left everything as it is when
analysis is taken to justify a jihad against religious upbringing.
2
My comments here hint at a subtle but perhaps important disagreement with Rawls about the
interpretation of the burdens of judgment. Rawls (1993) says that the burdens of judgment require
us to do without the ideal of ethical or religious truth in political discussion, and to replace it with
the ideal of reasonable agreement (pp. 94, 125–129). But if reasonableness simply disengages us
from the ideal of truth, it is hard to see how it can be commended as a virtue at all. It might be
better to say that the burdens of judgment require us to circumscribe our political practices to the
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moral truth we can discern with confidence on the basis of our shared capacities to reason, and
they restrain us from exceeding those limits in part because we acknowledge that others may
apprehend important truths that we cannot discern on that basis.
3
I am grateful to Roland Case for helping me to see the idea of the burdens of judgment in this
way, although I am not sure that this is what he wanted to show me.
4
The literature on political liberalism grows apace. A good place to start is Charles Larmore’s
(1990) characteristically elegant and compact paper. For a trenchant attempt to develop the
educational implications of a version of political liberalism, see Strike (1994).
5
This point tends to be obscured by the tendentious label “comprehensive liberalism” because that
suggests an ethical doctrine which specifies the values we should live by in comprehensive detail.
But I doubt that any recognizably liberal doctrine could do that. Rawls sometimes uses a quasioxymoron — “partially comprehensive” — to characterize the liberal ethical doctrines which
political liberalism distances itself from. But that does not solve the problem. It would be much
less confusing to contrast ethical with political liberalism, and to acknowledge openly that ethical
liberal doctrines vary greatly in their expansiveness.
6
I say “putative liberals” because I doubt that Dewey is the genuine article. The massive emphasis
on solidarity and the integration of interests in his conception of democratic culture make his
solution to the problem of social unity a lot closer to communitarianism than to liberalism (e.g.,
Dewey, 1916, pp. 81–99). But my reading of Dewey is far from the standard interpretation.
7
We are all indebted to William Hare’s seminal work on open-mindedness as an educational aim
(e.g., Hare, 1985). I do not know if he would commend my use of his ideas here.
8
Research for this paper and “Common Schools for Common Education” was helped by funding
from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I am very grateful for this
support.
REFERENCES
Adams, R. M. (1987). The virtue of faith and other essays in philosophical theology. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Austin, J. L. (1964). A plea for excuses. In V. C. Chappell (Ed.), Ordinary language (pp. 41–63).
New York: Dover.
Berlin, I. (1990). The crooked timber of humanity. London: John Murray.
Callan, E. (1994). Beyond sentimental civic education. American Journal of Education, 102,
109–234.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan.
Hare, W. (1985). In defence of open-mindedness. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Ignatieff, M. (1991). Understanding Fascism? In E. Margalit & A. Margalit (Eds.), Isaiah Berlin: A
celebration (pp. 135–145). London: Hogarth.
Larmore, C. (1990). Political liberalism. Political Theory, 18, 339–360.
Mill, J. S. (1976). On liberty. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. (Original work published 1859)
Nozick, R. (1981). Philosophical explanations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Peters, R. S. (1972). Education and the educated man. In R. F. Dearden, P. H. Hirst, & R. S. Peters
(Eds.), A critique of current educational aims (pp. 1–16). London: Routledge.
Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Rawls, J. (1993). Political liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
332
DISCUSSION
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DÉBAT
Strike, K. (1994). On the construction of public speech: Pluralism and public reason. Educational
Theory, 44, 1–26.
Taylor, C. (1991). Comments and replies. Inquiry, 34, 237–255.
Wolff, R. P. (1970). In defence of anarchism. New York: Harper & Row.
Eamonn Callan is in the Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton,
Alberta, T6G 2G5.
Articles
La participation des enseignants du secondaire
à l’encadrement des élèves: une analyse stratégique1
Daniel Turcotte
université laval
L’encadrement des élèves apparaît comme une avenue à privilégier quant aux efforts de
réduction de l’inadaptation scolaire. Cependant, l’implication, pourtant essentielle, des
enseignants dans cette voie fait souvent problème. Partant de l’objectif général d’en
arriver à une meilleure compréhension de la participation des enseignants à l’encadrement
des élèves, la présente recherche s’est intéressée à l’étude de la contribution des
enseignants de quatre écoles secondaires au système d’encadrement mis en place dans leur
école. S’appuyant sur les concepts et la démarche de l’analyse stratégique, cette étude met
en lumière les conditions et les contraintes de cette participation et en suggère une
interprétation basée sur les notions de stratégie, de pouvoir et de jeu.
Although mainstreaming holds promise for the education of children with special needs,
it is not always easy to involve classroom teachers in this strategy. My study of teachers’
contributions to mainstreaming in four secondary schools uses concepts and methods
drawn from the field of strategic analysis to examine conditions of and constraints on
teacher involvement, and to propose an interpretation based on the notions of strategy,
power, and play.
En dépit des réformes et des ajustements apportés au cours des dernières années,
la scolarisation de niveau secondaire demeure toujours au centre de controverses
et de remises en questions. D’un côté, les médias s’empressent d’étaler les
situations de violence à l’école et dénoncent le taux élevé d’abandons scolaires;
de l’autre, plusieurs spécialistes s’interrogent sur les façons de transformer une
réalité considérée comme inquiétante. Des titres évocateurs comme A Nation at
Risk (NCEE, 1983) ou L’école détournée (Balthazar et Bélanger, 1989) illustrent
la sévérité des critiques adressées à l’école secondaire.
Aux yeux de certains observateurs, des signes de malaise indiquent qu’il y a
encore des embâcles dans le processus qui mène au développement complet des
élèves (Conseil supérieur de l’éducation, 1982). Ces symptômes sont, notamment,
l’abandon scolaire, l’absentéisme, l’indiscipline, l’insuffisance de rendement, en
fait tous ces comportements qui peuvent être considérés comme autant de
manifestations d’une situation d’inadaptation scolaire (COPIE, 1981; Crespo et
Cournoyer, 1978).
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20:3 (1995)
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DANIEL TURCOTTE
Une voie de solution fréquemment suggérée pour prévenir et réduire ces
manifestations d’inadaptation est l’encadrement des élèves. Plusieurs estiment en
effet que “la qualité de l’encadrement des élèves aura un grand impact sur la
qualité de leurs apprentissages et de leur intégration à la vie en société” (Boivin
et Plante-Proulx, 1989, p. 17).
Si l’importance de l’encadrement fait généralement consensus, les activités
auxquelles il fait référence ouvrent toutefois à des applications diverses. Ainsi,
dans l’entente nationale des enseignants du Québec 1986–1988, l’encadrement
est défini comme une intervention auprès d’un élève ou d’un groupe d’élèves
visant le développement personnel et social de l’élève et l’invitant à assumer ses
responsabilités relativement à sa propre formation (CPNCC, 1987). D’autres
auteurs envisagent l’encadrement comme un ensemble de mesures et de services
éducatifs mis à la disposition des élèves d’une école afin de leur permettre de
poursuivre leur formation et leur développement de façon continue et harmonieuse (Dionne, 1986) ou encore comme un soutien global et continu aux élèves
sur le plan des apprentissages (Boivin et Plante-Proulx, 1989).
Lorsqu’il est question d’encadrement des élèves, les enseignants sont généralement considérés comme les premières personnes concernées. Comme acteurs
ayant les contacts les plus étroits et les plus réguliers avec les élèves, ils
occupent une position privilégiée pour leur apporter l’aide et le soutien dont ils
ont besoin pour leur permettre de poursuivre leur développement. Cependant, les
enseignants sont souvent décrits comme non motivés, apathiques et responsables,
en partie, des difficultés de l’élève (Hohl, 1985). Sollicités et critiqués à la fois,
ils ne manifestent pas toujours un grand empressement à s’engager dans les
activités d’encadrement. Dans une étude sur le sujet, Dupont (1978) mentionne
qu’à peine 40% des enseignants participent aux activités d’encadrement des
élèves. Son observation semble toujours d’actualité puisque plusieurs observateurs sont d’avis que la situation de l’encadrement des élèves au secondaire
demeure problématique et requiert des correctifs substantiels (Comité catholique
du Conseil supérieur de l’éducation, 1989; Dionne, 1986; Théroux, 1986).
Plusieurs obstacles contribueraient à entraver la participation des enseignants
à l’encadrement des élèves. La surcharge de travail (nombre d’élèves par groupe,
nombre de groupes à rencontrer, hétérogénéité des groupes-classe), l’ambiguïté
des tâches et la rigidité des règles régissant l’organisation scolaire (régime
pédagogique, règles budgétaires, conventions collectives, grille horaire) sont des
facteurs fréquemment mentionnés à cet égard (Comité catholique du Conseil
Supérior de l’Éducation, 1989; Dionne, 1986). Cependant, selon Dupont (1978),
la faible collaboration des enseignants dans l’encadrement des élèves serait
principalement attribuable à l’enseignant lui-même, particulièrement à “son
manque d’intérêt et de motivation, son manque de préparation, ses difficultés de
relations avec les élèves et son manque de sens professionnel” (p. 121).
Ces observations sur la participation des enseignants à l’encadrement des
élèves, toutes éclairantes qu’elles soient, présentent deux limites importantes. La
L’ENCADREMENT DES ÉLÈVES
335
première est de présenter la participation des enseignants en termes dichotomiques de “collaboration-absence de collaboration” alors que dans la réalité, cette
participation se présente sous différentes formes. La seconde est de situer l’explication de la participation dans un cadre déterministe. Or, se limiter à une telle
explication, c’est faire abstraction du caractère dynamique et souvent imprévisible du comportement organisationnel. En effet, l’appartenance à une organisation
pose certaines contraintes à l’acteur mais celui-ci n’est jamais totalement passif
pour autant: “Il a ses propres buts, ses propres projets qu’il tente de poursuivre
à travers les contraintes avec lesquelles il est confronté” (Friedberg, 1972, p. 28).
La présente étude vise à mieux comprendre la participation des enseignants à
l’encadrement des élèves en l’abordant dans une perspective interactionniste,
c’est-à-dire en approchant cette participation comme un ensemble d’actions
compréhensible à la lumière des intentions de l’enseignant et des moyens dont
il dispose pour réaliser ses intentions. La participation se présente alors comme
une activité intentionnelle, inscrite dans un contexte de rationalité limitée et
mettant en jeu des objectifs et des enjeux particuliers.
LE CADRE CONCEPTUEL
La participation, telle qu’entendue dans cette étude, dépasse la contribution aux
décisions pour englober les contributions de tous genres qu’un acteur fait à une
organisation (Dion, 1972). Abordée dans une telle optique, tout membre d’une
organisation adopte toujours une certaine forme de participation: “Chacun de
nous, qu’il le veuille ou non, qu’il en soit réellement conscient ou non, participe
à tout moment à la vie des ensembles sociaux dont il fait partie” (Friedberg,
1972, p. 87). Dans la mesure où “on ne peut pas ne pas avoir de comportement”
(Watzlawick, Weakland et Fisch, 1975, p. 46), l’inactivité, au même titre que
l’activité, influence les autres et, conséquemment, contribue ou fait entrave à la
mission d’une organisation. Ainsi, il n’y a pas des individus qui participent et
d’autres qui ne participent pas: il n’y a que des acteurs qui jugent préférable de
s’engager dans la vie de leur organisation et d’autres qui préfèrent ne pas
s’engager. Ainsi, la participation apparaît comme une conduite stratégique
“toujours révisable qui dépend de la situation dans laquelle se trouvent les
individus et des objectifs qu’ils visent dans leur action” (Friedberg, 1972, p. 92).
Présentée en ces termes, la participation peut être étudiée à partir des concepts
de l’analyse stratégique (Bernoux, 1985; Crozier, 1964; Crozier et Friedberg,
1977; Friedberg, 1972). Ces concepts font principalement référence aux objectifs
de l’acteur, aux enjeux de sa participation, au pouvoir qu’il détient dans l’organisation, aux contraintes et ressources dont il dispose et aux stratégies qu’il utilise.
Partant de ce cadre conceptuel, l’analyse stratégique suggère une démarche
hypothético-inductive qui part de l’expérience vécue des acteurs pour découvrir
leurs comportements et remonter ensuite aux jeux qui lient les divers acteurs
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DANIEL TURCOTTE
entre eux. Cette démarche renvoie à une méthode d’étude de cas axée sur “l’observation et la mesure des attitudes, comportements et stratégies [des acteurs] par
l’évaluation de leurs ressources spécifiques ainsi que des contraintes de toutes
sortes qui limitent leur marge de manoeuvre et pèsent sur leur stratégie” (Crozier
et Friedberg, 1977, p. 94). Évidemment, une telle approche ne vise pas à rendre
compte des actions particulières de chacun; elle cherche plutôt à fournir une
représentation globale de la logique du comportement des acteurs à la lumière
des contraintes que pose la réalisation d’une action collective au sein d’un
système structuré.
LA MÉTHODOLOGIE
Dans le cadre de la présente étude, cette démarche fut opérationnalisée par la
réalisation d’entrevues semi-dirigées auprès de 80 informateurs provenant de
quatre écoles secondaires. La population étudiante de ces écoles varie entre 1 227
élèves pour la plus petite et 2 322 élèves pour la plus populeuse. Le nombre
d’enseignants fluctue entre 83 et 147. Deux écoles offrent les cinq niveaux du
secondaire, alors que les deux autres touchent principalement le deuxième cycle,
pour une, et le premier cycle, pour l’autre.
Les informateurs
Le fait d’étudier quatre écoles différentes s’est révélé un facteur déterminant sur
l’étendue de l’échantillon des informateurs. Voulant éviter un élargissement indu
de l’échantillon tout en s’assurant d’une bonne connaissance de la réalité de
chacune des écoles, nous avons jugé à la fois réaliste et pertinent d’établir à 20
le nombre d’entretiens dans chacune des écoles. Selon Lofland (1971), les études
ayant recours à l’entretien qualitatif utilisent généralement entre 20 et 50 entretiens et ce nombre est généralement suffisant pour avoir une bonne connaissance
d’un milieu.
Au total, 80 informateurs, dont 65 enseignants et 15 personnes appartenant à
d’autres catégories d’acteurs (membres de la direction et autres personnels
impliqués dans l’encadrement) ont collaboré à cette étude. Le choix de ces
informateurs fut réalisé avec le souci d’obtenir le plus large éventail possible de
données sur la réalité de l’enseignant face à l’encadrement des élèves. Les
paramètres de diversification suivants ont été utilisés: le rôle au sein du système
d’encadrement, le niveau et le secteur d’enseignement, la matière enseignée et
l’ancienneté dans l’école. Ainsi, le choix des informateurs a été arrêté en prenant
soin de rencontrer au moins un enseignant affecté à chacune des fonctions prévues au système d’encadrement, en s’assurant d’une représentation pour chaque
niveau d’enseignement dispensé et pour chacune des principales matières, et en
prévoyant la rencontre de jeunes enseignants et d’enseignants plus expérimentés.
L’ENCADREMENT DES ÉLÈVES
337
La cueillette des données
Les cueillette des données s’est déroulée en trois étapes. La première fut principalement axée sur la connaissance formelle du système d’encadrement mis en
place dans chacune des écoles participantes. La deuxième étape a porté sur
l’étude du vécu quotidien des enseignants dans la mise en application du système
d’encadrement. Cette étape, qui constitue “la condition même d’une étude
sérieuse du champ” (Crozier et Friedberg, 1977, p. 398), a conduit à la réalisation d’entrevues semi-dirigées portant particulièrement sur: (a) le rôle et les
responsabilités de l’informateur dans le système d’encadrement, (b) les contraintes qui s’imposent à lui dans le cadre de ces activités et les difficultés qui
en découlent, (c) l’évaluation qu’il fait de sa situation — ses sources de satisfaction et d’insatisfaction, ses espoirs de changement et, (d) ses possibilités d’action
face à la situation actuelle. La troisième étape a consisté à retourner auprès de
quelques informateurs afin de vérifier la fidélité de la reconstruction des informations recueillies. Cette étape de vérification, suggérée par la méthode naturaliste
(Lincoln et Guba, 1985), prolonge l’association des répondants à la démarche de
recherche tout en assurant une plus grande crédibilité aux résultats.
Analyse et traitement des données
Les données ainsi recueillies ont fait l’objet d’une analyse interprétative-descriptive (Tesch, 1990). Les documents accumulés ont été répertoriés et l’enregistrement sonore des entrevues fut transcrit intégralement. Ces transcriptions furent
ensuite soumises à une analyse thématique à partir de la démarche suggérée par
Van der Maren (1986, 1987): codage des données, classement et catégorisation,
structuration et interprétation. Après un découpage basé sur les thèmes abordés,
les segments d’information extraits des entrevues individuelles ont fait l’objet
d’un recoupement transversal (Deslauriers, 1987) qui a permis de faire ressortir
les différences et similitudes dans les propos des informateurs. Cette étape a
conduit à l’interprétation des données par la transposition des propos des informateurs en termes de structure de jeu.
LES RÉSULTATS
Précisons d’abord l’existence, dans les quatre écoles visitées, d’un mécanisme
formel d’encadrement des élèves. Désigné comme le “système d’encadrement”
dans trois écoles et comme la “politique d’aide à l’élève en difficulté” dans
l’autre, ce mécanisme prévoit une démarche d’intervention où les enseignants
sont appelés à assumer différentes tâches qui se regroupent en quatre attributions
principales: (1) le contrôle (des absences, retards et comportements), (2) l’intervention auprès de l’élève et de ses parents lorsqu’une difficulté se présente, (3)
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DANIEL TURCOTTE
la référence de l’élève à un autre intervenant lorsque la difficulté persiste et
enfin, (4) la transmission écrite de renseignements sur le fonctionnement de
l’élève. Donc, l’essentiel de la contribution attendue des enseignants en matière
d’encadrement correspond à des activités de dépistage, d’intervention et de
référence des élèves en difficulté.
La participation: une activité intentionnelle
L’étude de la participation des enseignants à la réalisation de ces attributions fait
ressortir une différence marquée entre le discours et la pratique. En effet, même
si certains ont l’impression que “cela ne donne absolument rien d’appliquer le
système d’encadrement,” la plupart des enseignants interrogés s’entendent pour
reconnaître l’impact positif de ce système, et pour affirmer la nécessité d’actions
concertées et cohérentes auprès des élèves. Cependant, leur engagement dans
l’encadrement des élèves est généralement inconsistant. Certains enseignants se
font un devoir de mettre systématiquement en application les modalités d’encadrement prévues, la plupart, cependant, les appliquent de façon sélective et
irrégulière, et quelques-uns “négligent” même constamment d’exécuter les tâches
qui leur sont confiées. Voici quelques illustrations de cette réalité.
Le système officiel, il serait rentable si on le jouait à fond mais il est laissé à la discrétion
de chacun et comme le système répugne à plusieurs, parfois il n’est pas utilisé. (école #1)
C’est un bon système en autant que tu le mettes en application; mais souvent c’est le
manque de temps. C’est sûr que le système serait plus efficace si chacun faisait ce qu’il
a à faire comme ce doit être fait. Mais tu es tolérant et tu laisses passer: pendant ce
temps-là, le système n’est pas appliqué. (école #2)
La participation à l’encadrement prend donc forme à travers des pratiques dont
la logique n’est pas immédiatement apparente. En effet, les enseignants continuent de privilégier les actions individuelles et isolées tout en dénonçant l’absence de concertation et en reconnaissant la nécessité d’une plus grande cohésion
dans les interventions auprès des élèves. L’identification des enjeux liés à la
participation à l’encadrement fournit des éléments d’explication à cette apparente
contradiction.
Les objectifs et les enjeux des acteurs
L’analyse du discours des informateurs fait ressortir que la participation des
enseignants à l’encadrement soulève des enjeux qui vont au-delà de l’objectif
d’aider l’élève à fonctionner adéquatement et à réussir au plan académique. Trois
de ces enjeux incitent à une mise en application limitée du système d’encadre-
L’ENCADREMENT DES ÉLÈVES
339
ment. Ils touchent l’alourdissement de la tâche, l’altération de ses rapports avec
les élèves et la perception négative de la direction et des autres enseignants.
La mise en application des dispositions du système d’encadrement vient alourdir une tâche déjà surchargée. En outre, le contrôle des absences, l’information
aux parents, l’intervention auprès de l’élève sont des activités qui comportent le
risque d’entraîner une altération des rapports avec les élèves puisque ces derniers
n’apprécient généralement pas que l’enseignant “dénonce” leur situation.
Le professeur qui se fait détester, les étudiants lui mettent des bâtons dans les roues tout
le temps. (école #2)
J’ai souvent entendu des élèves dire: “Lui, chaque fois qu’il a un problème, il va en parler
avec les autres.” Ce n’est pas bon que les élèves détectent cela; ça fait plus de tort que
de bien. (école #3)
De plus, la recours à la procédure de référence soulève la crainte d’être perçu,
par la direction et par les autres enseignants, comme quelqu’un qui rencontre des
difficultés en classe ou qui est incompétent dans la solution de ses problèmes
avec les élèves. Quelques exemples:
C’est toujours un peu “tannant” de dire: “J’ai de la misère avec cet élève-là.” Les gens
ont leur fierté et leur orgueil. (école #3)
Il y a des enseignants qui vont garder l’information sur les difficultés qu’ils rencontrent
pour ne pas faire pâlir leur étoile. (école #4)
Si ces différents enjeux contribuent à freiner l’empressement de l’enseignant
à s’engager dans l’encadrement, d’autres considérations exercent une influence
opposée. C’est le cas de l’intérêt à préserver le système d’encadrement; même
si ce système ne permet pas toujours d’apporter une solution immédiate aux
problèmes que rencontre l’enseignant en classe, son impact positif sur le fonctionnement d’ensemble de l’école est largement reconnu. L’encadrement contribue à diminuer les problèmes de discipline dans l’école et, quand il y a moins
de problèmes de discipline, le rôle de l’enseignant s’en trouve facilité.
Il y a vraiment un travail d’encadrement qui se fait ici à la polyvalente et tout le monde
en profite. Tous les enseignants profitent des retombées de ce travail. (école #1)
Quand les élèves sont encadrés, cela fonctionne toujours mieux. C’est plus facile pour
l’élève; c’est plus facile pour l’enseignant aussi. (école #3)
La participation des enseignants est également influencée par les mesures utilisées par la direction pour assurer la mise en application du système. À cet égard,
l’effort du personnel de direction s’actualise à travers quatre moyens d’action
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DANIEL TURCOTTE
principaux: la mise en place d’un climat positif, la définition de valeurs communes, la participation au processus décisionnel et la spécification de règles
formelles.
Qu’il soit associé à des principes comme la solidarité, l’autonomie, la cogestion ou la collaboration, un climat de travail basé sur des relations harmonieuses
entre la direction et les enseignants apparaît, aux yeux du personnel de direction,
comme un important facteur d’efficacité dans une organisation scolaire. La direction estime notamment que l’adhésion des enseignants aux objectifs du système
d’encadrement sera facilitée si ces derniers se sentent respectés comme professionnels et comme personnes.
Ici, il y a beaucoup d’activités et c’est ce qui rend l’école intéressante: c’est sa vie. (. . .)
On essaie de créer un milieu de vie pour les élèves et pour les enseignants. (. . .) Si les
gens s’impliquent, ils vont être heureux et fiers de leur école. (école #1)
Une deuxième modalité d’action de la direction consiste à définir avec les
enseignants des valeurs de base qui servent de “toile de fond,” “d’épine dorsale,”
au fonctionnement de l’école. Le respect, l’excellence, la réussite, l’appartenance
et le civisme sont de ces valeurs qui sont proposées comme guides aux enseignants dans les écoles participantes. Partant de l’idée que les actions individuelles
doivent se greffer aux préoccupations collectives, l’affirmation de valeurs communes est considérée par la direction comme un incitatif à la concertation entre
les acteurs.
La mise à contribution des enseignants dans le processus de planification et
d’implantation du système d’encadrement est une autre action utilisée par la
direction pour susciter leur engagement dans sa mise en application. Selon ce qui
se dégage des propos des informateurs, la contribution au processus décisionnel
peut avoir un effet sur deux plans. Au plan pratique, les enseignants sont portés
à respecter davantage les règles d’un système si celui-ci répond aux besoins
qu’ils ont exprimés; ils agissent alors avec le souci de préserver ce système. Par
ailleurs, au plan normatif, la participation à la mise sur pied du système contribue
à créer une obligation morale d’y adhérer.
C’est un système qui a été accepté au niveau de l’école, par le syndicat, par la direction,
et tout le monde y tient. Automatiquement t’es obligé de le prendre. (école #1)
Quand tu as participé à la mise sur pied d’un système, par le suite, c’est un peu gênant
de ne pas le mettre en application. (école #3)
La spécification de règles délimitant de façon explicite la contribution attendue
des enseignants dans la mise en application du système d’encadrement constitue
une quatrième modalité d’action de la direction. Les mécanismes utilisés pour
assurer le respect de ces règles s’inscrivent dans une dynamique de rétribution-
L’ENCADREMENT DES ÉLÈVES
341
sanction conduisant à la rétribution du conformisme par une réponse “supportante” et à la sanction de la déviance par “l’isolement” de l’enseignant fautif, par
l’absence d’appui de la part de la direction ou par l’application de mesures
disciplinaires.
L’enseignant qui ne collabore pas au système, il ne reçoit pas d’aide. On lui dit: “Tu veux
fonctionner seul, alors arrange-toi avec tes problèmes!.” (école #1)
Il y a des choses dans le système que tous les enseignants doivent faire; ils n’ont pas le
choix. S’ils ne le font pas, je peux imposer des sanctions. (école #2)
Le contrôle de la direction n’arrive cependant pas à encadrer la participation
des enseignants dans un modèle unique. La mise en application du système d’encadrement donne lieu à un éventail de comportements oscillant entre la concertation et l’individualisme, la cohésion et la dispersion, l’utilisation systématique
et l’application chaotique.
La marge de liberté des enseignants
Malgré les contraintes qui pèsent sur eux, les enseignants disposent d’une marge
de liberté qu’ils peuvent utiliser pour négocier leur façon de participer à l’encadrement. Les atouts sur lesquels ils fondent cette marge de manoeuvre se regroupent en quatre catégories: la compétence, la position d’intermédiaire entre l’école
et le milieu, le contrôle de l’information et l’imprécision des règles organisationnelles.
Une première source de pouvoir des enseignants repose sur la compétence qui
leur est reconnue en matière d’encadrement des élèves. Cette compétence découle
d’une part, de la nature même de l’inadaptation scolaire; c’est un problème
complexe face auquel il est généralement impossible d’identifier une intervention
idéale et où chaque situation appelle une action qui doit tenir compte du contexte
et des acteurs en présence. L’impossibilité d’identifier une “meilleure” façon de
faire laisse à l’enseignant une importante marge de liberté quant au moment et
à la nature des interventions à poser.
Outre le pouvoir collectif découlant de la zone d’incertitude liée au phénomène
même de l’inadaptation, les enseignants peuvent également élargir leur marge de
liberté par la maîtrise de compétences particulières en matière de prévention ou
de réduction de l’inadaptation scolaire. Ainsi, l’enseignant qui ne fait jamais
appel à la direction se sent moins dépendant de son support.
Je n’ai pas d’étudiants qui me créent des embêtements parce que, quand ils commencent
à brasser, je règle rapidement le problème. (. . .) Je me fous des procédures parce que je
n’ai pas besoin des autres pour diriger ma classe. (école #1)
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DANIEL TURCOTTE
Moi, je n’ai aucun problème de discipline en classe alors, l’opinion des autres, je m’en
soucie peu. C’est ce que je pense qui est prioritaire. (. . .) Et la direction ne viendra pas
demander à quelqu’un qui n’a pas de problème de changer. (école #2)
En tant qu’intermédiaires entre les parents et l’école, les enseignants occupent
une position stratégique au sein de l’organisation scolaire. D’une part, c’est sur
leur action en classe que repose la réputation de l’école; d’autre part, c’est par
l’intermédiaire des liens qu’ils tissent avec les élèves et avec les parents que
s’établissent les passerelles entre l’école et le milieu. Cette position frontalière,
qui leur permet d’avoir accès à l’information sur ce qui se passe dans l’école et
à celle qui est véhiculée à l’extérieur de l’école, est d’autant plus stratégique que
les relations école-milieu représentent un aspect particulièrement délicat du
fonctionnement des écoles secondaires: peu d’organisations sont aussi exposées
à la critique et à la remise en question. Comme la crédibilité d’une école repose
en bonne partie sur l’image qu’en projettent les enseignants, il est nécessaire
pour la direction de maintenir un climat harmonieux d’où l’exigence d’une
certaine souplesse face aux enseignants.
Une troisième source de pouvoir des enseignants tient au contrôle qu’ils
exercent sur l’information. En effet, comme la classe est généralement considérée
comme un “territoire privé” où l’enseignant est “le seul maître après Dieu,” les
enseignants sont considérés comme les premiers, sinon les seuls interlocuteurs
mandatés pour rapporter ce qui s’y passe. Comme la mise en application du
système d’encadrement repose en grande partie sur les informations transmises
par les enseignants puisque c’est sur la base de ces informations que sont planifiées, mises en place et évaluées les interventions liées à l’encadrement, le contrôle de l’information leur confère un pouvoir important. L’exclusivité territoriale
de la classe et le contrôle de l’information que cette exclusivité permet, contribuent donc à la marge de liberté dont disposent les enseignants.
Moi, quand j’entre dans une classe, je ferme la porte et je la mène comme je veux; c’est
MA classe. Je me sens vraiment autonome. (école #2)
Plusieurs professeurs n’osent pas parler de ce qui se passe dans leur classe. Il y en a qui
ont moins de discipline, mais, pour cacher leurs problèmes, ils disent: “Moi je n’ai pas
de problème.” Pourtant, on sait tous fort bien qu’ils en ont. (école #4)
Enfin, la quatrième source de pouvoir des enseignants tient à la nature des
règles qui régissent le système d’encadrement. Ces règles sont généralement peu
explicites sur les situations qui doivent faire l’objet d’une intervention, sur les
actions à poser et sur le rôle de l’enseignant. Alors que les règles sont générales,
les situations qui se présentent sont particulières, spécifiques et souvent inédites.
Donc, même si les règles déterminent les modalités d’application du système
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343
d’encadrement, leur caractère général entraîne l’existence d’une zone d’incertitude dont les enseignants peuvent tirer profit pour élargir leur marge de liberté.
On constate donc que les enseignants disposent d’une autonomie considérable
quant à leur participation à l’encadrement des élèves. Cette autonomie n’est
cependant pas sans limites; si elle est balisée, d’une part, par les actions de la
direction, elle est également assujettie, comme nous allons le voir, au fait que la
participation à l’encadrement est une activité qui s’inscrit dans un système
d’action collective.
L’ENCADREMENT: UNE ACTION COLLECTIVE
La reconnaissance de la dimension collective de la participation à l’encadrement
repose sur deux observations principales: la nature collective des bénéfices
produits par le système d’encadrement et l’évaluation de l’impact de l’action
individuelle des enseignants sur les résultats du système.
Lorsqu’ils évaluent l’efficacité du système d’encadrement, c’est généralement
au niveau du fonctionnement global de l’école que les enseignants en situent les
bénéfices les plus significatifs. En effet, à leurs yeux, l’impact principal de
l’encadrement se situe au plan de la réduction des flâneries et de la diminution
des problèmes de discipline dans les corridors; pour ce qui est d’aider un élève
en difficulté ou de contrôler les troubles de comportement en classe, leur jugement est plus réservé. L’application du système d’encadrement n’est pas toujours
une solution aux problèmes qui se présentent dans leur classe. Donc, bien que
le système profite à tous les acteurs en contribuant à améliorer le fonctionnement
général de l’école, chacun n’en retire pas pour autant des bénéfices personnels
dans la réalité de sa classe.
En outre, aux yeux des enseignants, il n’y a pas toujours de lien entre leur
participation personnelle à l’encadrement et l’efficacité du système. Ils perçoivent
généralement l’influence de leur participation personnelle comme plutôt négligeable sur les résultats du système: action collective et participation individuelle
ne font pas un mais deux.
Ces deux observations sur les bénéfices du système et sur l’impact de la
participation individuelle peuvent justifier le faible intérêt des enseignants à
s’engager dans l’encadrement des élèves. En effet, dans la mesure où la mise en
application du système comporte des exigences importantes et dans la mesure où
la contribution personnelle apparaît avoir peu d’impact sur l’efficacité du système, l’enseignant a intérêt à laisser les autres assumer la responsabilité de cette
mise en application: il peut alors en retirer les bénéfices, puisqu’ils sont collectifs, tout en évitant d’en subir les inconvénients. Cette stratégie de désengagement ou de défection comporte cependant un risque: si elle était adoptée par tous
les enseignants, le système deviendrait inopérant et chacun perdrait alors les
bénéfices collectifs qu’il en retire. Donc, même si la marge de liberté dont il
dispose permet à l’enseignant de limiter son engagement dans l’encadrement des
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DANIEL TURCOTTE
élèves, il doit veiller à ce que le système d’encadrement soit maintenu s’il veut
conserver les avantages qu’il en retire. En ce sens, plus l’enseignant retire des
bénéfices du système, plus il sera soucieux d’en assurer la survie. On constate
donc que la participation à l’encadrement doit être analysée en tenant compte à
la fois de l’autonomie dont dispose l’enseignant et des contraintes de l’action
collective, contraintes découlant de l’impossibilité de prévoir la participation des
autres et de la nécessité d’assurer la survie du système. Ainsi abordée, le cadre
décisionnel qui s’offre à l’enseignant peut être circonscrit à l’intérieur de quatre
possibilités qui sont illustrées dans la figure suivant.
La première possibilité (voir figure 1) consiste en une application des dispositions du système d’encadrement de la part de tous les acteurs (I): le système
atteint alors une efficacité maximale et l’enseignant est susceptible de retirer des
bénéfices qui dépassent son investissement. Le seconde possibilité implique une
mise en application du système de la part de l’enseignant couplée à une défection
de la part des autres acteurs (II): l’efficacité du système est alors limitée et
l’investissement individuel de l’enseignant excède largement les bénéfices qu’il
en retire. Par ailleurs, si l’enseignant fait défection mais que les autres enseignants mettent en application le système (III), comme l’influence de la participation individuelle est limitée, les résultats sont satisfaisants et les bénéfices de
l’enseignant dépassent alors largement son investissement. Enfin, quatrième
possibilité, si aucun enseignant ne met en application le système (IV), son
efficacité est nulle et éventuellement il sera aboli, éliminant alors toute possibilité
de profiter des bénéfices collectifs qu’il produit. Donc, si dans l’immédiat la
défection est une option qui n’est pas nécessairement désavantageuse, à long
terme elle peut se révéler très coûteuse.
En se référant à ces possibilités, la participation peut alors être abordée comme
le résultat d’une décision stratégique où, parmi un ensemble d’alternatives,
Les autres acteurs
L’enseignant
Application
Défection
Application
Défection
I
efficacité: excellente
II
efficacité: limitée
III
efficacité: bonne
IV
efficacité: nulle
FIGURE 1
Les stratégies possibles de l’enseignant et les résultats prévisibles
L’ENCADREMENT DES ÉLÈVES
345
l’enseignant choisit le mode de participation qui est susceptible d’être le plus
avantageux pour lui. Il devient alors possible d’expliquer l’apparente contradiction entre le discours des enseignants sur la nécessité d’une application rigoureuse et constante du système d’encadrement et l’inconsistance de leur action en
la matière. En effet, l’application rigoureuse et constante du système est une
option avantageuse à la condition que tous les autres acteurs mettent également
le système en application; dans le cas contraire, cette option est moins “payante”
puisque l’investissement de l’enseignant dépasse largement les bénéfices qu’il
peut retirer. À prime abord, l’option la plus avantageuse, d’un point de vue
individuel, serait de laisser les autres acteurs assumer la mise en application du
système. Cette option offre la possibilité de participer aux bénéfices collectifs
sans avoir à en assumer les inconvénients. Toutefois, si tous les enseignants
optent pour cette possibilité, le système sera éventuellement aboli entraînant du
même coup la perte des bénéfices. Cette option comporte donc un risque non
négligeable.
En fait, toute la difficulté vient du fait que l’efficacité de la stratégie personnelle de l’enseignant est fonction de celle des autres acteurs et qu’il ne connaît
pas cette stratégie. Même s’il peut tenter de l’anticiper, il fait face à une incertitude qui limite sa marge de manoeuvre et qui situe sa décision dans un contexte
de rationalité limitée. La stratégie qui apparaît la plus logique dans les circonstances consiste à faire une application irrégulière ou sélective du système. Cette
stratégie permet, au plan collectif, d’assurer la survie du système et, au plan
individuel, de maximiser son investissement. En effet, en s’impliquant dans le
système, même si c’est de façon sélective, l’enseignant s’assure du support de
la direction, il se place à l’abri d’éventuelles sanctions, il conserve une marge de
manoeuvre qu’il peut utiliser pour faire preuve de souplesse dans ses rapports
avec les élèves et il contribue à la perpétuation d’un système qui lui procure des
bénéfices collectifs. Il y a donc un intérêt chez la plupart des enseignants à
préserver le système même si son efficacité en regard des difficultés qu’ils
rencontrent en classe n’est pas toujours à la hauteur de leurs attentes.
Vue sous cet angle, la participation à l’encadrement apparaît comme une
stratégie s’insérant dans une structure de jeu qui réalise l’intégration et la
régulation des actions individuelles en assujettissant l’intérêt de l’enseignant à
réduire son investissement personnel à la nécessité de la survie du système.
L’EFFET CONTRE-INTUITIF DE L’ACTION COLLECTIVE
Ces observations sur la participation des enseignants à l’encadrement des élèves
présentent des similitudes avec les travaux de Olson (1971) sur les effets contreintuitifs de l’action collective. Selon cet auteur, lorsqu’une organisation produit
des services collectifs, c’est-à-dire des services qui profitent à tous les membres
d’un ensemble d’individus, bien que tous ces individus aient un intérêt individuel
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DANIEL TURCOTTE
à la production de ces services, il n’est de l’intérêt de personne de participer à
cette production. Ils ont avantage à laisser les autres assumer les “coûts” de cette
production puisque, de toute façon, ils pourront bénéficier de ses retombées qui
sont collectives.
Toutefois, alors qu’Olson (1971) situe l’action collective dans un contexte
relationnel “d’état de nature,” pour employer le terme de Boudon (1977), contexte où les acteurs ont la latitude de s’abstenir de considérer les effets de leur
comportement sur autrui, la participation des enseignants s’inscrit davantage dans
un contexte de “contrat” puisqu’ils ne peuvent se déterminer sans considérer les
effets de leur action sur le maintien du système d’encadrement. La survie du
système constitue donc la principale contrainte à leur liberté d’action. Dès lors,
l’absence totale d’engagement n’est acceptable que si elle demeure le fait d’une
minorité, auquel cas elle ne peut constituer une menace véritable pour la survie
du système, ou si la plupart des enseignants n’ont pas intérêt à ce que le système
d’encadrement soit maintenu. C’est pourquoi le mode de participation le plus
répandu consiste à adopter une participation sélective témoignant ainsi de l’intérêt des enseignants de préserver le système d’encadrement mis en place dans
leur école.
CONCLUSION
Ce texte a proposé une interprétation interactionniste de la participation des
enseignants à l’encadrement des élèves. Partant d’une vision de la participation
comme étant une activité intentionnelle inscrite dans un contexte de rationalité
limitée, nous nous sommes efforcés, à partir de données recueillies auprès de
quatre-vingts informateurs, de mettre en lumière la dynamique dans laquelle
s’inscrit cette participation en relevant, entre autres, les actions utilisées par le
personnel de direction pour inciter les enseignants à s’engager dans l’encadrement et les sources de pouvoir à la base de la marge de liberté des enseignants.
Nos observations sur l’importance de cette marge de liberté concordent celles
avec d’autres ouvrages sur le sujet qui présentent l’école comme un système à
faible interdépendance (Weick, 1976, 1982) ou comme une bureaucratie professionnelle (Mintzberg, 1982).
Mais la participation à l’encadrement des élèves ne constitue pas pour autant
une action purement individuelle s’exerçant sans contrainte; elle s’inscrit dans
une structure de jeu basée sur la nécessité d’assurer la survie du système, structure de jeu qui réalise l’intégration et la régularisation des actions individuelles
des enseignants en posant la nécessité d’un engagement minimal dans l’encadrement des élèves.
Évidemment, l’optique adoptée dans cette étude s’est limitée à aborder la
participation des enseignants sous l’angle de la mise en application du système
formel d’encadrement des élèves, négligeant par le fait même les initiatives
personnelles non référées au système. Mais il faut garder à l’esprit que notre
L’ENCADREMENT DES ÉLÈVES
347
démarche visait principalement à saisir la logique de la participation des enseignants à un système d’action élaboré en vue d’une action collective. Par l’adoption d’une perspective interactionniste, la présente étude a voulu se démarquer
de l’explication déterministe véhiculée par les études antérieures sur la participation des enseignants à l’encadrement des élèves. À cet égard, l’interprétation
proposée ici nous apparaît apporter un éclairage supplémentaire sur l’encadrement des élèves tout en contribuant à enrichir la compréhension de l’action
collective au sein de l’organisation scolaire.
NOTE
1
Cette recherche a été réalisée avec l’aide financière du fonds FCAR. L’auteur remercie M.
Louis-Philippe Boucher et M. Gilles A. Bonneau, professeurs à l’Université du Québec à
Chicoutimi, pour leur encadrement dans la réalisation de cette étude.
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Two Policy Approaches to Native Education:
Can Reform Be Legislated?
Patrick Brady
lakehead university
The evolution of Canadian federal policy for Native elementary and secondary education
has followed a pattern remarkably similar to that in the United States. A significant
difference in the provision of educational services to indigenous peoples is, however, that
whereas the United States has historically attempted to regulate and reform Native
education through federal legislation, Canada has generally eschewed such a proactive
strategy in favour of what Hall (1992) refers to as the “No Policy-Policy.” In this article
I examine the evolution of Native education policy in both countries to determine which
approach has brought Native people closer to their desired goal of having control over
their children’s education.
La politique fédérale canadienne d’enseignement primaire et secondaire destinée aux
autochtones suit une évolution semblable à celle des États-Unis. ll existe toutefois une
différence significative dans la prestation des services éducatifs aux peuples autochtones:
les États-Unis ont toujours tenté de réglementer et de réformer l’éducation des autochtones par le biais de lois fédérales tandis que le Canada évite, en règle générale, ce genre
de stratégie proactive et préfère ce que Hall (1992) désigne comme une “politique de
non-politique.” Dans cet article, l’auteur analyse l’évolution, dans les deux pays, de la
politique en matière d’enseignement aux autochtones afin de déterminer quelle approche
permet aux peuples autochtones de se rapprocher de leur objectif, qui est de contrôler
l’éducation de leurs enfants.
In his review of the Assembly of First Nation’s document Tradition and Education: Towards a Vision of Our Future (AFN, 1988), MacPherson (1991) examined the constitutional and legal issues affecting Native education in Canada. He
believed that “federal education policy in the Indian education area is skeletal,
incremental, and . . . lacking in coherently articulated foundations or premises”
(p. 12). In MacPherson’s opinion:
Federal policy must be searched for in a bewildering array of other laws, subordinate
laws, policy directives and individual agreements (both inter-governmental and government-Indian band). Moreover, a good portion of federal policy cannot be found anywhere;
it just happens depending on who might be involved in a particular matter at a particular
time in a particular locale. (p. 12)
This approach to public policy closely resembles what Hall (1992) calls the “No
Policy-Policy” option, in direct contrast with the situation in the United States,
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20:3 (1995)
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PATRICK BRADY
where a considerable body of legislation directly affects Native education. These
dissimilar national approaches to public policy provoke the question: Has the
proactive approach to Native education policy on the part of the United States’
federal government made a significant difference in the delivery of educational
services to that country’s first citizens as compared to the Canadian experience?
In this article I attempt to answer that question by examining two aspects of
Native education policy in Canada and the United States: (a) the evolution of
federal Native education policy in each country and (b) how much control Native
people in each country have over their children’ education.
THE EVOLUTION OF NATIVE EDUCATION POLICY
The legislative framework governing Native education in Canada and the United
States has often developed out of the larger policy decisions made by both
countries’ governments regarding their Native people’s place in their respective
societies. Although these governments’ relations with their respective indigenous
populations have major differences, their educational initiatives have remarkable
similarities.
The Evolution of Native Education Policy in Canada
The British North America Act (1867) and the Indian Act (1876) gave the federal government jurisdiction over Native education (Longboat, 1986), a domain
normally a provincial responsibility. This legislation and a series of treaties
signed with various Indian groups between 1871 and 1923 placed the federal
government in the position of having to “find some way of discharging its responsibilities in administering matters it did not normally handle” (Burnaby, 1980,
p. 37). Subsequently, in attempting to fulfil this mandate, the federal government’s actions have passed through a number of distinct phases.
Phases in Canadian Federal Native Education Policy
The first such phase, referred to as “segregation for protection” (INAC, 1982),
was implemented through the creation of the now-infamous residential school
system. Under this regime the federal government entered into agreements with
various religious denominations, whereby, as Miller (1987) points out, Native
children were often sent “far from home to ‘industrial schools’ conducted by
Christian denominations with government funding where they would learn useful
trades and acquire the ways of Euro-Canadians” (pp. 4–5). This structure remained the mainstay of federal Native education policy until after World War II,
when the federal government used other methods to meet its legal obligations to
provide Native people with educational services.
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351
The era after World War II, marking the beginning of a second phase in
federal policy, emphasized integration of Native children into provincially
operated school systems. The passage of a new Indian Act, in 1951, permitted
the federal government to enter into agreements with the provinces to enable
Native children to attend provincially operated schools. The results were substantial, as the percentage of Native children attending provincial schools rose
from 27% in 1963 (Frideres, 1983) to 56.3% in 1979 (INAC, 1988). This trend
toward provincialization, however, encountered increased resistance by Native
people in the wake of the release of the federal government’s Statement of the
Government of Canada Policy on Indian Policy (Government of Canada, 1969),
which proposed that “the governments of the provinces . . . take over the same
responsibilities for Indians that they have for other citizens in their provinces”
(p. 6). The National Indian Brotherhood rejected this proposal as an attempt by
the federal government to abandon its obligations toward Native people. The
Native Indian Brotherhood responded with its own position paper, entitled Indian
Control of Indian Education (1972), in which it asserted Native people’s inherent
right to control their children’s education. In response to this opposition the
federal government made another significant (at least in appearance) shift in its
Native education policy. This policy change was announced by the Minister of
Indian Affairs in 1973 and formalized in the Indian Education Paper Phase One
(INAC, 1982). The new policy “emphasized both the need to improve the quality
of Indian education and the desirability of devolving control of education to
Indian society” (p. 2).
Since this policy was adopted, the percentage of Native children enrolled in
federal schools has declined from 24.7% in 1985 (INAC, 1988) to 8.7% in 1991
(MacPherson, 1991), while enrolment in First Nations-operated schools increased
from 26% to 44% over the same period. These figures, however, reflect enrolment trends among only status Native children living on reserves and do not take
into account the growing number of Native people who live in urban settings. As
Urion (1992) noted, “the overwhelming majority of the 220,000 eligible to attend
school have no access to Native operated schools. In total, that means that
approximately 75%–80% of First Nations children in Canada attend non-Native
schools” (p. 3).
The Evolution of Native Education Policy in the United States
Although the history of the relationship between the United States federal
government and that country’s Native people differs from the Canadian experience, a closer examination of U.S. federal Native education policy reveals that
many policies adopted by that nation are similar to those of the Canadian federal
government over the same time period.
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Phases in U.S. Federal Native Education Policy
Reyhner (1992) has identified five phases in U.S. federal policy: (a) missionary
activity and paternalism, (b) government control and dependency, (c) moves to
reform Indian education, (d) the termination era, and (e) moves toward selfdetermination. Each of these phases is significant because whereas the details of
specific policies differed and time lines varied, the overall policy approach to
U.S. Native education taken during these periods closely parallelled developments in Canada.
One such similarity was the use of direct federal government fiscal support to
missionary organizations as a mechanism for the provision of educational services. As Kickingbird and Charleston (1991) noted,
[there] was no clear distinction between the separation of church and state with respect
to Native education in the early days. In fact the government negotiated with the various
sects and divided the country into jurisdictions. (p. 8)
Furthermore, both Canada and the United States favoured the residential boarding
school system as the mechanism for providing educational services to Native
people, residential schools that operated in a depressingly similar manner and
shared a common goal: the eradication of all traces of Native culture from their
charges.
An additional parallel can be drawn between what Reyhner (1992) refers to
as the “moves to reform Indian education” period in the United States and the
post-war provincialization phase in Canadian policy evolution. Although the
policy of enrolling Native children in state-operated public school systems started
in the 1890s, it gained impetus with the release of the Meriman Report in 1928.
That report found serious deficiencies in schools operated by the Bureau of
Indian Affairs (BIA). The release of this report, and other studies, resulted in the
passage of the Johnson O’Malley Act in 1934, under the terms of which the
Secretary of the Interior was granted authority to “enter into contracts with states
or territories to pay them for providing services to Indians” (Reyhner, 1992, p.
51) in much the same manner as the Minister of Indian Affairs could enter into
agreements with the various provincial governments for the same purpose in
Canada.
A further parallel exists between what Reyhner (1992) referred to as the
“termination era” in the United States and the policy the Canadian government
proposed in the ill-fated Statement of the Government of Canada Policy on
Indian Policy (more commonly referred to as the “White Paper”) in 1969. The
U.S. experience was characterized by the Congress enacting legislation that
“terminated the special relationship between specifically named Indian tribes and
the United States” (Kickingbird & Charleston, 1991, p. 16). As a part of this
process the states were to assume responsibility for educating Native children
POLICY APPROACHES TO NATIVE EDUCATION
353
through their public systems in much the same way the Canadian “White Paper”
had proposed the transfer of responsibility for Native education to the provinces.
As in Canada, this attempt by the U.S. federal government to evade its legal
obligations was opposed by Native leaders. As Reyhner (1992) noted:
Over the years, through education, involvement with federal programs, and generally
increased experience working with white America, Indian tribes had been developing a
core of leadership capable of telling the federal government what the tribes wanted. This
leadership was almost unanimous in opposing termination. The alternative put forward
was self-determination; letting Indian people through their tribal governments determine
their own destiny. (p. 54)
This opposition, plus such studies as the Indian Education: A National Tragedy, a National Challenge report by the United State Senate in 1969, led to the
passage of legislation ushering in the final stage in the evolution of federal
Native education policy in the United States, that being recognition of the
principle that Native people should have control over their educational institutions.
The Indian Education Act (1972) made a number of significant changes to
how educational services were delivered to Native people. Among the Act’s
more significant elements were provisions that: (a) encouraged the development
of culturally relevant curriculum materials, (b) required the establishment of local
Native parent committees to be enlisted in the development and oversight of
programming developed for Native children, and (c) for the first time, extended
the mandate of federal Native education funding to include urban Native children. The trend toward self-determination was furthered with the passage of the
Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act (1975). This Act directed the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and other federal government agencies, to
contract out the delivery of many services they provided to Native governments.
NATIVE EDUCATION LEGISLATION IN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES
Although the federal governments of both Canada and the United States recognized (at least in theory) the principle of Native control of Native education at
approximately the same time, the question remains: Have these policy developments actually resulted in meaningful systemic reform, or have these initiatives
produced a result more illusionary than substantive? To examine this question
from a broad perspective, it is necessary to examine the legislative framework
affecting Native education in both countries.
Federal Native Education Legislation in Canada
MacPherson’s (1991) assertion that federal Native education is “skeletal, incremental and lacking in coherently articulated foundations or premises” (p. 12)
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grows out of the fact that Native education occupies a unique niche in Canada’s
constitutional framework. That policy framework is complicated by the conflicting aspirations of the parties involved. Responsibility for the education of status
aboriginal people living on reserves or in remote communities in Canada lies
squarely with the federal government. Whereas the British North America Act
(1867), the Indian Act (1876), and various treaties obligate the federal government to provide educational services to Native people (the extent to which such
services must be provided is a subject of intense dispute between the government
and various Native organizations), none of these documents provide a legislative
framework for the operation of an education system. As the Assembly of First
Nations (1988) has stated, “Sections 114–123 of the Indian Act (1951) provide
very generally for the education of Indian children. These provisions are minimal
when compared to provincial government provisions for education” (Vol. 2., p.
118). In fact, much of the legislation with the greatest influence on Native
education takes the form of various Orders in Council, Treasury Board Minutes,
and provisions of the Financial Administration Act, legislation on the expenditure
of public funds not specific to Native education. This lack of specific legislation
contrasts starkly with the situation in the United States, where a considerable
body of federal legislation directly affects Native education.
Federal Native Education Legislation in the United States
Like their Canadian counterparts, Native people in the United States occupy a
unique position in that nation’s political and judicial culture. This relationship is
codified through a series of treaties signed between the federal government and
various Indian nations between 1794 and 1871. These treaties (120 of which contain education provisions) constitute, according to Mueller and Mueller (1992),
“a promise to provide educational service” and thereby “invoke a legal obligation
that does not exist for other groups” (p. 69). This obligation has been met, in
recent years, through the passage of a number of pieces of federal legislation.
Although several programs supply educational services and funding to Native
people, three pieces of legislation are key to this article. As previously discussed,
the provisions of the Johnson O’Malley Act (1934), the Indian Education Act
(1972), and the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (1975)
have significantly affected the funding and delivery of educational services to
Native people. Overall, this legislation has provided for the financing of Nativespecific programming in state-operated public schools, extended the scope of
Native programming to meet the needs of urban-based Native people, and mandated the participation of Native parents in developing and delivering such
programs. Furthermore, the Indian Self-determination and Education Assistance
Act (1975) gave legislative weight to the concept of Native control of Native
education by requiring the Bureau of Indian Affairs and other agencies to contract out the services they provide to Native governments.
POLICY APPROACHES TO NATIVE EDUCATION
355
On the surface, at least, the U.S. federal government seems to have developed
a more extensive legislative framework supporting the delivery of educational
services to Native people than has its Canadian counterpart. The key question,
however, remains: Has this legislation resulted in significant systemic reform, the
type of reform that leads to increased levels of control by Native parents over
their children’s education?
NATIVE CONTROL OF NATIVE EDUCATION: CAN IT BE LEGISLATED?
Any attempt to compare how much control Canadian and U.S. Native people
have gained over their educational institutions is complicated by two questions:
(a) the difficulty of ascertaining how much real control Native people have over
schools currently operated by non-Native governments, and (b) the nature of
control possible under existing arrangements for devolution of responsibility for
education to status Indian persons living on legally recognized Indian reserves.
The latter being a somewhat less complex issue, I will examine it first.
Native Parents and the U.S. Public School
Wells’ (1991) survey of 511 U.S. Native tribal leaders indicated that as many as
92% of Indian children in that country attend public schools operated by nonNative governments. These figures are comparable to those in an earlier article
by Tippeconnic (1984), who placed the same figure at 80.5%. Whichever figure
is correct, for the vast majority of Native parents, their ability to influence their
children’s education is directly linked to their ability to influence decision
making at the school board level.
Although the Indian Education Act (1972) requires the establishment of parental oversight committees, the legislation does not provide for parental input
into the wider decision-making process by mandating direct Native school board
representation. Although 55% of the tribal leaders Wells (1991) surveyed indicated that their tribal members were represented on local school boards, 34%
replied that they constituted a minority of the boards’ membership even when
Native children constituted a majority of the school district’s enrolment. As
Wells (1991) stated:
This is both a political and legal problem which must be resolved before Indian communities can exercise some degree of local control over the education of their children. Even
where there is opportunity to elect Indian school board members, many Indian people do
not exercise their franchise out of habit, fear, or ignorance. (p. 3)
This situation is not dissimilar to that facing Canadian Native parents whose
children attend public schools operated by provincial governments. Although, as
I will discuss later, a number of provinces have made statutory provision for the
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representation of status on-reserve Indian parents on boards of education, these
provisions have not always given Native parents a meaningful voice in their children’s education.
Canadian Native Parents and the Provincial School Systems
As long as a significant number of Native children continue to attend provincially operated public schools, Native parents’ ability to gain a meaningful voice
in their children’s education will continue to be linked to their ability to gain
representation on provincial and territorial school boards. As in the case with
their U.S. contemporaries, Native parents in Canada often face systemic barriers
to their representation on local boards of education.
Results from an AFN study (1988) indicated that five of the ten provincial
governments have not made provision for Native representation on local boards
of education, and that Native representation was inadequate even in those
provinces that have legislated such representation. The AFN (1988) found:
It is noted that there is some provision for First Nations representation on school boards
in some provinces, however, across Canada First Nations representation on school boards
is very limited. Even where there is some provision, the number of First Nations representatives is two, regardless of the number of First Nations students. (Vol. 1, p. 65)
Furthermore, it is entirely possible for Native representatives to constitute a
minority of a board’s membership even though Native children comprise a significant minority or even a majority of the board’s enrolment. Paquette (1986a)
summarized the situation well:
At best, the current representation of Native people on provincial boards of education is
a limited and flawed presence. . . The representation . . . provided . . . is typically only
that of a weak minority voice in the political fabric of board decision making. (p. 11)
Native parents living in urban settings, and this represents a growing percentage of Native people, are even more limited in their ability to gain access to
decision making at the board of education level. This is, to a large extent, a
result of the mechanics of the electoral process. As noted elsewhere (Brady,
1992):
In the case of boards that elect trustees through the at large system of election, Native
representation is often difficult to attain. Unless Native people constitute a majority of the
voters within a board’s boundaries, the mechanics of the electoral system precludes them
from attaining any meaningful representation. . . . Native parents residing within the
boundaries of boards using the ward system (single or multi-member) fare little better.
Unless the Native population of a board is concentrated in sufficient numbers to constitute
POLICY APPROACHES TO NATIVE EDUCATION
357
the majority of the ward’s voters, their chances of securing the election of a Native trustee
are as slim as in the at large system. (pp. 69–70)
Consequently, Native parents in both Canada and the United States are often
limited in their ability to influence their children’s education, particularly when
their children attend schools in non-Native education systems. The key to Native
control of Native education would therefore appear to lie in having Native
children attend educational institutions controlled by Native people (for Native
people living in non-Native communities, however, such a proposition invites the
ascription of stigma with the label of being either involuntary segregation or
voluntary apartheid). That situation, of course, has proven difficult to achieve.
Native Control of Native Schools: Fact or Illusion?
Native people’s demand to control their own educational institutions gained
impetus in both Canada and the United States during the 1970s and 1980s. In
many cases, however, the transition from federal to local control has proven
more illusionary than real. Stuart (1990) identified several aspects of the public
policy process that have influenced this transition of control. Two of these
aspects, which Stuart refers to as fundamental problems and procedural problems,
serve as a useful framework for further discussion of this issue.1
Stuart (1990) examines what he refers to as the “fundamental problems”
associated with Native self-determination as it applies to the transfer of authority
in the area of Native education in the United States. He believes that, regardless
of provisions of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act
(1975), the legislation simply “does not provide for a transfer of operating
authority from the federal agency to the tribe” (p. 17). Furthermore, the “relevant
federal agency retains the power to identify problems, design programs to
address the problems, and define criteria for success” (p. 7), thus leaving considerable control over Native educational policy in the hands of the federal
bureaucracy. Such a situation leaves Native governments in the unenviable
position of being responsible for delivering a variety of services without having
complete control over many parameters directly affecting delivery of the very
programs they have contracted to deliver.
Such “fundamental problems” are not unique to the United States as they,
probably more than any other factor, constitute the largest single obstacle to
Native control of Native education in Canada. The Canadian experience is
unique, however, in that much of the legislative framework necessary to Native
control has yet to be developed.
Although only a few sections of the 1951 Indian Act (sections 114 to 123)
deal with education, they serve to limit a First Nation’s community’s authority
over its schools. As Longboat (1986) points out,
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there is nothing in the Indian Act that could give a community any leverage in gaining
control over its education. . . . Legally control is concentrated in one person: the Minister
of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. (p. 33)
In other words, whereas the federal government may have agreed with the
principle of Native control of Native education, it has done little to transfer
legislative control over education to First Nations government. As the AFN
(1988) recognizes, “for the most part, jurisdiction over First Nations education
remains with the federal, provincial and territorial governments” (Vol. 2, p. 158).
The result is that the term “band controlled” somewhat misrepresents reality. A
more accurate description, as Hall (1992) describes it, would be “federally
controlled, band operated school” (p. 57). As long as legislative and legal
authority continues to reside in non-Native legislative bodies, Native people’s
ability to control their children’s education will be, to all intents and purposes,
severely restricted.
Perhaps one of the best examples of such “fundamental problems” is the
financing of Native education in both countries. At the heart of this issue lies a
fundamental conflict between two traditions: the longstanding desire of Native
people to control their own institutions and the equally longstanding tradition of
parliamentary accountability. Paquette (1986a) summarized this conflict:
Some hard facts greet the would-be architect of meaningful change in aboriginal education (and general) governance. None is harder than the strength of the tradition of
parliamentary accountability for funds appropriated . . . there can be little likelihood of
political feasibility in any plan which seeks to deny some measure of parliamentary
control over the funds it appropriates. (p. 75)
As previously mentioned, in Canada Native education is financed by appropriation of general revenues through the Treasury Board according to the terms and
conditions of the Financial Administration Act. As the AFN (1988) points out,
Parliamentary control is maintained through approval of the annual estimates using a vote
system. . . . Parliament maintains controls over these funds by not allowing the transfer
of funds between votes without Parliamentary approval through the Supplementary
Estimates procedure. (Vol. 2, p. 132)
Given the current atmosphere of fiscal restraint, and increased public demands
for accountability in the expenditure of public funds, it is highly unlikely that
parliament will be willing, in the near future, to surrender this responsibility.
Furthermore, it is unlikely that First Nations communities will have, in the foreseeable future, the resources to become fiscally independent. As Paquette (1986a)
observes:
The vast majority of aboriginal communities in Canada have, after all, neither an average
income level nor real property wealth sufficient to make local taxation conscionable, even
POLICY APPROACHES TO NATIVE EDUCATION
359
if Native people were favourably disposed toward surrendering their tax-exempt status to
support Native governance. (p. 29)
Such circumstances are not limited to Canada, as financing of Native education
in the United States makes self-determination an equally if not more elusive goal.
With notable exceptions, many Native communities in the United States lack
the fiscal resources to fund fully their own education systems. As Stuart (1990)
notes, “financing is a significant part of the problem in achieving tribal selfdetermination” (p. 12). This observation is astute when applied to education. It
could be argued that Native governments in the United States are even more
restricted in their ability to control their own education systems than are their
Canadian counterparts, for two reasons: (a) a political philosophy that resulted
in significant spending reductions on Native education, and (b) a convoluted
system of financing educational expenditures that seriously undermines the
principle of local control.
Whereas the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (1975)
may have lent legislative credence to the concept of Native control of Native
education, the intention of this legislation has been seriously undermined by the
political philosophies of subsequent administrations. As Stuart (1990) found:
A significant element in the thinking behind the self-determination policy on the part of
some administration figures if not the Congress, has been the notion that true self-determination implies financial independence. In this view, Indian tribes will be dependent and
will suffer from the effects of paternalism as long as the federal government is funding
them. Thus President Reagan, in his 1983 Indian message, stated that tribes must provide
a greater percentage of the costs of self-government, reducing their financial dependence
on the federal government. (p. 4)
The result has been that the U.S. federal government has significantly reduced
funding. Brescia (1991) found that, when adjusted for inflation, BIA spending on
education fell by 4.21% for the period 1975–1991. Stuart’s (1990) figures show
an even more significant reduction: between 1981 and 1988 Indian Education Act
grants fell by 34.6%. Overall, this policy and its resultant expenditure reductions
has negatively affected local control of education. Brescia (1991) summarized the
situation succinctly:
Native education systems need a massive infusion of capital so that real decisions can be
made about students’ education. As in choice programs, if all the choices are bad, then
you have no choice. If Native communities have no opportunity to direct the education
of their children, then there is little reason to expect improvement in student outcomes.
. . . If economic conditions on reservations are not improved by restructuring and expansion of the tax base, there is no reason to expect that any educational restructuring will
be successful. The two are inseparably linked. . . . The current system of programs causes
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tribes to see each other as adversaries and to continually seek a diminishing amount of
funds. (p. 22)
The resource dilemma is further complicated by a financing system that concentrates control in the hands of the federal bureaucracy. Schools operated directly
by the BIA are funded directly by the federal government, and as the AFN
(1988) notes, “the Secretary of the Interior controls curricula and administration
and only peripheral local input is in effect such as locating geographic boundaries of schools” (Vol. 3, p. 138). Tribal Contract Schools, funded by the federal
government but managed by Native governments, do not fare much better. The
AFN found that:
The real control is with the B.I.A., because of funding arrangements. The schools must
make expenditures, then wait to be reimbursed by B.I.A.; as a result, construction is
sometimes halted, pay cheques are stopped and it is difficult to hire teachers. The schools
face high finance charges in a convoluted accounting system. The employees are hired
at the district rather than local level and employees are unaware of local needs. In short
without Native control of funding, there is no control of education. (Vol. 3, p. 138)
As demonstrated, these restrictions on self-determination imposed by the
funding mechanisms in both countries aptly exemplify how “fundamental problems” affect Native people’s attempts, in both countries, to gain control of their
educational institutions.
In addition to “fundamental problems,” Stuart (1990) examined what he
referred to as “procedural problems” associated with Native self-determination,
problems arising from the federal bureaucracy’s reluctance to devolve its authority to Native governments. As Kickingbird and Charleston (1991) describe
the U.S. BIA resistance to the devolution process:
the government, however, has not facilitated the transfer to Native community control.
Instead, it has turned up stumbling blocks wherever possible. The B.I.A. is not committed
to self-determination and fights hard to keep from entering into contracts with local
Native communities. (p. 25)
Native people in Canada have also experienced “procedural problems” in their
quest to gain control over their educational institutions. Whereas the Minister of
Indian Affairs officially recognized the principle of Native control of Native
education in 1973, like its U.S. counterpart, INAC (Indian and Northern Affairs
Canada) has demonstrated less than wholehearted enthusiasm toward its implementation. The federal government has, as Ward (1986) points out,
insisted that it retain ultimate responsibility but enter into agreements with Bands “capable” of control. Further, there would have to be controls on quality to meet provincial
standards. . . . Furthermore, the government would be able to define which Bands were
“capable of control.” (pp. 12–13)
POLICY APPROACHES TO NATIVE EDUCATION
361
Moreover, the process of devolving administrative authority over education
from federal to Native control has contributed to the problem. As Hall (1992)
concluded:
In most cases the transfer process, termed devolution by the federal government, had been
quick, poorly planned and ill conceived. . . . Self-determination is a term used by federal
authorities to disguise their efforts to dump as much responsibility as possible for Indian
education while convincing Indians that such an occurrence is in the Indian’s best interest.
(p. 57)
Such reluctance on the part of both federal bureaucracies to divest themselves
of control over Native education, when coupled with the aforementioned “fundamental problems,” has proved a serious impediment to devolution. As long as
legislative and legal authority continues to reside in non-Native legislative bodies,
Native people’s abilities to control their children’s education will be severely
restricted.
DIFFERENT POLICY APPROACHES: DIFFERENT RESULTS?
As I have described, federal Native education policy in Canada and the United
States has followed strikingly similar patterns. There is, however, a major difference between the countries in their fundamental approach to the development of
that policy. Whereas the U.S. federal government has consistently used a variety
of legislative initiatives to reform Native education, the federal government in
Canada has just as consistently eschewed the legislative option. As such, the
fundamental question remains, have these different approaches yielded substantially different results? The answer, at least within the parameters of this article
and bearing in mind the existence of a wide range of local variations, appears to
be a tentative no. Neither the proactive approach of the United States nor the
passive approach of the Canadian government has led to significant change, or
at least reform substantive enough to alter the locus of control over Native
education from the federal to Native governments. This is due, in part, to the fact
that neither approach has dealt with two important factors inhibiting reform
efforts in both countries: (a) a substantial majority of Native children in both
countries continue to attend schools operated by public education authorities, and
(b) the federal government bureaucracies, in both countries, retain their de facto
control over the education of Native children residing on legally recognized
reserves regardless of what policy approach is taken by their political masters.
Legislation such as the Indian Education Act (1972) and the Indian SelfDetermination and Education Assistance Act (1975) has led very few U.S. Native
parents and communities to have greater influence in educational decision
making. This lack of influence can largely be attributed to the fact that the
overwhelming majority of Native children in the United States are currently
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enrolled in non-Native education systems. As Kickingbird and Charleston (1991)
point out:
Native community and tribal involvement in public education is very limited. The Native
parent advisory committees required by some of the federal programs in the Department
of Education have very limited impact on public school decision making and administrative practices. In many cases, the requirements are ignored by both the public schools and
the federal agencies as being impractical to implement. (p. 25)
Canadian Native parents do not fare much better. As previously mentioned,
Native representation on provincial school boards in Canada is determined by
provincial statute and local board policy. In many cases Native parents are
under-represented or not represented at all, a circumstance often resulting from
the very nature of the democratic process as currently practised in Canada and
the United States. Paquette (1986a) writes that:
As in so many areas, the issue of protecting any presumed rights of off-reserve statusIndians as a group in the area of education has run headlong into the dominant tradition
in western jurisprudence that the law exists to protect individuals rather than groups. In
terms of their lack of specific representation in provincial governance forms, then,
off-reserve status Indians are on a par with their non-status and Metis counterparts, that
is, on precisely the same footing as non-aboriginal parents. . . .
. . . Native people of all legal categories who do not live on a reserve and are not
recognized as residents of a school board are completely disenfranchised from a voice in
the governance of the schools that educate their children. (pp. 10–11)
This is primarily due to the fact that, as Humphreys and Lawton (1986) note,
“education is inherently political in that it must reflect the needs and interests of
parents and other elements of the attentive public” (p. 7). In most public education systems in Canada this means being responsive to the needs and interests
of the most politically influential clientele, the suburban middle class.
Although these comments are about the relationship between Native people
and public education systems in Canada, they are equally applicable to the
United States. Until the question of group versus individual representation is
resolved, Native parents will be limited in their ability to have a voice in their
children’s education, if those children are enrolled in non-Native educational
institutions.
The second domain in which neither the Canadian nor the U.S. approach to
reform has met with success is in dealing with what Paquette (1986b) refers to
as the “bureaucratic veto.” This a situation where the bureaucracy can “effectively determine whether a policy will result in any concrete policy outputs
whatsoever and have the power to reshape these outputs in any way they think
is to their advantage” (p. 70). In the case of Native education, in both countries,
POLICY APPROACHES TO NATIVE EDUCATION
363
this “bureaucratic veto” has proved successful in delaying Native people from
controlling their own education systems.
As previously discussed, the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (1975) was intended to transfer delivery of educational services from
the federal to Native governments. This transfer of authority has been, in many
ways, more illusionary than material. As Champagne (1983) points out,
the limited capability of tribal governments to assume administration over the full range
of BIA programs, and the absence of BIA capability to provide the necessary technical
assistance to the tribal governments have all hampered the transfer of administrative
control of BIA programs to the tribal governments. (p. 23)
The key words in this passage are “administrative control,” as the machinations
of the federal bureaucracy and a dependence on federal financing have seriously
reduced Native governments’ ability to control their own affairs. Jorgensen
(1986) aptly describes the position of Native governments: “their decisions could
be vetoed by the Secretary; their public funds withdrawn by legislation or even
by foot-dragging agencies . . .” (p. 9). In other words, for many Native communities, the movement toward self-determination has meant little more than
accepting the chore of program delivery management without being given the
administrative control necessary to complete the task effectively.
In contrast to its U.S. counterpart, the Canadian federal government has not
attempted to provide a legislative basis for Native self-determination in education. Although the Minister accepted the principle of Native control in 1973, the
INAC bureaucracy has effectively wielded the “bureaucratic veto” when it has
come to implementing the policy. The INAC bureaucracy, according to Ward
(1986), has
continually forced Indians to respond to government proposals and government policies
with little or no Indian input or consultation. By diverting Indian energies to responses,
the government had not provided a climate conducive to self-determination of Indian
education by Indian people. (p. 19)
Furthermore, the federal government has consistently declined to make those
amendments to the Indian Act necessary to transfer authority over education from
the federal government to Native education authorities. Ward (1986) states:
The government viewed these proposed revisions to the education section of the Indian
Act as a dangerous relinquishment of its control over education for Indian people and
responded negatively. The Department insisted that it should retain ultimate responsibility
but enter into agreements with Bands “capable of control.” (pp. 12–13)
The federal governments of Canada and the United States have pursued
different legislative approaches for delivery of educational services to Native
364
PATRICK BRADY
people. Whereas U.S. federal authorities have attempted to reform Native education and to recognize the right of self-determination through legislation, Canadian
authorities have taken the opposite approach. Apart from the Indian Act (1951),
Canada has little federal legislation dealing with Native education. This situation
has resulted in a patchwork quilt of agreements between the federal government
and various Native groups (in a variety of organizational configurations) dealing
with the transfer of authority over education to Native governments. Furthermore,
neither the ad-hoc approach of the Canadian government nor the U.S. approach
of legislating program after program has led to significantly superior results.
Attempts to reform Native education in both countries have failed for similar
reasons.
First, both countries have traditionally based their legal and political cultures
on the basis of recognizing and protecting individual rather than collective rights.
Therefore, the governance mechanisms of both nations’ public education systems
continues to represent the interests and needs of its politically influential clientele. Given this situation, the parents of Native children who chose (and it would
be unthinkable to interfere with such a choice) to enrol their children in nonNative educational institutions face the same circumstance as do the parents of
other minority group children: their ability to influence their children’s education
is limited.
Second, neither country, notwithstanding declarations to the contrary, has
transferred legislative, legal, and fiscal control over Native education to Native
governments. Despite Ministerial pronouncements and individual pieces of legislation, legal authority and control over fiscal resources remain firmly rooted in
the federal legislative bodies and bureaucracies of both countries, which situation
has the potential to, and frequently does, frustrate Native aspirations to control
their educational institutions.
Finally, regardless of the approach taken, Native people in both countries
(Government of Canada, 1986; Reyhner, 1992) continue to have some of the
lowest rates of educational attainment, to have some of the highest dropout rates,
and to occupy the lowest positions of socioeconomic status. Until many “fundamental” and “procedural” problems discussed in this article (and many others that
have not been discussed) are resolved, opportunities for meaningful reform in
Native education will be seriously diminished.
NOTE
1
Stuart (1990) defines “fundamental problems” as “limitations built into the concept of selfdetermination . . . and into the relationship between tribes and the federal government as it has
evolved since the nineteenth century. ‘Procedural problems’ are problems of administrative implementation” (p. 5).
REFERENCES
Assembly of First Nations [AFN]. (1988). Tradition and education: Towards a vision of our future
(Vols. 1–3). Ottawa: Assembly of First Nations.
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Brady, P. (1992). Individual or group representation: Native trustees on boards of education in
Ontario. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 19(1), 67–72.
Brescia, W. (1991). Funding and resources for American Indian and Alaska Native Education
(Report No. RC 018 612). Washington, DC: Indian Nations at Risk Task Force.
Burnaby, B. (1980). Languages and their role in educating Native children. Toronto: OISE Press.
Canadian Education Association. (1984). Recent developments in Native education. Toronto: Author.
Champagne, D. (1983). Organizational change and conflict: A case study of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs. American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 7(3), 3–28.
Elder, J., & Reyhner, J. (1992). A history of Indian education. In J. Reyhner (Ed.), Teaching
American Indian students (pp. 33–59) Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Frideres, J. (1983). Native people in Canada: Contemporary conflicts. Toronto: Prentice-Hall.
Government of Canada. (1867). Constitution Act: British North America Act. Ottawa: Supply and
Services.
Government of Canada. (1876). Indian Act. Ottawa: Supply and Services.
Government of Canada. (1951). Indian Act. Ottawa: Supply and Services.
Government of Canada. (1967). A survey of contemporary Indians. Ottawa: Indian Affairs Branch.
Government of Canada. (1969). Statement of the government of Canada on Indian policy 1969.
Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada.
Government of Canada. (1986). Improved program delivery, Indians and Natives: A study team
report to the task force on program review. Ottawa: Supply and Services.
Hall, D. R. (1992). FED-BOS: The federally controlled, band operated school and the no-policy
policy. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 19(1), 57–66.
Humphreys, E. H., & Lawton, S. B. (1986). Principles of representation: An overview. In E. H.
Humphreys & S. B. Lawton (Eds.), Alternative approaches to determining distribution of school
board trustee representation: Vol. 1. Trustee representation: Theory and practice in Canada (pp.
7–36). Toronto: OISE Press.
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada [INAC]. (1982). Indian education paper phase one. Ottawa:
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada.
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada [INAC]. (1988). INAC basic departmental data. Ottawa: Supply
and Services.
Indian Education Act of 1972, 20 U.S.C. §241aa–241ff, §1211a, §1221f–1221h, §3385–3385b
(1972).
Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act of 1975, 25 U.S.C. §450a et seq. (1975).
Johnson O’Malley Act of 1934, 25 U.S.C. §452 et seq. (1934).
Jorgensen, J. (1986). Federal policies, American Indian politics and the new federalism. American
Indian Culture and Research Journal, 10(2), 1–13.
Kickingbird, K., & Charleston, G. (1991). Responsibilities and roles of governments and Native
people in the education of American Indians and Alaskan Natives (Report No. RC 018 612).
Washington, DC: Indian Nations at Risk Task Force.
Longboat, D. (1986). First Nations control of education: The path to our survival as nations. In J.
Barman, Y. Hébert, & D. McCaskill (Eds.), Indian Education in Canada: Vol. 2. The Challenge
(pp. 22–42). Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
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MacPherson, J. (1991). MacPherson report on tradition and education: Towards a vision of our
future. Ottawa: Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.
Miller, J. R. (1987). The irony of residential schooling. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 14(2),
3–11.
Mueller, M. I. K., & Mueller, V. D. (1992). Federal legislation affecting American Indian students.
In P. Anthony & S. Jacobson (Eds.), Helping students at risk: What are the educational and
financial costs? (pp. 66–91). Newbury Park, CA: Corwin Press.
National Indian Brotherhood. (1972). Indian control of Indian education. Ottawa: National Indian
Brotherhood.
Paquette, J. (1986a). Aboriginal self-government and education in Canada (Background Paper No.
10). Kingston, ON: Institute of Inter-governmental Relations.
Paquette, J. (1986b). Purpose, parity and conflict: Policy and practice in two northwestern Ontario
native school jurisdictions. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto.
Stuart, P. H. (1990). Financing self-determination: Federal Indian expenditures, 1975–1988. American
Indian and Research Journal, 14(2), 1–18.
Tippeconic, J. W. (1984). Public school administration on Indian reservations (Contract No. 40083–0023). Washington, DC: ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools.
Urion, C. (1992). Big picture and paradoxes. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 19(1), 1–6.
Ward, M. S. (1986). Indian education: Policy and politics, 1972–1982. Journal of Canadian Native
Education, 13(2), 10–21.
Wells, R. N. (1991). Indian education from the tribal perspective (Report No. RC 018 099).
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Educational Research and Improvement.
Patrick Brady is in the Faculty of Education, Lakehead University, 955 Oliver Road, Thunder Bay,
Ontario, P7B 5E1.
L’influence du climat psychosocial de l’école et
le concept de soi des élèves
Renée Forgette-Giroux
Marc Richard
Pierre Michaud
université d’ottawa
Depuis plusieurs années, certains chercheurs ont tenté d’expliquer le rendement scolaire
des élèves en prenant en considération le concept de soi et la confiance en soi. L’ambiguïté des résultats de ces recherches a amené d’autres chercheurs à dépasser cette problématique et à envisager les variables environnementales de l’école. Le modèle de
Brookover est apparu pertinent parce qu’il met en lumière la complexité du système
éducatif en soulignant l’importance des attentes des enseignants et des autres composantes
du climat psychosocial de l’école. Les résultats de la présente recherche ont démontré que
trois composantes du climat psychosocial de l’école ont une incidence sur le concept de
soi, la confiance en soi et le rendement en français et en mathématiques, à savoir les
attentes des enseignants, les chances de réussite des élèves et leurs valeurs personnelles.
Recent studies have sought to link students’ self-concept and self-confidence to their
academic performance. Ambiguities in this research have led others to put the question
in environmental terms. Brookover’s model is helpful because it takes into account the
complexity of the education system, but without neglecting student expectations and other
features of the school’s psycho-social climate. This present study shows that three such
features affect self-concept and self-confidence, as well as performance in French and
mathematics: teacher expectations, pupils’ probability of success, and pupils’ personal
values.
L’expérience des éducateurs semble démontrer que le succès des élèves dépend
non seulement de leurs capacités intellectuelles, mais aussi de d’autres traits de
leur personnalité tels que le concept de soi et la confiance en soi. Au cours des
dernières années, bon nombre de chercheurs se sont intéressés à cette problématique en tentant d’établir une relation entre le concept de soi et la confiance en
soi d’une part, et le rendement des élèves, d’autre part. Toutefois, les résultats
de ces recherches ne sont pas tous concordants: certains démontrent qu’il existe
une relation significative entre le concept de soi et le rendement (Bloom, 1966/
1979; Crohn, 1983; Gerardi, 1990; Griffore et Parsons, 1983; McGuire, Furjioka
et McGuire, 1979; Shaalvik, 1983) alors que d’autres jugent cette relation faible
ou inexistante (Caslyn et Snow, 1977; Maruyama, Rubin et de Kingsbury, 1981;
Pottebaum, Keith et de Eyly, 1986; Scheirer et Kraut, 1979). Aussi, l’ambiguïté,
voire la contradiction inhérente d’une recherche à l’autre, a incité des chercheurs
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20:3 (1995)
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RENÉE FORGETTE-GIROUX, MARC RICHARD ET PIERRE MICHAUD
tels que Bailey (1987), Dixon (1986) et Weinstein (1982) à dépasser l’intériorité
de la personne (le concept de soi) et à examiner les variables environnementales
susceptibles d’influencer le concept de soi et le rendement. Bloom (1966/1979)
met en lumière l’importance de cette nouvelle orientation de la recherche dans
les termes suivants:
les différences individuelles dans l’apprentissage . . . nous empêchent souvent de traiter
directement des phénomènes de l’éducation: elles consistent à chercher des explications
dans la personne de l’élève plutôt que dans l’interaction entre les individus et les environnements éducatifs et sociaux dans lesquels ils vivent . . .
Certaines différences sont dues aux pratiques éducatives de la famille et de l’école. (p.
19–20)
Cette remarque de Bloom fait état des préoccupations des chercheurs qui, au
cours de la dernière décennie, ont étudié l’effet de l’environnement éducatif sur
le concept de soi et le rendement de l’élève. À cet égard deux tendances se
dégagent: certains chercheurs ont pris en considération l’incidence des attentes
des enseignants sur le concept de soi et le rendement, alors que d’autres ont tenté
d’élargir la problématique en considérant l’influence du milieu scolaire comme
système social.
LES ATTENTES DES ENSEIGNANTS
Les attentes des enseignants à l’endroit des élèves, tout comme celles des parents, sont au coeur même des pratiques éducatives. En effet, comme l’indiquent
Purkey et Novak (1984):
teacher attitudes influence student performance . . . available evidence indicates that
teachers do hold different expectations for various students, that these expectations
influence teacher behavior, and that this behavior influences student self-perceptions and
school achievement. (p. 5)
Plusieurs études appuient cette assertion. Celles-ci permettent de constater une
relation entre les attentes des enseignants et le concept de soi des élèves (Eder,
1983; Harris, Rosenthal et Snodgrass, 1986; Karper et Martinek, 1982; Milgrim,
1983; Pépin, 1990). Aussi, les attentes des enseignants constituent-elles un
facteur important de l’environnement éducatif (Burns, 1979). Elles contribuent
au développement d’une image positive de soi chez les élèves et à l’amélioration
de leur rendement. Comme le souligne Morency (1993), il est important que
l’enseignant soit convaincu de la capacité des élèves à s’améliorer à l’intérieur
des tâches qu’il lui propose pour qu’à son tour l’élève y croit. En s’appuyant sur
une méta-analyse de 47 études, Smith (1980) démontre que l’effet des attentes
des enseignants est un fait bien établi et permet de prédire le comportement et
le rendement des élèves. La recension de Pépin (1990) corrobore ces résultats.
CLIMAT PSYCHOSOCIAL ET CONCEPT DE SOI
369
Bien que la grande majorité des chercheurs cités précédemment souligne
l’existence d’un lien entre les attentes des enseignants et le rendement, Brophy
(1983), après avoir analysé plus de 100 rapports de recherche portant sur les
effets des attentes, conclut: “Actual expectation effects are probably minimal in
most classrooms, although they do exist and are probably substantial in classrooms taught by teachers with certain personal characteristics” (p. 631). Selon
lui, ces attentes ne peuvent être que partiellement responsables du rendement de
l’élève; elles ne font qu’augmenter la probabilité du succès ou de l’échec de
celui-ci et ne peuvent à elles seules rendre compte de toute l’influence de l’école
sur le concept de soi et le rendement. À cet égard, Brookover (1979) démontre
que l’école est un environnement éducatif complexe. En effet, son modèle met
en évidence cette complexité en postulant que les écoles ont une structure sociale
et un climat psychosocial distincts.
MODÈLE DE BROOKOVER
Plusieurs modèles visent à analyser la relation entre le climat psychosocial et
l’apprentissage. Habituellement, en plus de leur aspect systémique, ces modèles
s’inspirent de la psychologie, de la sociologie et se fondent sur certains postulats
pédagogiques (Michaud, Forgette-Giroux et Richard, 1989); certains modèles plus
complets traitent aussi de variables administratives et environnementales. Trois
types de modèles prévalent: les modèles additifs, les modèles médiatifs et les
modèles interactifs. Le modèle de Brookover (1979) peut être décrit comme
médiatico-interactif parce qu’il présente ou décrit le rôle de la structure sociale
et du climat psychosocial comme variables médiatrices de l’apprentissage.
Toutefois comme tous les modèles, celui proposé par Brookover constitue une
représentation simplifiée de la réalité, il ne retient que des variables psychosociales: la structure sociale et le climat psychosocial. De plus, ses modalités d’opérationalisation ont pour effet d’en limiter l’application à des variables mesurables.
À cet égard, le modèle favorise davantage l’utilisation de schèmes de recherche
descriptifs, corrélationnels et expérimentaux.
Cependant Brookover, sociologue de l’éducation, dépasse les vues de Bourdieu
et Passeron (1970). Alors que l’approche de ces derniers considère que le système éducatif favorise la reproduction des classes sociales, le modèle de Brookover permet d’envisager la possibilité d’une intervention sur la structure et le
climat psychosocial pour contrer les effets des antécédents sociaux des élèves.
Les flèches de la figure 1 illustrent les variables et les relations postulées. Tout
en reconnaissant une relation directe entre les intrants sociaux et les extrants du
système scolaire, à savoir le concept de soi, la confiance en soi et le rendement,
Brookover prévoit que cette relation peut être influencée par la structure sociale
et le climat psychosocial de l’école. Celui-ci est en effet constitué de quatorze
composantes importantes de l’environnement éducatif, telles que les attentes, les
normes et les sentiments des élèves, des enseignants et des cadres de l’école.
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Structure sociale de l’école
1. participation des parents
2. individualisation des programmes
3. organisation de la classe
Intrants
1. caractéristiques des élèves
2. caractéristiques des enseignants
Extrants
1. rendement scolaire des élèves
2. concept de soi des élèves
3. confiance en soi des élèves
Climat psychosocial de l’école
1. perception des élèves
2. perception des enseignants
3. perception de la direction
Perceptions des élèves
Perceptions des enseignants
Perceptions de la direction
1. importance accordée à
l’éducation
2. perception de leurs chances
de réussite
3. perception de leur valeur
personnelle et des attentes à
leur égard
4. perception des normes et des
exigences du milieu
5. perception des normes des
enseignants à leur égard
1. perception de l’habileté des
élèves à poursuivre des études
post-secondaires
2. perception de l’habileté des
élèves à terminer leurs études
secondaires
3. perception de leur engagement et de celui des élèves
4. perception des attentes de la
direction
5. perception de l’importance de
l’éducation
1. perception des préoccupations
et attentes des parents
2. perception de l’effort qu’elle
fait en vue d’améliorer
l’enseignement
3. évaluation de la perception
des parents du milieu
4. perception et attentes par
rapport aux élèves
FIGURE 1
Modèle de Brookover (1979)
En ce qui concerne le concept de soi, Brookover fait référence à la capacité
de l’élève sur le plan scolaire. En d’autres termes, il limite la signification du
concept de soi à la perception de soi de l’élève en tant qu’élève et souligne
l’importance des interactions de l’élève avec les autres élèves de sa classe et avec
certains élèves de l’école. Il postule également que l’élève est amené peu à peu,
sous l’effet des attentes, des normes et des valeurs de tous les intervenants du
système scolaire, à concevoir ses propres normes et croyances et du même coup
à définir son rôle au sein de l’école.
CLIMAT PSYCHOSOCIAL ET CONCEPT DE SOI
371
En somme, en plus de tenir compte des intrants sociaux telles que les caractéristiques du groupe d’élèves et de la structure de l’école, ce modèle envisage
les différents aspects du climat psychosocial de l’école et permet de voir dans
quelle mesure celui-ci peut être relié au rendement, au concept de soi et à la
confiance en soi des élèves. De plus, il peut être décrit à partir des perceptions
de trois groupes ou de l’un ou l’autre des trois groupes suivants: les enseignants,
les directeurs et les élèves. La présente recherche prend en considération uniquement les perceptions de ces derniers sur les aspects suivants: l’importance
accordée à l’éducation, leurs chances de réussite, leurs valeurs personnelles et les
attentes à leur égard, les normes et les exigences du milieu ainsi que les normes
des enseignants à leur endroit. Ainsi, le modèle de Brookover incite à poser les
questions de recherche suivantes: Comment les élèves perçoivent-ils le climat
psychosocial de l’école? Dans quelle mesure leurs perceptions du climat psychosocial influencent-elles leur concept de soi, leur confiance en soi et leur
rendement?
MÉTHODOLOGIE
La population étudiée dans cette recherche est constituée d’élèves de niveau
intermédiaire de langue française de la province de l’Ontario. L’échantillon
comprend 864 élèves de septième et huitième années répartis dans 13 écoles
intermédiaires de huit conseils scolaires.
L’instrument choisi a pour titre Le climat psychosocial de l’école (Forgette-Giroux, Michaud et Richard, 1989). Il est une adaptation française du questionnaire
School Social Climate construit par Brookover (1979). Ce questionnaire s’adresse
aux élèves de 11 ans et plus. Il mesure les perceptions des élèves des composantes du climat psychosocial. Il fournit également une mesure du concept de soi et
de la confiance en soi des élèves par rapport à leurs habiletés scolaires. En ce qui
concerne la variable “concept de soi,” l’auteur indique que tous les items font
référence à la conception que l’enfant a de lui-même comme élève et en comparaison avec ses pairs. De plus, il précise ceci: “it makes no attempt to measure
a wide range of self concepts” (Brookover, 1979, p. 24). La mesure de la “confiance en soi” détermine jusqu’à quel point l’élève se perçoit compétent, désire
réaliser des activités scolaires et résoudre des problèmes par lui-même. La
traduction et la mise à l’épreuve de la validité du questionnaire furent confiées
à des spécialistes. La fidélité du test fut éprouvée à l’aide du coefficient de
consistance interne; les valeurs obtenues sont les suivantes: climat psychosocial,
0,8792 (32 items); concept de soi, 0,8141 (7 items); confiance en soi, 0,5531 (4
items).
Le questionnaire fut soumis à une analyse factorielle. Les résultats de celle-ci
ont permis d’identifier six composantes du climat psychosocial perçues par les
élèves. Ainsi la première dimension identifiée par Brookover, “l’importance
qu’ils accordent à l’éducation” fut scindée en deux composantes distinctes: (1)
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RENÉE FORGETTE-GIROUX, MARC RICHARD ET PIERRE MICHAUD
perception des attentes à leur égard; (2) perception des valeurs de leurs amis. La
version du questionnaire utilisée dans la présente recherche comprenait 43 items
répartis entre les six composantes du climat psychosocial, le concept de soi et la
confiance en soi.
Cet instrument fut administré par la même personne à tous les sujets. En plus
de répondre à ce questionnaire, les élèves devaient remplir une fiche de renseignements personnels et préciser l’occupation de leur père et de leur mère. Ces
dernières réponses furent utilisées à titre d’indicateur de leur statut socio-économique. Quant à la mesure du rendement, elle fut déterminée à l’aide des résultats
semestriels des élèves aux divers examens de français et de mathématiques
administrés dans chacune des écoles. Bien que ces dernières mesures (indicateur
socio-économique et rendement scolaire) comportent certaines limites, elles
furent quand même utilisées à titre exploratoire. Les facteurs mis en corrélation
avec le concept de soi, la confiance en soi et le rendement en français et en
mathématiques sont le sexe, le statut socio-économique et les six composantes
du climat psychosocial telles que perçues par les élèves.
ANALYSE ET INTERPRÉTATION DES RÉSULTATS
Une première analyse a permis de vérifier les corrélations entre la variable sexe,
le statut socio-économique et le climat psychosocial. Les valeurs de ces coefficients de corrélation sont peu élevées et non significatives (0,238 à 0,001). Des
résultats similaires furent obtenus lors d’une deuxième analyse en comparant ces
mêmes variables aux résultats scolaires en français et en mathématiques ainsi
qu’au concept de soi des élèves et à leur confiance en soi. Seule la variable
“statut socio-économique” indique des résultats significatifs, mais avec des
coefficients de corrélation relativement faibles (0,122 à 0,262, p≤0,05).
Il semble que les élèves provenant de milieux plus favorisés économiquement
obtiennent des résultats supérieurs en français et en mathématiques, ont un
concept de soi plus positif et possèdent une plus grande confiance en eux-mêmes.
Ces résultats rejoignent ceux de Coleman (1966), et de Bourdieu et Passeron
(1970). Ces chercheurs croient que les antécédents socio-économiques des élèves
ont une incidence sur le rendement de l’élève et sur certains objectifs d’ordre
affectif.
Les composantes du climat psychosocial perçues par les élèves, c’est-à-dire
les attentes des enseignants à leur égard, leurs chances de réussite, leur valeur
personnelle et les normes et exigences des enseignants ont des coefficients de
corrélation significatifs avec les rendements en mathématiques et en français
(0,42 à 0,09, p≤0,05 et p≤0,001), mais surtout avec le concept de soi des élèves
où les valeurs de ces coefficients sont plus élevées et plus significatives (0,62 à
0,36, p≤0,001). Le climat psychosocial s’avère donc un élément particulièrement
important lorsqu’il s’agit d’expliquer certains résultats relatifs au concept de soi
des élèves et à leur rendement scolaire. Ces résultats obtenus en milieu minori-
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CLIMAT PSYCHOSOCIAL ET CONCEPT DE SOI
taire francophone rejoignent ceux de Brookover. Toutefois, il semble que les
différentes composantes du climat psychosocial telles que perçues par les élèves
n’ont pas le même niveau d’influence sur le concept de soi, la confiance en soi
et le rendement en français et en mathématique; une analyse de régression multiple a permis de préciser l’apport de chacune de ces composantes.
La première analyse de régression a vérifié l’effet de l’ensemble des six
composantes du climat psychosocial sur le concept de soi et s’est avérée significative (F (6,861)=178.83, p≤0,0001). Une deuxième analyse de régression a
démontré l’effet de ces mêmes composantes sur la confiance en soi (F(6,861)=
25,31, p≤0,0001). Enfin, en ce qui concerne les variables du rendement (français
et mathématiques) et tenant compte des limites inhérentes aux instruments de
mesure, les résultats semblent indiquer qu’il y a un effet important du climat
psychosocial sur ces variables (français, F(6,782)=47,86, p≤0,001; mathématiques, F (6,782)=44,94, p≤0,0001). Globalement, le climat psychosocial semble
donc avoir une incidence importante sur les variables affectives “concept de soi”
et “confiance en soi” et sur le rendement.
Ces deux analyses de régression multiple ont également permis d’estimer la
contribution de chacune des composantes du climat psychosocial perçues par les
élèves par rapport aux différentes variables. Le tableau 1 présente les coefficients
bêta et indique la portée relative des différentes composantes du climat psychosocial sur les variables “concept de soi” et “confiance en soi.”
TABLEAU 1
Coefficients de régression relatifs au concept de soi et à la confiance en soi
Concept de soi
Confiance en soi
Climat
Bêta
Prob.
Bêta
Prob.
Attentes à leur
égard
0,52
0,0001
0,17
0,0001
Valeurs des amis
0,07
0,1031
–0,02
0,6180
Chances de réussite
0,32
0,0001
0,11
0,0001
Valeur personnelle
0,32
0,0004
0,05
0,1202
Normes et exigences du milieu
–0,01
0,8722
–0,05
0,2099
Normes et exigences des enseignants
0,03
0,5604
0,02
0,6671
R carré ajusté
0,55
0,14
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RENÉE FORGETTE-GIROUX, MARC RICHARD ET PIERRE MICHAUD
Tout d’abord notons l’importance de la première dimension du climat psychosocial: attentes à leur égard. Les attentes des enseignants et des parents semblent
être la composante du climat qui influence le plus le concept de soi et la confiance en soi des élèves. Ces résultats corroborent ceux de plusieurs recherches
(Eder, 1983; Harris, Rosenthal et Snodgrass, 1986; Karper et Martinek, 1982;
Milgrim, 1983; Pépin, 1990). Toutefois, les attentes des enseignants ne sont pas
les seules à avoir un effet sur le concept de soi et la confiance en soi. Le concept
de soi des élèves est en outre affecté par la perception de ceux-ci par rapport à
leurs chances de réussite et à leur valeur personnelle. De plus, la confiance en
soi des élèves varie selon la perception qu’ils ont de leurs chances de réussite.
Ces trois dimensions du climat psychosocial sont responsables de 55% (R carré)
de la variation des scores du concept de soi et de 14% de la variation des scores
de la confiance en soi.
En ce qui concerne le rendement, le tableau 2 indique les résultats concernant
quatre composantes du climat psychosocial et le rendement en français et en
mathématiques.
Plus précisément, la perception des élèves des attentes à leur égard, de leurs
chances de réussite, de leur valeur personnelle et des normes et des exigences du
milieu présentent des résultats significatifs par rapport à leur performance en
français et en mathématiques. L’étude des coefficients de régression standardisés
(coefficients bêta) permet de considérer l’influence possible des dimensions
TABLEAU 2
Coefficients de régression relatifs aux rendements en français et en mathématiques
Français
Mathématiques
Climat
Bêta
Prob.
Bêta
Prob.
Attentes à leur égard
0,56
0,0001
0,40
0,0001
–0,02
0,8934
0,12
0,5952
Chances de réussite
0,58
0,0001
0,67
0,0001
Valeur personnelle
0,69
0,0001
0,66
0,0100
Normes et exigences du
milieu
–0,97
0,0001
–0,64
0,0037
Normes et exigences des
enseignants
0,29
0,1025
0,39
0,1254
Valeurs des amis
R carré ajusté
0,26
0,17
CLIMAT PSYCHOSOCIAL ET CONCEPT DE SOI
375
“chances de réussite,” “valeur personnelle” et “normes et exigences du milieu.”
Relativement à cette dernière dimension, le sens et la portée du coefficient bêta
laisse entrevoir que le fait d’être exigeant auprès des élèves pourrait avoir un
effet négatif sur le rendement.
Enfin, la comparaison des résultats présentés aux tableaux 1 et 2 porte à croire
que les perceptions des élèves du climat psychosocial influencent leur concept
de soi et leur rendement scolaire. Le tableau 2 met en lumière les valeurs respectives du R carré de ces deux variables; français, R carré=0,26; mathématiques,
R carré=0,17. Les quatre dimensions du climat psychosocial sont donc responsables de seulement 26% de la variation des scores en français et de 17% de la
variation des scores en mathématiques. Par ailleurs le tableau 1 démontre que le
climat psychosocial tel que perçu par les élèves explique 55% de la variation des
scores de leur concept de soi.
CONCLUSION
Alors que la très grande majorité des recherches ont porté une attention particulière à l’influence des attentes des enseignants sur le concept de soi et le
rendement scolaire, la présente recherche a tenté d’élargir la problématique en
envisageant les diverses composantes du climat psychosocial de l’école présentées dans le modèle de Brookover. Les résultats obtenus permettent d’entrevoir
l’importance que les élèves accordent à leurs chances de réussite, à leurs valeurs
personnelles, aux attentes des enseignants ainsi qu’aux normes et aux exigences
des enseignants et du milieu. Ces différentes composantes semblent en effet avoir
un lien avec le concept de soi et le rendement scolaire des élèves.
Les résultats de la présente étude devraient inciter d’autres chercheurs à
considérer non seulement les perceptions des élèves du climat psychosocial, mais
aussi celles des enseignants et des directeurs d’école telles que le propose
Brookover. Ainsi les responsables de l’enseignement seraient amenés à prendre
conscience de l’importance du climat psychosocial de leur école et à élaborer des
lignes de conduite sur le plan administratif qui permettraient l’émergence d’un
climat favorisant l’épanouissement affectif et le succès scolaire des élèves.
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The Nexus of Equality and Quality in Education:
A Framework for Debate
William J. Smith
Charles Lusthaus
mcgill university
Valverde (1988) claims that the general public and many educators believe it is extremely
difficult if not impossible simultaneously to provide excellent education to majority
youngsters and to provide equality of opportunity to ethnic and racial minority students.
We explore the paradox these two major goals present, namely that schools should
promote both equality and quality but cannot foster both goals at once. We argue that the
apparent antithesis of equality and quality results from mutually exclusive definitions
obscuring the true relationship between the two constructs. In place of these definitions,
we offer a model demonstrating that equality and quality are not only compatible but
mutually supportive and enhancing.
Selon Valverde (1988), le public et de nombreux éducateurs estiment qu’il est très
difficile, sinon impossible, d’offrir à la fois une excellente éducation à une majorité de
jeunes et l’égalité des chances aux élèves des minorités ethniques ou raciales. Dans cet
article, les auteurs analysent le paradoxe qui résulte de ces deux objectifs clés, paradoxe
qui se formule comme suit: l’école devrait promouvoir l’égalité et la qualité, mais il lui
serait impossible de réaliser les deux à la fois. Les auteurs avancent que l’opposition
apparente entre l’égalité et la qualité résulte de définitions mutuellement exclusives qui
embrouillent le lien véritable entre les deux visées éducatives. En place et lieu de ces
définitions, les auteurs proposent un modèle démontrant que l’égalité et la qualité sont
non seulement compatibles, mais complémentaires et mutuellement enrichissants.
Educational policy develops through a complex process of accommodation to
competing demands for educational services. These competing demands reflect
different visions of society and of schooling’s purpose. In this context, schools
become a “symbolic battlefield . . . the ultimate public-policy crucible in which
our vision of social purpose is tried” (Paquette, 1991, p. 2). We expect schools
to be excellent but equally available to all, goals which many see as inherently
contradictory. Savage (1988) describes this paradox thus:
One of the major challenges facing educators today is the creation of school systems
which are both equal and excellent. Yet a common perception is that educators must make
an either-or choice about excellence and equality, and that a major problem of educational
policy is to negotiate the conflict between them. (p. 9)
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E-QUALITY IN EDUCATION
379
In this paradigm, people see equality and quality as polar opposites on a linear
continuum. To move toward one is to move away from the other; when you
accommodate one, you do so at the other’s expense.
We associate the pursuit of equality as an educational policy goal providing
compensatory education and special education for students viewed as “educationally disadvantaged” because of various factors, including poverty, social
class, race, disability, or gender. Conversely, we associate the pursuit of quality
with educating majority-group students, especially those thought to have “superior ability.” Given the presumed linear relation between equality and quality,
advocates of each compete with each other for scarce educational resources in
what we call the “E-Quality” debate. As complex issues distil into slogans, the
debate is often reduced to demands, in the name of equality, for neighbourhood
schools that include all students, versus the call in the name of quality for
specialized classes, curricula, and schools for selected students.
Our purpose in this article is to contribute to an understanding of this debate
by exploring the constructs of equality and quality. In particular, we hope to
resolve the paradox these two major goals present, namely that schools should
promote both equality and quality but cannot foster both goals at once. This brief
discussion is divided into three parts. In the first two, we discuss the constructs
of equality and quality, with a view to understanding each part of the paradox.
In the third, we offer a synthesis of these two constructs, and, we believe, a
resolution of the paradox.
THE CONSTRUCT OF EQUALITY
The notion of equality is as old as human thought but despite its universal
appeal, it still remains an “elusive ideal”; in the words of Lucas (1965): “Equality is the great political issue of our time. . . . The demand for equality obsesses
all our political thought. We are not sure what it is . . . but we are sure that
whatever it is, we want it” (p. 296). The very concept of equality is a paradox.
On the one hand, we often assert that all persons are equal but yet we realize
that all people are not in fact equal, as stated by Blits (1990): “Every individual
inherits some of the advantages or disadvantages of his ancestors and is largely
influenced by the social conditions (education, family environment, and the like)
in which fortune places him” (p. 309).
When governments attempt to define equality in law, they are no longer
engaged in philosophical discourse, as their deliberations will result in the
creation of various rights and obligations enforceable by the courts. Legal
equality, however, does not mean treating everyone alike; rather, it means the
distinctions laws make between groups are relevant to acceptable public purposes.
Equality is often a rhetorical and ideological battleground, where the interests
of majority and minority groups are fought out, where rights of the individual are
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CHARLES LUSTHAUS
pitted against rights of the collectivity. Equality can thus be used to describe
various forms of distributive justice which, according to Rawls (1971), should
be consistent with principles of equal citizenship and equality of opportunity.
Equal citizenship assumes that although people may possess different qualities,
and therefore be unequal in terms of merit, they are all of equal worth. “Equality
of opportunity” refers to such divergent circumstances as the freedom to exercise
one’s natural abilities and the redistribution of social or economic benefits.
Contemporary authors often discuss equality in terms of “fair play,” also
known as procedural equality, and “fair shares,” also known as substantive
equality. According to Vickers (1983), “fair play” aims at removing external
barriers to allow people an equal opportunity to compete in “life’s race.” Gibson
(1990) sees this as encompassing a wide variety of treatments:
Stingily applied, the fair play . . . model represents a stern and unsympathetic form of
rugged individualism. Generously applied, it can accommodate a considerable measure
of humanitarianism. (p. 63)
Vickers (1983) describes “fair shares” as a more expansive form of equality
which promotes the collective welfare of all members of the community, regardless of their ability to compete in “life’s race.” Otherwise, disadvantaged individuals will still finish last, if they finish the race at all. As Bayefsky (1985)
says, “Free to try. Born to lose” (p. 5).
Equality in the school setting is often termed equal educational opportunity
(EEO), a construct that has evolved over time and that is defined differently by
different commentators (Coleman, 1968). EEO begins with consideration of these
similarities and differences among the children who come to school; these reflect
internal factors, such as ability and interest, and external factors, such as socioeconomic status and cultural values, as well as interaction between the two.
Inequalities can arise from inappropriate treatment of similarities and differences;
that is, when we act on the basis of factors not relevant to the school context or
fail to act on the basis of relevant factors. For example, EEO is denied or
diminished when educators act on the basis of skin colour (irrelevant factor) or
fail to compensate for a child whose home offers very little stimulation (relevant
factor).
The provision of EEO can be analyzed in terms of inputs, throughputs, and
outputs (Sutton, 1991). Inputs are the “raw material” of the educational process
(e.g., human resources). Throughputs include what happens within the school as
students are educated (e.g., how students are treated by teachers). The interaction
of throughputs on inputs produces outputs (e.g., academic achievement). Murphy
(1988) states that the emerging construct of EEO is access to learning, which is
concerned more with how inputs are directed toward achieving school success.
This perspective places the focus for EEO at the school level.
E-QUALITY IN EDUCATION
381
Much EEO literature is premised on the belief that students’ success in school
should be determined by ability and effort, not class or wealth. There is considerable divergence, however, concerning the extent to which schools should
attempt to compensate for such inequalities, from the neo-conservative position
of simply protecting basic rights to the social-democratic position of redistributing economic benefits (Salomone, 1986). There is similar divergence on the
means to achieve such goals and on whether equality can be achieved, or at least
maximized, by dealing with diverse students together or separately, a quandary
Minow (1990) describes as the “dilemma of difference.”
EEO aims, then, at reducing if not eliminating the educational disadvantage
of minority groups. Once again, these terms are assigned different meanings by
different authors (Pallas, Natriello, & McDill, 1989) and need to be qualified. For
purposes of this discussion, “educational disadvantage” refers to conditions that
impair a student’s ability to benefit from a meaningful educational experience.
A “minority group” is understood as an identifiable sub-set of society, characterized by having less power and receiving pejorative treatment, and which is
generally, but not always, a numerical minority compared to the dominant/
majority group.
Although only educational disadvantages warrant the provision of EEO, in
practice educational disadvantage usually stems from more general social and
economic disadvantage. The narrow focus on education, however, recognizes that
not all minority groups experience educational disadvantage and not every
member of a disadvantaged group requires special treatment. Similarly, EEO
policy must accommodate individuals who are not members of such groups but
who require such treatment.
Students with disabilities are one group who have experienced unequal conditions and treatment for many years. These students, like those from other
minority groups, have been excluded from and marginalized by the education
system. The pursuit of equality for these students began with the right of access
to the public school system. Once they are admitted to the system, emphasis
shifts to appropriate placement and educational services. At present, the issue is
framed largely in terms of their equal right to be educated in the mainstream
with their age-appropriate peers and to receive an appropriate education.
Policy talk about educating students with disabilities reveals the range of
meanings of equality discussed above, as well as the wider E-Quality debate. For
example, some people believe equality for students with disabilities is fostered
by a separate special education system. Others believe equality is best promoted
by integrating these students in the mainstream of regular education. Opposition
to integration is also voiced by those who fear it will be detrimental to nondisabled children. They argue that the attention and resources lavished, some
would say wasted, upon students with disabilities compromise the quality of
education offered to other students.
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THE CONSTRUCT OF QUALITY
Defining quality or excellence is at least as problematic as defining equality or
equity. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1975) defines “quality” as, inter
alia, “the nature, kind, or character (of something); hence, the degree of excellence, etc. possessed by a thing” (Vol. 2, p. 1724). It defines “excellence” as “the
state or fact of excelling; the possession of good qualities in an unusual degree”
(Vol. 1, p. 695), where “excel” means “to be superior or preeminent, usu[ally]
in good qualities or praiseworthy actions; to surpass others” (Vol. 1, p. 695). If
we think of education as an input-throughput-output system, we can begin to
think about superior resources (e.g., teachers), superior processes (e.g., classroom
instruction), and superior products (e.g., graduation results). As suggested by the
Oxford definitions, however, this conceptualization immediately begs the question — superior in relation to what, or to whom?
Strike (1985) contributes to our understanding of the E-Quality debate by
exploring the meaning of quality as it applies to “norm-referenced” or “criterionreferenced” testing. In a norm-referenced definition, quality is understood in
relation to a normalized distribution of performance with respect to some particular measure of quality. Quality thus becomes a “high score” compared to the
norm. It is axiomatic, therefore, that only a limited number of schools or students
can be excellent. As Strike (1985) puts it: “That only some can be excellent is
true for the same reason that not everyone can be better than average” (p. 410).
Before this approach can be used, however, one must first decide the reference
group upon which to “norm the test.” Will it be schools in the province, in
Canada, in North America, in the world? Will the reference group include all
schools, only public schools, only academic schools?
The alternative approach is to define quality by some criterion (or criteria)
that, at least in theory, is attainable by all, or most, schools. Obviously, the
criterion can be set high enough that very few will meet it, or low enough that
all will meet it. If this approach is used for some purpose other than to control
the percentage of schools qualifying as excellent, however, the criterion must be
defined in terms of schooling’s purpose. Thus, for example, if people are being
trained to operate a piece of equipment, quality can be defined according to that
purpose. Given the complex purposes of public education, defining such standards is not easy.
Whereas norm-referenced measures are concerned with meeting a relative
standard (dependent benchmark), criterion-referenced measures are concerned
with meeting some absolute standard (independent benchmark). In both approaches, one is confronted by two underlying questions: What is the purpose of
education? What is the substance of the measure of quality, be the measure
relative or absolute?
According to Wirt, Mitchell, and Marshall (1988), “the history of education
has been driven by this search for Quality, whether in curriculum, teaching
E-QUALITY IN EDUCATION
383
methods, teacher and administrator training, or other attributes of the professional
model of education” (p. 274). As alluded to above, however, given the variety
of interrelated and sometimes contradictory purposes of education, this quest has
never been easy. The OECD report Schools and Quality describes this dilemma:
Despite the need for focus, a single, tight definition of “quality” would require making
two questionable assumptions, first, that underlying the complexity of education systems
is a set of relatively clear and non-conflicting goals that provide the measure of whether
quality is being achieved, second, that it should be possible to apply these goals across
OECD countries despite their diverse traditions and cultures and the variety of conditions
prevailing even within national frontiers. It would also entail assuming that educational
improvement is to be achieved through a standard model or plan that can be implemented
in a “top-down” fashion. (OECD, 1988, cited in Freeland, 1991, p. 61)
Canada has no national report — not even a Royal Commission — to galvanize
the educational community and the general public around the search for quality
education. This is not surprising, given the federal government’s conspicuous
absence from the educational policy scene in Canada. More activity has occurred
at the provincial level; much policy talk on quality education used to stimulate
reform in Canada, however, comes from the United States (Wideen, 1988).
In the United States, the reform movement is often described in terms of
successive “waves of reform” (Lunenburg, 1992). The first wave was based on
the assumption that the country’s educational problems could be attributed to low
scholastic standards and poor teaching. Increased student testing and the establishment of curriculum standards and frameworks were the preferred vehicles of
change to address problems of academic content. It is not surprising, therefore,
that quality came to be defined by normative test scores. According to Howe
(1987), this approach was simplistically presented by the media and accepted by
the public to mean that “if scores go up, the schools are fine, if they go down,
the schools are losing quality” (p. 200).
The second wave of reform was almost a mirror image of the first. As Hanson
(1991) states, “if the first wave of educational reforms identified teachers as the
problem, the second wave identified them as the solution” (p. 34). Models for
restructuring schools, including an emphasis on school-based management and
the “empowerment” of teachers, became the second wave’s currency. This
decentralization of the solution to school improvement fostered increased diversity in the definition of its substance.
While reform waves have ebbed and flowed, John Goodlad has systematically
thought and written about educational quality, as illustrated by the following
extract from A Place Called School (1984):
[In order to improve the quality of schooling, we] need to involve students in a variety
of ways of thinking, to introduce students to concepts and not just facts, to provide
situations that provoke and evoke curiosity, to develop in students concern for one’s own
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performance in work and the satisfaction of meeting one’s own standards, to cultivate
appreciation of others through cooperative endeavours, and to be concerned about the
traits of mind and character fostered in schools. (p. 244)
What emerges from the work of Goodlad (1984, 1990) and others is that quality
is much more elusive than anything that can be measured on a standardized test.
Contemporary thinking about educational quality emphasizes the process
occurring in schools, using the principles of “total quality management” of W.
Edwards Deming (Bonstingl, 1992). In this vision of educational quality, the
student is both a consumer and a producer, who both benefits from and contributes to his or her own intellectual, personal, and social development. Educators
must examine the whole range of effects current assessment practices have on
students and on their capacity to learn and grow. This paradigm recognizes that
the potential for success — and for failure — is much more closely associated
with processes comprising the system than with individuals’ actions. It is the
responsibility of educational leaders to provide the environment in which continuous improvement — that is, quality education — can be delivered.
This construct of educational quality (continuous improvement) is a visionary
departure from the definition of educational quality in terms of competitive
excellence, measured by norm-referenced achievement test scores. As set forth
by Glasser (1992a):
While a complete definition of quality is elusive, it certainly would include usefulness in
the real world. And useful need not be restricted to practical or utilitarian. That which is
useful can be aesthetically or spiritually useful or useful in some other way that is
meaningful to the student — but it can never be nonsense. . . .
What we want to develop are students who have the skills to become active contributors to society, who are enthusiastic about what they have learned, and who are aware
of how learning can be of use to them in the future. (pp. 692, 694)
This construct is not Utopian or unconnected with the “real world”; on the
contrary, it seeks to establish the school’s place in that world.
SYNTHESIS OF EQUALITY AND QUALITY
As we have shown, both equality and quality are difficult to define and mean
different things to different people. In summary, equality, or equity, denotes
fairness or justice and subsumes the notions of procedural and substantive
equality. In the context of public schooling, it is often referred to as equal
educational opportunity or EEO. EEO considers both similarities and differences
among students and attempts, through various inputs, throughputs, and outputs,
to provide an appropriate education to all students. EEO aims at reducing, if not
eliminating, minority groups’ educational disadvantage. Disadvantage arises from
both internal and external factors, such as skin colour and socioeconomic con-
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ditions. Minority groups are understood to encompass ethnic and cultural minorities, the poor, and students with disabilities.
Quality, or excellence, is generally understood to mean attainment that is superior based on some measure. In education, the concept has thus come to mean
superior inputs, throughputs, and outputs of schooling. Describing anything as a
measure of some attribute implies a reference point or scale, be it absolute or
relative. We have seen that excellence is a key by-word of the reform movement.
At first, and still for many, quality was measured by test scores — typically on
standardized achievement tests, used to compare one school, school system, or
jurisdiction to the larger group on which the test was normed. Increasingly today,
quality is given a much broader meaning, one recognizing not only the measurable and non-measurable outputs of education, but also the process by which
education takes place.
As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, the current debate portrays
equality and quality as if they were linearly related, where a move toward one
necessarily means a move away from the other. This presumed antithesis has
been applied at the level of the system to exclude students altogether, within the
system to track students into different programs and schools, and within programs and schools to group students by various ability-based criteria. As alluded
to above, the evolution of policy for educating students with disabilities encompasses all three of these variations.
The defence of tracking, ability grouping, and a special education typically
uses a linear conceptualization of equality and quality. Although some argue that
such practices benefit all students, others suggest this claim often masks the
“hidden agenda” of promoting the welfare of the most able. As Cummins (1986)
states, “within democratic societies, contradictions between the rhetoric of
equality and the reality of domination must be obscured” (p. 25).
Critics of the “most able” vision of quality point out its harmful effects on
disadvantaged students — hence the characterization of critics as pro-equality,
anti-quality. In fact, these critics are not opposed to quality, only to a vision of
quality which is exclusionary. They argue that norm-referenced criteria for
defining quality are inherently exclusionary because only those who are (significantly) above the mean are deemed to have attained quality standards. They
assert that quality standards must instead embrace all students. Consider this
statement by McCollum and Walker (1992):
Large scale reform efforts that lump all groups together by intent or by default will result
in less than adequate responses to those students with other linguistic, cultural, or ability
characteristics. . . . New attention must be directed to the diversity of our schools, recognizing that there can be excellence in diversity. . . . The long-term effects of unidimensional policies that ignore our increasingly pluralistic society suggest that we are headed
for a future very different from the one painted in America 2000. Perhaps a true pursuit
of excellence might better be served by a focus on the need for the more specialized and
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careful attention to the needs of all students, rather than on a focus for us to be “Number
1.” (pp. 191–192)
If these visions are irreconcilably antithetical, the conflict arises not from
opposing equality and quality, but from contrasting socio-political visions of
society.
On the one hand are those who espouse a neo-conservative agenda, one
characterized by maximum individual liberty, competition, self-sufficiency,
minimum government intervention, and procedural equality. On the other hand,
those advancing the social democratic agenda advocate substantive equality,
cooperation, and community responsibility and accept, or even desire, considerable government intervention to accomplish their goals. In moderate forms, each
agenda seeks a “level playing field” for all and the differences between them
become shades of grey. In their extreme forms, the neo-conservative agenda
promotes social Darwinism and the social democratic agenda promotes socialism.
Shades of grey are replaced by starkly contrasting blacks and whites. Marcoulides and Heck (1990) express the effect of this conflict on education:
The dilemma posed for policymakers concerned with mediating the demands for both
equity and excellence is suggested by a basic dichotomy in American education: whether
education is to be viewed as a tool of empowerment or an instrument of selective mobility. (p. 307)
It is no accident that the ascendancy of the neo-conservative agenda and the
advocacy of quality over equality have developed in a period of economic
recession. In times of economic prosperity, stakeholders are more likely to view
the equality agenda as something which can be accommodated, at least partially,
with additional funds. In hard times, such demands are more likely viewed as
competing for existing funds. As self-interest is not a fashionable slogan, the
rhetoric of reform prefers the pursuit of quality as the symbol of its agenda.
When the more eclectic view of quality — that is, continuous learning for
all — envisaged by Goodlad (1984, 1990), Glasser (1992b), Lezotte (1992), and
others replaces the notion of quality linked to standardized achievement tests, the
antithesis of equality and quality tends to dissipate, even if it does not disappear.
This analysis leads us to conclude that equality and quality are in fact orthogonally related, as illustrated in Figure 1.
Using this paradigm, one can move toward or away from either equality or
quality without necessarily moving toward or away from the other. Put another
way, equality begs the question “Equitable for what?” whereas quality begs the
question “Excellent for whom?” The orthogonal relation creates four quadrants
that define the nexus of equality and quality. Using this approach, educational
policies can be characterized as one of four types, according to how they promote equality and quality.
E-QUALITY IN EDUCATION
387
Quality
Equality
Low
High
High
III
IV
Low
I
II
FIGURE 1
The Nexus of Quality and Equality
Type I policies are low on equality and low on quality. It is difficult to
imagine policy makers consciously pursuing such policies but they do exist in
practice. For example, a school board may separate students into two different
streams or programs and virtually deny various students access to certain types
of learning experiences. Policy makers may believe they are offering quality
services to one or both of these streams, while in fact they are providing mediocre quality in each.
Type II policies pursue quality at the expense of equality, and exclude those
who do not, or cannot, achieve the standards used to define quality. We do this
when, for example, we create magnet or alternative schools, provide these
schools with superior resources, and then restrict access to them to those students
who meet predetermined academic prerequisites and can afford supplementary
fees for extra-curricular activities.
Alternatively, one can pursue a type III policy; in this case, we aim at achieving equality at the expense of quality and include all students, without regard for
any standards of quality. This approach is exemplified when we “dump” students
with disabilities in a regular class without providing appropriate support.
Of greater interest, therefore, is whether, and if so how, one can pursue a type
IV policy, one which maximizes both equality and quality. In this instance, we
seek to provide a quality educational experience to all students, as discussed
below.
This analysis shows that the apparent contradiction between equality and
quality is a function of the particular definitions used to describe each construct.
As soon as one accepts that each construct may be defined variously, then the
conflict between equality and quality can be seen as a result, rather than a cause,
of the debate. If quality is defined as by high achievement scores on normalized
tests, it is impossible to provide EEO to all students. One can accommodate procedural equality but not substantive equality. If one wishes to pursue substantive
equality, then one must sacrifice the normalized standard of quality. This dichot-
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omy may be mitigated by a criterion-referenced definition of quality, depending
on the reference point used to define quality. The presumed antithesis, however,
can be resolved only when quality is defined as continuous improvement.
The analysis also exposes the fact that quality has been appropriated by one
side in a socio-political debate, a side whose real agenda is better expressed by
the slogan “quality for my group, but not for yours.” Some would argue that this
posture reflects overt prejudice and the use of schools to maintain class domination (Shujaa, 1993), a recurrent theme in the EEO literature (e.g., Hurn, 1985;
Porter, 1979).
This synthesis suggests that type IV policies, which we call E-Quality policies,
are not only desirable but attainable. E-Quality education does not mean the same
education, either in form or in content, for all students. Not all students need or
want to learn exactly the same facts and skills, any more than they all have the
same aspirations, be they personal, social, academic or vocational. E-Quality
education occurs when such diversity is accepted, and when curriculum and
teaching methods, to name but two variables, are adapted to meet these individual needs. Skrtic (1991) states that student diversity is a problem only in schools
“premised on standardization and thus configure themselves as performance
organizations that perfect student programs for known contingencies” (p. 177).
By contrast, he asserts, “student diversity is not a liability in a problem-solving
organization; it is an asset, an enduring uncertainty, and thus the driving force
behind innovation, growth of knowledge, and progress” (p. 177).
It is important to emphasize the in-school interactions which occur between
students themselves, as well as those which occur between students and adults,
as these interactions represent a dimension of E-Quality schooling that cannot be
ignored. These interactions are a critical element in preparing students to live and
work in the global economy of the future. Reich (1990) describes the importance
of collaboration in this new world:
Ideally, individual skills are integrated into a group; this collective capacity to innovate
becomes something greater than the sum of its parts. Over time, as group members work
through various problems and approaches, they learn about each others’ abilities. They
learn how they can help one another perform better, what each can contribute to a particular project, and how they can best take advantage of one another’s experience. (p. 201)
The E-Quality school fosters such interactions, thereby promoting both quality
and equality. In this vision of education, equality and quality are not merely
compatible: each is a precondition for the other.
CONCLUSION
Our purpose in this article was to advance discussion of an important contemporary policy issue — the pursuit of equality and quality. More specifically, we
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have attempted to resolve the paradox these two major goals present, namely that
schools should promote both equality and quality but cannot foster both goals at
once. To accomplish this task, we proposed a model showing that the relationship between equality and quality is orthogonal, not linear, and that four policy
types can be envisaged. Using this model, we have shown that the apparent
incompatibility of these two goals results from acceptance of mutually exclusive
definitions judging quality on a norm-referenced basis. This definitional base
creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of “irreconcilable difference” between the two
constructs.
When quality is understood on the basis of continuous improvement for all
students, the irreconcilable is resolved. Not only is it possible to pursue equality
and quality simultaneously, such an approach is the essence of school improvement in the post-industrial age. As Schaefer (1990) argues, there is no quality
without equality and equality without quality is not worth having. Equality and
quality are, in fact, complementary aspects of a global vision of public education,
which, if not essential to each other, are mutually supportive and enhancing:
If one identifies high standards as an aspect of excellence and diversity as an aspect of
equity, then excellence and equity complement each other. It is this combination of
characteristics that results in educational eminence. Neither excellence alone, with its
excluding policy, nor equity alone, with its including policy, is sufficient for the attainment of educational eminence. Indeed, excellence, without a commitment to equity could
result in arrogance. And equity, without a commitment to excellence could result in
mediocrity. Since excellence and equity and equity complement each other to their mutual
benefit, one wonders how they were ever thought to be contradictory or in opposition to
each other. (Willie, 1987, p. 205)
Achieving both equality and quality requires new approaches. As stated by
Haywood, Burns, Arbitman-Smith, and Delclos (1983–1984): “‘Back to basics’
in the traditional sense should be replaced by ‘forward to fundamentals,’ reflecting a redefinition of what is basic or fundamental to school learning” (p. 17).
Some recent research provides some answers as to how to develop such schools,
but certainly not all the answers. We are, however, far more likely to find these
answers if we begin with the premise that E-Quality schools are not only desirable but attainable.
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William J. Smith is in the Office of Research on Educational Policy and Charles Lusthaus in the
Department of Administration and Policy Studies, both in the Faculty of Education, 3724 McTavish
Street, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1Y2.
Idéologies de la nation, idéologies de l’éducation
au Canada entre 1867 et 1960: le “bénéfice
du locuteur” majoritaire ou minoritaire
Angéline Martel
Daniel Villeneuve
téléuniversité
Deux grands courants idéologiques nationaux et éducatifs se sont développés au Canada
entre 1867 et 1960. Les adhérents de chacune de ces idéologies ont trouvé des avantages
concordant avec leur statut de majoritaire ou de minoritaire. Pour ceux de l’idéologie
homogénéiste, l’uniformité linguistique et culturelle est la condition nécessaire au
maintien de l’unité nationale. Pour ceux de l’idéologie dualiste, au contraire, la
reconnaissance de la dualité est la condition nécessaire au maintien de l’unité nationale.
À cause de ces oppositions idéologiques, les projets éducatifs des minorités et ceux de la
majorité entrent donc systématiquement en collision. Ce retour historique permet de mieux
comprendre les raisons profondes qui motivent, aujourd’hui, la résistance aux droits
scolaires constitutionnels promulgués par l’article 23 de la Charte canadienne des droits
et libertés (1982).
Two national educational ideologies developed in Canada between 1867 and 1960. Their
adherents were more or less successful in achieving their educational goals depending on
whether they were in the majority or in a minority. Those who held to an ideology of
homogeneity saw linguistic and cultural uniformity as the precondition of national unity,
whereas dualist ideologues thought duality the necessary condition of unity. This ideological antinomy has led systematically to majority-minority clashes. An historical
perspective helps us understand the reasons for resistance to education provisions in
article 23 of the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
INTRODUCTION
S’il est un domaine dans lequel les idéologies de la nation sont susceptibles de
se heurter de front, c’est bien en éducation. En effet, l’éducation tient un rôle
stratégique dans la formation et la reproduction des nations modernes. Moore
(1918) écrivait, au début du siècle, “Education and nationality are as closely and
as confusedly related as the hen and the egg” (p. 99). Selon Gellner (1989), le
rôle de l’éducation dans la formation des nations industrialisées est si crucial, par
comparaison avec les sociétés pré-industrielles, qu’on peut considérer que “le
monopole de l’éducation légitime est maintenant plus important et plus décisif
que le monopole de la violence légitime” (p. 56). C’est que, dans les systèmes
éducatifs contemporains, la transmission du savoir a pour corollaire la production
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et la reproduction des valeurs sociales et linguistiques qui favorisent généralement la promotion des groupes dominants au détriment de groupes minoritaires.
Toutefois, réagissant à ce processus d’homogénéisation par l’État, les minorités demandent et obtiennent de plus en plus de protections contre les “abus” de
l’État. C’est d’ailleurs le rôle que jouent les chartes, celui de contrôler les
pouvoirs et les prérogatives des états. Avec leur multiplication consacrant ainsi
la primauté du droit dans les sociétés démocratiques, celui-ci joue donc un rôle
grandissant dans la protection et l’épanouissement des minorités (Capotorti, 1979;
Turi, 1986). Les groupes minoritaires s’appuient désormais sur le droit pour
préserver leur identité propre face à l’homogénéisation culturelle et linguistique
que tendent à imposer les groupes dominants au sein des États modernes. Depuis
les dernières décennies, les minorités cherchent incidemment à garantir, au
moyen de dispositions légales, idéalement de nature constitutionnelle, la vitalité
de leur langue dans des domaines spécifiques tels que l’éducation, les média,
l’administration publique, les tribunaux (Cobarrubias, 1983; Tollefson, 1991).
Certains groupes minoritaires s’efforcent même d’acquérir dans ces domaines,
par le recours au droit, une forme ou une autre d’autodétermination ou d’indépendance de l’État, sans pour autant rechercher une souveraineté pleine et entière
dans toutes les sphères de leur existence.1
Parmi les secteurs visés par les revendications des minorités, l’éducation se
voit attribuer généralement un rôle prépondérant dans la protection et l’épanouissement de leur langue et de leur identité (Giles, Bourhis et Taylor, 1977). Plus
qu’un simple lieu de transmission de la langue, l’école représente alors pour les
minorités une institution sociale d’importance vitale où se produisent et se
reproduisent la culture et l’identité des groupes. C’est autour de l’école également que se forment et se maintiennent les réseaux sociaux qui constituent les
groupes minoritaires. Dans les milieux minoritaires, l’éducation et les droits
scolaires prennent donc souvent une valeur symbolique beaucoup plus forte qu’au
sein des milieux majoritaires. Les groupes linguistiques minoritaires affirment
alors leurs projets éducatifs avec insistance et persistance dans leur discours
public, leurs revendications et leurs démarches judiciaires.
Les deux visions du rôle de l’éducation au sein des États modernes que nous
venons de décrire brièvement, celle de l’État et celle des minorités, esquissent
deux grands courants idéologiques qui s’affrontent, au Canada, comme dans les
États bilingues ou multilingues du monde. Pour mieux comprendre leur interaction et interrelation, nous examinerons comment ces deux courants idéologiques, l’un homogénéiste2 et l’autre dualiste, envisagent le rôle de l’État et celui
de l’école. Ces deux idéologies engendrent des visions tout à fait opposées du
rôle de l’éducation, qui déterminent chacune à leur manière la fonction épistémique de l’école ainsi que la place qui revient aux groupes minoritaires en ce
domaine. En dernière analyse, le rôle attribué à l’éducation par ces deux idéologies découle directement de leur conception respective de la nation.
Nous reconstituons brièvement ces deux courants idéologiques tels qu’ils se
sont développés dans la nation canadienne entre 1867 et 1960. Nous faisons
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l’hypothèse que les projets éducatifs des minorités et ceux de la majorité entrent
systématiquement en collision parce qu’ils reposent respectivement sur des
idéologies opposées de la nation et de l’éducation. Comme corollaire, nous
faisons l’hypothèse que l’idéologie de l’éducation est intimement liée à celle de
la nation. À cet égard, l’expérience canadienne s’avère particulièrement propice
à l’analyse car, dès 1867, la loi constitutionnelle régissant la nouvelle confédération canadienne — l’Acte de l’Amérique du Nord britannique (AANB) — instaurait, dans l’article 93, certains droits touchant expressément l’éducation des
minorités, de sorte qu’il nous est possible d’étayer sur une période historique
étendue notre analyse de l’articulation entre l’idéologie de la nation et celle de
l’éducation.
Amorcer une réflexion sur le rôle qu’historiquement les idéologies accordent
à la notion de “nation” et à celle d’ “éducation” permet de mieux comprendre le
recours systématique au droit constitutionnel et aux tribunaux par les minorités
francophones du Canada depuis l’avènement de l’article 23 de la Charte en
1982.3 En effet, ces recours contemporains au droit s’inscrivent dans la foulée
d’une histoire des idéologies et les arguments invoqués aujourd’hui devant les
tribunaux reprennent les deux idéologies historiquement prédominantes. L’adhérent — ou locuteur — d’une idéologie tente alors d’avantager le statut ou la position de son groupe, minoritaire ou majoritaire.
Bien que la dynamique d’interaction entre une majorité et une minorité, que
nous décrivons dans ce texte par la voie des idéologies respectives, recouvre une
dimension proprement canadienne, elle n’est pas unique au contexte canadien.
Elle est aussi lié à la mise en place, au sein des sociétés modernes démocratiques, des grands systèmes d’éducation centralisés, dans lesquels s’affirme avec
plus de force que jamais la propension des majorités à imposer à tous leur langue
et leur culture. À ce titre, nous espérons que notre analyse sert à une compréhension mondiale de la dynamique des relations entre une minorité et une majorité.
Nous concentrons ici notre attention sur la période 1867–1960,4 durant laquelle les droits scolaires des minorités au Canada sont régis par l’article 93. En
un premier temps, nous situons notre étude en définissant le concept d’idéologie.
En un deuxième temps, nous décrivons les deux idéologies de la nation qui ont
silloné l’histoire canadienne pendant cette période. Ensuite, nous démontrons
comment ces visions différentes de la nation conduisent à des visions diamétralement opposées du rôle de l’éducation. Nous concluons que chaque locuteur
cherche à avantager la position de son groupe par le biais de son discours
idéologique.
LE SENS ACCORDÉ AU CONCEPT IDÉOLOGIE
Le concept d’idéologie s’avère central à notre problématique. En raison de son
caractère polysémique, nous précisons brièvement le sens que nous lui attribuons.
Ce concept, croyons-nous, est intimement lié à la notion de pouvoir. Notre
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optique s’inscrit dans l’une des dimensions fondamentales de la condition minoritaire, celle d’être en position désavantagée au plan des rapports de pouvoir.5 En
effet les minorités éprouvent plus de difficulté à faire accepter leurs visions de
la société, leur conception sur l’éducation, entre autres. Tollefson (1991) propose une définition du concept d’idéologie qui s’articule autour de la notion de
pouvoir:
Ideology is connected to power, because the assumptions that come to be accepted as
common sense depend upon the structure of power in a society. In general, common-sense
assumptions help to sustain existing power relationships. As ideology builds these assumptions into the institutions of society, it tends to freeze privilege and to grant it legitimacy
as a “natural” condition. The exercise of power depends upon coercion, including physical
violence, and upon the manufacture of consent, which refers to the capacity of dominant
groups to gain consent for existing power relationships from those in subordinate positions. [. . .] Ideology contributes to the manufacture of consent because it leads to (ideological) assumptions about right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. That
is, ideology shapes behaviour. . . . it is largely unconscious. . . . (p. 10–11)
Une idéologie exprime donc un rapport de pouvoir entre les agents sociaux qui
la véhiculent — les locuteurs — et les destinataires qu’elle vise à convaincre. Elle
légitime l’inclusion des uns et l’exclusion des autres, suivant des critères prétendument et apparemment normaux, voire universels. Elle tend à se perpétuer par
l’entremise des institutions sociales, dont l’école, puisqu’elle participe à la
production et à la reproduction de ces dernières. Enfin, elle contribue à gagner
le consentement des uns et des autres, dans la mesure où elle oriente les comportements en établissant les critères du bien et du mal.
Dans toute société, l’exercice du pouvoir dépend ou bien de la coercition ou
bien d’une “production de consentement” — “a manufacture of consent,” pour
reprendre l’expression de Tollefson (1991). En ce qui a trait aux sociétés démocratiques, l’exercice du pouvoir repose davantage sur une “production de consentement.” Ce consentement est obtenu au moyen de l’idéologie et l’école est un
lieu privilégié de production de consentement.
Ainsi, les idéologies, dans l’optique de notre cadre d’analyse, se conçoivent
comme des ensembles d’idées reçues, des représentations du monde, des systèmes d’idées plus ou moins cohérents, des principes éthiques qui orientent les
comportements et règlent les relations de pouvoir entre les individus et entre les
groupes. Les idéologies ne sont pas des phénomènes statiques. Elles ont une vie
plus ou moins durable. Elles naissent, se développent, interagissent avec d’autres
idéologies. Ce faisant, elles se transforment, déclinent, renaissent et ainsi de
suite. Il en est ainsi des idéologies dualiste et homogénéiste au Canada: leur
contenu et leur vigueur ne cesse de fluctuer au cours de l’histoire.
Si les idéologies ne déterminent pas entièrement les comportements, elles
reflètent dans une large mesure les intérêts des agents sociaux — individus ou
groupes — qui les véhiculent. À la suite de Boudon (1986), nous considérerons
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que l’adhésion des agents sociaux aux idéologies est déterminée soit par leur
position dans la structure sociale, soit par leur disposition — c’est-à-dire par leur
propres schèmes de référence ou d’habitudes mentales, soit enfin par l’efficacité
de la communication. Ces facteurs interviennent tantôt indépendamment les uns
des autres, tantôt concurremment. Ainsi, les catégories de minorité et de majorité
sont tout aussi cruciales que celles de classe sociale ou de sexe dans l’adhésion
des agents sociaux aux idéologies. Toutes ces catégories constituent en fait autant
de positions au sein d’une structure sociale qui sont susceptibles de déterminer
la réceptivité des agents aux idéologies. Cette caractéristique, Foucault (1976) l’a
aussi clairement exprimée lorsqu’il emploie l’expression “le bénéfice du locuteur” (p. 13), expression qui met l’accent sur la volonté ou l’intention qui porte
le discours, en l’occurrence dans ce texte, celui sur l’éducation et la nation.
Afin de dégager les idéologies de la nation et de l’éducation, nous avons
analysé des documents historiques provenant de différents types de locuteurs,
entre autres, représentants de groupes minoritaires et majoritaires, membres
d’association, membres de parlements, ministre de l’éducation, historiens.
DEUX IDÉOLOGIES DE LA NATION: HOMOGÉNÉISTE ET DUALISTE
Résumons maintenant les caractéristiques des deux grandes idéologies de la
nation qui avaient cours au Canada entre 1867 et 1960. Soulignons d’emblée que
les deux idéologies sont décrites ici de manière schématique aux fins de l’analyse. Il s’agit de schémas à valeur heuristique ou encore d’idéaux-types.6 Gardons
alors à l’esprit que, concrètement, plusieurs variantes et nuances s’interposent
entre elles.
Pour l’idéologie homogénéiste, seule l’uniformité de langue et de culture est
capable d’assurer l’unité canadienne, tandis que la reconnaissance de toute
différence met en danger cette unité. À titre d’exemple des nombreux textes que
nous avons recensés, voici Morley (1919) qui dépeint la mentalité de la majorité
canadienne anglaise à l’égard du Canada français. Selon cette mentalité, seule
l’assimilation des Canadiens français de l’extérieur du Québec au sein de la
majorité canadienne anglaise pouvait garantir l’unité du pays:
In effect the attitude of English to French Canada might be expressed as follows: “We
have ceded you one province as your special preserve, and we shall content ourselves
with the remaining eight provinces and the territorial districts, including all lands hitherto
unorganized or unexplored; in these our own language and institutions are to be the
normal and established ones, and should we, at any time, care to come into your territory,
we shall, of course, be free to do so, bringing with us our customs and institutions; while,
in the event of your coming into our territory, you will doubtless be willing and glad to
renounce your special rights in exchange for the privilege of being amongst us. We hope
and trust you will rejoice in this arrangement, which will, we believe, serve but further
to cement the bond of good fellowship already existing between us.” (p. 73–74)
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Ce qui se dégage de cette description, c’est une volonté de confiner le Canada
français à l’intérieur d’une réserve (“special preserve”) constituée par le territoire
québécois et d’assimiler les Canadiens français de l’extérieur du Québec au sein
du Canada anglais afin de garantir l’unité nationale.
Pour l’idéologie dualiste, c’est tout le contraire: l’unité nationale passe obligatoirement par le respect de la diversité, en particulier par la reconnaissance de
la dualité linguistique et culturelle du Canada. À titre d’exemple, voici un extrait
du compte-rendu du dixième anniversaire de l’Association canadienne des éducateurs de langue française (ACELF, 1957):
L’unité tant désirée de tous les Canadiens, ne peut se réaliser en imposant l’uniformité;
mais c’est dans le respect des diversités de langue et de culture que nous nous acheminons vers l’harmonieuse coexistence de tous les éléments de notre population. (p. 3)
Il est frappant de constater à quel point l’argument de l’unité nationale est
présent aussi bien dans l’idéologie homogénéiste que dans l’idéologie dualiste.
Mais, si chacune de ces idéologies invoque le thème de l’unité nationale avec la
même vigueur, c’est sur la base d’une argumentation complètement différente.
Selon le cas, l’argumentation cherche précisément à établir la légitimité ou
l’illégitimité des droits scolaires revendiqués par les francophones minoritaires.
L’argument de l’unité nationale est l’un des plus fréquemment avancés pour
refuser d’accorder des droits linguistiques (Kloss, 1971). Dans l’histoire canadienne, cet argument tient une place centrale dans les débats touchant les droits
des minorités, en raison justement des difficultés constantes rencontrées par les
gouvernements canadiens dans leurs efforts pour constituer et maintenir l’unité
du pays. En fait, c’est en regard de l’argument de l’unité nationale qu’on situe
le mieux les deux idéologies l’une par rapport à l’autre.
Les idéologies homogénéiste et dualiste ne sont pas spécifiques au contexte
canadien, mais l’une et l’autre se réfèrent aussi à un contexte proprement local.
Ainsi, l’idéologie homogénéiste, qu’on retrouve surtout au sein de la majorité
anglo-canadienne, se présente historiquement sous la forme d’une aspiration à la
prédominance du groupe anglophone, de sa langue et de sa culture, en territoire
canadien. L’idéologie dualiste, qu’on retrouve essentiellement chez les francophones, tant minoritaires que majoritaires du Québec, préconise la coexistence
égalitaire et harmonieuse des peuples anglophone et francophone, où chacun
préserverait sa langue et sa culture propres. Cependant, les deux idéologies se
rattachent en dernière analyse à un vaste mouvement de fond, d’envergure mondiale, associé à la modernisation et à la démocratisation des sociétés.
Ce mouvement est double. D’un côté, il induit tendanciellement, par l’intermédiaire des grandes institutions modernes comme l’État, l’école et les médias,
un processus d’homogénéisation des idiomes linguistiques et des identités culturelles. Depuis plusieurs années, par exemple, on a parlé abondamment à travers
le monde de l’hégémonie culturelle américaine, du phénomène d’américanisation,
qui s’affirme par l’intermédiaire notamment de la télévision, du cinéma et de
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l’édition, et qui tend à imposer mondialement la langue anglaise comme lingua
franca. De la même manière, on pourrait parler dans le cas canadien de l’émergence, au fur et à mesure du développement et de la modernisation de l’État,
d’une certaine tendance à la “canadianisation” de la langue et de la culture
anglaises, avec ce que cela implique de pression homogénéisante au plan national. Cette pression, en effet, s’exerce surtout de la part du groupe anglophone
(majoritaire) sur les groupes minoritaires et en particulier sur le groupe francophone vivant à l’extérieur du Québec car, comme l’observait Foucault (1976),
le propre du pouvoir — et singulièrement d’un pouvoir comme celui qui fonctionne dans
notre société — est d’être répressif et de réprimer avec une particulière attention les
énergies inutiles, l’intensité des plaisirs et les conduites irrégulières. (p. 17)
Ce potentiel répressif du pouvoir moderne, on peut l’entrevoir à travers l’idéologie homogénéiste, dans la mesure où sa caractéristique principale est d’aplanir
les différences linguistiques et culturelles, en considérant l’exigence de reconnaissance des différences comme des énergies inutiles, des conduites irrégulières.
D’un autre côté, le mouvement homogénéisateur se heurte partout dans le
monde à la résistance plus ou moins vigoureuse de mouvements d’affirmation
identitaire à caractère linguistique et culturel. Dans de nombreux pays, parallèlement, on assiste depuis quelques décennies à une prolifération sans précédent
de courants pluralistes préconisant la préservation de la diversité linguistique et
culturelle. Dans le contexte canadien, c’est à la montée de ces mouvements
affirmationnistes et anti-homogénéistes qu’il convient selon nous de rattacher
l’avènement de l’idéologie dualiste qui a eu tendance, surtout à compter des
années 1960, à dominer au niveau étatique fédéral. La détermination du groupe
canadien-français à faire reconnaître son statut de “peuple fondateur” et à préserver son identité, sa langue et sa culture propres a contribué à freiner le processus
d’homogénéisation.
Cependant, à l’aube des années 1960 au Canada, l’idéologie homogénéiste
commence à perdre sa vigueur tandis que l’idéologie dualiste parvient peu à peu
à pénétrer les lieux de pouvoir et à se sédimenter dans la culture et dans les
institutions nationales. Jusqu’à la fin des années 1950, l’idéologie dualiste
demeure circonscrite au Canada français et trouve de rares sympathisants au
Canada anglais. Conséquemment, elle reste une idéologie minoritaire peu
influente qui, au sein des élites dirigeantes, rencontre l’indifférence sinon
l’hostilité. Au tournant des années 1960, cependant, des changements décisifs
favorisent un essor sans précédent de l’idéologie dualiste dans les sphères dirigeantes. Parallèlement, la situation des francophones en milieu minoritaire en
matière de droits scolaires commence à connaître des changements profonds et
significatifs qui vont contribuer à la concrétisation de leurs projets éducatifs.
Nous verrons maintenant que l’idéologie de l’éducation est intimement liée à
l’idéologie de la nation.
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DEUX VISIONS OPPOSÉES DU RÔLE DE L’ÉDUCATION
En un premier temps, nous présentons le rôle de l’éducation tel que conçu par
l’idéologie homogénéiste. Ensuite, nous décrivons celui conçu par l’idéologie
dualiste. Enfin, puisque l’article 93 de l’AANB définit le droits aux écoles
séparées (confessionnelles), nous l’analysons brièvement.
Dans l’optique de l’idéologie homogénéiste, les projets éducatifs des minorités,
qui préconisent la reconnaissance des différences linguistiques et culturelles,
apparaissent comme une hérésie intolérable. En effet, ces projets vont directement à l’encontre de l’idéal “national” de l’idéologie homogénéiste fondé sur
l’uniformité linguistique et culturelle. Par exemple, dans une déclaration du
révérend John King prononcée lors de la crise scolaire manitobaine de 1890, on
sent clairement l’esprit homogénéiste et sa hantise que l’école minoritaire ne
menace l’unité de l’état et de la société canadienne: “The system of separate, or
sectarian schools operates injuriously on the well-being of the state. . . . It
occasions a line of cleavage in society, the highest interests of which demand
that it should, as far as possible be one” (cité par Clark, 1968, p. 9).
Afin de comprendre les intentions, les “bénéfices du locuteur,” à l’origine du
discours homogénéiste canadien sur le rôle de l’éducation, il convient d’invoquer
le contexte historique dans lequel le système scolaire canadien a été ébauché.
L’AANB a été promulguée dans l’intention d’unifier les colonies britanniques de
l’Amérique du Nord en créant un pays nouveau. Cette union s’est faite dans le
but entre autres de favoriser les échanges commerciaux entre les colonies et de
former une économie à l’échelle nationale. Elle s’est réalisée aussi avec l’intention de se prémunir contre l’envahissement du voisin américain qui, par ses
tendances hégémoniques, menaçait l’autonomie et l’identité propres des colonies
constitutives du futur Canada (Deblois, 1987; Ferguson, 1960).
Pour consolider le nouveau pays, il importait alors, au yeux des autorités de
cette époque, d’unifier également les populations diverses qui formaient à ce
moment-là le Canada. Ces populations étaient loin d’être homogènes. De nombreux immigrants européens de langues et de nationalités diverses venaient
s’ajouter aux deux “peuples fondateurs” qui étaient de cultures et de religions
différentes. Les autorités canadiennes, qui s’inquiétaient de cette situation démographique, voyaient dans l’école le moyen tout désigné pour contenir un éventuel
éclatement culturel du pays et pour constituer une identité nationale forte. La
question de l’unité nationale s’avérait donc cruciale pour les autorités gouvernementales et leur préoccupation à cet égard se répercutait dans le domaine scolaire (Deblois, 1987, p. 4). Ryerson, surintendant en chef de l’éducation au HautCanada, puis en Ontario, de 1844 à 1876, affirmait en 1868: “Education is the
chief element in forming the mind and heart of an individual, or a nation.” (cité
par Deblois, 1987, p. 21). Aussi, on ne s’étonnera pas que les écoles publiques
fussent communément désignées comme des “national schools” (Clark, 1968).
Dans cette optique, il est clair que l’idéologie homogénéiste attribuait à l’école
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une fonction épistémique bien précise: celle de former en chaque individu un
certain profil de citoyen canadien, idéalement de langue et de culture anglaises.
Au début du siècle, dans les milieux orangistes ontariens par exemple, on
invoquait couramment cette formule: “One language, one school, one flag”
(Moore, 1918). L’idéologie qui ressort de cette formule ne reflète pas un courant
de pensée isolé. On pourrait citer de nombreuses déclarations d’acteurs politiques
de l’époque contenant la même équation entre “one school” et “one language.”
Par exemple, Sifton, procureur général du Manitoba, déclarait en 1895, dans le
contexte des luttes scolaires qui ont agité la province:
We look at the State of Minnesota to the south of us, almost an empire in extent, and
containing people of many different nations, all under the one system of schools, and
learning the one language. Where would they be, in the great western State, if they were
to tolerate for an instant the system which the Dominion Government is attempting to
force down our throats? (cité par Clark, 1968, p. 11)
Citons aussi Bryce, un historien manitobain qui fut activement impliqué dans
la campagne contre les écoles séparées ou confessionnelles (par opposition aux
écoles publiques):
When men deliberately state as they have done that they aim at building up a French
Canadian nationality, what is that but a blow at our hopes as one Canadian people?
Language and separate schools are being used to build up what is really destructive to our
hopes as a people, and we should be unworthy of our name if we permitted such aggression. (cité par Clark, 1968, p. 9)
À lire aujourd’hui ces déclarations, on ne peut s’empêcher d’y voir quelque
chose d’excessif et d’anachronique. En fait, le sentiment d’étrangeté que nous
éprouvons en regard de ces déclarations témoigne par lui-même du caractère
relatif des idéologies. Les idéologies ne sont pas des phénomènes statiques; elles
se transforment sans cesse en fonction du contexte historique et du dialogue
qu’elles engagent avec d’autres idéologies. De nos jours, plus personne n’oserait
affirmer aussi péremptoirement la maxime “one school, one language.” Celle-ci
constitue un artefact social dont la construction est contingente à un moment
spécifique dans l’évolution des rapports de pouvoir au Canada. Elle s’inscrit en
l’occurrence dans le procès de formation de l’état canadien, à un moment où
celui-ci cherche à s’appuyer sur un groupe majoritaire pour gagner son consensus
et légitimer son pouvoir.
En ce qui concerne les minorités, on comprendra donc que leurs projets
éducatifs, que nous décrivons maintenant allaient droit à l’encontre des desseins
“nationaux” de la majorité. D’où la vigueur des résistances qu’elles ont rencontrées dans leurs tentatives pour concrétiser leurs projets éducatifs et pour obtenir
l’application des droits que leur conférait, selon leur interprétation, l’AANB en
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matière d’éducation. Bourassa (1915) résumait en ces mots les projets éducatifs
des francophones en milieu minoritaire:
Tout ce qu’ils réclament, c’est le droit de faire enseigner leur langue à leurs enfants, dans
les écoles soutenues de leurs deniers. Ils ne demandent de l’État, pour ces écoles, que leur
part proportionnelle des subsides prélevés sur eux comme sur le reste de la population.
(p. 32)
S’il faut entendre par le ton de cette déclaration de Bourassa que les francophones minoritaires réclamaient peu de chose, les gouvernements des provinces
à majorité anglophone voyaient manifestement la chose d’un autre oeil. Ceux-ci
ont toujours fermement résisté à accéder aux demandes des francophones. En
effet, afin de concrétiser les projets éducatifs des minorités, il était indispensable
que les gouvernements renoncent à imposer un système scolaire totalement
homogène et acceptent que les minorités érigent leur propre réseau scolaire. Or,
pour les états, en particulier ceux pour qui l’unité nationale pose problème
comme c’est le cas historiquement au Canada, un tel renoncement représente un
défi majeur dans la mesure où il paraît aller directement à l’encontre des efforts
d’unification nationale. Les minorités se heurtent alors au refus de la majorité de
céder le pouvoir exclusif qu’elle détient dans l’éducation.
De même que l’éducation constitue pour l’état l’instrument par excellence
pour instaurer une culture commune et homogène, aux yeux des minorités, elle
est le moyen le plus efficace permettant éventuellement de résister à la domination de la majorité en préservant et en développant leur langue et leur culture.
En fait, les minorités attribuent à l’école une tout autre fonction épistémique que
celle qui lui est réservée par l’idéologie homogénéiste. Tandis que le principe
définissant le rôle de l’école dans l’idéologie homogénéiste préconise la formation d’un citoyen au profil unique, abstrait et universel — ou “national” — le
principe mis de l’avant par l’idéologie dualiste émane au contraire d’une volonté
de préserver et de reproduire les différences linguistiques et culturelles. Pour
l’idéologie dualiste comme pour toute idéologie pluraliste, l’école a pour rôle
d’assurer aux jeunes générations l’accès à une éducation respectueuse de leur
identité linguistique et culturelle.
On comprendra ainsi pourquoi, dans les milieux minoritaires, l’école et les
droits scolaires prennent parfois une valeur symbolique extrêmement forte. Les
francophones minoritaires ont toujours attribué à l’éducation une importance
cruciale.
Comme dans le cas de l’idéologie homogénéiste, le rôle de l’éducation tel
qu’envisagé par l’idéologie dualiste est lié à la conception de la nation canadienne qu’elle véhicule. Pour l’idéologie dualiste, qui voit dans la reconnaissance
du pluralisme et de la dualité la condition nécessaire au maintien de l’unité
nationale, chacun des deux peuples fondateurs doit pouvoir bénéficier d’écoles
distinctes afin de préserver sa langue et sa culture spécifiques. Le maintien de
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l’unité canadienne passe donc nécessairement par l’accessibilité à l’éducation en
français et non par l’imposition d’un système scolaire unique et culturellement
homogène:
Nous voulons en premier lieu établir que c’est par l’éducation surtout que nous pourrons
atteindre ce bien inestimable de l’unité canadienne [. . .] C’est donc par un système
d’éducation français répandu et organisé dans tout le Canada, parallèlement au système
d’éducation anglais, que nous aurons le plus de chance de réaliser l’unité canadienne.
(Parent, 1951, p. 43–46)
Par comparaison avec le large éventail des possibilités dont bénéficient les
membres de la majorité dans le domaine scolaire, il est clair que les choix des
francophones minoritaires en ce domaine s’avèrent restreints. Ces restrictions
sont liées au rapport de force défavorable dans lequel se trouvent les minorités
face aux majorités.7
Durant les premières décennies de la Confédération, les conflits scolaires
relatifs aux droits éducatifs des minorités ont pris la forme surtout de conflits
religieux. Ce fut le cas, par exemple, lors de la crise scolaire manitobaine entourant l’adoption du Public Schools Act de 1890, qui retirait aux écoles séparées
leur part du financement public tout en contraignant les catholiques à financer
les écoles publiques. En dépit de la forme religieuse du conflit, il s’avère difficile
toutefois de discerner laquelle, de la religion ou de la langue, était véritablement
en cause. En pratique, on sait que l’identité religieuse et l’identité linguistique
coïncidaient et que les francophones se concentraient pour la plupart dans les
écoles catholiques. Comme l’AANB définissait par ailleurs les écoles séparées
sur la base d’un critère strictement confessionnel, il était inévitable que le Public
Schools Act donne au conflit scolaire qui s’ensuivit un caractère religieux. Au
fond, quelle que fut leur forme, religieuse ou linguistique, on peut penser que ces
conflits mettaient finalement en cause encore une fois les relations entre minorités et majorités, entre Canadiens français et Canadiens anglais. McCarthy ne s’y
trompait pas: en s’en prenant à l’école catholique, il entendait bien défaire un
rempart derrière lequel on continuait d’enseigner en français. Clark (1968)
rapporte en ces mots la pensée de McCarthy:
McCarthy was obsessed with the notion that this is a “British country,” that we must have
“unity of language and race” in Canada, and that therefore the “French language and
French ideas must go to the wall.” Since Roman Catholic schools in Manitoba and the
North-West Territories helped to preserve the linguistic as well as the religious rights of
the French Canadians, they must be swept away. (p. 5)
Un argument fréquemment invoqué par les adversaires de l’école catholique:
il fallait préserver absolument le principe de la séparation de l’Église et de l’État.
The Manitoba Free Press, en date du 7 août 1889, rapporte des propos tenus par
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McCarthy dans le cadre de la campagne qu’il mena au Manitoba contre les
écoles séparées: “It was, he [McCarthy] had thought, firmly established in the
British constitution, that church and state were entirely separate; but in the
separate schools we have the opposite of that” (cité par Clark, 1968, p. 38). En
pratique, le principe de la séparation de l’Église et de l’État fut employé surtout
pour justifier que l’État ne soit pas tenu de financer les écoles où l’on enseignait
une doctrine chrétienne distincte — c’est-à-dire catholique.
Un autre argument était communément soutenu contre l’école catholique:
“equal rights to all, special privileges to none” (Clark, 1968, p. 36). Selon cet
argument, si les catholiques romains obtenaient le financement des écoles
séparées conformément à leurs demandes, cela équivaudrait à leur conférer un
privilège spécial inéquitable à l’égard des autres minorités religieuses. Au
fondement de cet argument, on trouve la négation du statut de minorité historique
que revendiquent les franco-catholiques au sein de la Confédération canadienne.
De même, l’argument invoque un égalitarisme formel pour justifier une inégalité
de fait.
Au premier regard, l’opposition aux écoles minoritaires de confession catholique romaine a donc pris la forme d’un militantisme protestant luttant vigoureusement contre les “agressions” de l’Église catholique et contre les dangers du
“papisme.” Pourtant, ce militantisme anti-catholique ne s’est pas traduit par
l’exigence d’une école sécularisée ou laïque pour tous. L’école publique préconisée par les adversaires de l’école catholique, c’était ni plus ni moins l’école de
la confession majoritaire, c’est-à-dire protestante. En fait, si les opposants à
l’école catholique comptaient des sécularistes, il s’agissait pour la plupart de
chrétiens croyants appartenant à différentes confessions protestantes (Clark,
1968).
En somme, au-delà de la forme religieuse des conflits scolaires de l’époque,
on retrouve, en dernière analyse, la même opposition entre l’idéologie homogénéiste et l’idéologie dualiste. Quand on examine de près les arguments invoqués
contre l’école séparée ou catholique, on découvre encore la même propension
homogénéiste, le même refus devant la perspective que les minorités bénéficient
d’écoles distinctes. Qu’il s’agisse de l’école française ou de l’école catholique,
on constate la même hostilité à son égard de la part de la majorité. Car l’idéologie homogénéiste craint toute différence quelle qu’elle soit. Peu importe que
l’école des minorités soit séparée sur une base linguistique ou sur une base
religieuse, toute forme de pluralisme constitue toujours une atteinte au principe
de l’homogénéité.
CONCLUSION
À travers ces profondes divergences de vue sur le rôle de l’éducation dans le
développement de la nation canadienne, à travers également les conflits scolaires
sur la question de l’école confessionnelle, c’est fondamentalement l’opposition
404
ANGÉLINE MARTEL ET DANIEL VILLENEUVE
idéologique entre homogénéisme et dualisme qui se manifeste.
Au Canada, historiquement, la question scolaire est liée étroitement à la
question nationale. C’est pourquoi les droits scolaires ont toujours été au coeur
des enjeux constitutionnels et faillirent même compromettre en 1867 le dénouement des négociations. En effet, l’AANB n’aurait jamais vu le jour si une entente
de dernière minute n’était intervenue entre les Pères de la Confédération concernant les droits scolaires des minorités (Carignan, 1989). En refusant aux
francophones minoritaires les services éducatifs qu’ils demandent, l’idéologie
homogénéiste cherche à légitimer son point de vue en soutenant que c’est afin
de garantir l’unité nationale qu’il est nécessaire d’ériger un système scolaire
unique et homogène. Les minorités ont beau invoquer que l’unité nationale passe
au contraire par la reconnaissance de la dualité et donc par le soutien étatique
aux écoles de la minorité, leur discours demeure d’une portée limitée parce
qu’elles se trouvent dans un rapport de pouvoir qui leur est défavorable.
En ce qui a trait à l’école confessionnelle, la dimension religieuse des conflits
qui lui sont liés durant les premières décennies de la Confédération ne change
rien au fond du problème, à savoir que c’est toujours le même rapport de pouvoir
entre minorités et majorités et la même opposition entre homogénéisme et
dualisme qui sont à l’oeuvre. Là aussi, avant les années 1960, c’est l’idéologie
homogénéiste qui l’emporte, imprégnant jusqu’à l’interprétation judiciaire des
droits scolaires conférés aux minorités en vertu de l’AANB.
Il est frappant de constater les différences de fond et de forme entre le discours de la majorité et le discours des francophones minoritaires au sujet de
l’école. À la différence du discours dominant sur l’éducation, qui met de l’avant
son profil unique de citoyenneté, le discours minoritaire en appelle à la “survivance,” à la préservation des valeurs et des identités culturelles et linguistiques
de même qu’à leur transmission inter-générationnelle. Dans le premier cas, les
valeurs sous-jacentes concernent la formation de l’État et son enracinement dans
la société. Dans le second cas, elles concernent l’affirmation et la reproduction
identitaires en dehors de la sphère de l’État. Le groupe majoritaire ne voit aucune
menace dans le discours dominant sur l’éducation; ses propres valeurs étant
celles que ses membres retrouvent dans l’école “nationale,” son identité n’est pas
en jeu. Les choses se présentent très différemment aux yeux des minorités, qui
voient dans le discours dominant sur l’école et dans les projets éducatifs de la
majorité une menace directe à leur identité.
Chaque groupe présente donc un discours “situé” — minoritaire ou majoritaire — en ce sens que chacun, à sa manière, tente de créer ou perpétuer une
position avantageuse pour son statut, sa survivance, son épanouissement ou sa
domination. Chaque groupe, chaque individu qui le représente officiellement, ou
y appartient, cherche son “bénéfice,” au nom de la nation, de l’unité nationale
ou de l’identité minoritaire. C’est le propre de l’idéologie.
L’étude des arguments des idéologies homogénéiste et dualiste, de leurs fondements et de leurs bénéfices, contribue à mieux comprendre la dynamique contem-
“BÉNÉFICE
DU LOCUTEUR” MAJORITAIRE OU MINORITAIRE
405
poraine des relations entre minorités et majorités. En effet, elle favorise une
compréhension particulière de la résistance des gouvernements des provinces à
majorité anglophone par rapport à l’implantation de l’article 23 de la Charte
canadienne des droits et libertés de 1982. Par ailleurs, cette étude apporte également un certain éclairage sur les relations entre les minorités et majorités à
l’échelle mondiale, car les idéologies homogénéiste et dualiste ne sont pas
propres au Canada. Ces idéologies s’affrontent partout où les minorités réclament
de l’État des mesures qui assureront leur survie ou leur développement.
NOTES
1
Les francophones minoritaires du Canada (vivant à l’extérieur du Québec) en sont un exemple.
Ils souhaitent l’autonomie de gestion de leurs écoles sans revendiquer une indépendance complète
sur une base géographique.
2
Nous utilisons ce néologisme pour désigner l’adhésion à un idéal d’homogénéité.
3
Entre 1982 et 1990, 17 décisions judiciaires furent rendues par les tribunaux canadiens (voir
Martel, 1991a, 1991b).
4
Cet article s’inscrit dans le cadre d’une étude plus large subventionnée par le Ministère du
Patrimoine canadien et par Conseil de la recherche en sciences humaines du Canada.
5
Pour une définition du concept de minorité, voir Tollefson (1991), p. 15–16.
6
Weber (1965) a suggéré la notion d’idéal-type comme un outil conceptuel et heuristique permettant de saisir et d’analyser les phénomènes sociaux:
On obtient un idéal-type en accentuant unilatéralement un ou plusieurs points de vue et en
enchaînant une multitude de phénomènes donnés isolément, diffus et discrets, que l’on trouve
tantôt en grand nombre, tantôt en petit nombre et par endroits pas du tout, qu’on ordonne . . .
pour former un tableau de pensée homogène. On ne trouvera nulle part empiriquement un
pareil tableau dans sa pureté conceptuelle: il est une utopie. . . . ce concept rend le service
spécifique qu’on en attend au profit de la recherche et de la clarté. (p. 181)
7
Selon Tollefson (1991), “Dominance refers to the capacity to expand one’s range of choices.
Individuals or groups are dominated (i.e. subordinate) if their choices are constrained relative to
others with whom they share social relationships” (p. 14).
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Angéline Martel est professeure de linguistique à la Télé-université, Université du Québec et
directrice de l’Unité d’enseignement et de recherche des Sciences humaines et sociales, 1001
Sherbrooke est, Montréal, Québec, H2X 3M4. Daniel Villeneuve est agent de recherche à la
Télé-université, 1001 rue Sherbrooke est, Montréal, Québec, H2X 3M4.