Abstract

This thesis explores the relation between the liberal ideal of political legitimacy and the education of children as a basic social institution. The ideal of political legitimacy is that each citizen have sufficient reason to accept the basic social and political institutions of his or her society. It is typically argued by liberal theorists that the basic institutions will be legitimate in this sense only if they respect the autonomy of each citizen in being tolerant of different conceptions of the good. Here education poses a puzzle. Toleration seems to imply that parents should be free to educate their children according to their own conceptions of the good, but the value of autonomy seems to imply that children should be protected from the influence of their parents in order arrive at their own conceptions of the good. The apparent tension between the values of toleration and autonomy in education thus makes us wonder whether the liberal ideal of legitimacy, as typically interpreted, is coherent. ;This thesis begins by reinterpreting the liberal ideal of legitimacy. A system of basic social and political institutions is legitimate, I maintain, if it adequately protects everyone's basic interest. There are, I contend, fundamental political values which any reasonable person would agree are important to achieve for the person who holds them. If someone needs something in order to achieve one of these values then that person has a basic interest in having that thing. The solution I offer to the tension between toleration and autonomy in education is thus to focus on the adequate protection of basic interests. If the basic interests of parents in education are adequately protected then, I maintain, sufficient toleration has been shown to parents; and if the basic interests of children in education are adequately protected then their autonomy is sufficiently respected. Since, I claim, the basic interests in education of children, parents and society may be adequately protected by a number of different institutional arrangements, some of which are recognizably liberal, this account of political legitimacy thus resolves the problem which education poses for liberal theory.