Cultural Proceduralism,Cultural Preservation,and Public Education

Fair Opportunities or Just Outcomes?

At the core of Patten’s account of cultural justice is a principle of fairness: the state’s obligation to extend a fair opportunity for self-determination to all its citizens. It is by virtue of being guided by this principle that a liberal state has reasons to be neutral between the conceptions of the good held by its citizens (109). According to Patten, a state maintains neutrality between rival conceptions when, relative to an appropriate baseline, its policies are equally accommodating of those conceptions. For a policy to be equally accommodating it must extend equivalent forms of assistance to each conception of the good and impose the same forms of hindrance on each (112). ³ When decisions concerning the formatting of institutions are at stake, a liberal state committed to neutrality should either refrain from endorsing particular cultural emblems or, when disentanglement is not possible, as in the case of the choice of an official language, it should extend equal recognition to all cultures, by granting to them forms of recognition tailored to their specific cultures, for example, a right to schooling one’s children in a minority language (169). Once these background conditions are secured, if cultural loss happens because of others exercising their rights to change culture or to spend their resources in certain ways, no complaint can be reasonably advanced by members of cultural minorities.

I believe that this pure procedural approach to cultural justice, which focuses on opportunities rather than outcomes, works only if we understand the status and significance of cultural commitments in a particular way. If these commitments are understood as a set of bare preferences, akin to consumption tastes, then one could easily agree with Patten that what matters are fair opportunities to pursue one’s own culture, and not the actual satisfaction of one’s cultural commitments.

But this way of understanding the status of cultural preferences is somehow at odds with the way in which Patten himself seems sometimes to understand this status. Patten argues that cultural preferences are sui generis because, unlike other preferences, they are identity-related, non-negotiable, and linked to relationships of mutual recognition (133–36). This sui generis character of cultural commitments implies that their frustration can produce serious harms. Patten claims that when people are put in a position where they are unable to honor their cultural commitments, “they may agonize over their situation and be left with a lasting sense of failure” (134). Since experiencing a lasting sense of failure is incompatible with a person’s sense of self-respect, that is to say, with a person’s sense of confidence in her ability to successfully pursue or realize her life plans, loss of one’s culture would then seem to amount to a loss of self-respect. So understood, culture looks more like a condition of self-respect rather than a set of bare preferences, akin to tastes. ⁴

Now, if this is the way we should understand the value of culture, why should a liberal state limit itself to fair opportunities for cultural survival, rather than trying to achieve cultural survival itself? We care that people be able to maintain their self-respect, not simply to have a fair opportunity to do so. And, I assume, many would reject the idea that a person’s ability to maintain a secure sense of self-respect should be left to the way in which cultural goods happen to get priced in the market on the basis of how individual preferences aggregate.

Patten would respond that focusing on outcomes faces the problem of responsibility for preferences (184). It is true, he argues, that members of a minority culture may not be responsible for the fact that their cultural preferences are more expensive to satisfy relative to those of the majority, since this fact is set by market forces beyond their control, that is, the conjunction of low demand (by virtue of being minorities) and economies of scale in cultural production. But the presumption in a liberal society is that members of cultural minorities, like holders of expensive tastes, did have a reasonable opportunity to avoid holding those preferences, and for this reason they should be held responsible for their externally determined costs.

But this reasoning is, in my view, at odds with Patten’s own account of the status and significance of cultural commitments. If having certain cultural preferences depends on being socialized into a culture since birth, and if, importantly, cultural preferences are reasonably regarded as non-negotiable, that is non-exchangeable, by those who hold them, then, it is unclear why individuals can be reasonably expected to avoid holding their cultural preferences. Yet if people cannot be reasonably expected to avoid holding these preferences, then, there is little reason left to hold them responsible for the externally determined costs of holding those preferences. Therefore, when people’s cultural preferences remain frustrated because of market forces, we face a situation in which their self-respect is diminished by factors they cannot be held responsible for. This would seem to trigger a residual complaint for compensation based on justice.

However, Patten could respond that being unwilling to revise one’s preferences is not the same as being unable to do so. As long as minorities are able to revise their preferences, they can and ought to be held responsible for the costs of the latter. I find this answer problematic for two reasons. First, there is no sharp line between unwillingness and inability. For someone who is socialized since birth into adopting certain commitments and into regarding them as non-negotiable, standing by these commitments might become—to borrow Harry Frankfurt’s famous words—a “volitional necessity.” ⁵ Second, it seems to me that for a liberal state to permissibly hold a citizen C responsible for the external costs of her commitments, it is not sufficient that C be able to revise those commitments, it must also be the case that C can be reasonably expected to revise, and thus to abandon, them. Yet, if cultural commitments really have the sui generis character that Patten attributes to them, so that violating them would lead to a loss of self-respect, it remains unclear whether a liberal state can reasonably expect C to abandon her commitments.

It follows that members of cultural minorities may have a sound complaint based on justice against institutions that leave their ability to enjoy their culture at the mercy of market factors they cannot be held responsible for. Cultural preservation may not be guaranteed but it should be facilitated. This may require a state to move beyond neutrality of treatment and take action directly aimed at cultural preservation—for example, by subsidizing cultural goods that happen to be unaffordable because of supply-demand mechanisms.

But now assume that cultural preferences are not special after all—they are bare preferences, on par with leisure or consumptions tastes. In this case, I think, a focus on fair opportunity for cultural preservation, rather than cultural preservation itself, would be sufficient. But now Patten’s argument would face a different problem. Patten claims that a state has especially strong reasons to be neutral among cultural and religious aspects of people’s conceptions of the good (136). Neutrality is much less robust with regard to other preferences. This entails, for example, that while your Hindu dietary customs entitle you, at least pro tanto, to special vegetarian options at the school cafeteria, my love for animals, which prevents me from eating meat, entitles me to no special accommodation. Yet, once culture is conceived as a bare preference one can be reasonably expected to avoid holding, rather than as a basis of self-respect, the state’s preferential accommodation of claims based on cultural preferences over similar claims based on different commitments, becomes, in my view, unjustified.

To sum up: either cultural commitments are sui generis, in which case special accommodation can be justified but a procedural focus on opportunities rather than outcomes becomes insufficient; or cultural preferences are conceived of as bare preferences, in which case a focus on opportunities may be enough but the state should be required to extend the same forms of accommodation to all preferences, whether cultural or not.

Is There a Right to a Culturally Specific Education?

If, on the one hand, cultural proceduralism arguably provides insufficient protection to cultural minorities, on the other hand, it grants to them culturally specific rights that cannot be justified, at least not on grounds of self-determination, or so I will now try to argue.

Among the culturally specific rights that Patten defends there figure educational cultural rights. The point of these rights is to offer conditions under which a younger generation can be socialized into a particular culture. These rights include the right to design school curricula according to the needs and preferences of particular cultures, as well as the right to deliver teaching in public schools in minority languages (chapter 6). Educational cultural rights play a particularly important role in Patten’s account of culture, which is itself defined in terms of institutionally sanctioned processes of socialization (see chapter 2).

But can Patten’s account of cultural justice, ultimately grounded on a principle of fair opportunity for self-determination, justify culturally specific educational rights?

Consider the choice of school curricula, including the choice of what language to adopt in public schools. Patten argues that, unless the right to have schools teaching in minority languages is acknowledged, the members of linguistic minorities could reasonably complain that they do not have a fair opportunity to realize their interest in self-determination. More precisely, the case for language rights is grounded on two interests that members of a cultural minority share (202). First, an interest in the accommodation of their identity. Second, an interest, grounded on self-determination, in being able to access the particular options that they subjectively value. If enough others will be socialized, through educational institutions, into speaking the same language of their minority and into valuing the same rites and practices, then there will be a sufficient core of people interested in carrying them on.

What is puzzling is the move from (1) an interest, shared by the adult members of a cultural group, in having a fair opportunity to pursue their already formed conception of the good to (2) a claim to be provided with publicly funded institutions the aim of which is to socialize children, who lack an already formed conception of the good, so as to increase the likelihood that the options currently valued by the adult members of the majority will be reproduced.

This movement is puzzling because it violates the principle of separateness of persons—the idea that persons, including children, are not mere means to the satisfaction of other people’s ends. Once we recognize the status of children as independent persons, the claim that the present generation has a right to socialize the members of the next generation so as to best fit their own already formed conception of the good can be put into question. ⁶

Indeed, people do not have a right that others be socialized so as to best fit their own ways of life, including their cultural preferences, even if and when they lack a fair opportunity to pursue their preferences. To illustrate: the fact that I have reasons, grounded on my interest in self-determination, to have friends who share my interest in ping-pong (because I cannot play alone), does not give me a right that other people be inculcated with a love for ping-pong so as to best fit my interest. And, this is true even if my lack of ping-pong-loving friends results from a situation in which ping-pong is less popular than other activities because of some unequal accommodation by the state.

Control rights over other human beings, especially those who are not able to consent, can only be justified by appeal to the interests of those subject to those rights. The question remains as to how we should understand the interests of children. This is a complex question to which I cannot do justice here. But it seems fair to say that children, like adults, also have an interest in self-determination. Yet, since they do not hold an already formed conception of the good, their interest should be understood as an interest in potentia, that is, as an interest in becoming self-determining adults in the future. Children, we may say—following Joel Feinberg—have an interest in a fairly (although perhaps not maximally) open future. ⁷ This interest imposes on others, including the members of minorities, a duty to educate the members of the new generation in a way that will allow them, as far as possible, to choose their own cultural commitments and conception of the good. Since it is wrong to undermine children’s future ability to endorse the cultural and religious commitments (if any) they want to endorse, members of cultural minorities (and majorities) have no right to use public and compulsory educational institutions so as to form members of the new generation according to their own cultural preferences, especially if the reason for doing so is to make it more likely for themselves to have subjectively worthwhile options.

Patten acknowledges that if the recognition of culturally specific educational rights were to compromise children’s interest in having adequate opportunities, then there would be sufficient reasons to outweigh a case for cultural and language rights (210). But my point is not that considerations concerning the opportunities open to the new generation should trump the case for culturally specific educational rights, based on the adults’ interest in having subjectively valuable cultural options. My point is rather that the latter interest provides little reason to design public institutions so as to educate children in one way rather than in another. To further illustrate this point, consider again the ping-pong example: I do not have a right that other people be inculcated with a love for ping-pong so as to best fit my interest in self-determination, even if this would not prevent them from having adequate opportunities and a good quality of life.

In terms of education and language policies, this entails that even if minority-language children would enjoy adequate opportunities in their language, there are strong reasons—based on children’s right to self-determination—to support a multilingual education, so as to educate all children in both the majority and the minority language, as well as in a “cosmopolitan” language, such as—in today’s world—English. In states with many linguistic minorities, schools would select languages according to general criteria, such as territorial concentration. Among available minority languages, parents can then choose that their children be educated in their own language, beyond the majority and cosmopolitan ones. Yet, the reason for allowing this choice would not be grounded on the interest in self-determination of adults but in the interest of children to be able, if they wish so, to endorse their parents’ cultural practices.

Therefore, unlike liberal nationalists, and in agreement with Patten, I do not think that the purpose of language and educational policy should be to promote convergence on the majority language and culture alone, so as to support the enterprise of nation-building. Children should not be forced to assimilate in whatever culture the majority happens to have, for this would undermine their interest in a fairly open future. Yet, for the same reason, unlike Patten, I do not think that a state should grant special and separate instruction in the language of the minority, according to the needs and preferences of adult speakers. Both approaches to language and educational policy neglect the liberal requirement that control rights over nonconsenting human beings can only be justified by appeal to the interests of those subject to those rights, which in this case include the child’s interests in self-determination and well-being, as well as, no less, the basic demands of political citizenship that all future citizens, including children, have a shared interest in supporting.

Parents, of course, have an interest—shared by their children—in familial love and intimacy, which may ground a parental right to educate, within the family, children in their own culture and native language so as to share personal experiences and cultural practices with them. ⁸ Further, the interests of adult members of cultures may well serve as the appropriate ground of many cultural rights—including some language rights (e.g., having official documents translated in their own language). However, when the justification of compulsory educational institutions is at stake, the interests in self-determination of adults do not justify, in my view, a culturally specific education.