Non-coercive promotion of values in civic education for democracy

Introduction

Civic education for democracy is of increasing interest to political philosophers, in particular those concerned with the moral and political status of children (see M. Freeman, 1997; Archard, 2004). A number of difficult-to-resolve debates converge on this issue, however. This is the case first as civic education is a concern with education for good citizenship but there is no single shared view of what a good citizen should do or should be disposed to do (see Hess, 2004: 258, Westheimer and Kahne, 2004). The debate over the definition of the good citizen also informs a disagreement about the values of civic education. There is controversy here over whether values should be promoted at all, as any attempt to do so may face the charge of indoctrination (Hess, 2004: 258). Even those who accept that civic education should promote values do not have a shared view on which values to promote, as there is disagreement, for instance, over whether civic education should promote only secular values, or only the values of a liberal democratic culture, or only the values of the specific culture or nation or ethnic group concerned (see Kymlicka, 2003; Archard, 2003).

Any attempt to promote values through civic education must address two questions. First, given the plurality of ethical norms, systems and theories, which values can and should be promoted? For some, citizenship ‘should be about trying to work out and communicate a common set of values’, whereas, in contrast, communitarians and multiculturalists believe that the values promoted should be relevant to ‘the resolution of disputes locally and in contexts in which their resolution makes a difference’ (Halliday, 1999: 48; see MacIntyre, 1985: 252). Second, if civic education is to be non-coercive, to whom should arguments be addressed? Any attempt to promote values in civic education will affect the interests of citizens generally, the parents of the children involved, and the children themselves. Although parents are thought to have rights to teach values to their children, there are limits to just how far this process of value promotion may go, and those limits are set in large part by the interests of their children as well as the interests of other citizens (Brighouse and Swift, 2006; O’Neill, 1989).

In this article a conception of civic education is defended that is ‘political’ in a loosely Rawlsian sense (see Rawls, 1993). It will be argued that civic education should promote the values of reasonableness, mutual respect and fairness, but also, and in contrast to comprehensive liberalism, it is argued that only public, political reasons count in attempting to justify the content of civic education (cf. Gutmann, 1995, 1999). However, contra Rawls, the content of civic education may legitimately be broader than this, including but not restricted to the values of autonomy, integrity and magnanimity (see Gutmann and Thompson, 1996) and truthfulness and generosity (see MacIntyre, 1999). At the same time, if civic education is seen merely as a means to shape and form future citizens, then the promotion of values in civic education will be a coercive imposition on children and young people. If the promotion of values is to be non-coercive it must be defended with reasons that children should be able to accept (see Archard, 2004; Harris, 1996). Neither comprehensive nor political liberals have succeeded in doing so up to now.

An autonomous way of life

The debate over these questions between comprehensive liberals and political liberals is the theoretical point of departure for this article. Comprehensive liberals appeal directly and explicitly to liberal moral principles and a liberal (autonomous) way of life. They believe that the justification of political proposals need not be independent of the values of liberal morality and also that civic education programmes should promote an autonomous way of life (Raz, 1986, 1990; Gutmann, 1995). However, although Amy Gutmann’s liberalism is of the comprehensive variety, she agrees with some political liberals on the content of civic education. That is, she concurs with those political liberals who believe that civic education should teach mutual respect, while criticizing comprehensive liberals who reject the teaching of mutual respect.

Mutual respect is defined here as ‘reciprocal positive regard’ among citizens who pursue ways of life consistent with the basic liberties and opportunities of others (Gutmann, 1995: 561). The goals of civic education that Gutmann espouses are taken in large part from John Rawls’ work. Education, according to Rawls, should ‘encourage the political virtues so that they [those who are so educated] want to honor the fair terms of social cooperation in their relations with the rest of society’ (1993: 199). The political virtues include ‘toleration and mutual respect, and a sense of fairness and civility’ (ibid.: 122). Civic education furthermore should teach all children ‘such things as knowledge of their constitutional and civic rights … to insure that their continued membership [in their parents’ religious or cultural group] is not based simply on ignorance of their basic rights or fear of punishment for offences that do not exist’ (ibid.: 199). Such political knowledge gives the individual the very real ability to ‘exit’ the group, should there be reason to do so (Brighouse, 1998: 730). Therefore, in sum, civic education should teach toleration, mutual respect, fairness, civility and political knowledge.

Political liberals who teach mutual respect do so for purely civic, public reasons. In contrast, for Gutmann, mutual respect should be taught for the non-political reasons provided by commitment to the values of autonomy and individuality, while a programme of civic education should also explicitly and intentionally promote autonomy and individuality as ‘a conception of the good life’ (1995: 558). The first part of Gutmann’s argument is that to develop individuality and autonomy requires substantial understanding of other ways of life which in turn requires the teaching of mutual respect (ibid.: 561). There is a distinction between understanding, respecting and accepting unfamiliar ways of life, according to Gutmann, and the purpose of civic education is to help distinguish them, and to teach the first two (understanding and respecting) and not to teach the third (accepting). Moreover, Gutmann contends, there is an overlap between the skills and virtues of democratic citizenship and those of individuality. On the one hand, teaching mutual respect ‘can aid students in understanding and evaluating both the political choices available to them as citizens and the various lives that are potentially open to them as individuals’ (ibid.: 563). On the other hand, teaching mutual respect also teaches the importance of people being free to live the life they choose: for example, the practice of exposing children to different religious beliefs is politically relevant not so that government should regulate religion but ‘because citizens need to think about why religious belief should not be regulated’ (ibid.: 573).

If it is agreed that civic education should promote autonomy it must be done through the teaching of mutual respect, Gutmann is arguing. A further argument is needed to establish that autonomy should be promoted at all, however. Gutmann accepts that the ‘good of children includes not just freedom of choice, but also identification with and participation in the good of their family and the politics of their society’ (1999: 43). Her approach is non-neutral in the sense that it accepts civic education will and should promote a way of life. However, there is a very real possibility that the promotion of autonomy will come into conflict with a family’s or a community’s promotion of its own goals insofar as promoting autonomy encourages the freedom to decide to leave the group or to reject its values (see Crowder, 2006: 423). The question at issue then is how to resolve any disputes that do arise concerning the competing goals of promoting autonomy on the one hand and group identification and participation on the other. Gutmann goes some way towards an appeal to moral truth when discussing what she calls ‘the value of moral freedom’: ‘All societies of self-reflective beings must admit the moral value of enabling their members to discern the difference between good and bad ways of life’ (1999: 43). At other points, however, she makes only the pragmatic claim that freedom of a particular sort is ‘most suitable’ to a society such as ours: ‘Rational deliberation remains the form of freedom most suitable to a democratic society in which adults must be free to deliberate and disagree but constrained to secure the grounds for deliberation and disagreement among children’ (ibid.: 45; see Raz, 1986: 391). She goes so far as to say that independent philosophical accounts of autonomy ‘are not sufficiently strong or determinate enough to override the actual disagreements among citizens’ (1999: 64). Nonetheless, she concludes that a democratically agreed programme of civic education must not be ‘repressive’. Although families and communities are permitted to ‘shape but not totally to determine their children’s future choices’ (ibid.: 46), adults must be ‘prevented from using their present deliberative freedom to undermine the future deliberative freedom of children’ (ibid.: 45).

To a certain extent, other liberals will find these proposals controversial. Comprehensive liberals agree that the purpose of civic education should be to promote autonomy. However, liberals may fear that state-enforced or publicly controlled civic education cannot promote autonomy but will instead lead to indoctrination. According to Gutmann, publicly controlled schools can promote autonomy if they are sufficiently decentralized and ‘constrained not to indoctrinate or discriminate against minorities’ (1995: 563). As we have already seen, Gutmann also contends that the teaching of mutual respect is necessary so as to promote autonomy. Once again liberals will object. They will argue that, although children should be taught the value of toleration, teaching children to respect others violates their freedom (ibid.: 559). This is Mill’s point that others are free to lead lives we find repugnant and we in turn are free to avoid their company, to ‘stand aloof from a person … that displeases us’ (Mill, 1985[1959]: 146). Gutmann’s response is to argue that, if we value autonomy, we must also accept the teaching of mutual respect as the necessary means to attain that goal:

A state makes choice possible by teaching its future citizens respect for opposing points of view and ways of life. It makes choice meaningful by equipping children with the intellectual skills necessary to evaluate ways of life different from that [sic] of their parents. (1999: 30)

Therefore, Gutmann believes that teaching mutual respect will also teach the values of autonomy and individuality, and that teaching autonomy and individuality can aid students in making choices about the various lives open to them. However, the list of values required for democratic participation, in Gutmann’s view, is longer than this (see Fives, 2009).

According to Gutmann and Thompson, the virtue of ‘mutual respect’ is needed for ‘a distinctively democratic character – the character of individuals who are … open to the possibility of changing their minds … if they confront unanswerable objections to their present point of view’ (1990: 76). To exercise the virtue of mutual respect, however, one must also exercise the virtues of integrity and magnaminity. Integrity requires that one be consistent in speech, and espouse moral positions because they are moral positions, not merely because they further one’s interests or promote one’s conception of the human good (ibid.: 78). Magnanimity, on the other hand, requires that one acknowledges in speech that the position of those one disagrees with is a moral position. One should not respond to it as if it were nothing but the expression of their self-interest or conception of the good life (ibid.: 79).

Gutmann is therefore proposing that democratic participation requires a lengthy list of potentially controversial values and virtues. For that reason, the justification of Gutmann’s proposals for civic education is all the more significant, in particular given the opposition within liberalism already discussed. However, a quite serious methodological and moral issue arises here. Strictly speaking, Gutmann’s argument addresses only the interests of parents and also the interests of the future adults the current generation of children will one day be. It is in this spirit she observes that, although teaching mutual respect does not prevent parents from fostering deep religious convictions in their children, it limits the authority parents can claim over their children’s public education (1995: 577). This is the case, she believes, as mutual respect involves ‘teaching future citizens to evaluate different political perspectives that are often associated with different ways of life’ (ibid.: emphasis added). Her argument is that the authority of parents is limited by the fact that one’s ‘child is at once a future adult and a future citizen’ (ibid.: 576; emphases added). Therefore, in justifying teaching mutual respect Gutmann offers arguments to the parents of the present generation of children and also to the adults those children will one day be, but no argument is offered to children themselves.

Reasonable citizens

Comprehensive liberals are arguing that a programme of civic education should teach mutual respect but also that in doing so it should promote an autonomous way of life, that is, ‘rational deliberation among ways of life’. As a political liberal, Stephen Macedo criticizes Gutmann and other comprehensive liberals on the following basis. As they insist on ‘the importance of critical thinking in all departments of life’, and as they make such an assertion concerning religious belief and practice (and any other domain where choices are made between ways of life), it follows that comprehensive liberals ‘premise political authority on the contention that critical thinking is the best way to attain religious truth’ (Macedo, 1995: 473). Macedo’s alternative approach is explicitly indebted to Rawls’ political liberalism. First, he states that, given the difficult matters of judgement involved with respect to religious truth, or moral truth more generally, in political debate it should be acknowledged that people can reasonably disagree about such issues (Rawls, 2001[1987]: 435). Second, as fellow citizens, our basic motive should be the desire to respect reasonable people, and therefore the reasons given to others are ‘reasons we might reasonably expect that they, as free and equal citizens, might also accept’ (Rawls, 2001[1997]: 579). The crux of the matter is the legitimate grounds of coercion, not the legitimate basis of moral belief (Macedo, 1995: 475).

Macedo believes that political liberalism is neutral in one sense but accepts that it is not and should not be neutral in another. It is neutral in the sense of ‘not relying on the justifiability of any particular comprehensive ideal or view of the whole truth’ (ibid.: 477). In contrast, according to Macedo, comprehensive liberals do rely on such a comprehensive ideal or view of the whole truth. On the other hand, he accepts that the goods of ‘freedom, peace, and prosperity’, goods promoted by political liberalism, will not be valued equally by people of different faiths. However, even more to the point:

… promoting core liberal political values – such as the importance of a critical attitude toward contending political claims – seems certain to have the effect of promoting critical thinking in general. Liberal political virtues and attitudes will spill over into other spheres of life. Even a suitably circumscribed political liberalism is not really all that circumscribed: it will in various ways promote a way of life as a whole. (Macedo, 1995: 477)

In response, Joseph Raz has argued that political liberals cannot do without moral truth, as they must justify their own basic premises. Rawls’ political philosophy, Raz has argued, can only be ‘intelligible’ if its reliance on certain truths is acknowledged: ‘It recognizes that social unity and stability based on consensus … are valuable goals of sufficient importance to make them and them alone the foundations of a theory of justice for our societies’ (Raz, 1990: 14; see Estlund, 1998: 272, 254).

However, Rawls has a response to just such a criticism. He can go back to the basic observation that there is no way to gain agreement in politics on what should count as moral truth, other than by means of coercion, and it is this reason alone that leads to the bracketing of the truth or otherwise of liberal morality (Rawls, 2001[1987]: 435). It is up to comprehensive liberals to show how such an agreement can be secured, and given the pervasive quality of contentious moral disagreement the burden of proof is with them. Moreover, Rawls can argue that the requirement of publicity corresponds with the prerequisite to give justifications within morality, as opposed to a justification for morality (see Scanlon, 2002: 518–19; see Fives, 2010). Morality requires us to treat others as free and equal moral persons and to offer moral justifications to others, and in political debate this entails that we be willing to justify ourselves to others and do so with reasons they should find acceptable (see S. Freeman, 2000: 401). To reject the requirement of publicity in political debate is incompatible with the commitment to view others as free and equal moral persons. The burden of proof must lie once again with those who claim that we are not under an obligation to limit ourselves in political debate to reasons that are public in nature.

Once again, however, comprehensive liberals can and do respond. They insist that using and appealing to comprehensive values in political debate in fact will better encourage persuasion rather than coercion. Rather than bracketing them, we should invite our deepest disagreements on to the political stage, as this will lead to a more profound diversity of political viewpoints, deeper forms of mutual respect, and also a more robust political life (see Macedo, 1995: 491–2). It is important not to overstate the role played here by a comprehensive liberal moral doctrine. As was clear from the discussion of Gutmann’s position, although she believed civic education should promote an autonomous way of life, she concluded that it is through democratic debate that the content of civic education programmes should be fixed.

It is also the case that Rawls for his own part accepts that comprehensive moral principles could, without violating the requirement of publicity, play a role in political debate. We can argue from a comprehensive doctrine if the following proviso is respected: ‘that, in due course, we give properly public reasons to support the principles and policies our comprehensive doctrine is said to support’ (Rawls, 2001[1997]: 584). Therefore, there is considerable agreement here between comprehensive and political liberals. Neither political nor comprehensive liberals assume that political principles are justified solely by appealing to a liberal conception of the good, although both accept that moral doctrines can be introduced in political debate. What is more, political liberals propose a system of civic education the outcome of which is expected to be the promotion of an autonomous way of life. Nonetheless, a clear difference between the two positions is evident. It is political liberals who provide a way in which to offer arguments in politics that are suited to politics and yet at the same time meet the requirements of morality: that we offer public reasons in support of the principles we propose, and we do so also for principles our comprehensive doctrine is said to support.

Macedo therefore has good reason to claim, as he does, that political liberalism is better able to attract the trustful allegiance of people with opposing but still reasonable conceptions of the good (1995: 493). However, he then goes on to claim that political liberalism is better able to attract trustful allegiance for the specific reason that it bars ‘coercive perfectionism in principle’ (ibid.). It is not at all clear that political liberalism, as it stands, can bar coercive perfectionism in principle, and this is the case for two reasons.

First, political liberals accept that the promotion of autonomy in non-political spheres is an indirect but inevitable consequence of teaching mutual respect. While the rationale for political liberalism is that moral justification in politics requires publicity, political liberals are not offering public justifications for the foreseeable consequences of civic education, the promotion of an autonomous way of life. Indeed, they had tried to keep the issue off the agenda altogether, claiming that, as a matter of principle, political liberalism does not promote comprehensive moral values.

Second, Macedo’s justification for a civic education of mutual respect does not address itself to those who would be receiving this education, and this is a further reason to doubt that political liberalism, as it stands, can bar coercive perfectionism in principle. Macedo believes families do not have a moral right to opt out of reasonable measures designed to educate children toward very basic liberal virtues even if ‘those measures make it harder for parents to pass along their particular religious beliefs’ (1995: 485). The reason why ‘religious fundamentalists’ do not have ‘a right to shield their children from the fact of reasonable pluralism’ is that children are not mere extensions of their parents (ibid.). An ‘awareness of alternative ways of life is a prerequisite not only of citizenship but of being able to make the most basic life choices’ (ibid.: 486). However, and like Gutmann, Macedo only takes into account the interests of future adults and the current generation of parents: ‘Each of us can reasonably be asked to surrender some control over our own children for the sake of reasonable common efforts to insure that all future citizens learn the minimal prerequisites of citizenship’ (ibid.: 485–6; emphasis added).

Public reasons for ethical values

So far this article has given a qualified defence of a political conception of civic education. It has been argued that it is correct to bracket moral truth in political debate and also that a political conception should attract allegiance from reasonable citizens. It also follows that the values required in civic education must at the very least include reasonableness, mutual respect and fairness. However, political liberals have been criticized because they accept that civic education will promote an autonomous way of life but they do not offer public reasons in its defence. The promotion of autonomy is not itself what is problematic. Rather, the argument is that a defensible civic education programme may promote autonomy, along with other values, but also the proper content of civic education can be determined only through offering public reasons in support of such proposals.

It is illustrative to look again at Rawls’ position. He has argued that civic education should teach toleration, mutual respect, fairness, the value of civility, and also the political knowledge necessary to know one’s rights and duties as a citizen. The underlying value that should be promoted, however, is reasonableness. It requires us to recognize and accept the consequences of the burdens of judgement. We should therefore accept that differences between reasonable moral doctrines have a morally innocent source and that in politics we should not strive for a consensus on a single moral doctrine that could be attained only through coercion. We should also be willing to respect others as moral equals, and therefore also to offer moral justifications for proposals and actions that others should in principle be capable of accepting. This is the willingness to offer public reasons for our proposals, reasons whose force in political debate does not simply derive from a comprehensive moral doctrine.

Can the list of moral values promoted in civic education be wider than liberals so far have accepted? Communitarians believe that the social values and virtues should be promoted: they include, but are not limited to, truthfulness, generosity, clemency, courage, constancy, amiability, trust, empathy, benevolence and cooperativeness. The reason to teach social virtues is that it is only if participants in politics share certain commitments towards the political community as a whole, and towards the treatment of fellow citizens within the community, that a morally justified community can flourish (MacIntyre, 1999: 161).

Liberals do, however, worry about the consequences of a thoroughgoing communitarian politics. Liberals can accept that families and communities should promote social values, but also that children must be taught critical reasoning so that in the future they will be free to make informed decisions, including the decision to exit the group (see Gutmann, 1999; Crowder, 2006). Promoting autonomy is different from promoting other values, liberals assert, as it is autonomy that enables the individual to make choices between ways of life. Nonetheless, Gutmann has willingly conceded that hers is not a morally neutral approach, as it promotes a way of life. However, if teaching autonomy will affect the ‘ends’ chosen by individuals (see Callan, 2002: 123), with respect to that point it does not differ from the teaching of social values. Communitarians go on to argue that, as liberals wish to promote an autonomous way of life, what liberal politics does promote is a set of ends that are incompatible with communitarian ends. In a liberal public sphere, they argue, it is no longer legitimate even to discuss shared or common goods as it is only the wants or desires of (autonomous) individuals that are considered relevant or appropriate (see Sandel, 1992[1984]: 22; MacIntyre, 1988: 337).

There are two crucial characteristics of the liberal–communitarian debate above. The first is that, as it stands, there seems to be no way to resolve the disagreement. They cannot agree on the liberal contention that autonomy should always be promoted and that doing so is very different from the promotion of social values. However, the second crucial characteristic of the argument is that neither side is offering public, political reasons. Liberals are arguing from a moral commitment to promote an autonomous way of life. Communitarians are arguing from very different premises but these too are derived from moral doctrines and commitments to promote certain ways of life.

What is instead required is an argument based solely on public reasons. That is, in giving reasons to others, citizens must view one another as free and equal moral persons; they must offer fair terms of social cooperation; and finally, they must recognize and accept the consequences of the burdens of judgement. What public reasons can be given for the promotion of autonomy in civic education? The argument could be that, if the participants in a civic education programme are to be treated as free and equal moral persons, participants must be willing to offer moral justifications but also they must be willing and able to understand and analyse the justifications offered to them. This is possible only if critical abilities are fostered and encouraged. It is for this reason that civic education is thought to be permissible only if it includes elements that direct the critical scrutiny of children and young people to the very values they are taught (Brighouse, 1998: 719, 732; see Coleman, 2002: 176).

However, the same form of argument, at least in principle, is available to those who wish to promote social values in civic education; for example, generosity. Generosity requires that at times we go beyond what justice requires of us, and instead respond to the neediness of the needy person (MacIntyre, 1999). The political defence of generosity would include the observation that, as generosity requires that we give to others according to their needs, rather than their past contribution, it involves viewing others first and foremost as moral equals. Generosity is something owed to all because of this shared moral status. Moreover, in giving to the needy stranger we put to one side our moral doctrine in the sense that differences in moral doctrine are irrelevant to the relationships of giving and receiving.

However, a note of caution is required. It is highly informative that communitarians so far have not made public, political arguments in defence of social values (see Fives, 2008). It suggests that, as it stands, a communitarian programme of civic education would not be compatible with taking a political approach to moral values. For instance, MacIntyre’s assumes that apprentices in a practice first learn the standards of excellence of that practice from those in authority, and then strive to emulate and even surpass those standards and those achievements of excellence (1988: 30). The crucial thing is that the truth of these values is taken as a given. Therefore, not only must the arguments in defence of social values change if there is to be any likelihood of engaging non-communitarians in the debate, but also only a political approach to the promotion of social values in civic education would be attractive to non-communitarians.

Non-coercive promotion of values

So far we have looked at one problem with the attempt by political liberals to justify a programme of civic education. Political liberalism will promote ‘critical thinking in general’ and ‘a way of life as a whole’, but its adherents have failed to offer public, political reasons in support of these values. However, there is a further problem with the justification of civic education by political liberals, a problem shared by Gutmann’s comprehensive liberalism. They seem unable to establish that theirs is a civic education programme that will not be ‘coercive’, as they are unwilling to address their arguments to the children who will be the participants in civic education.

The argument of this article is, first, children, and adolescents in particular, have sufficient moral capacity for arguments to be directed to them concerning matters that directly affect them. Second, although political debate should give equal consideration to the interests of children, it does not follow that children share all the interests that adults have or that they should have the same rights and duties as adults. Finally, it will be argued that, because of the unique situation of children, it is in their interests to take part in civic education, although only if its content and structure respect their moral status.

Any proposals for civic education at some stage must deal with the moral and political status of children. Arguments should be addressed only to those who have what is assumed to be the capacity needed both to understand justifications and to offer their own justifications in return. Do children and young people have a unique moral status in this sense? For Robert Noggle, whereas adults are ‘moral agents’ children are ‘moral patients’ capable only of what he calls ‘simple agency’ (2002: 100; see Brighouse, 1998: 737). Children are capable of the deliberate, intentional and rational pursuit of goals. However, they lack ‘temporal extension’, the ability to take into consideration their long-term interests; also they do not have a sense of justice; and nor finally do they have a conception of the good and therefore the ability to act according to the dictates of prudence and personal commitments (Noggle, 2002: 101). Children lack the capacity for the kind of moral agency that allows adults to interact with other moral agents on equal terms, Noggle is claiming. The ‘moral community requires and presupposes a willingness to give and accept moral considerations as reasons for action’, and that its ‘members understand, value, and have at least some motivation to act upon, the norms of moral decency’ (ibid.: 110). To the extent the child or young person is incapable of such moral agency, it is the role of parents or guardians, acting as a bridge between the child and the community, to facilitate the child’s meeting these requirements (ibid.: 111; see M. Freeman, 1997: 37; Brennan, 2002: 60). It is for these reasons that, in debates on civic education, arguments are offered to adults, including the parents who now act as a ‘bridge’ between the child and the community.

Gutmann explains the special status of children with the observation that although schools can help children move from a ‘morality of authority’ to a ‘morality of association’, ‘[v]ery few sixteen year olds (or adults) ever embrace the morality of principle’ (1999: 60). Here her argument follows very much Rawls’ own account of psychological and moral development (1971: 462–79). The morality of authority involves following rules because they have been issued by authority figures (e.g. parents and teachers). The morality of association involves accepting rules ‘because they are appropriate to fulfilling the roles that individuals play within various associations’ (Gutmann, 1999: 60). Finally, the morality of principle involves post-conventional moral reasoning, where the acceptance of rules is founded on each individual’s own capacity to construct and comprehend the general principles from which the rules derive (see Coleman, 2002: 167–8). Gutmann believes that adolescents by and large are only capable of the morality of association, expressed in the cooperative virtues of empathy, trust, benevolence and fairness, and it is these that can and should be taught in schools (1999: 61). Similarly, others have argued that a preoccupation with autonomy is suited to an ‘associational view of human relations’, where society is based on consent and each member has equal rights (Arneil, 2002: 82). In contrast, the child’s membership in the family is not based on consent, and duties of adults to children cannot be reduced to, or limited to, protecting the rights of their children (see O’Neill, 1989).

A distinction is being made between moral agents and moral patients, or full moral agency and simple agency (see Archard, 2004). However, while this distinction may have application to the real world when comparing adults and young children, it is less plausible when comparing adults and adolescents. Advocates of children’s rights have claimed that many adults do not live up to this ideal of moral agency while many young people can and do. If adults do not live up to the ideal of moral agency then there no longer is justification for assuming young people incapable of the autonomy adults are said to exercise. However, advocates of children’s rights often have not clearly specified the point at which a person becomes capable of moral agency and therefore have unwisely claimed that all children should have all of the rights that adults have (see Harris, 1996). An alternative approach is to look at the way in which moral agency can be quite highly developed in adolescence and then investigate the implications for political theory and political practice of this developmental process.

There are, however, two very different implications that can be drawn from the claim that many adolescents have the same or similar capacity for moral agency as many adults. Some infer that the conventional standards of moral agency are too demanding, both for adults and adolescents, but this article will argue for retaining these high standards. Joe Coleman has argued that adults by and large do not develop the capacities for moral agency as they are set out in Rawls’ work (Coleman, 2002: 167). The implication of Coleman’s argument is that adolescents and adults do have an equal moral status, but this is an equality judged by quite modest standards. However, more needs to be said about the capacities for rationality and a sense of justice. The empirical claim that many or even most adults do not on a daily basis exercise the capacities for rationality or for a sense of justice to the highest possible level is not the only relevant consideration. For it may be that most adults rarely attain these standards and yet at the same time that these are reasonable benchmarks, or ideals, or principles for adults, and for that reason the political system is set up the way it is, guaranteeing specific rights and requiring the performance of certain duties. In other words, it may be possible to offer public, political reasons in defence of such principles, even though most of us most of the time do not live up to them. The benefit of such an approach is that the requirements of morality are not watered down to lower standards or less demanding requirements.

This is one way in which to retain high standards or ideals in respect of political morality, and therefore also in respect of the content of civic education. However, this does not by itself tell us whether adolescents should be obliged to take civic education classes and whether these classes should be more or less participant-oriented. It could be argued that, if these high ideals are reasonable for those adults who do not always live up to them, then surely they are appropriate for children and young people as well. If that is the case, and if we are unwilling to oblige adults to take civic education classes, how can we justify such an obligation to children or young people? However, it is possible to respond by pointing out that, even if the interests of children and adults are given equal consideration, it does not follow they have the same or identical interests. Equality of concern for interests does not entail uniformity of interests. Moreover, it can then be possible to put an argument to adolescents defending civic education programmes that are within limits participant-oriented. Amy Gutmann has pointed out that a more participant-oriented education programme is in many respects more compatible with democracy, as it ‘builds upon the students’ interests and elicits their commitment to learning’ (1999: 90). However, she has also rightly warned that this commitment ‘should be overridden when disorder and arrogance are so great as to threaten the very enterprise of education within schools’ (ibid.).

An argument, based purely on public reasons, needs to be addressed to children and young people along the following lines: childhood and youth is a stage of human development characterized by relative incompetence, dependence and vulnerability. It is not that children and young people have no moral capacities, but that those capacities are in the process of development. As a result, the interests of children and young people are to a large extent unique. In particular, children and young people have a higher-order interest in education as a necessary element of development. They also have interests in an education for citizenship more specifically. Partly this is an interest in their future lives: an interest in becoming an adult with certain attributes. However, it is also an interest in their current experience: an interest in being treated in ways that show respect for their moral equality. Taking both sets of interests together, it is plausible to make an argument to adolescents in particular that they have interests in civic education and also in a participant-oriented approach. This is the case as civic education strives to foster values beneficial to the future adult but also participant-oriented civic education treats the participants as ends in themselves.

Conclusions

This article has looked at what values if any should be promoted in civic education and also how the promotion of values can be non-coercive. It was argued that civic education should promote the values of reasonableness, mutual respect and fairness, but also that only public, political reasons should be used in any attempt to justify the content of civic education. It was argued as well that the content of civic education may legitimately be broader than this. It is possible to offer public, political reasons to justify promoting the values of autonomy, integrity, magnanimity, truthfulness and generosity. However, this article has stressed that civic education programmes themselves must live up to the requirements of a political approach. Therefore, it is not acceptable for civic education programmes to indoctrinate students with the values in question, and this supports calls for a more participant-oriented approach to civic education, in particular with respect to adolescents. A related issue is that civic education must not approach the current generation of children and young people as if they were merely the means to bring about the future adults and future citizens they will hopefully one day be. Such an approach will be a coercive imposition of values on children and young people. If instead the promotion of values is to be non-coercive it must be defended with reasons that children and young people should be able to accept.