Critical Studies in Education, 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2014.873368

A dangerous idea? Freedom, children and the capability approach to education Judith Bessant* GUSS, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

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(Received 7 August 2013; accepted 28 November 2013) This article begins by observing how education is currently appreciated primarily for its utility value, a view informed by utilitarianism and neoclassical economic theory. A critique of that framing is offered and an alternative way of valuing education informed by a Capabilities Approach is presented. In doing so, I also observe that while key proponents of the Capabilities Approach promote the idea of freedom, they deny it to children and some young people. The argument they present is that in the hands of children, freedom destroys their capabilities because they lack capacity for good judgment and therefore should only make minor decisions. The focus should be on adulthood because only at that stage can we exercise good judgment and exercise freedom properly. I explain why this view limits the application of Capabilities Approach, why it is problematic and offer a way of overcoming that constraint. Keywords: childhood; educational policy; inequality/social exclusion in education; neoconservatism/neoliberalism; philosophy of education; youth/adolescence

Significant increases in education participation have been witnessed of late across all Western nations. For member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it is estimated that an average of 84% of young people will complete upper secondary education while entry rates for university-level programmes increased, on average, 25% between 1995 and 2010 (OECD, 2012). So many people are now in education or training presumably because education is valued. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence that education is regarded as a vital accomplishment and has implications for a person’s life and average lifetime earnings. The assumption is that education is a good, and more education is better for the individual, the society and the economy. I am interested in the question of how education is valued. This matters because it affects all aspects of the ‘education enterprise’ – the institutional culture, education policies, the classroom, the curriculum and the very experience of being a student and a teacher. I note that for a long time, the central justification for education and its value has come from a broad church utilitarian tradition. It is a view buttressed by economists and policy-makers using the vocabulary of investment in human capital promoted by neoclassical economists like Becker (1964/1993). Within this framing, education and human well-being are valued as a function of economic utility: the value of education is to produce skilled employees for the labour market, enabling higher incomes and enhanced living standards for the individual and economic growth for all. Given that utilitarianism in its neoliberal form has already been subject to major critical reviews and given the space constraints of a journal article, I present a brief *Email: [email protected] © 2014 Taylor & Francis

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overview and critique here (Ball & Olmedo, 2013, pp. 99–112; Brown, Lauder, & Ashton, 2011; Connell, 2013, pp. 85–96; Hall, 2011, pp. 705–728). My focus is to consider an alternative, the Capability Approach (CA) to human development and ask whether it can be applied to education. In doing this, I draw on the work of the two pre-eminent writers in this field, Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen. I focus on Sen and Nussbaum because they played a formative role in conceptualizing the CA, and have histories of collaborative work in developing and placing human development theory on the international policy agenda. This is not to ignore their differences, but to point to the substantive common intellectual ground they share. To begin, both draw on the Aristotelian virtue ethics tradition to inform their moral inquiry. They draw on the Aristotelian philosophical tradition to counter and reframe the prevailing utilitarian world view. They approach the task by asking questions about what we value: for example, what is a person able to do or be, as opposed to how much material resources they have or they can acquire? These writers also describe human development using the language of human capabilities and spell out what they see as essential for a good life and for promoting a just and more equitable society. Both also see the individual as an end in themselves in contrast to the utilitarian view of the individual as a means to an end (Nussbaum, 2000, 2006; Sen, 1988, 2009). As such, the CA can be understood by the questions its proponents pose about what we can be or do, rather than what we have. What is needed to be free to choose what we value? Once those choices are made, a second order of questions can be presented: what does it take to achieve the ‘doings and beings’ people value? (Nussbaum, 2011; Sen, 1999, 2009). In short, the CA can be characterized by normative claims that freedom is morally important. Freedom is required to achieve well-being, which is needed if a person is to have opportunities (capabilities) to do and be what they value. As such, denying freedom or capacity is morally wrong. This presents a powerful argument for the provision of certain ‘forms of education through which a person can explore her own conception of what she has reason to value’ (Unterhalter, Vaughan, & Walker, 2007, p. 4). Before focusing on how education is valued from a Capabilities Approach, I offer a synopsis of utilitarianism, the philosophical tradition that informs modern education and then argue that the student’s capacity to make informed choices is limited under the utilitarian model. I then turn to an alternative way of valuing education, namely the Capabilities Approach. That approach is outlined and consideration is given to the values and practices central to that approach, namely freedom, justice and capability. I explain why they are critical for establishing just education institutions oriented towards human development, a good life and democratic culture. However, I also note that while key proponents of the Capabilities Approach promote freedom, they deny it to children and many young people. This denial presents an obstacle for those interested in applying CA to educational institutions because most students are young. At this point, I consider the application of a CA to education and in doing so, move from a ‘macro’ discussion and analysis of the philosophical traditions that inform policy and practice to a more ‘micro-level’ analysis that includes a focus on practice in the classroom. I argue that the claim made by both Sen and Nussbaum that children and young people cannot exercise substantive freedom is problematic on empirical and ethical grounds. I consider how and why students and teachers can exercise freedom and the ethical and practical implications of this. Utilitarianism Utilitarianism has provided a long-standing framework of ethical deliberation in Anglophone societies since its origins in Britain, courtesy of eighteenth-century

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philosophers like Francis Hutcheson and Jeremy Bentham. It has played a key role in shaping the framework of Anglo-American public life and core modern institutions. This brief synopsis offered within the constraints of a short article can only gesture at its complexity and richness. Like all major philosophical traditions, utilitarianism is defined as much by the internal disagreements amongst its adherents as by the points of agreement. The fact that contemporary philosophers as diverse as Kagan, Smart, Singer and Railton have articulated versions of utilitarianism highlights the point that a clear and unchanging common ground that defines this tradition is hard to find. Hutcheson and Bentham first developed the principle of utility, grounding it in a hedonistic doctrine that defined pleasure and the avoidance of pain as the criterion for establishing what was good or bad. For Bentham, we are motivated by desires for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. This form of utilitarianism is an ‘ethical hedonism’expressed in the injunction: to always act so as to promote the greatest happiness, and can be characterized as a kind of psychological hedonism involving a preoccupation with motivation. Subsequent utilitarians rejected the idea that the good is whatever satisfies human desire or what makes us happy. One way of highlighting the complexity of utilitarianism is to refer to some of the similarities and differences in the work of key figures like Bentham and J.S. Mill. (The fact that key figures like J.S. Mill changed their minds repeatedly about aspects of utilitarianism highlights the complexity of this tradition.) While Bentham and Mill agreed that maximizing happiness is the right thing to do, Bentham had a particularly instrumental view about that, arguing that we can aggregate the interest of each person through a formula which calculates the goodness of an act. For Mill, it was more complicated, he said the quality of satisfaction or desire matter, and argued there were higher and lower forms of pleasure and pain. While internal critiques characterize this tradition, utilitarians also faced ongoing critiques from ‘outsiders’ like Kant, Sedgwick and Green, and more recently from Finnis, Posner, Williams and Sen, to name but a few. In summary, those writers made five key critiques. First, relying on happiness, pleasure or well-being cannot provide a strong or consistent basis for determining whether an action is good or right. There are too many ways happiness (pleasure) can be described. What produces happiness changes with time and place. That is, to claim that what is a good or right can be determined by the degree to which an act satisfies desire or relieves pain, while ignoring the nature of the action used to create that happiness is not a defensible way of identifying the good if the action is wrong in the first place. Indeed, there are activities that give some people pleasure which give others grief and some are evil. Supporting such action can never be right. Second is the related problem of whether different degrees of happiness should be given different ethical significance. Are some forms of happiness more important than others, or is the happiness of one-sized group more important than that of another-same sized group? Should the absence of certain pains have greater weight than the absence of others? In respect to minority groups, utilitarianism leaves numerical and moral minorities (young people – students – disadvantaged groups) reliant on the hope that securing their interest will enhance the utility of the majority (older people). Thus, the majority always have priority over minorities (‘the young-as-student’). We should also note that applying utilitarian principles constrains the educator’s capacity to exercise a duty of care and professional discretion because doing so requires them to identify what contributes to their own well-being and that of the student. This

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raises questions about whether the teacher can act morally when the source of their judgment is not their conscience or sense of what is right and wrong, but simply represents the majority view (Williams, 2006). Fourth, the relationship between the student and teacher is fiduciary in nature and as such imposes duties on educators to act in ways that protect the student’s interests. Utilitarianism constrains a teacher’s capacity to exercise those duties because being a fiduciary means acting in the student’s interest even when that involves acting against the interests of the majority – or against what the individual says contributes to their wellbeing. The final critique relates to the problem of distributive justice, or the just allocation of goods and services. According to Rawls (1971), when utilitarians work within the welfare-maximizing framework and attempt to secure the general welfare, they tend to overlook distinctions between people and treat ‘them’ as a single entity because they are preoccupied with a single idea of well-being that ought to be maximized. This reflects a failure to recognize the plurality of a community and the differences which define individuals and groups. This means that the different needs/desires found in any society are not acknowledged. Failure to attend to difference means different persons and groups are neither acknowledged nor respected as ends in themselves. Education and utilitarianism: an overview The utility value attributed to education has achieved a near-hegemonic appeal evident in the popularity of ‘human capital’ language like: ‘Investment’ in ‘human capital’, which is said to produce in students the knowledge and skills needed for them to perform labour that has economic value. Illustrative of this are government initiatives like Australia’s Skills Reform Agenda, an approach paralleled in most western nations and designed to increase higher education participation. Certainly in Europe, and ironically in the context of the most serious global financial crisis since the 1930s depression, the EU Commission developed a ‘Youth Strategy’1 designed to address the problem of a flagging economy by skilling-up youth. We are told this will also address major social problems like youth unemployment and that increasing education participation rates will promote an active citizenship, enhance social inclusion and thereby prevent social disorder (European Commission, 2012, for US examples, see Nussbaum, 2010). The OECD estimated that improved education levels since 1970 have increased gross domestic product (GDP) per capita by 10–20%. A person with a university degree can expect to earn around $AU446 a week more than a person who hasn’t completed Year 12. For this reason, national agendas for economic prosperity necessitate investment ‘in all and high expectations’ that everyone who can participate (Gillard, 2010) does so. Thus, education is valuable because it lifts skills and creates qualifications, jobs and boosts the economy. Modern nation states are keen not to ‘lag behind’ in international education league ladders, which requires investment in their national ‘intellectual infrastructure’ if they are to keep pace with competitors and grow human capital. In doing this, as Rizvi and Lingard (2010) argue, the EU drew on the ‘global imaginary’ to promote ‘the need’ to bring Europe’s education systems into ‘the global village’ and to recognize that they face international competition and need to achieve world class standards’ to make the economy the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world. It is a world view rooted in neoclassical economics, a tradition refurbished in the wake of the Keynesian critique (1936–1970), that came from the ‘Chicago School of

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Economics’ and figures like Gary Becker (1964/1993) and Milton Friedman (1982). As an exponent of human capital theory, Becker argued that people and education are best treated as units valued and measurable in terms of a nominated monetary worth. It is a view that assumes causal relationships between education expenditure – ‘investment in human capital’ – and national financial gain like increased productivity as measured by growth in GDP, and by increased individual income. Yet in spite of many technically and statistically impressive evaluations, human capital theory has made only a limited contribution to the education debate because of its narrow focus on utility or benefits defined in terms of measure of GDP or gross national product (GNP), or estimations of lifelong earnings. The weakness with this approach is that while these metrics may measure improvements in human lives, they cannot speak about the goods that define human life as truly valuable. This approach works only if we assume that these measures of utility function as proxies for happiness, healthy lives, just institutions or freedoms worth having, or satisfying social and human projects and relationships. This assumption is not well supported by relevant evidence, for example, on the link between increased GDP and happiness, see Diener and Diener (2008). Material goods or high income may affect the quality of our lives, but may not guarantee access to basic human goods like biological and emotional health or meaningful social relations or, more importantly, for the purposes of this article, may not promote the development of ‘substantive’ freedom (Nussbaum, 2006). Equally crude metrics like school retention or university participation rates do not capture the quality or condition of a nation’s education. On their own, the fact that large numbers of students are schooled, says nothing about the quality of the curriculum or what they are learning. Contemporary neoliberal discourses conflate educational with economic processes and objectives, and in doing so, obscure the politics that informs education policies (for example, Australia’s Skills Reform Agenda, the EU Youth Strategy (European Commission, 2012), and ‘for profit’ policies that inform higher education in the USA (see Nussbaum, 2010). This is achieved by representing education and economic policy as a way of addressing technical issues of economic efficiency. The technicization of policy discourse de-emphasizes the political nature of education policy by representing education as a commodity produced and distributed in a market and by ‘assuming and promoting a consensus in relation to this “economizing agenda”’ (Clarke, 2012, p. 298). Similarly, the preoccupation with evidence-based policy sustains the idea that we can measure ‘effectiveness’, ‘learning and teaching standards’ and ‘progress’. This implies that policy-making requires reference to empirical ‘evidence’ rather than debate about the good of education and the political choices available. We also see an incessant use of metrics like participation rates, demonstrable competencies, quantifiable learning outcomes and other performance measures. The presumptive utilitarianism at work here sanctions an emphasis on how education practice and education policy act as primary technical exercises. As Stronach (2010) and Lingard (2011) argue, the neoliberal obsession with accountability and productivity means that the complexities of different educational systems and learning and teaching practices disappear through the use of standardized assessments, which encourages the homogenizing of education and education policy-making. This approach also has a destructive impact on disadvantaged communities (Ball, 2008), while obscuring the political nature of practice and policies informed by a utilitarian ethical frame. The fact that students’ capacity to make informed choices is limited under the utilitarian model, points to the value of considering an alternative (CA) approach. What would a Capabilities Approach applied to education look like?

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Freedom, justice and capability Over a number of decades, Sen and Nussbaum have developed a far-reaching ethical and analytic framework that considers how we might promote the good life. This is summarized in their work on ‘capabilities’, and involved rejecting the pervasive commitment to utilitarianism that shaped modern economics and Anglo-American philosophy (Biggeri, Ballet, & Comim, 2011; Hart, 2012; Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 2009, pp. 317–319). They question whether the quantum of happiness or utility is what we ought to try to measure in assessing the value of a social practice. A calculation of benefits derived from education (i.e., estimated income and material goods) cannot tell us whether a person thrives or whether the community is just, because counting ‘detached objects’ (for example, income and commodities), which is the ‘standard measure’ used to gauge value or success tells us little. What we should look for are the ‘actual opportunities of living’ well rather than the ‘means of living’. This provides a better way of assessing individual or collective benefits (Sen, 2009, p. 233). Assessing the value of a social practice in utilitarian terms does not promote a sustainable economy nor does it encourage inequality. Sen and Nussbaum extend the liberal idea of freedom while addressing issues of justice. Unlike utilitarians, they reject monistic principles like utility (‘happiness’). They argue against the single-minded pursuit of economic growth saying that promoting justice requires us to ensure that there is freedom and the capability available to all to identify, choose and pursue our objectives – namely those goods we value. Like other liberal philosophers, they assume there exist multiple and incommensurable ways of determining what constitutes a good life and justice. For Sen, the pursuit of a single principle or measure ignores the fact there are pluralities of values and that little is gained by measuring one single aspect of a person’s circumstances, like income. This is because many of the valuable ends of a good life are not commensurable. They do not have the same qualities or standards and so cannot be compared with or measured against each other (Nussbaum, 2010, p. 239; Sen, 2009). For something to be commensurable, it requires that the objects or activities in question share common qualities and have units on which comparisons can be made. Non-commensurability points to the need for several ways of valuing, which would need to be not reducible to each other. The noncommensurability of values reflects the diversity of valued end that characterizes our lives as good lives: Various attainments in human functioning that we may value are very diverse, varying from being well nourished or avoiding premature mortality to taking part in the life of the community to developing the skills to pursue ones’ work related plans and ambitions. The capability that we are concerned with is our ability to achieve various combinations of functionings that we can compare and judge against each other in terms of what we have reason to value. (Sen, 2009, p. 214)

In their account of freedom, they recognize a plurality of goods or valued ends of living as inseparable from any defensible conception of justice. Freedom requires that people have the capabilities needed to make choices and pursue those choices: a just society is one which supports freedom by enabling people to make and have the choices that define a free and a just society. Our quality of life can be judged by the extent to which we exercise freedom, choose between different ways of living and pursue what we have reason to treasure. Sen distinguishes between a narrow understanding of freedom, described as ‘culmination outcomes’ where we get what we want, but still have no choice, and a ‘comprehensive account’, which occurs when we lead a life we value, which

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includes actually having and making a choice between viable alternatives. In short, determining whether an individual is living a good life and whether a society or institution is just is evident by the extent to which people are free to choose between viable alternatives, and the degree to which they can pursue the ends they value. This incorporates being free to value different ends (to choose between alternative conceptions of good). What matters is the whole of a person’s life and not ‘detached objects of convenience’ (incomes or commodities), which are taken ‘especially in economic analysis to be the main criteria of human success’ (Sen, 2009, p. 233). This points to an interest by CA proponents in assessing a person’s tangible capabilities to engage in free choice and to have the intellectual, social and material capabilities (resources) to pursue those valued ends. A good life requires more than the means of living, it requires opportunities of living, this is why Nussbaum and Sen reject income or wealth as a singular measure of the good life. For Sen: ‘wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking, for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else’ (2009, p. 253). What does this mean for those working within the modern education system? Education and the capability approach The conception of freedom outlined by Sen and Nussbaum points to some of the ways in which education can enhance our capacity to live flourishing lives. It suggests how schools, universities and education policy communities all might work to achieve this by encouraging searching questions about the value of education. Currently, the standard approach to assessing the value of a ‘good’ like education is to ask what we might expect to get from our ‘human capital investment’ (what quantum of knowledge can we expect as defined or ‘measured’ by examination results and what job and income might be expected on graduation)? Importantly, those using a CA are better equipped to address equity issues. As mentioned above, one problem with the utilitarian approach is its failure to address the persistent evidence that societies, such as ours, tend to be fundamentally unequal. This is not to suggest that spending money (‘investment’) on educating disadvantaged groups (like people with disability or lower socio-economic groups) does not, and should not, occur in institutions shaped by the economic liberal world view. Rather it is to point out that within that frame, minority groups (whether they be numerical or moral minorities) rely on the hope that securing their interests will satisfy the desires and diminish the pain of the majority. In this way, the majority always have priority over minorities (which disadvantaged groups tend to be) and the well-being or the interests of the majority is said to be whatever satisfies the desire of the majority (whatever makes the majority happy). This, I suggest is not a good basis for determining the morality or goodness of an act or for determining what is in the interest of disadvantaged groups. Moreover, when utilitarians attempt to secure welfare, they generally aim to secure the general welfare, and tend to minimize or neglect differences, thereby treating a group as a single entity (Rawls, 1971). We might, for example, conceive of a situation in which children from families in the bottom decile of income groups receive only primary education, while children from highearning families attend primary and secondary school. If both groups say they are satisfied, because it is what each expects, then there is no problem in terms of utility or desire satisfaction, because both groups are equally content. Yet such a conclusion overlooks equity and how income disparity might mean in a context characterized by an economic liberal world view and thus avoids issues of equity. A focus on capabilities requires us to evaluate not just expressed satisfaction with learning outcomes, it involves

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asking about the extent to which real educational choices were available, and whether people had a genuine capability to achieve a valued educational functioning. We would also need to ask whether people’s educational aspirations (what they hoped for) were constrained by their circumstances, and whether low-income groups had a range of valued learning opportunities to choose from, from which they then selected only a minimal primary education. The CA raises more questions about equality than a focus on desire satisfaction. Applying the Capability framework entails valuing education for its intrinsic goods rather than for its instrumental importance. This highlights the role of freedom and choice in bringing about the kind of life we value and the capabilities we need to enjoy for a life we ‘treasure’ (Sen, 2009, p. 227). It would mean assessing education by asking whether it affords us the capabilities needed to achieve what we value. Practical implications Comprehensive freedom in an education setting encourages self-determination and freedom for students to be and do what they value which are, of themselves, advantages. The value of this can be appreciated by considering the quality of life we have when choice is missing or severely limited. If we imagine a situation in which choice is absent, when we are forced to act against our will, then we get an appreciation of the value of freedom. What are the practical implications of this? How would modern educational institutions, given their tendencies towards authoritarianism, the relative absence of choice, compulsory attendance requirements, the fact that many students have little, if any, choice about the subjects in which they enrol, how they learn or who teaches them, adopt a capabilities approach? The potential for change that a CA implies for contemporary education is dramatic. To begin, taking the idea of justice and substantive freedom seriously requires significant changes to the current architecture of teacher–student power relations. Applying a CA would require that students be supported to make informed choices. In exercising such freedom, they would learn of the available alternatives, the consequences of each and the paths to achieve them. This would have significant implications for the curriculum, for student learning, teaching practices and school management. Recognizing a student’s capacity for moral competence is to recognize their capacity as political agents. In such an environment, students would be more active learners, have some say over the content of their learning and pedagogy rather than being recipients of information and teaching practices that others determine they need or ought to value. What would emerge from the application of a CA to education are more democratic schools and universities that provide opportunities to learn how to make good judgment and help build student self-identity as active citizens able and willing to exercise positive freedom. Moreover, given the developmental role of education, and its ‘character building’ function, educating for good decision-making and for determining what students themselves value is particularly relevant to those interested in promoting democratic cultures. For the purpose of this article, I focus on students, and while I realize there are many mature-age students, my focus here is on students as ‘children’ (3–12), as ‘adolescents’ (13–18) and young people (12–25). As mentioned earlier, most schools are authoritarian institutions; typically, students have little say about what they learn or how their classes and schools are run. Similar observations can be made about modern universities. Many students are seriously short-changed, a failure partly explained by the imperative to cut

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spending and create ‘efficiencies’ that compromise the quality of their education (Brown et al., 2011). At the same time, many students experience financial hardship and find themselves in significant debt and working long hours for wages, as they can complete their study. In the United States of America, for example, completion rates are inadequate with 80% of students not graduating. As Stiglitz points out, the financial rewards that are meant to follow graduation often fail to materialize. His account of the quality of education most students receive is damning: rather than ‘satisfaction’ guaranteed or your money back, the reality is ‘dissatisfaction is almost guaranteed, but you will be saddled with these debts for the rest of your life’ (Stiglitz, 2013, pp. 243–245). Freedom and ‘the young’? While the CA points to a major revisioning of the role and character of education, its advocates have allowed one major and troubling obstacle to arise regarding the appropriateness of encouraging or ‘permitting’ students to exercise ‘comprehensive freedom’. This tendency, seen in both Sen and Nussbaum, tends to reinforce the long conventional view that children and young people cannot be allowed substantive freedom, or at most, may enjoy only limited positive freedom. This view presents a major stumbling block for those interested in applying CA to education. Yet as I will argue, while claims that a freedom ought to be limited are a popular view, encouraging students to exercise freedom remains critical for learning and for a good life. The CA provides a valuable alternative to the contemporary utilitarian preoccupation with its focus on instrumental goods and competition for objects of convenience – which do not necessarily lead to a good life. Taking the CA seriously has implications for the entire educational institution, for teachers, managers, policy-makers and communities. In a school committed to a capabilities approach, we would see teachers enabling students to exercise ‘comprehensive freedom’ by helping them make informed choices and by assisting them to achieve what they chose. It is a practice radically different from the way in which most education institutions currently operate. Talking about freedom and young people in the same breath tends to come up against entrenched age-based prejudice. After all, as many adults will insist young people do not have the moral or intellectual capacity to exercise such freedom, and the younger a person is, the less their capacity. This premise informs claims that children and young people are deficient adults, that they lack the experience and requisite cognitive and ethical abilities to know what is in their best interest. Such claims are used to justify paternalist responses that adults ought to exercise a ‘duty of care’, something which is said to obligate the older person to manage and constrain the capacity of young people to make choices until they are cognitively able to do so. This ‘requires’ adults to restrict and deny freedom ‘for the student’s own good’. The younger a person, the more restricted their freedom ought to be. It’s a view reinforced by the ‘science of developmentalism’ and represented, for example, by the work of psychologists like Kohlberg and his schema of cognitive and moral development (1963, pp. 11–33). As mentioned earlier, the claim that children and young people should not exercise substantive freedom is, perhaps paradoxically, supported by Sen and Nussbaum. They are also not alone in this view: it is a pervasive and powerful idea which has achieved a taken-for-granted status. Freedom, it is argued, ought to be curtailed when we are young because it can impact on our future ‘adult freedom’. If a young person chooses to withdraw from studying mathematics, for example, they will lose the freedom later in life to choose to pursue

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career options that require mathematics – such as being an airline pilot or an engineer. Nussbaum calls this ‘capability-destruction’ and says that in children, this ‘is a particularly grave matter and as such should be off limits’ (2011, p. 27). Sen also appears to accept the view that adults are best placed and qualified to decide for young people:‘… the child when it grows up must have more freedom, so when you are considering a child, you have to consider not only the child’s freedom now, but also the child’s freedom in the future’ (cited Saito, 2003, p. 25). The implication is that only adults, as fully developed people, can and should have the capacity to exercise substantive freedom and engage in practical reasoning. Since young people are not fully developed, they do not have the status or competence as moral agents to exercise substantive freedom. This reflects the popular idea that they (children and young people) are ‘human becomings’ and, as such, their future as adults is privileged over their present (Qvortrup, Bardy, Sgritta, & Wintersberger, 1994; Uprichard, 2008, pp. 303–313). It is a view that draws on ‘developmentalism’ and ‘stage and life-cycle theories’ said to offer ‘scientific’ descriptions of how humans ‘progress’ over time (Uprichard, 2008). As ‘stages’, childhood, adolescence, and youth are transitionary which, are said to be different to later (presumably stable and permanent) ‘stages’ (i.e., adulthood, middle-age, elderly, and so on) which is when, it is argued, we are fully competent active agents capable of decision-making. For these reasons, a young person can and should make only minor decisions. They ought to be restricted to minor decisions like whether they are ‘unhappy, want milk and so on.’ From this perspective, the focus is on the future, when in adulthood: ‘… they will actually exercise some freedom’ (Sen, cited in Saito, 2003, p. 26; Nussbaum, 2011). When dealing with children, it is their future freedom rather than the present that ought to be given priority, little, if any; attention is not given to the developmental role of exercising freedom and the making of informed choice at an early age. As long as we restrict a person’s capabilities in this way (to one ‘stage’ their life-span), and support claims that they need to be protected from closing-off future choices, then a very narrow version of the CA seems to be applicable to children and educational institutions. This view has implications for student capabilities and their freedom to choose about what they value, a topic to which I return. Before doing so, however, I need to explain why assumptions that young people’s freedom ought to be curtailed and postponed need to be approached with scepticism and caution. Postponing freedom According to Finnis (1980) and Williams (2006), practical reasoning is a fundamental good in human life constituted by our ability to deal with both immediate daily issues and longer-term choices. Sen and Nussbaum agree. People need to choose the valued ends or goods they want, like health, play or knowledge, while keeping in mind those longer-term tasks which orientate one’s life in ways that direct us towards certain goods and valued ends: for example, I want to be a certain kind of person with X interests and Y abilities. Although a number of different discourses have informed the popular proposition that children and young people lack the requisite cognitive and ethical abilities needed to engage in practical reasoning before they become adults, the Kantian deontic tradition has had a particularly powerful influence. For Kant, our capacity for rationality provided the basis for his normative and descriptive account of moral reasoning. Judgment is the consequence of human reasoning performed by rational persons enjoying maximum autonomy (Kant, 1996). Closer to our

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time, neo-Kantian developmental theorists like Kohlberg used Kant’s view of practical reasoning (reasoning about what I ought to do) to construct a developmental model which says the capacity to engage in practical reasoning (understood as a rational cognitive activity) is a developing capacity only fully realized in adulthood and then not by all adults. Kohlberg claimed humans evolve through successive stages of cognitive and moral reasoning to become adults with a capacity to engage in practical reasoning. Kohlberg also claimed that he could empirically measure this cognitive and moral development. Ethical competence is thus understood as developmentally bounded competence. Moreover, only adults are morally competent because they alone have the requisite formal cognitive abilities (1963). This Kantian tradition has been criticized on a number of grounds. According to Williams, it is excessively cognitivist and ignores how emotions inform judgments (2006). This is to say nothing of the influence of values that shape the ethos of a place and which are learnt by living within a community. There is also the role of ‘character’ as understood within traditions like virtue ethics that see people act in particular ways (for example, when soldiers obey their conscience without obvious reliance on philosophical reasoning). At the same time, those working from a Kantian tradition ignore the social context and pressures to conform to group norms, the law and community prejudices, which influence the long-term goods we select and which shape the choices we make. In short, this tradition is seen to disregard the influence of context in which practical reasoning takes place. Finally, it is a paternalist argument that presupposes the existence of specific criteria for determining when a person reaches a point when they have the competences to make good choices. It presupposes that people who have reached a specified age demonstrate those capacities and relies on the assumption that ‘adults’ exhibit the ethical and cognitive competence they are supposed to have. Yet there is a case to be made that most adults living in real communities, actual families and organizations do not demonstrate the requisite ethical competencies which this approach assumes they do. In short, there are problems with the position that represents adults as naturally ethically and cognitively competent in ways that young people can never be and that this ‘fact’ justifies constraints on young people’s freedom to choose or act or the recognition and promotion of their rights. All this matters, given the formative nature of being young and the educative role of schools and universities. It also points to the ways ‘children’, ‘adolescents’ or young people are positioned in a moral order, something which has a bearing on what they are permitted to do and be and what they are not – which in turn affects their opportunities to learn and develop (Stasiulis, 2002, pp. 507–537). Such attitudes and positioning limit the actions that are socially possible for people of certain ages, as opposed to those that are logically possible. Yet, a range of social actions exist that children and young people can perform if we ignore those constraints. It is possible for children, who are quite young, to make well-informed decisions about matters like the political party they want in office if they are provided with good information, opportunities to reason and opportunities to make choices. They can understand and participate in complex and sophisticated philosophical argument if they are educated into the field in ways that are sensitive to their experience as relative novices, as distinct from people who are intellectually and physiologically incapable of understanding the material and how to make good judgments. As I later explain, using the idea of phronesis, the degree to which such freedom might be exercised relies on the capacity of educators to make good judgment.

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A dangerous idea: overcoming obstacles Implementing the CA in education requires that children and young people enjoy and exercise their freedom in ways beyond Sen’s and Nussbaum’s own position. It entails overcoming obstacles like those just described: namely the idea that young people lack the moral competence and cognitive capabilities to make rational choices that adults presumably possess. Accordingly, adults have a duty to prevent young people from exercising freedom, to protect them from their own deficits. For this reason, constraining the freedom of young people is a dangerous idea. This obligation or duty is often misrepresented as a conflict or tension between a young person’s positive freedom (freedom to), and an adult’s ‘duty of care’ to protect them (negative freedom, freedom from harm). The idea that young people have the same kinds of entitlements and capacities to exercise freedom as older people is a subversive idea because it challenges long-standing images of their childish and dependent nature and the inherently ‘risky’ adolescent who requires close monitoring. It is challenging because ‘diminishing’ adult authority would constrain older people from performing ‘guardianship duties’. This is significant for educational institutions, where interests, lines of authority and power relations are deeply entrenched. Typically, reference to ‘duty of care’ is used to trump a young person’s opportunity to freedom. The premise silently relied on is that a ‘duty of care’ is diametrically opposed to supporting a young person exercising freedom. I suggest this is a false premise, and that one claim does not trump the other because they are compatible with each other. The proposition that young people ought to be accorded the same kind of freedoms and moral considerations as adults does not imply they should be treated the same way as adults. Indeed as Sen argues, it is because people are different in their ability to render resources into ‘functionings’ – or the things that they can do in life, a just or fair distribution of resources may not be one that is equal. This is because different people have different needs. If we apply this reasoning to students, it follows that because they may be less able, because they may be physically smaller or less experienced than an older person, then those differences place an obligation or duty of care on others who are more able and better resourced to ensure the young person is supported in ways that make it possible for them to exercise their freedom. This point can be clarified if, instead of talking about a young person, we consider a person with a chronic illness or disability. Because they are not physically able to exercise freedom, does not mean someone else ought to make decisions for them. People with disabilities are generally recognized as having a right to exercise freedom because they have a moral status that is derived from the fact they are a person. However, it is because they have such a right that they should not be just left ‘to go it alone’, because they can’t. In short, justice or equal entitlement to freedom does not necessarily mean equal treatment. This way of thinking also values freedom in ways that disparage dependency. It is an unfortunate view that overlooks the ethics of care that assumes no one person ought to be left to cope on their own and that it is valuable and ethical to depend on others and be involved in relations of care.

Practical reasoning, good judgment and freedom Just educational institutions will work using democratic rather than authoritarian protocols. Student well-being can be secured by opportunities to exercise ‘comprehensive

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freedom’ based on informed choice, and support needed to achieve what they value. Student well-being entails exercising freedom and leading a life oriented to a range of virtues while being supported by teachers exercising similar agency. Precisely because young people are not always able to do X or Y on their own, others, particularly educators, will be obligated to assist them in making good choices and in supporting them to achieve what they value. Indeed, a good educator is one who demonstrates a capacity for good judgment or ‘practical wisdom’ (phronesis) that enables them to make assessments and decisions about how to act to achieve basic social goods in ways which enable a good life and which shape the habitus of the individual. For reasons mentioned above, this includes enhancing a student’s capacity to exercise freedom and develop in all the ways that they can. This rests on the idea that each of us have a mix of innate and learned capacities that we can cultivate that enable us to flourish and be good people. This is different from the utilitarian view, that it is the end that matters. Being able to help a student recognize their own dispositions and how they might pursue them within an educational setting, while also helping them cultivate virtues (honesty, knowledge, care, courage), requires practical reasoning (the ability to decide whether an action is good or bad or right or wrong). Inherent in this is the ability to determine how and where to intervene on a continuum that has, for example, the extreme paternalistic approach at one end whether the student is directed to do or be X, and the libertarian laissez faire approach at the other. It is demonstrated by the capacity to be context-sensitive, to know the individual student, their interests and dispositions and to know how to guide the student in choosing between viable alternatives, and in working out how to pursue the ends they value. In practice, it means helping students establish how and why they might act to change aspects of their lives for the best and what action is required in specific situations to achieve that. The large question of how educators might develop their own capacity for practical wisdom remains. While I do not have the space in this article to spell out further the relationship between freedom and practical reasoning or good judgment, we can briefly outline the kind of ‘phronetic pedagogy’ encapsulated in our ability to ask and address the following questions: ● ● ● ●

What are the intention or values of those involved? Whose interests are serviced, who gains and who loses and how is power exercised? Is what is happening good or desirable? (what values or goods are promoted). What action is required? (Flyvbjerg, 2004; Kerr, 2010, pp. 289–306).

Exercising freedom and good judgment rests on the student’s ability to comprehend and care about their well-being and to recognize how that relates to the well-being of others. This requires the active support of their teachers. It requires educators to work with students, parents and communities to establish the kind of action, dispositions and skills that are needed to achieve a CA. Enhancing student capacity in these ways requires the development of virtues like civic courage, often needed to challenge and transform the socio-political landscape. This involves more than developing an understanding of what is good, it requires a clear understanding of what needs to be done. The teacher–student relationship is critical. As mentioned earlier, assisting students in the exercise of substantive freedom relies on the educator’s capacity to secure their own well-being by being able and willing to exercise freedom. The educator’s exercise of their own human agency is important not just so they can be authentic and effective as role models, it is also critical for a staff member’s own self-care and for building educational

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institutions that can encourage critical thinking and commitment to democratic practice. I refer to the educator’s capacity to take up their right to speak, and thereby the practice of parrhesia (truth-telling), which is an essential precondition of freedom. I also suggest that there are four elements constitutive of this practice: the first is speaking the truth. The second is having the courage to speak truthfully in situations where there is some risk or danger for the truth-teller. Third, speaking courageously is a form of criticism directed either towards another or towards one-self and should come from below, from the less powerful. Finally, parrhesia as the telling of truth, is a duty related to positive freedom (Foucault, 2010; Tamboukou, 2012, pp. 849–865). All this raises questions about culture. Given that freedom is central to classic liberalism and western thinking, should educating students to be autonomous be a universal feature of all communities? My answer is that freedom can be understood more broadly, indeed a focus on self can take a variety of cultural forms and highlight our dependence on others. In short, freedom does not need to be conceptualized in the narrow classic liberal utilitarian form, and thus student freedom has general value and universal applicability. What it does require is an appreciation of the different cultural forms freedom can take. A just education of the kind that could eventuate using a CA would also need to address the issue of age-based prejudice (Young-Bruehl, 2012). This matters because such prejudices create obstacles typically represented as special ‘protections’ or negative freedoms that produce external constraints for some people because they are young (for example, not having the autonomy to make decisions on their own behalf, not having freedom of movement and so on). Likewise, the habit of questioning common sense and scientific truth claims about age that reinforce negative stereotypes would need to be encouraged. It would entail recognizing the difference between what young people can do and know, and what their community permits them to do, – or what they may do. It would include equipping students to engage in critical thought which requires ensuring that there is space and encouragement to deliberate. Conclusion: age matters I do not suggest that everyone aged 0–25 ought to enjoy unfettered freedom. The question of age is raised because it is generally assumed that it provides a clear indicator of when we are able to exercise comprehensive freedom. Yet, using age as a marker is problematic for the reasons mentioned above and it rests on essentialist thinking. People age differently in diverse social contexts and develop capacities at different times and often not in linear progressive ways as developmentalism may have us believe. At what age should a young person be able to exercise substantive choice? The answer I suggest is: at the age they express an interest in doing so. When a student expresses an interest in exercising choice, whether it relates to the curriculum, the school they attend or national politics, that is when educators need to be able to detect and tap into that interest, to educate by offering relevant information about the viable options and to assist students in making good judgments about what they value. This also highlights the importance of educators themselves, as having the capacity to make good judgments about the kind of information and guidance that is appropriate for their students, about how and when that material is best presented and how the student can be provided with opportunities to learn to make good decisions. Amongst other things, this entails the capacity to exercise phronesis, to determine the desirable ‘middle ground’ between denying freedom outright (by assuming an overly paternalistic position), and the libertarian free-for-all approach.

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Given that Nussbaum and Sen draw on an Aristotelian tradition, education and the development of character are relevant. Accordingly, a good life is one in which we enjoy a variety of goods, it entails the capacity for phronesis or good judgment, and ideally it is something that should be developed early. Thus, it follows that a critical task for educators and policy-makers is to be clear about the nature of the freedom and capabilities needed to enable students to exercise freedom and make choices about what they value and, in doing so, be guided in living a good life. Importantly, this also applies to educators because the extent to which students have opportunities to develop good judgment depends on their teacher’s own capacity to do so. It defines the quality of the student’s education, their quality of life and whether the institution in which they learn can be described as just.

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Note 1.

The EU Youth Strategy was first announced in 2009 and revised in 2012. It made increasing secondary and university participation rates its central policy objective. This objective originated in 1987 when the EU adopted its first education programmes.

Notes on contributor Judith Bessant is a Professor at RMIT University in Melbourne. She teaches in human service practice and social science, and has developed curriculum for the state government and within the university. She has also published widely in the areas of policy, sociology, politics, media and youth studies.

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