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Isaiah Berlin and Education Neil Burtonwood Cultural Diversity, Liberal Pluralism and Schools Culturally diverse liberal democracies on both sides of the Atlantic are currently faced with serious questions about the education of their future citizens. What is the balance between the need for social cohesion, and at the same time dealing justly with the demands for exemptions and accommodations from cultural and religious minorities? In contemporary Britain, the importance of this question has been recently highlighted by the concern to develop political and educa- tional strategies capable of countering the influence of extremist voices, in both the majority and minority communities. Starting from recent debates in North America about possible accommoda- tions to meet the concerns of non-liberal religious groups, the book goes on to examine several issues centred on education in culturally-diverse societies. Neil Burtonwood argues persuasively that the work of Isaiah Berlin, the British philosopher and historian of ideas, has considerable potential for illuminating questions about a properly liberal response to pluralism, and the education of cultural minority children in a liberal democracy. This is the first book to bring his writing to bear on education. Berlin’s liber- alism is distinctive in attending to the benefits that individuals gain from their memberships of cultural identity groups and religious communities, while remaining committed to Enlightenment values based on individual freedom. Yet his need to find compromises to balance the claims of individuals and groups makes Berlin’s version of liberal pluralism so relevant to many vital questions of education policy and practice that concern philosophers of education today. Neil Burtonwood is Senior Lecturer in Educational Studies at the University of Leeds; he previously taught in high schools and at Bretton Hall College of Higher Education. He is the author of The Culture Concept in Educational Studies. Routledge international studies in the philosophy of education 1 Education and Work in Great Britain, Germany and Italy Edited by A. Jobert, C. Marry, L. Tanguy and H. Rainbird 2 Education, Autonomy and Democratic Citizenship Philosophy in a changing world Edited by David Bridges 3 The Philosophy of Human Learning Christopher Winch 4 Education, Knowledge and Truth Beyond the postmodern impasse Edited by David Carr 5 Virtue Ethics and Moral Education Edited by David Carr and Jan Steutel 6 Durkheim and Modern Education Edited by Geoffrey Walford and W. S. F. Pickering 7 The Aims of Education Edited by Roger Marples 8 Education in Morality J. Mark Halstead and Terence H. McLaughlin 9 Lyotard: Just Education Edited by Pradeep A. Dhillon and Paul Standish 10 Derrida and Education Edited by Gert J. J. Biesta and Denise Egéa-Kuehne 11 Education, Work and Social Capital Towards a new conception of vocational education Christopher Winch 12 Philosophical Discussion in Moral Education The community of ethical inquiry Tim Sprod 13 Methods in the Philosophy of Education Frieda Heyting, Dieter Lenzen and John White 14 Life, Work and Learning Practice in postmodernity David Beckett and Paul Hager 15 Education, Autonomy and Critical Thinking Christopher Winch 16 Anarchism and Education A philosophical perspective Judith Suissa 17 Cultural Diversity, Liberal Pluralism and Schools Isaiah Berlin and education Neil Burtonwood Cultural Diversity, Liberal Pluralism and Schools Isaiah Berlin and education Neil Burtonwood First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2006 Neil Burtonwood This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN10: 0-415-36501-5 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-01604-1 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-36501–7 (hbk} ISBN13: 978-0-203-01604-6 (ebk) For Jean, Tom and Matthew After the ruinous experiments of the lately deceased century, after so much vile behaviour, so many deaths, a queasy agnosticism has settled around these matters of justice and redistributed wealth. No more big ideas. The world must improve, if at all, by tiny steps. (McEwan, 2005: 74) Copyright © 2005 Ian McEwan. Reproduced by permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN. Contents Preface x Acknowledgements xi Abbreviations xii 1 Isaiah Berlin and liberalism 1 2 Political philosophy, cultural diversity and education 21 3 Cultural diversity, value pluralism and the curriculum 45 4 Faith-based and cultural identity schools: a liberal defence? 66 5 Cultural communities, education and right of exit 86 6 National identity and education 99 7 In pursuit of an uncertain future 124 Notes 140 References 158 Index 178 Preface While there has been considerable attention given to the intellectual legacy of Sir Isaiah Berlin since his death in 1997, relatively little has been said so far about the implications of his work in philosophy and the history of ideas for education. Although he says little directly about education, it is the thesis of this book that Berlin’s writing on the subjects of liberalism, pluralism and, not least, his abiding concern to avoid cruelty and suffering, has relevance to several key debates in the philosophy of education. In discussing some of the questions around contemporary issues such as civic education, faith-based schools, values education and education for citizenship and national identity I hope to show the relevance of Berlin to the philosophy of education and to contribute to the wider debate about the way that the claims of liberalism and pluralism are best recon- ciled in the interests of both liberty and identity in culturally diverse societies. Acknowledgements I am grateful to my colleagues in the Inclusive Education Research Group in the School of Education at the University of Leeds for the opportunity to share some of the ideas that eventually came to be formulated as the proposal for this book. Colleagues beyond Leeds have also been very helpful either in responding to the original proposal, in reading and commenting on various drafts of chapters or in corresponding with me about their own work. In each case I am grateful for the collegiality shown and I wish to extend my thanks especially to Harry Brig- house, Mike Degenhardt, Henry Hardy, Stephen Macedo, Michael Merry, Paul Standish, Jack Weinstein and Colin Wringe. I am also grateful to Terry Clague and his colleagues at Routledge for editorial guidance throughout the writing process. Versions of some sections of the book have appeared in an earlier form as articles or were presented as conference papers. I am grateful to members of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain for their response to parts of Chapter 6 which were presented as a conference paper at the Annual Conference in April 2005; in particular I would like to thank Mark Olssen for his comments on that occasion. Parts of Chapter 4 were published in an earlier form in ‘Social cohesion, autonomy, and the liberal defence of faith schools’ in Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 37, 2003 and I am grateful to Blackwell Pub- lishing for permission to reproduce this material. In Chapters 2 and 5 I have used extracts from ‘Isaiah Berlin, diversity liberalism, and education’ originally published in Educational Review, Volume 55, 2003 and I am grateful to Taylor & Francis Ltd (www. tandf. co. uk) for permission to reproduce this material. The quotation from Ian McEwan’s book Saturday, published in 2005 by Jonathan Cape, is reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited and Rogers, Coleridge and White Ltd. While preparing my manuscript I read that Ian McEwan had been reflecting on Isaiah Berlin while writing Saturday and it is not difficult to see the influence of Berlin, not least in the quotation I have selected to appear at the beginning of this work. Neil Burtonwood Leeds Abbreviations CRE Commission for Racial Equality DES Department of Education and Science DfEE Department for Education and Employment DfES Department for Education and Skills NCC National Curriculum Council NFVEC National Forum for Values in Education and the Community OfSTED Office for Standards in Education QCA Qualifications and Curriculum Authority SCAA School Curriculum and Assessment Authority 1 Isaiah Berlin and liberalism Introduction Recent literature from the United States of America and Canada reveals that for liberal educators solutions to some key questions regarding the appropriate edu- cational arrangements for children belonging to cultural minorities are to be found in the kind of political philosophy that is being written by liberal philo- sophers and their communitarian critics. While educators in the United Kingdom have only recently begun to draw on this detailed philosophical work, there is no doubt that the issues, questions and themes that dominate recent political and moral philosophy in North America have a significant bearing on educational issues in an increasingly culturally diverse United Kingdom. It is the thesis of this book that the work of Sir Isaiah Berlin, British philosopher and historian of ideas, has considerable potential for illuminating questions about the education of cultural minority children in a liberal democracy. Despite a considerable liter- ature on the intellectual legacy of Berlin since his death in 1997 little has been said about the relevance of this work to education.
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