Colin M. Macleod

Toleration, Children and Education

The paper explores challenges for the interpretation of the ideal toleration that arise in educational contexts involving children. It offers an account of how a respect‐based conception of toleration can help to resolve controversies about the accommodation and response to diversity that arise in schools.

Justice, Educational Equality, and Sufficiency

There are significant inequalities in the lives of Americas children, including inequalities in the education that these children receive. These educational inequalities include not only disparities in funding per pupil but also in class size, teacher qualification, and resources such.as books, labs, libraries, computers, and curriculum, as well as the physical condition of the school and the safety of students within it. While not all schools attended by poor children are bad schools, and not all schools attended by well-off children are good schools, there are clear patterns. Poor children are more likely to attend crowded and poorly equipped schools with less qualified teachers than the children of more affluent families. They are less likely to have computers, books, and advanced placement academic courses. (Satz 2007, 623)

Shaping Children’s Convictions

This article examines the degree to which children are entitled to an autonomy enhancing upbringing of a sort that imposes constraints on the efforts parents can legitimately undertake to shape the religious and moral beliefs of their children. The article describes a conception of child-rearing, called Socratic nurturing, that places emphasis on raising children in ways that facilitate the development of robust powers of critical reflection. It is argued that the well-being of children is well-served by Socratic nurturing and that children have a right to Socratic nurturing. The article addresses and rebuts some objections to attributing such a right to children.

Freedom as non-domination and educational justice

This article considers how the distribution of educational resources is relevant to facilitating republican freedom and the degree to which an egalitarian conception of educational justice is allied with the ideal of non-domination. I argue that the republican ideal of non-domination provides a credible account of some features of educational justice, but that it falls short of providing a fully adequate theory of educational justice. I present three challenges to the republican approach to educational justice. First, the ideal of non-domination is not fully applicable to addressing the distinctive claims of children. Second, even when modified non-domination provides an incomplete basis for identifying the full range of pedagogical objectives that matter from the point of view of justice. Third, non-domination is compatible with arbitrary and unfair exclusion of some children from valuable educational resources.

Agency, Authority and the Vulnerability of Children

This essay explores relationship between agency and vulnerability and its relevance to interpreting the wellbeing of children and their rights. Adults are usually considered less vulnerable than children because they are mature agents who have fully developed cognitive capacities in virtue they can manage important aspects of their own wellbeing. Children are juvenile agents to whom the rights to manage their own wellbeing are not assigned because they lack the powers of mature agency. I argue some children’s rights are grounded in juvenile agency ground and protect children’s access to intrinsic goods of childhood.

The puzzle of parental partiality: Reflections on How Not to Be a Hypocrite: School Choice for the Morally Perplexed Parent

In this article, I offer a response to Adam Swift’s book, How Not to be A Hypocrite: School Choice for the Morally Perplexed Parent, by developing some reflections on the nature, value and limits of parental partiality. I address two main issues. First, I consider the issue of how we should interpret the character and value of parental partiality. I argue that treating parental partiality as a kind of disposition helps to illuminate its distinctive value and also explains why we tend to judge some illegitimate expressions of partiality more harshly than others. Second, I examine one of the justifications Swift views as valid for sending children to private school. I criticize Swift’s contention that parents can be justified in sending children to private schools in order to secure for them a ‘fair chance in life’.

Equality and family values: conflict or harmony?

Abstract This paper provides a critical commentary on the claim advanced by Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift in their book Family Values: The Ethics of Parent–Child Relationships that there is an ineliminable conflict between relationship goods and fair equality of opportunity. I argue there need be no conflict between family values and equality of opportunity in a suitably non-hierarchical society. I also argue that the idea that equality of opportunity might be served by abolishing the family is mistaken. Egalitarian justice does not provide an obstacle to the realization of family values.

Constructing Children’s Rights

Moral rights are often characterized as having a special relationship to agency. But the link between agency and rights is often thought to pose an obstacle to the attribution of rights to children. Since children are not mature agents, they cannot be proper bearers of rights or at least of rights grounded in agency. This paper provides a way around this obstacle. Drawing on a form of constructivism, I argue that some rights can be attributed to children in virtue of their status as juvenile agents. I offer a characterization of the agency of children and to indicate how it provides a justificatory basis for distinctive rights of children.

If You’re A Libertarian, How Come You’re So Rich?

This article examines the bearing of political philosophy on one’s personal behaviour. I review the ‘rich egalitarian problem’ posed by G.A. Cohen and consider a variant of this problem called the ‘rich socialist problem’. I argue that once we adopt a nuanced view of what adequate fidelity to one’s political principles requires there is a satisfactory solution to the rich socialist problem. Finally, focusing on Robert Nozick’s highly influential historical entitlement theory, I explain the ‘rich libertarian problem’ and explain why, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, it is more intractable than the rich socialist problem. Cet article analyse l’importance de la philosophie politique pour le comportement personnel. Je passe en revue ‘le probleme de l’egalitarien riche’ pose par G.A. Cohen et considere un probleme analogue ‘le probleme du socialiste riche’. Je maintiens que des que nous adoptons un point de vue nuance sur ce que requiert la fidelite a des principes politiques, il y a une solution satisfaisante au probleme du socialiste riche. Enfin, me tournant vers la theorie tres influente de Robert Nozick sur l’habilitation (‘entitlement’) historique, je pose ‘le probleme du libertarien riche’ et j’explique pourquoi, etonnamment, c’est un probleme plus difficile a resoudre que celui du socialiste riche.

On living well now and in the future

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