What Sort of Education is Compatible With Religious Freedom?

What sort of education should the state provide? Assuming that the state is acting in the best interest of its citizens' children, what education should the state choose to provide? Should it provide a choice between religious and secular education, or should it provide only secular education? International law, as we have seen, requires, at a minimum, that parents have a choice of private religious education for their children. However, in a liberal state, it might be argued that no religious education should be given to children, despite their wishes or those of their parent. Even if the child chooses his or her religious education, he or she will be unduly influenced in his or her choice by his or her parents. Therefore, non-religious education is the only 'clean slate' on which the child will grow up to become a free-thinking citizen, who will make up his or her own mind as to choice of reli­gion in the future.

However, making a neutral choice is, of course, making a choice. There may be a difference, but not a great one, between non-religious education (education that is neither religious nor secular) and 'not religious' education (secular education). Children who study in a secular school, even one that is not anti-religion, are more likely to accept a secular outlook in the future.

The liberal neutrality approach may encounter another obstacle. Students do not come to school as tabula rasa. Even when the school sets out to provide a neu­tral educational setting, students may change it by exercising religious behaviour or expression. If the school tries to restore the neutral setting by limiting students' expression, it risks infringing the students' religious freedom.

Liberals wish to provide children with a neutral education, but encounter the problem of defining neutrality in education. Can we choose neutrality in educa­tion as a meta-value, without choosing neutrality as a value in itself? Can neutrality be imparted as a negative capability - do not be prejudiced against any religious viewpoint, rather than a positive capability - be neutral in your religious and philosophical convictions?

It can be argued that such a meta-value, or negative capability, can be taught, but not at a very young age. In order to grow up as full individuals, according to this argument, the child should first be given an affiliation, whether national or religious. It is not advisable or even possible to raise a child with no sense of identity. Similarly, we can teach the child not to accept stereotypical gender roles and to accept different sexual orientations, but it would seem impossible not to instil in the child some gender role, rather than a completely neutral gender identity.

The view that religion is constitutive of the person is central to a strong version of the communitarian critique of liberalism. A softer version of the communitar­ian argument against liberal neutral education can be summarized by Nagel's claim that liberal theory is non-neutral, because it discounts conceptions that depend on interpersonal relations. These conceptions, it can be added, are ever present in the children's environment.

This conclusion can also be reached through a different argument, namely that the family as a group has rights. O'Neill has commented on the tension between the child's rights and family rights. He sees the approach of liberal individualism as unsatisfactory when it comes to the intra-family relationship and suggests instead a mode of family covenant. Although he does not deal with the role of religion in the family covenant, it seems that religious cohesion might play an important part in this covenant. Even strict liberals will be hard pressed to accept that there is no importance in familial religious cohesion, although, from a liberal standpoint, this may not have enough importance to trump individual choices.

While the practical translation of a child's rights will be different than those of an adult, and should be constrained within family boundaries, I see no compel­ling reason to reject in principle the liberal model of individual rights in regard to children. Neither do I see a reason to reject it in regard to a child's freedom of religion.