The Demands of Liberal Education

The Demands of Liberal Education

Author	Meira Levinson
Country	United States
Language	English
Subjects	Citizenship, liberalism, autonomy (psychology)
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Publication date	1999
Pages	250[1]
ISBN	978-0-19-829544-0 [1]
Dewey Decimal	370.11[1]
LC Class	LC1091.L38[1]

The Demands of Liberal Education is a 1999 political philosophy book by Meira Levinson that establishes a liberal political theory of children's education that fits the mutual needs of the state and its diverse citizenry. She writes that the intent of a liberal education—an education that follows from a liberal society's values—is to maximize the autonomy of individual children through increasing their capacity for liberty. Levinson argues autonomy as a right to children. The book, published by Oxford University Press, aims to address a lacuna between educational policy and liberal political theory.

Levinson advocates for a weak perfectionist state that can promote thick autonomy while accepting citizens who do not agree. She argues for public schools "common" to all citizens and "detached" from individual citizen or community values, and argues for a constitutional mandate to this end.

Reviewers recommended the book for public educators as an important contribution to liberal theory. Their common criticism was based around practical applications and the imposition of autonomy as a value, e.g., her contemporary examples of national civics education, how citizens who disagreed with the focus on autonomy could be accommodated, and how a weak perfectionist state could defend marginalized group interests in a public school setting.