Becoming Autonomous: Non-Ideal Theory and Educational Autonomy

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BECOMING AUTONOMOUS: NONIDEAL THEORY ANDEDUCATIONAL AUTONOMY

Terri S. Wilson

School of EducationUniversity of Colorado Boulder

Matthew A. Ryg

Department of PhilosophySouthern Illinois University Carbondale

Abstract. Autonomy operates as a key term in debates about the rights of families to choose distinctapproaches to education. Yet, what autonomy means is often complicated by the actual circumstancesand contexts of schools, families, and children. In this essay, Terri S. Wilson and Matthew A. Ryg focuson the challenges involved in translating an ideal of educational autonomy into the “nonideal” contextsand circumstances that surround families’ choices. Drawing on the methodological insights of ElizabethAnderson and John Dewey, they sketch out a nonideal approach for exploring autonomy. Wilson andRyg particularly focus on Dewey’s notion of an ideal, his treatment of autonomy as a concept, and hisview of the self. Such a nonideal approach draws attention toward the specific circumstances, habits,and environments that make autonomy possible. Wilson and Ryg illustrate the salience of this nonidealapproach by exploring one example of an empirically engaged study of autonomy.

Introduction

To what extent should parents be able to choose educational approaches thataffirm particular cultural values or ethical convictions? How should the interests offamilies in choosing distinctive — even insular — approaches to schooling be bal-anced against the prospective rights of students? These are questions of educationalauthority.1 These questions — ones long considered by philosophers of educa-tion — have received renewed attention alongside the growth of school choicereforms such as charter schools, voucher programs, and homeschooling. Thesediverse choice options have also raised questions about the proper scope of stateand family authority over the provision of education. To varying degrees, manychoice theorists argue that the state should protect, recognize, accommodate, andeven support educational options that affirm the distinctive ethical convictions offamilies. The rights of parents to “opt out” of public schools (in favor of privatealternatives or the decision to homeschool) are well recognized, but the limits ofthese rights are debated.2

1. In this essay, we deliberately limit our attention to debates about educational authority. It is importantto note that many of these debates turn on a conception of autonomy that can be considered in broaderterms (for example, in terms of civic education or virtue). Rather than focusing on the broader set ofquestions (how children should be educated in a liberal democracy), we focus here on questions of whoshould decide how to educate them and the ideal of autonomy prioritized in such debates. The two setsof questions are, of course, related.

2. There is, of course, considerable debate over these limits. For an argument that leans strongly towardrespecting families’ rights, see William A. Galston, Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity

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The issue is often framed as balancing the state’s interests in providing bothbasic and civic education against parents’ interests in passing on a particular way oflife to their children. In addition, many theorists contend that children — not justparents and the state — have an independent interest in education: an interest inbecoming autonomous.3 Rob Reich defines autonomy, in this sense, as “a person’sability to reflect independently and critically upon basic commitments, desires,and beliefs, be they chosen or unchosen, and to enjoy a range of meaningful lifeoptions from which to choose, upon which to act, and around which to orient andpursue one’s life projects.”4 Other theorists take different positions on the degreeto which parents’ convictions should be protected, but their arguments generallyturn on a conception of autonomy. In varying ways, these scholars contendthat autonomy is a central aim of education and caution that education shouldnot privilege promoting a particular conception of “the good” over developingstudents’ ability to define and eventually choose their own conception of the good.

Many of the debates in this field revolve around the conflict between the“comprehensive” cultural values held by families and the demands of a liberaldemocracy. Yet, as Judith Suissa has argued, the assumption that families holda “comprehensive conception of the good” relies on a reductive view of theshifting and multifaceted values held by actual families. Suissa argues against theconflation of a family’s “substantive commitments” with an ideal of “cultural

in the Liberal State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). For an argument that proposesmore restrictions on the rights of parents to choose, see Walter Feinberg, Common Schools/UncommonIdentities: National Unity and Cultural Difference (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998). RobReich takes a middle position, arguing that school choice offers a potential way to accommodate pluralistpreferences within common ideals, rather than seeking to assimilate families to any one particular ideal;see Rob Reich, Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in Education (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 2002).

3. See, for instance, the focus on autonomy in the following: Harry Brighouse, “Civic Education andLiberal Legitimacy,” Ethics 108, no. 4 (1998): 719–745; Harry Brighouse, On Education (London: Rout-ledge, 2006); Eamonn Callan, Creating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1997); Amy Gutmann, Democratic Education (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1987); Meira Levinson, The Demands of Liberal Education (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1999); Stephen Macedo, Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitution-alism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); Ian MacMullen, Faith in Schools? Autonomy, Citizenship, andReligious Education in the Liberal State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); and Reich,Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in Education.

4. Reich, Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in Education, 42.

TERRI S. WILSON is Visiting Policy Scholar in the School of Education at University of ColoradoBoulder, UCB 249, Boulder, CO 80309-0249; e-mail <[email protected]>. Her research focuseson the philosophical foundations and normative significance of educational policy, including issuesraised by school choice, marketization, and parent engagement.

MATTHEW A. RYG is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Southern Illinois Uni-versity Carbondale, Faner Hall 4505, Carbondale, IL 62901; e-mail <[email protected]>. His researchexplores the social epistemology of significant democratic education experiments, including the High-lander Education and Research Center and the Algebra Project.

Wilson and Ryg Becoming Autonomous 129

coherence.”5 Paula McAvoy makes a similar argument in examining children’sexit rights from insular religious groups. She contends that “justice requires actorsto consider the specifics of the group, the social conditions in the larger culture, andthe foreseeable costs to accommodation and nonaccommodation.”6 Reich also seestheoretical answers as inadequate: “A precise institutional blueprint for education,and the distribution of authority over it, cannot be generated from philosophicalprinciple.”7 In different ways, Reich, Suissa, and McAvoy all point to the need totranslate an ideal of educational autonomy to the specific circumstances facingchildren, the values held by real families, and the actual legal and institutionalcontexts in which schools are embedded.

While they do not explicitly use this language, these theorists thus gesture tothe value of thinking of autonomy in nonideal terms.8 In contrast to ideal theory— which in broad terms outlines principles for a fair and just society — nonidealtheory focuses on how ideals are translated into actual social mechanisms, insti-tutions, and practices.9 This field generally pivots on the distinction between idealand nonideal theory made by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice.10 For Rawls, idealtheory aims, first, to imagine and outline principles of a fair and just society. Here,ideal theory necessarily brackets the limitations posed by existing social institu-tions and structures. His conception of nonideal theory is sequential: it starts withideals, and then considers how such principles might be translated into nonidealinstitutions and contexts. For Rawls, nonideal theory thus explores how an idealof justice might be pursued under unjust conditions.11

Elizabeth Anderson’s work offers a slightly different understanding of nonidealtheory. In her recent book, The Imperative of Integration, Anderson begins herinquiry into questions of race in the context of the nonideal “injustices in

5. Judith Suissa, “How Comprehensive Is Your Conception of the Good? Liberal Parents, Difference, andthe Common School,” Educational Theory 60, no. 5 (2010): 587–600.

6. Paula McAvoy, “‘There Are No Housewives on Star Trek’: A Reexamination of Exit Rights for theChildren of Insular Fundamentalist Parents,” Educational Theory 62, no. 5 (2012): 551.

7. Rob Reich, “Educational Authority and the Interests of Children,” in The Oxford Handbook ofPhilosophy of Education, ed. Harvey Siegel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 479.

8. There is no unified definition of nonideal theory; indeed, the term encompasses a variety of situated,naturalized, and pragmatic approaches to philosophy. We focus on Elizabeth Anderson’s pragmatic (andDeweyan) view.

9. A comprehensive and conclusive statement of the technical–philosophical differences between theideal and nonideal is beyond the scope of this essay. As we detail, we take up Elizabeth Anderson’sunderstanding of nonideal theory and explore some of its pragmatist foundations. In particular, we drawon the resources that Dewey may offer to nonideal explorations.

10. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).

11. As Burke Hendrix summarizes, ideal theory “seeks to outline the structuring principles for the mostfair form of human society that could be both stable and accepted by those who live within it, whilenonideal theory suggests strategies for pursuing justice where society is otherwise arranged.” Burke A.Hendrix, “Where Should We Expect Social Change in Non-Ideal Theory?” Political Theory 41, no. 1(2013): 117.


our actual world.” As she argues, “Knowledge of the better does not requireknowledge of the best. Figuring out how to address a just claim on our conductnow does not require knowing what system of principles of conduct would settleall possible claims on our conduct in all possible worlds, or in the best of allpossible worlds.”12 Importantly, Anderson advances a distinctive approach tononideal theory. In contrast to Rawls, she argues that theorizing must beginwithin the specific and nonideal circumstances of necessarily unjust communities.For Anderson, this commitment involves starting from extensive social scienceevidence documenting the specific practices and harms of racial segregation. Inthis sense, she employs a broadly pragmatic approach to nonideal theory.13 Indeed,Anderson draws on a Deweyan view of inquiry to describe her view of nonidealtheory.14 Referencing Dewey’s notion of unreflective habits, she notes, “we arenot jarred into critical thinking about our conduct until we confront a problemthat stops us from carrying on unreflectively.”15 Nonideal inquiry, in this sense,starts from realities on the ground. Her methodological invocation of Dewey isbrief but suggestive.16 While Anderson’s project addresses the moral problems ofincreasingly segregated social institutions, we contend that her methodologicalapproach offers insights into other debates. In particular, we see her Deweyanconception of nonideal theory as particularly relevant to debates about autonomyin education.

What does a nonideal approach have to offer debates about autonomy?Our central claim in this essay is that current debates about autonomy — inconceptualizing autonomy as an ideal — neglect important considerations of

12. Elizabeth Anderson, The Imperative of Integration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010),3.

13. In a July 2013 interview, Anderson describes her methodology as “pragmatist, moderately natural-ized, non-ideal, and stresses the importance of doing political philosophy in close engagement withresearch in the social sciences.” “Featured Philosopher: Elizabeth Anderson,” PEA Soup blog, July 22,2013, http://peasoup.typepad.com/peasoup/2013/07/featured-philosopher-elizabeth-anderson.html.

14. While Anderson does not draw on Dewey extensively, she does cite two passages from How We Think(Boston: D.C. Heath, 1910) to support this view of unreflective habit. See Anderson, The Imperative ofIntegration, 194n12.

15. Anderson, The Imperative of Integration, 3.

16. Anderson does not focus in Dewey in any depth in this work, but she does note in anotheressay that John Dewey was the “deepest advocate of non-ideal theory.” See Elizabeth Anderson,“Toward a Non-Ideal, Relational Methodology for Political Philosophy: Comments on Schwartzman’sChallenging Liberalism,” Hypatia 24, no. 4 (2009): 138. Other scholars have noted the Deweyanroots of Anderson’s methodology. In a recent issue of Symposia on Gender, Race, and Philosophythat focuses on Anderson’s The Imperative of Integration, for instance, both V. Denise James andPaul C. Taylor make this point; see Symposia on Gender, Race, and Philosophy 9, no. 2 (2013),http://web.mit.edu/∼sgrp/2013/no2/SGRPv9no2%280913%29.pdf. David Meens also cites Anderson’swork as emblematic of “a Dewey-inspired nonideal approach that takes historical context seriously andorients philosophical inquiry toward amelioration of pressing public problems.” See Meens’s “Philoso-pher, Know Thyself: Metaphilosophical and Methodological Reflection in Philosophy of Education asRequisite for Successful Interdisciplinarity,” Philosophy of Education 2013, ed. Cris Mayo (Urbana, IL:Philosophy of Education Society, 2014), 372–373.


how children become autonomous. As Reich, McAvoy, and Suissa all note, thesedebates are difficult to settle on a theoretical level. They often hinge on the prac-tical development of autonomy in young people and on the particular family andcommunity circumstances that shape parental authority over a child’s education.Drawing on Anderson’s understanding of nonideal theory, we contend that suchconsiderations cannot be relegated to the status of second-order questions: as con-cerns about how to “apply” an ideal to practice. In contrast, starting inquiry withinnonideal contexts might offer a more nuanced understanding of what autonomy isand its place in educational authority.

Yet, we acknowledge that it is easier to call for such a nonideal approachthan to actually engage in efforts to consider autonomy in empirical terms.Reich, in fact, notes that “the empirical measurement of autonomy, especially inchildren, seems to me an exceptionally difficult and probably quixotic quest.”17

Part of the difficulty, we contend, is that most considerations of autonomypresuppose — or start from — an ideal of the abstract liberal state, rather thanthe nonideal circumstances of particular communities. Arguments then turnon the content of autonomy, its connection to other civic virtues, the variousways it might be justified, what kinds of education might best promote it, andwho has authority over that education. Practically, this starting point influenceshow liberal theories of autonomy engage with issues of educational policy andpractice. In particular, while theorists are careful to acknowledge the importance ofinformal educational contexts, their policy recommendations tend to focus on theautonomy-facilitating mechanisms available within formal schools (for example,curriculum) and school systems (for example, student assignment policies).18 Yetmany of the most difficult questions regarding educational autonomy (for instance,homeschooling) directly challenge — or even elide — the mechanisms of formalschooling.

Our essay takes up this challenge: how, exactly, might we understand auton-omy in nonideal terms? In particular, rather than applying an abstract ideal ofautonomy to practice, what might it mean to start, in Anderson’s terms, fromthe specific and nonideal circumstances of necessarily unjust communities? Toexplore these questions, we turn to John Dewey. This is not an obvious or expectedchoice. Dewey has not figured prominently in liberal debates about educational


18. Theorists such as Brighouse, Callan, and Reich all note the importance of informal educationalcontexts, but nonetheless limit their attention to formal schooling. Callan, for example, notes thatan understanding of the “great sphere” might be achieved in informal social settings, or “might eventake root inadvertently in a child’s life.” But, he cautions, “schooling is also likely to be the mostpromising institutional vehicle for that understanding” (Callan, Creating Citizens, 133). Echoing thisfocus, Reich concludes Bridging Liberalism with the following claim: “Schools are almost certainlythe best institution over which the state has influence for shaping the public identities of its youngestcitizens and for educating children so that they may be better able to lead flourishing lives, by their ownlights” (Reich, Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in Education, 223).


autonomy.19 Indeed, Dewey never developed a specific concept of autonomy in anysignificant way. Yet, following Anderson’s suggestive hints, we argue that Deweyprovides key methodological and conceptual resources for guiding nonideal inquiryinto educational autonomy.

We see Dewey as a valuable source for this project in two principal ways.First, methodologically, he advocated starting inquiry from lived experience. Idealsshould not be applied to experience, but should emerge from experience, andreturn to guide subsequent experience. Anticipating Anderson, Dewey’s notionof an ideal emerges from the “inside out” and the “ground up,” in ways thatare always tied to concrete experiences and specific contexts. Second, Dewey’sview of the self offers novel conceptual resources for reframing autonomy as adynamic process structured by a constellation of practices, experiences, and habits.Autonomy, in this reading, is not an abstract ideal, but the continual processof negotiating critical and sympathetic engagement with the circumstances thatshape our lives.20 Taken together, we argue that this approach offers resources forrethinking autonomy in nonideal and empirically engaged ways.

The remainder of the essay is organized in five parts. The second sectionreviews how autonomy operates as an ideal in debates about educational authority.We then describe Dewey’s methodological and conceptual insights into autonomy.In the fourth section, we draw on these insights to highlight how nonideal contextsmight bear on considerations of autonomy. To do this, we offer one key example:an empirically engaged philosophical study that examines the circumstances andpossibilities of children’s exit rights from an insular community. In the fifthsection, we interpret this example through a Deweyan framework of the self,emphasizing the process of self-formation through educational environments,moving lines of interest, and flexible habits. In the conclusion, we explore hownonideal explorations may help reshape our understanding of autonomy in debatesabout the proper scope of authority in education.

Autonomy as an Ideal

Debates about educational authority often turn on a concept of autonomy.While theorists take different positions on the acceptable limits of parents’ choices,their arguments often employ a concept of autonomy to balance the distinctiveinterests of the state, parents, and children. Autonomy here refers to a qualityof reasoned “self-rule.”21 It generally implies that individuals have the abilityto engage in critical self-reflection about their values and commitments, as wellas have an ability to choose among particular life options. These qualities have

19. Anderson identifies Dewey as a liberal theorist, and we agree — at least in broad terms — with thisclaim. Our point here is that Dewey does not play a central role in liberal debates on autonomy; in thissense, he is not treated as a “liberal theorist.”

20. Here, our reading of Dewey’s view of autonomy draws on language (“critical and sympatheticengagement”) posed by Callan in Creating Citizens, 133.

21. Gutmann, Democratic Education.


to be considered differently in the case of children, who are not born with asense of autonomy, but must develop one. This gives children a “future interestin autonomy.”22 While there is broad agreement about the value of autonomy,theorists take different positions on what it means, what it requires, and whyit should be considered a legitimate goal of education in a liberal democracy.Bryan Warnick notes that theoretical accounts of autonomy emphasize differentcombinations of four central “capacities”: (1) to ask independent questions aboutthe traditions we are raised in; (2) to choose a tradition of our own, which mayinvolve leaving the one we were raised in; (3) to “persevere in the projects of one’schosen tradition”; and (4) to critically reflect on our own choice of particular idealsand traditions.23 In this sense, autonomy often demands qualities of self-reflectionand choice, as well as the ability to craft a life in accordance with one’s view ofthe good.

These varying priorities are reflected in different accounts of — and justifi-cations for — the role of autonomy in a liberal democracy. One common justi-fication is civic legitimacy. In order for citizens to understand, deliberate about,and consent to the principles of justice in a given society, they must becomeautonomous.24 Rob Reich advances, in his terms, a “minimalist conception” ofautonomy. He understands autonomous persons as “self-determining, in chargeof their own lives, able to make significant choices from a range of meaningfuloptions about how their lives will unfold.”25 Eamonn Callan endorses a “servilityargument” for autonomy. Less focused on the requirements of “self-examination,”Callan advocates a civic education sufficient to protect children from conditionsof “ethical servility.”26 As he summarizes, “each of us must learn to ask thequestion of how we should live, and that how we answer it can be no servileecho of the answers others have given, even if our thoughts commonly turnout to be substantially the same as those that informed our parents’ lives.”27

Autonomy is a legitimate goal, in this sense, because it protects a child fromunreflectively subordinating him- or herself to external values and goals. Fromanother perspective, Harry Brighouse calls for “autonomy-facilitating” rather than“autonomy-promoting” education. The difference between these two conceptsrests on the distinction between education that enables children “to make bet-ter rather than worse choices about how to live their lives” and education that

22. Harry Brighouse, “How Should Children Be Heard?” Arizona Law Review 45, no. 3 (2003): 691–711.

23. Bryan Warnick, “Rethinking Education for Autonomy in Pluralistic Societies,” Educational Theory62, no. 4 (2012): 424.


25. Ibid., 100.

26. According to Callan, “The great sphere certainly requires a level of autonomous development abovethe condition of mere agency; but on no account does it demand commitment to reasoned self-rule asthe apogee of human development” (Callan, Creating Citizens, 154).

27. Ibid., 155.


ensures “students employ autonomy in their lives.”28 In other words, Brighousewants education to provide children with the tools of rational reflection withoutimposing the normative goal that they should become autonomous.

These brief examples do not do justice to the wide range of work on auton-omy, but they do point to some central terms and shared areas of agreement. Allthree accounts, in slightly different ways, see the ability to choose — and per-severe within — a particular human tradition as part of what it means to leada flourishing life. Making such a choice depends on critical reflection into one’svalues, traditions, and beliefs. As Warnick notes, this understanding of autonomyoften requires interaction with ways of life — including cultural and religious tra-ditions — different from one’s own.29 Drawing on Bruce Ackerman’s concept of“the great sphere,” for example, Callan contends that schooling, at some stage,needs to include “sympathetic and critical engagement with beliefs and ways oflife at odds with the culture of the family or religious or ethnic group into whichthe child is born.”30 The requirement to engage diversity often promotes calls forsome form of common educational goals or even the interactions made possiblein “common schools.”31 While theorists disagree about how common civic goalsmight be accommodated in diverse forms of schooling, their various accounts oftenemphasize autonomy as a key criterion in assessing the legitimacy of differentoptions.

What is perhaps most striking about autonomy is the central, even dominant,place of the term in liberal theory. Warnick recently summarized this position as“the controversial and well-traveled idea, central to liberal political thought, thatindividual autonomy should be a chief goal of civic education in liberal democraticsocieties.”32 Indeed, this idea is so “well traveled” that it is sometimes referredto, in Callan’s terms, as “the autonomy argument.”33 Lucas Swaine, in a criticalappraisal of autonomy, notes that the concept has become “a normative ideal

28. Brighouse, “Civic Education and Liberal Legitimacy,” 734.

29. Warnick, “Rethinking Education for Autonomy in Pluralistic Societies,” 413. There is wide but notuniversal agreement on this point. Notably, Warnick’s essay takes up the work of Shelley Burtt, whoargues that the development of autonomy does not necessarily depend on interaction with culturaldifference. Shelley Burtt, “Comprehensive Educations and the Liberal Understanding of Autonomy,”in Citizenship and Education in Liberal-Democratic Societies: Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values andCollective Identities, ed. Kevin McDonough and Walter Feinberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

30. Callan, Creating Citizens, 133. In this discussion, Callan draws on Bruce A. Ackerman, Social Justicein the Liberal State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980).

31. Callan makes the distinction between common education, which he endorses, and common schools,which he does not require (Callan, Creating Citizens, 162–64).

32. Warnick, “Rethinking Education for Autonomy in Pluralistic Societies,” 411–426.

33. Callan summarizes what he calls “the autonomy argument” in the following terms: “I amautonomous to the degree that I have developed powers of practical reason, a disposition to value thosepowers and use them in giving shape and direction to my own life, and a corresponding resistance toimpulses or social pressures that might subvert wise self-direction” (Callan, Creating Citizens, 148). Hegoes on, however, to endorse a more minimalist variation of the argument.


that many theorists and philosophers of education think people should aspire toachieve.”34 From a similar perspective, Ian MacMullan has described an “orthodoxview” of autonomy that privileges critical autonomy over other character traitsor virtues.35 The commitment to cultivating and preserving citizens’ criticalautonomy has become, for MacMullan, an “orthodox ideal” in liberal theory.36

Other theorists have disputed both the centrality and legitimacy of autonomyas an ideal.37 Swaine, for example, has raised questions about the priority affordedautonomy in debates over the aims of education. He contrasts a view of autonomy— “a condition in which one rationally assesses one’s beliefs, aims, attachments,desires, and interests” — with a concept of moral character. Swaine contendsthat a single-minded focus on autonomy may be “counterproductive and eveninjurious” for the development of moral character, in that it encourages individualsto subject their values to a “troubling and unhealthy” degree of rational scrutiny.38

From a slightly different perspective, Anders Schinkel objects to the compulsorynature of “autonomy-promoting education” in dominant liberal accounts.39 Froma more critical perspective, Michael Hand notes the “Hydra-like character” ofautonomy in the philosophical literature: “as soon as one shows the inadequacyof one account, two more spring up in its place.” Hand argues that “the projectof erecting autonomy as an educational aim,” in both its ordinary and technicalsenses, “was wrongheaded from the start.”40

34. See Lucas Swaine, “The False Right to Autonomy in Education,” Educational Theory 62, no. 1 (2012):109; and Warnick, “Rethinking Education for Autonomy in Pluralistic Societies,” 411–426. Both of theseessays outline the dominant role played by autonomy in debates in liberal theory; however, Swainedescribes this as “the mainstream” position and offers a more critical assessment of its value.

35. Ian MacMullan, Civics Beyond Critics: Character Education in a Liberal Democracy (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, forthcoming).

36. MacMullan argues, in contrast, that civic education in liberal democracies is wrong to prioritizecritical autonomy over other important civic traits, including law-abidingness, civic identification, andsupport for fundamental political institutions (MacMullan, Civics Beyond Critics).

37. Although we focus here on critics of autonomy in philosophy of education, it is important to note thatthere is a broad field of criticism of this concept. Critics of autonomy can be found in diverse fields: fromphilosophy and political theory to feminism, law, medicine, psychology, and educational theory. For asmall sample of this critical range, see Tom O’Shea, “Critics of Autonomy,” Essex Autonomy ProjectGreen Paper Report (Colchester, UK: Essex Autonomy Project, 2012); Lisa Schwartzman, ChallengingLiberalism: Feminism as Political Critique (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2006); AlasdairMacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2d ed. (South Bend, IN: University of Notre DamePress, 1984); Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 1995); Catriona Mackenzie and Natalie Stoljar, eds., Relational Autonomy:Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2000); and John Christman, The Politics of Persons: Individual Autonomy and Socio-historical Selves(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

38. Swaine, “The False Right to Autonomy in Education,” 116.

39. Anders Schinkel, “Compulsory Autonomy-Promoting Education,” Educational Theory 60, no. 1(2010): 115.

40. Michael Hand, “Against Autonomy as an Educational Aim,” Oxford Review of Education 32, no. 4(2006): 536.


We share some of these concerns about the priority and dominance of auton-omy in educational theory. Our concern in this essay, however, is not to resolvethese debates, but to reconsider the “orthodox ideal” of autonomy that emergesfrom them, and how that ideal is applied to education. We do not argue either for —or against — an ideal of autonomy. Our aim is more modest: to suggest that auton-omy ought to be considered in nonideal terms and in ways that attend closely tothe processes and contexts through which one becomes more or less autonomous.This nonideal approach to autonomy thus differs in emphasis from the orthodoxview in a several significant ways.

First, many scholars of autonomy operate within the confines of an abstractliberal state. In doing so, they assume several liberal tenets: the purpose of the stateis to protect individual rights; the state’s authority is based on consent; the stateshould not promote a comprehensive doctrine, but broadly tolerate different waysof life. Questions of autonomy then refer back to the demands of the liberal state:for example, does a given understanding of autonomy allow for consent? While thisliterature often addresses empirical questions — the Yoder case, for example — itdoes so within the vocabulary of the liberal state.

Second, presupposing a liberal state also influences how orthodox approachesto autonomy engage issues of educational practice. In particular, they tend to focuson formal schooling, school systems, and policies. While not inattentive to infor-mal educational contexts, theorists nonetheless understand formal schooling asthe “most promising institutional vehicle” to address questions of autonomy.41

Yet, many of the most difficult questions of educational autonomy fall outside theboundaries of formal schooling and state regulation. In the case of homeschool-ing, for example, Reich notes that parents’ compliance with the very minimalregulations that currently exist is rarely enforced. Nonideal theory starts, in con-trast, from these unjust and problematic circumstances. As such, it helps us askwhat might be done to improve the conditions of children’s lives, guided by anend-in-view (perhaps one of autonomy) that emerges from practice and remainsrevisable in light of it.

In this sense, nonideal theorists such as Anderson advocate starting fromthe more inchoate problems of actually existing communities.42 Ideals are notused to evaluate the legitimacy of given educational practices (for example,homeschooling). In contrast, nonideal approaches might start with descriptiveaccounts of what autonomy might mean — practically — in the context ofnecessarily unjust communities. Here, in Anderson’s view, ideals are understood

41. Callan, Creating Citizens, 133.

42. Anderson sees nonideal theory as compatible with liberalism, of a particular variety at least.She identifies her work (and also Dewey’s) as part of the liberal tradition. Here, Anderson’s readingconcurs with other interpretations of Dewey as a liberal theorist. See, for instance, Eric MacGilvray,Reconstructing Public Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Daniel M. Savage, JohnDewey’s Liberalism: Individuality, Community, and Self-Development (Carbondale: Southern IllinoisUniversity Press, 2002); and David Fott, John Dewey: America’s Philosopher of Democracy (Lanham,MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998).


as hypotheses to be tested in practice, with an eye to how these ideals may impactthe real conditions of people’s lives.43

Dewey and Reconstructing Autonomy44

Following Anderson’s insights, we argue that Dewey offers important method-ological and conceptual resources for guiding nonideal inquiry into autonomy. Inthis section, we highlight (a) Dewey’s notion of an ideal as an “end-in-view” thatemerges from experience, and (b) his account of the process of self-formation. TheseDeweyan resources, we maintain, offer a way of reframing autonomy as a dynamicprocess structured by a constellation of practices, experiences, and habits. Ratherthan an ideal, autonomy becomes a continual process of negotiating critical andsympathetic engagement with the circumstances that shape one’s life. We con-tend that this approach offers intriguing and nonideal resources for understandingautonomy and guiding empirical inquiry into educational debates.

Methodological Resources: Ideals from Experience

For Dewey, ideals are not external ends. They emerge from inquiry intoexisting societies and human practices. As such, they are closely related to whathe terms “ends-in-view.”45 Ends always emerge from the realities of particularpractices; they are, literally, “in view” from where we happen to be standing. Theseends-in-view are signposts that guide our conduct, but ones that remain resolutelyconnected to current circumstances. Yet, the problem with this view of an idealmay already be clear, particularly when applied to issues of autonomy. How mightan ideal of autonomy — understood in any meaningful sense — emerge from thepotentially restrictive and limited circumstances of insular communities? Isn’tthe power of an ideal derived precisely from its critical distance from particularcircumstances? These are important questions. On an immediate level, however,nonideal forms of inquiry need not replace explorations of a more ideal variety.Nonideal theory may be an allied and complementary methodology, employedalongside other inquiries into the ideal of autonomy.

On a second level, these concerns may involve an oversimplification or evenmisreading of Dewey’s position. Dewey’s notion of an ideal does indeed emergefrom practice, but it is not identical to it. For Dewey, a concept or ideal cannotsimply mirror the existing realities of the world or perpetuate traits already found


44. This section draws substantially on our previous essay, “Non-Ideal Autonomy: Dewey and ReframingEducational Authority,” Philosophy of Education 2014 (Urbana, IL: Philosophy of Education Society,forthcoming). In that essay, we focused on developing a Deweyan account of autonomy. This essay, incontrast, focuses on the potential value of nonideal methodological approaches for issues of autonomyin education. We also attempt to put our Deweyan framework “to work” in considering a key exampleof empirical inquiry into autonomy.

45. Chapter 8 of Dewey’s Democracy and Education (New York: Macmillan, 1916), titled “Aims inEducation,” may be helpful in the explication of this point, especially the third “Criteria of Good Aims,”121–124.


in society.46 An ideal might be better understood as a set of dynamic and regulativecriteria for the explanation and guidance of human conduct. Ideals are to be seenwithin social context, oriented toward the instrumental resolution — or at leastthe amelioration — of human problems.47 In this sense, while ideals emerge fromexperience, they must be directed back to it, in ways that build richer and moremeaningful experiences. Ideals are not fixed ends, static states, or even necessarilysubstantive nouns. Instead, Dewey emphasizes the transformation of ideals intodynamic criteria, hypotheses, and questions. As such, Dewey helps us move anideal from a mere end to be achieved to a greater or lesser characteristic of humanactivity and interactions.

Given this understanding of an ideal, how might Dewey approach concernsof autonomy? This is not an easy or straightforward question, in part becauseautonomy was not a central concept for Dewey. Indeed, he rarely used the term.48

While he occasionally referred to “autonomy” in his writings, Dewey did notdevelop it as a philosophically significant concept, nor did he prioritize it within hisown ethical theory. Dewey preferred terms like self, individual, and person, onesmore easily integrated and situated in experience, over more abstracted conceptssuch as autonomy.49 Guided by similar conceptual studies of Dewey, we undertakea limited reconstruction of Dewey on autonomy.50 We first outline some of hisrelevant explicit mentions of autonomy, focusing on how he describes inquiry asautonomous. We then turn, in the next section, to how Dewey situates autonomyin his notion of the self.

While Dewey mentions the term autonomy in a wide variety of places acrosshis extensive writings, it is rarely treated as the subject of philosophical analysis.51

In the majority of these instances, autonomy is employed to briefly specify

46. Ibid., 83.

47. John Dewey, Experience and Nature (1925), in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925–1953, vol. 1, ed.Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008). For an excellent discussion ofDewey’s denotative method, see Thomas Alexander, “Dewey’s Denotative-Empirical Method: A ThreadThrough the Labyrinth,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 18, no. 3 (2004): 248–256.

48. Part of this absence may be historical. One should not expect the terms of contemporary debate tohave the same presence in historical texts. Yet, autonomy was not absent from key philosophical debatesof the time, including scholarship on Immanuel Kant’s ethical and political philosophy.

49. To a certain extent, every concept is an abstraction. Our claim is that autonomy, as a term, involvesan additional layer of abstraction from experience, in contrast to terms that Dewey preferred, such as“self” and “interest.”

50. See William Caspary, Dewey on Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000); and R. W.Hildreth, “Reconstructing Dewey on Power,” Political Theory 37, no. 6 (2009): 780–807.

51. The term “autonomy” is found in twenty of the thirty-seven volumes of The Collected Works ofJohn Dewey. The exact number of times Dewey used the word “autonomy” in his Collected Works is70. Unless otherwise noted, all subsequent references to Dewey’s works will be to this multivolumeseries, comprising The Early Works, 1882–1898, The Middle Works, 1899–1924, and The Later Works,1925–1953, edited by Jo Ann Boydston and published by Southern Illinois University Press. Individualvolumes will be cited in the text as EW, MW, and LW, respectively. For instance, the citation (MW 12,249) refers to Middle Works, volume 12, page 249.


the meaning of a phrase. For example, Dewey uses the term in the 1920s toexplicate the “constructive parts” of Bertrand Russell’s socialism: “[he] favors… advocacy of full autonomy for professional groups.”52 He uses the term insimilar ways in discussions of teacher professionalism,53 provincial and localsovereignty,54 political55 and cultural autonomy,56 and industrial autonomy.57

Dewey also employs the term to explicate Immanuel Kant’s deontology.58 In allthese cases, autonomy is employed as if it were a descriptive adjective, not a termof inquiry in its own right.

One example is more intriguing. In his Logic, Dewey uses the term“autonomous” when describing inquiry: “Logic is autonomous,” he claims.59

He expands: “The position taken implies the ultimacy of inquiry in determinationof the formal conditions of inquiry. Logic as inquiry into inquiry is … a circularprocess; it does not depend upon anything extraneous to inquiry.”60 Crucially,while Dewey uses the term to describe how logic is independent from the “extra-neous,” he does not mean to imply that logic is “independent” from the world.This is a subtle but important distinction: logic does not rely on external aims orfoundations, yet it cannot be separated from experience. In addition, because logicis autonomous, “it precludes resting logic upon metaphysical and epistemologicalassumptions and presuppositions. The latter are to be determined, if at all, bymeans of what is disclosed as the outcome of inquiry; they are not to be shovedunder inquiry as its ‘foundation.’”61 To be autonomous, then, logic must excludeappeals to first principles or foundations; it should not be, for example, judgedagainst an external ideal of rationality. The formal conditions of logic are deter-mined within the process of inquiry itself. Logic is, however, what makes inquiryconsistent, productive, and generative. But these criteria are discovered by andwithin the process of inquiry; they are not external ends. Inquiry — in a Deweyansense — could only be realized through the process of its own construction.62

Here, we can start to see how Dewey might reframe and approach autonomy.Rather than asking what autonomy is, Dewey draws our attention to questions

52. John Dewey, “Three Contemporary Philosophers” (MW 12, 249).

53. John Dewey, “Toward a National System of Education” (LW 11, 358).

54. John Dewey, Essays (MW 13, 132, 150, and 183).

55. John Dewey, “Cultural Rights Must Be Recognized” (MW 10, 288).

56. John Dewey, “Political Independence Impracticable for Small Nationalities” (MW 10, 290).

57. John Dewey, “The Economic Basis of the New Society” (LW 13, 313).

58. Dewey, Ethics (LW 7, 155).

59. John Dewey, Logic (LW 12, 29).

60. Ibid., 28.

61. Ibid.

62. See “Bentley to Dewey, 7 January 1951, Dewey Papers and Bentley Collection” (LW 16, 514n47).


like “How does one become autonomous?,” and “Under what conditions —and through what processes — can a sense of autonomy be developed?” Deweycontends that ideals emerge from actual experience and are then directed back toguide experience. Nonfoundational and nonideal, a Deweyan view of autonomybecomes a particular quality and refinement of experience. As such, it must beunderstood in light of Dewey’s broader account of the self.

Conceptualizing Autonomy: Self Through Interest and Habit

Rather than focusing exclusively on the individual, Dewey emphasizes atransactional account of the self. This self interacts with — and is shaped by —environments through the interstices of interest and habit. Dewey’s conceptionof self “is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formationthrough choice of action.”63 We do and act, undergo and are acted upon. In addition,Dewey’s view of the self is not positioned against the social world. He concedesthat “an individual existence has a double status and import,” but denies any meta-physical or epistemological “dualism erected between the ego and the world ofthings and persons.”64 The self for Dewey is both individual and social, continuallyre-constituted in the world with and by persons interacting in environments.

Many autonomy theorists would broadly endorse this view of the self. AsCallan notes, autonomy does not demand that the self is “unencumbered” fromthe social world, only that we are “capable of asking about the value” of particularends with which we identify. In this sense, the self is both individual and social:autonomy is the capacity to critically reflect on our traditions and the way we havebeen socialized. But how exactly do we inquire into traditions, particularly onesthat may be, to borrow Callan’s phrase, “constitutive of identity”?65 Liberal theoryhere, we contend, is less instructive; it merely asks that we can question thesetraditions. Dewey, however, helps us see how this process takes place, particularlythrough his accounts of interest and habit.

For Dewey, “self and interest are two names for the same fact.”66 On asimple level, interest means that “self and world are engaged with each other in adeveloping situation.”67 Interest describes how an actor is “bound up with what isgoing on” and is — literally — interested in his world. For Dewey, interest impliesthat an actor is concerned with the consequences of a given situation and “boundup with the possibilities inhering in objects.”68 In doing so, Dewey rejects twonarrower versions of interest. It isn’t an attitude or internal state; nor is it simplyan object or goal. Interest is the situation that encompasses both. In this sense, we

63. Dewey, Democracy and Education, 408.

64. Dewey, Experience and Nature (LW 1, 188).

65. Callan, Creating Citizens, 54.

66. Dewey, Democracy and Education, 408.

67. Ibid., 148.

68. Ibid., 146.


cannot take for granted a preexisting self that “has interests.”69 The self does notsimply pass through the world, choosing among diverse options. Nor does the self“react” to the world in ways implied by classic models of stimulus and response.In contrast, an actor is always in transaction with a particular situation in waysthat are conditioned by practices, environments, and habits.

Dewey’s view of habit also departs from our common understanding of theterm.70 In his view, habits are ways of responding to the world. As modesof response, habits offer ways to flexibly interpret dynamic situations. Theyrepresent possible ways of selecting focus for our attention, behavior, and action.Habits are intimately and etymologically connected to habitation, that is, ourways of being-in-the-world. Bad habits, for example, are those that block furtherself-inquiry and growth. Yet habits are not easily changed. As Dewey says, “[W]ecannot change habit directly: that notion is magic. But we can change it indirectlyby modifying conditions, by an intelligent selecting and weighting of the objectswhich engage attention and which influence the fulfillment of desires.”71 Habitsare largely nonreflective; quite simply, they allow us to both cognitively andnoncognitively navigate the world. The vital issue becomes how an individualresponds when their taken-for-granted habits are disrupted.

A Deweyan approach to autonomy might be understood through this momentof response. Autonomy, in this reading, may demand flexible and self-correctinghabits of inquiry that allow us to critically reflect on new situations, our traditions,and our future life course. Good habits, for Dewey, involve thought. But how canhabits demand thought and still remain mostly nonreflective? Dewey’s answer isthat “habit does not preclude the use of thought, but it determines the channelswithin which it operates. Thinking is secreted in the interstices of habit.”72

Thought is, in this sense, both conditioned by habits but achieved throughcritically reflecting on habits. The key, according to Dewey, is to have flexiblehabits, ones that allow us to negotiate diverse experiences, customs, and habits,and apply them to new situations.73 This notion of flexible habit underscoresthat autonomy is not a static state, but inheres in the processes of moving —flexibly — between reflective and nonreflective experience. We do not, in thissense, “achieve autonomy.” Rather, we are always in processes of becoming, and

69. This is suggestive, too, for how Dewey might push back on the language of state, family, andchildren’s interests that frames debates over educational authority. We do not have space, however, todevelop this challenge in detail.

70. Our notion of habit in this essay largely follows Sarah Stitzlein’s development of “flexible habits.”Stizlein valuably highlights Dewey’s appreciation of the “plasticity of humans and the habits thatconstitute them.” See Sarah Stizlein, Breaking Bad Habits of Race and Gender: Transforming Identityin Schools (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), 99.

71. Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct (MW 14, 18–19).

72. Dewey, Public and Its Problems (LW 2, 335).

73. See Stizlein, Breaking Bad Habits of Race and Gender, chaps. 2, 5, and 6, respectively.


hence of negotiating critical purchase on our circumstances even as we remainconditioned by them.

This view of the self is suggestive for how we might understand autonomyin Deweyan terms. Interests are expressions of the self; habits constitute the self.Most crucially, the self is transactionally constituted in interaction with specificenvironments. Dewey thus draws attention to the conditions, environments, andsituations that make experiences of autonomy possible. In particular, he highlightsthe importance of the situation that disrupts our habits and how flexible habitsallow us to continually reconstruct a self in interaction with these situations.In effect, a Deweyan view of autonomy directs attention to the fundamentallytransactional processes of self-formation that occur within formal and informallearning environments. Equipped with a Deweyan view of the self, we mightstudy key moments when taken-for-granted ways of being are disrupted by newsituations or encounters with difference. Dewey’s understanding of the self alsoemphasizes the role played by environments — families, schools, and communities— in shaping the self and its interests.

Nonideal Contexts of Autonomy: One Example

Drawing on this framework, we turn to one example that illustrates the non-ideal contexts of children’s autonomy: Paula McAvoy’s 2012 essay in EducationalTheory, “‘There Are No Housewives on Star Trek’: A Reexamination of Exit Rightsfor the Children of Insular Fundamentalist Parents.” Combining philosophicalanalysis with empirical research, McAvoy offers a suggestive example of how thecircumstances of particular communities might subtly shift theoretical positionson exit rights.74 While she does not name the essay in Deweyan or nonideal terms,we argue that McAvoy’s case could illustrate the salience of nonideal and Deweyanapproaches to questions of educational autonomy.

In her essay, McAvoy turns to different sources of empirical evidence forinsights into the feasibility of exit rights from insular communities.75 As she notes,debates about exit rights hinge on a tension between two strains of liberal theory.On one side, advocates of group rights argue that liberalism only asks that insulargroups “do not prevent members from leaving” (NH, 536).76 From the other side,

74. McAvoy does not name her approach in this essay as a work of “nonideal theory.” Our purpose indrawing on this example is not to classify it as a form of nonideal theory (or not), but to show how aclose engagement with empirical examples can draw philosophical attention to different dimensions ofautonomy. McAvoy does discuss nonideal theory more closely in other work; see McAvoy, “Accom-modating Patriarchy: Multicultural Decision-Making and School Policy” (paper presented at the annualconference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, Oxford, UK, March 30, 2012).

75. McAvoy’s article “‘There Are No Housewives on Star Trek’” (see note 6 for the full citation) is centralto our discussion in the remainder of the essay; this work will be cited in the text as NH for all subsequentreferences.

76. In discussing this point, McAvoy draws principally on William Galston’s Liberal Pluralism: TheImplications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2002). She also cites the following theorists as supportive of a groups rights perspective: WilliamGalston, “Two Concepts of Liberalism,” Ethics 105, no. 3 (1995): 516–534; Chandran Kukathas,


“autonomy-promoting theorists” like Stephen Macedo and Susan Moller Okinargue that this view privileges group rights over individual autonomy in wayslikely to be coercive and harmful for women and children.77 In this argument, thestate is justified in defending certain individual rights — and especially a child’sfuture interest in autonomy — against particular illiberal cultural practices (NH,537).

McAvoy argues for a principled middle ground between these two positions:“the state may not force less liberal groups to adhere to the basic principles of liber-alism but must negotiate toward a solution that leaves individuals comparativelybetter off” (NH, 537). Her argument takes up the oft-discussed case Wisconsin v.Yoder and the rights of young people from Anabaptist communities (Amish, Hut-terites, and Mennonites).78 McAvoy argues both (a) that the state should not forceAnabaptist children into high schools, especially given the difficulty and coercivenature of such enforcement; and (b) that Anabaptist children — in their currentcircumstances — do not have adequate opportunities to exit, primarily because oftheir lack of education.

While McAvoy’s argument is valuable as a contribution to debates about exitrights, we focus here on her empirically engaged methodology and its potentialcontributions to philosophical considerations of autonomy. McAvoy describesher approach as using “the tools of applied moral and political philosophy toshow that when we attend to the experiences of group dissenters — and notjust the interests of the group — a different picture of exit emerges” (NH, 537).Indeed, part of McAvoy’s contribution, in drawing on the particular circumstancesfacing Anabaptist children, is to argue that we may need to revise our currentunderstandings of exit rights. To make this argument, McAvoy takes up theconditions for securing the right to exit proposed by William Galston in his 2002book, Liberal Pluralism. As she summarizes, Galston’s criteria for a secure rightto exit are met when persons (1) “are aware of alternative ways of living”; (2)“have the capacity to assess those alternatives should they choose to”; (3) “havenot been subject to brainwashing or other types of psychological coercion”; and(4) “have the ability to ‘participate effectively in at least some ways of life otherthan the ones they choose to leave’” (NH, 539).79 Galston argues that the Amishmeet these conditions. Considering Galston’s conditions alongside “the particulars

“Cultural Toleration,” in Ethnicity and Group Rights: NOMOS 39, ed. Ian Shapiro and Will Kymlicka(New York: New York University Press, 1997), 69–104; and Avishai Margalit and Moshe Habertal,“Liberalism and the Right to Culture,” Social Research 64 (1994): 491.

77. McAvoy cites the following sources in support of this view: Stephen Macedo, Diversity andDistrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,2000); and Susan Moller Okin, “Mistresses of Their Own Destiny,” in Citizenship and Education inLiberal Democratic Societies: Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities, ed. KevinMcDonough and Walter Feinberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 346.

78. Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972).

79. McAvoy cites Galston’s fourth criteria directly from Liberal Pluralism, 122–123.


of the Anabaptist case,” McAvoy argues these communities have not adequatelysecured exit rights for their children (NH, 539). For her, “insular fundamentalistgroups cannot satisfy these conditions” by themselves, and the state must “enactpolicies that facilitate entrance into another way of life” (NH, 539–540).

To make this argument, McAvoy draws on empirical research on the experi-ences of Anabaptist youth,80 as well as on an interview with an excommunicatedMennonite woman named “Emily” (a pseudonym).81 McAvoy interviewed Emilyabout her reasons for leaving her church, the barriers she faced in exiting thiscommunity, and the resources that helped her leave. While careful not to gen-eralize from Emily’s experience, McAvoy draws on this case to reconsider theconditions necessary to exit. We see this case as an intriguing illustration of anonideal approach to autonomy. Emily was seven years old when her mother con-verted to a conservative Mennonite church. Although she had previously attendedpublic schools, after her mother converted, Emily was enrolled in a small Mennon-ite school. In keeping with her new church, Emily wore “plain clothes” and wasallowed neither to listen to the radio nor to watch television or movies. Readingmaterials were generally limited to those found in the school library, but Emily’smother — more liberal than some members of the community — allowed her chil-dren to check out books from the local public library on a weekly basis.

As McAvoy details, Emily particularly enjoyed Star Trek novels and creditsthem with opening her eyes to a different reality. Indeed, the title of McAvoy’sessay draws on Emily’s statement about the impact of reading these books: “Oneday I realized, ‘there are no housewives in Star Trek, and I don’t want to bea housewife.’” Emily also had interaction with family members outside of thechurch, including an aunt who was attending college and who lived with herfamily for a time. Emily noted that her experiences made her somewhat of an“outlier” and gave her some knowledge of alternative ways of life. But McAvoyis careful to underscore these limits. She notes that Emily’s description of reading(“It was like everything … was science fiction, even things that weren’t”) showhow this religious community established significant “psychological boundariesbetween themselves and those on the outside” (NH, 540–541). In addition, whenleaving the community, Emily felt sure she faced a future in hell. This was no idlestatement, but a powerful belief that affected her deeply and shaped the subsequentrelationship she had with her family. As McAvoy details, “it took years for her

80. McAvoy references John Hostetler, Amish Society, 4th ed. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1993); Donald B. Kraybill, The Amish and the State (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1993); Tom Shachtman, Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be Amish (New York: North Point Press,2006); Thomas J. Meyers, “The Old Order Amish: To Remain in the Faith or to Leave,” MennoniteQuarterly Review 68, no. 3 (1994): 378–395; and Denise Reiling, “The ‘Simmie’ Side of Life: Old OrderAmish Youths’ Affective Response to Culturally Prescribed Deviance,” Youth Society 34, no. 2 (2002):146–171.

81. McAvoy notes that she interviewed Emily by phone, for several hours in total, in November 2008.At the time of the interview, Emily was thirty-one years old; at nineteen, she had left the Mennonitechurch (NH, 539).


to come to believe that she had not, in fact, chosen hell. During those years, heranxiety about the afterlife woke her up at night. To this day, her mother, brother,and sister still worry for her soul” (NH, 541). For McAvoy, while Anabaptists aretechnically allowed to exit and are “aware that people leave,” it is very difficult toleave when doing so is “equated with damnation” (NH, 543).

Building on Emily’s specific circumstances, McAvoy also draws on relevantsocial science evidence to document the real challenges Anabaptist youth face inboth exiting insular communities and entering alternate ways of life (NH, 543).McAvoy affirms the value of Galston’s basic framework for exit rights, but arguesthat the Amish have not adequately secured exit options for their children. Sheemphasizes the limited access to outside ways of life, the particularly restrictivecircumstances facing Amish young women, and the changing economic circum-stances facing Amish youth today, who — in order to support themselves “outside”the community — would need to have completed more than an eighth-grade edu-cation. Noting the compliance issues involved, she argues that students shouldnot be forced to attend high school. Nonetheless, the liberal state should provideservices that better facilitate entrance. She recommends (1) that local high schoolswork to facilitate enrollment, particularly for young people who may have gaps intheir education; (2) the provision of four-year educational vouchers to dissenterswho wish to pursue higher education; and (3) the creation of smaller high schoolsthat focus on the particular needs of young people who may wish to leave theircommunities. In this sense, attention to nonideal contexts allows McAvoy bothto pose a subtle revision of the criteria for exit and to propose policy mechanismsto better facilitate entrance. We explore these nonideal implications further in thenext section.

Analysis

While not theorizing autonomy per se, McAvoy documents the harms ofinsular communities and their real threats to children’s future autonomy. Inparticular, Emily’s experiences in an insular community — and her eventual exitof that community — can be read through concerns of autonomy. What mightthis empirical example teach us about a nonideal approach to autonomy? In thissection, we reinterpret McAvoy’s empirical case through an alternative Deweyanaccount of the self.82 We highlight the role of environments, the flexibility ofhabits, and the importance of the ongoing process of becoming autonomous.

First, in thinking about Emily’s experiences, a Deweyan view draws attentionto the contexts and environments that shape autonomy. And, indeed, McAvoypowerfully documents some of the contextual factors at play in Emily’s situation.Here, small facts about Emily’s circumstances take on new significance: that

82. We are not arguing that McAvoy’s interpretation is incorrect. She draws on the example of Emily— deftly and to great effect — to advance a particular argument about the conditions of exit rights.We employ and interpret her example to slightly different ends: to explore a nonideal and Deweyanconception of autonomy. As such, McAvoy may not endorse this particular interpretation of Emily’sexperience.


her aunt came to live with her family, that Emily was allowed to check booksout from the local library, that she had a job at her father’s business and somehabituated measures of independence, and that she married soon after leavingher community.83 McAvoy notes that these conditions all enabled Emily to have“some idea of the outside world,” one of Galston’s key conditions for exit. ButMcAvoy also uses these conditions — and social science evidence — to counterGalston’s claim that Amish youth have adequate opportunities to assess otherways of living and to exit, if they so choose. She also draws attention to the factthat women have fewer such opportunities; generalizing about “Amish youth”potentially elides key differences of gender.

While McAvoy’s approach deftly documents contextual factors, a Deweyanframework draws further attention to the interactivity and particularity of Emily’sstory. While access to the public library, for instance, played a formative role inEmily’s developing independence, this same factor may not be equally important toother young people. Dewey’s notion of a situation, in this sense, is more radicallyparticular and local. One of the key moments in Emily’s story — noticing thatthere were no housewives in Star Trek — was a situation that encompassed aparticular person, with a set of particular experiences, coming to a particular book,and interacting in a particular way. The content of the book may not have thesame effect on another person, even someone in similar circumstances. Here,Dewey draws our attention to particular and idiosyncratic learning required bynotions of autonomy. In this sense, the informal learning contexts of families,associations, and communities are just as crucial as formal schooling. Attentionto informal contexts does not minimize the necessity of formal civic educationand policy recommendations designed to safeguard children’s autonomy. Yet,following Dewey, “where” and “how” we look for autonomy — and personsexperiencing autonomy — may not necessarily be limited to formal educationalinstitutions. Our policy recommendations, too, may need to shift.

Second, McAvoy’s narrative highlights key moments in Emily’s life wheretaken-for-granted assumptions were disrupted. In these moments of disruption,Emily became newly aware of her habitual and taken-for-granted beliefs aboutthe world. Emily’s weekly trips to the library and extensive reading played a keyrole. While Emily recalled that reading about everything was a kind of “sciencefiction, even things that weren’t,” she highlighted the importance of her exposureto Star Trek novels. McAvoy reports that Emily “especially enjoyed” these novels.Indeed, we might imagine — considering that Emily reported reading ten booksa week — that her choices may have been made chiefly for enjoyment. Thatis, she was probably not deliberately embarking on a reading program with the

83. McAvoy highlights six particular factors that enabled Emily to leave her Mennonite community: (1)exposure to other ways of life through family members; (2) exposure to the world of ideas through thelibrary; (3) that she had not lived her whole life in the community; (4) that she had a place to go and arelative to facilitate her entrance into the outside world; (5) that she had earned enough money to owna car, which gave her a measure of independence; and (6) that she married not long after leaving, whichhelped her resolve not to return and gave her a source of support (NH, 548).


intent to seek an “alternative way of life” or to “encounter meaningfully differentalternatives.” In the language of flexible habits, she may have been readingsomewhat unreflectively.

Yet when she suddenly noticed “there were no housewives in Star Trek,” herreading disrupted her unreflective assumptions about what the world was. Thesebooks were impressive not necessarily for their content, but for Emily’s suddenrealization of a particular absence (housewives) from their imaginary world. Partof her life that had been in the background — norms and expectations that womenwere housewives — suddenly came into the foreground. In Dewey’s language,Emily’s habitual way of experiencing the world was disrupted. A previouslyunnoticed dimension of her world was transformed into a problem and an occasionfor critical thinking. What is crucial is how Emily flexibly responded and adapted tothis disruption. She could have turned away from information that called her wayof life into question. Yet, as McAvoy suggests, these moments became significantopportunities for Emily, ones that shaped her ability to eventually — after sometime and significant challenges — leave her community.

Third, Emily’s story emphasizes the halting and uneven process of developingautonomy. In emphasizing the real “transition costs” associated with “movingfrom an insular group into the mainstream culture,” McAvoy points to thepsychological costs and practical difficulties involved in exit (NH, 548). A Deweyanframework might move this analysis in a slightly different direction: to theprocess of developing autonomy. Autonomy in this sense is not an absolute ideal,but — in Dewey’s language — a kind of “end-in-view” attached to a particularcontext. Emily gradually gained more independence and critical distance from hercircumstances; yet, as McAvoy notes, this process was a difficult and halting one.Emily continued to believe (for a time) in her damnation, and she also had to learnhow to have (in her terms) “normal interactions” with others (NH, 542). Strikingly,McAvoy details that Emily “had to relearn how to speak because, as she explained,while it was never explicitly taught, women spoke so softly that they could not beheard by non-Church members” (NH, 543). Emily, in this sense, had to reshape herhabitual ways of being in the world. No longer unreflective and unthinking, sheforged new — flexible — habits for engaging with others in more productive ways.

Autonomy here was not a “state” that Emily achieved through critical reflec-tion. Nor was it something she absolutely “lacked” by simple virtue of her status inthis community. While autonomy theories prioritize critical reflection and inter-action with differences, these are often treated as factors — ones either present orabsent — in evaluating particular circumstances against an ideal of future auton-omy. Outlining the conditions that may cultivate — and impede — autonomyis crucially important theoretical work. Yet, what a Deweyan nonideal approachoffers, we contend, are resources for exploring how such processes of inquiry takeplace, through experience and over time. Dewey’s account of habit is particularlyuseful here. Emily engaged in critical inquiry when her habitual understandings ofthe world were disrupted; yet — as Dewey notes — habits are persistent and pow-erful, no matter whether they are positive or negative. They involve a constant


give-and-take between reflective and nonreflective experiences. Because habits arenot easily changed, Dewey stresses the development of flexible habits of observa-tion and inquiry that might enable young people to gain control over and meaningwithin subsequent experiences. Autonomy, in this reading, is neither a state noran achievement, but a fundamentally transactional process of self-formation andgrowth.

Conclusions

To conclude, we take a step back and outline two potential contributions ofa nonideal and Deweyan approach to autonomy: (1) as methodological guidancefor future inquiry, and (2) as a conceptual resource for understanding the role ofautonomy in education. First, a Deweyan view of autonomy offers methodologicalresources for directing nonideal inquiry into autonomy. Rather than posing an idealof autonomy, a Deweyan framework would start with the specific conditions andcircumstances where autonomy becomes a “felt problem.” As Anderson remindsus, this is a novel understanding of nonideal theory. She contrasts her Deweyanapproach with more “derivative” notions of nonideal theory, which first attemptto “settle” the meaning of an ideal, and then think about how best to achieve it.As she writes,

This challenge misunderstands how normative thinking works. Unreflective habits guide mostof our activity. We are not jarred into critical thinking about our conduct until we confront aproblem that stops us from carrying on unreflectively. We recognize the existence of a problembefore we have any idea of what would be best or most just.84

In effect, a Deweyan understanding of nonideal theory challenges us to constructempirically guided, “ground-up” ideals from the realities of particular circum-stances.

Methodologically, this view highlights the value of tying philosophical ques-tions to empirical research. Drawing on this understanding of nonideal theory, wemight call for more collaboration between conceptual studies of autonomy andempirical social science focused on the experiences of young people, families, andcommunities. McAvoy’s study is a powerful example of how social science evi-dence can contribute to theoretical debates. Indeed, her study offers a suggestiveexample of how the real circumstances of young people might subtly shift theoret-ical positions on issues of autonomy.

Yet, this study is also limited as a work of nonideal theory, at least asunderstood by Anderson and Dewey. McAvoy focuses on a specific, existingtension in liberal theory and carefully selects an empirical example to explore thattension. In this sense, her essay tacks between theory and practice: she evaluatesan example against a theoretical framework of exit rights, but also employs theexample to complicate and revise this theoretical account. In Anderson’s accountof nonideal theory, inquiry starts from empirical concerns. In terms of autonomy,a Deweyan approach might begin with the problematic circumstances and felt



difficulties within insular communities (it would not start, necessarily, withtensions within liberal theory). In the same light, Dewey might encourage us tobroaden the scope of our inquiry. In addition to studying the tensions raised byinsular communities, we might explore dimensions of autonomy within religionmore generally,85 or how autonomy might be part of the informal processes of civiceducation.86 A Deweyan framework is particularly well suited to such situatedand nonideal philosophy. Ideals — like autonomy — are not abstract standards.In contrast, they are “ends-in-view” and aims that grow out of the imperfectcircumstances of here and now.

Second, such empirical engagement, in starting from the experiences of chil-dren and families, may offer new conceptual resources for how we understandautonomy in education. As we have shown, a Deweyan approach draws attention,foremost, to the uneven process of developing autonomy. Autonomy is not an idealstate to be achieved, but a continual process of negotiating critical and sympatheticengagement with the circumstances that shape our lives. In emphasizing criticalreflection and engagement with difference, Dewey’s processual account is broadlycompatible with liberal understandings of autonomy. At the same time, his non-ideal approach shifts attention toward the experiential, embodied, habitual, andinteractive dimensions of critical reflection. In doing so, he complicates an ortho-dox view of autonomy, which emphasizes the necessity of critical reflection, notnecessarily how it happens.

This focus on the how — and on the lived experiences of autonomy — reflectsa Deweyan commitment to use philosophy as a practical tool to improve thelives of ordinary citizens. Starting with empirical problems, philosophy helps uscritically interrogate social practices and construct ideals to help ameliorate realproblems. Ideals (including ones like autonomy) serve as hypotheses to be testedin concrete social policies and practices. Here, we might take up one of McAvoy’ssuggestive recommendations: small high schools, created on a “human scale,”to address the unique social and educational needs of Anabaptist youth fromparticular communities. Rather than mandating such schools — as a condition for

85. Walter Feinberg and Richard Layton’s recent study of teaching the Bible explores issues of autonomyin the context of religious and secular communities. Walter Feinberg and Richard Layton, For the CivicGood: The Liberal Case for Teaching Religion in the Public Schools (Ann Arbor: University of MichiganPress, 2014).

86. An emerging area of literature has explored the “everyday” and embodied contexts of youthcitizenship in ways that offer potential insight for the Deweyan notion of autonomy we explorein this essay. See, for example, Gert Biesta, Robert Lawy, and Narcie Kelly, “Understanding YoungPeople’s Citizenship Learning in Everyday Life: The Role of Contexts, Relationships, and Dispositions,”Education, Citizenship, and Social Justice 4, no. 1 (2009): 5–24; Ruth Lister, Noel Smith, Sue Middleton,and Lynne Cox, “Young People Talk About Citizenship: Empirical Perspectives on Theoretical andPolitical Debates,” Citizenship Studies 7, no. 2 (2003): 235–253; Ross VeLure Roholt, R. W. Hildreth,and Michael Baizerman, Becoming Citizens: Deepening the Craft of Youth Civic Engagement (NewYork: Routledge, 2008); and Bronwyn Wood, “Researching the Everyday: Young People’s Experiencesand Expressions of Citizenship,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 27, no. 2(2014): 214–232.


securing autonomy in Anabaptist communities — a Deweyan nonideal approachwould call for experimenting with such approaches on a limited scale. Nonidealinquiry could then focus on the consequences of such experimental schools foryoung people in particular communities. How might such spaces improve theconditions of their lives? In what ways might young people in these communitiescome to experience a wider sense of the world? How, too, might such experimentsbe improved, revised, or discarded in light of new understandings?

This view of an ideal does not, in Anderson’s terms, “set standards, outside ofpractice, for the success of practice.” Rather, summarizing Dewey’s insights, sheargues that

ideals embody imagined solutions to identified problems in a society. They function ashypotheses, to be tested in experience. We test our ideals by putting them into practice andseeing whether they solve the problems for which they were devised, settle people’s reasonablecomplaints, and offer a way of life that people find superior to what they had before.87

This Deweyan notion of an ideal is tentative, provisional, and ameliorative.Considering autonomy in such nonideal terms asks us to start with the problemsfaced by actual young people, some of whom — like Emily — may be engagedin the halting process of coming to understand their way of life and perhaps toreshape it toward new directions. Working alongside other theoretical approaches,nonideal theory may be able to propose small-scale solutions and new experimentsto those ends.


THIS PROJECT WAS SUPPORTED by a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoc-toral Fellowship.

Becoming Autonomous: Non-Ideal Theory and Educational Autonomy

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