THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM IN
THE EDUCATION OF FREE PERSONS
Frederick Marshall Schultz
The University of Akron
The critical concern in recent years over how to help students and their teachers achieve greater freedom of thought and concerned social action in educational settings has been a primary focus of the massive literature in critical scholarship regarding schoolings. That literature is still developing at an amazing pace.1 The educational problem to be addressed here has derived from the present writer’s exploratory inquiry into the ontological status of freedom of thought and the necessity of its achievement for persons to become truly free, independent forces in the life of any society. It is hoped that this paper will contribute to the dialogue on the idea of freedom and the conditions for the achievement of liberatory freedom in the empowerment of persons in educational settings. The argument set forward in this paper is that an examination of the phenomenological development of persons’ uses of freedom may provide explanatory power in documenting the necessity of creating conditions for teaching persons by means which permit learners to practice the uses of freedom in action. This argument shares the views of those who believe that people achieve freedom by reflective exploration of their own lives and the gender, social, and political contexts in which they live.
We know that human beings possess freedom by virtue of several wondrous gifts. With the physiological and neurological development of a human being’s capacity to engage in cognitive operations comes the possibility and the necessity of the use of freedom. Freedom is a condition, therefore, of relation in which the individual makes deliberate, conscious choices to whatever extent both cognitive capacity and opportunities to learn lead to successful educational achievements sufficient to induce autonomous behavior on the individual’s part. These gifts are: their ability to develop symbolic expressions of what they perceive; their capacity to develop memory of their experience; their cognitive capacity to analyze and synthesize all of those conceptual constructs which they formulate, as well as their capacity to integrate and to reorganize their conceptual repertoires in the process of becoming thinking, reflective selves. Their use of this freedom can, however, be thwarted and compromised by others, as well as by themselves, through choices of their own as well as by those limitations on ranges of personal choice created by societal and cultural constraints on their life experience. The optimization of a person’s use of his or her freedom in the experience of living requires the liberation and development of personal cognitive capacity, or, in brief, the liberation of the individual’s power to reason. We know that educators can play an important role in this liberatory process.
Freedom is exercised in an individual’s life when the individual is able to make choices; in so doing, a person responds or chooses not to respond to those interpersonal or broader social forces which the individual encounters. These social forces include other individuals, groups of persons, cultural norms which a person encounters, as well as any ideological belief systems which may inform his or her choices. The birth of freedom is the birth of the possibility of choice. The physiological evolution of cognitive capacity makes freedom and choice possible. If one speaks of the affirmation of reason, we here see a truly phenomenological dilemma which existentialist philosophers and psychologists see as an unavoidable problem with which each human being must contend. It is the struggle to affirm one’s own belief in one’s own capacity in some way, to as great an extent as may be possible, in particular life circumstances, to transcend the freedom versus determinism split. Success in this endeavor involves, among other things, the struggle to learn the uses of reason in dealing with both the rational and the irrational social constraints which inhibit a person’s development as a self, as well as the need to extend what Edmund Husserl referred to as the phenomenological horizons of individuals.
Freedom develops within a person as he or she explores the world and as he or she learns to reason. Freedom may come with the turf of being human, but the optimization of its use in a person’s life experience is dependent on the capacity to learn those skills of rational analysis which can create the possibility of transcending the cultural, political, and economic stumbling blocks to optimal personal development. When does each of us first become aware that we possess freedom? Such a process can best proceed in a context of freedom of inquiry and open debate about the problems of life, a context which does not exist at present in North American elementary or secondary schools. Educators can either assist or inhibit this process of personal liberation through their choices in the conduct of educational experiences. John Dewey wrote to this point in The Public and Its Problems:
The belief that thought and its communication are now free simply because legal restrictions which once obtained have been done away with is absurd….No man and no mind was ever emancipated merely by being left alone. Removal of formal limitations is but a negative condition; positive freedom is not a state but an act which involves methods and instrumentalities for control of conditions. Experience shows that sometimes the sense of external oppression, as by censorship, acts as a challenge and arouses intellectual energy and excites courage. But a belief in intellectual freedom where it does not exist contributes only to complacency in virtual enslavement, to sloppiness, superficiality, and recourse to sensations as a substitute for ideas: marked traits of our present estate with respect to social knowledge.2The use of our freedom for the liberation, or emancipation, of reason and the ontological necessity of freedom as a condition of inquiry creates moral issues regarding its uses. Yet, one can optimize conditions of inquiry and learning in one’s own practice as an educator. One can make the sort of commitment to principles of fairness and equity in social action called for by advocates of several philosophical persuasions in discourse about the role of philosophy of education in the empowerment or liberation of persons.
As Dewey and the critical scholars of the present day have argued, freedom is a phenomenon which is expressed in action. We have located the ontological onset of freedom as a product of the onset of cognitive function. A “free” choice should imply a choice by a free person; that is to say, our choices are evidence of our uses of freedom. If it is to have a benevolent effect on a person’s life, it must be informed by reason and reflective social conscience. The phenomenology of the uses of freedom involves the study of how people come to perceive those choices which affect the directions of their lives. Choice and action imply risk for persons, and awareness of risk creates tension. Affirmative belief in one’s self helps one find the courage to take risks. We may choose to take risks for sufficient or insufficient reasons. Helping people learn the skills of reasoned integration and reorganization of experience is an important dimension of the phenomenology of education, a point Dewey and many present-day critical scholars have recognized.
The questions one poses always raise as many others. So it seems to be with human inquiry. We find in discussion of the concept of freedom that it usually plays to a full house in the sense that it is something every non-pathogenic human being desires. We also find in our discussions of freedom that it is usually discussed in reference to and/or within certain specific human contexts (gender or social class or cultural relations or questions of social justice). When it is discussed in its most extended use, either as a general principle or as a foundation for creative inquiry regarding how to “empower” or “liberate” persons from hegemonic dominance by others, we can encounter those concerns which generate uncertainty as to its actual status in human experience. The ability to use freedom of perception and cognition are given by virtue of a human being’s capacity to perceive and conceive ideas as well as by virtue of all of the defining attributes which have come to be associated with human intellectual and affective function. Humans use their freedom in talk with others as well as in internal dialogue with their own inner selves as they sort out their perceptions of others, themselves, and all of the phenomena of experience. So one might say that cognitive freedom is a “given,” and a necessary “given” for the possibility of intelligent thought, informed affect, or any other form of responsible social action. However, freedom tends to be used in the context of dialogue with others and oneself.
Kant recognized this problem well in The Critique of Practical Reason.3 In dealing with the discussion of the concept of freedom in general, as a transcendental, universally necessary concept, Kant saw the existence of the concept of freedom as the very cornerstone of the possibility of pure reason and the quest for knowledge.4 Given the problematics of the uses of freedom in the dialectic over any social empirical state of affairs among human beings in any time or place, discussion of freedom and the use of it in judgments of practice (such as “professional practice”) raise fundamentally normative (value laden) and even moral issues which must be faced. We have sketched out briefly the ontological status of freedom as a necessary condition for rational inquiry in educational settings; we now need to locate the concept of freedom within those competing, ideological contexts in which talk about freedom and, more importantly still, the uses of reflective freedom are attempted in dialogue in schools.
Some persons use their intellectual freedom to transcend the cultural and intellectual perspective in which they began their lives; others may use their freedom either to choose not to do so, or they may live in social systems or under social circumstances which inhibit the very possibility of such a choice being ever perceived as either necessary or desirable. The sociology of knowledge is a very real part of human social life. Knowledge of alternative perceptions of what constitutes a desirable or just social life evolves in the process of freely flowing dialogue among persons regarding those issues which affect their individual or collective well being.
We are all affected by the extent to which the public is open to consideration of alternatives to present cultural practices and beliefs regarding the education of children, adolescents, and adults. Citizens are “free” to exercise choices only about those universes of social discourse which they are permitted to know (the freedom versus determinism split at work in society). The curricular content of schools, the content of instructional materials within school curricula, and the particular philosophical perspectives of individual teachers are reflective of the particular social forces, including the ideological forces, which are dominant in the “formation” of curricula and the education of teachers. Thus, the use of freedom in curriculum development and in the activities of teaching occurs in cultural and ideological contexts where educators have to make moral judgments as to what they ought to do.
What conception of the uses of freedom in the education of persons is to prevail in a just society? The conditions under which persons live do present limitations to perceptual possibility, real social barriers, if not determinative boundaries to personal development, in cases of extreme poverty and educational neglect. Such factors can affect the public practice of freedom of thought to varying extents. For instance, how can a person choose a goal, the possibility of which he or she is not aware? We are only free-to-dream of that of which we are aware.
M. Merleau-Ponty, in his very generative treatise on the Phenomenology of Perception, addressed the question of freedom as the culminating topic for treatment in that work. He begins by noting that when each of us think within our respective selves, within our personal consciousness, we feel “beyond our limitations.” He goes on to say:
Neither my freedom nor my universality can admit of any eclipse. It is inconceivable that I should be free in certain of my actions and determined in others: how should we understand a dormant freedom that gave full scope to determinism? And if it is assumed that it is snuffed out when it is not in action, how could it be rekindled? If per impossible I had once succeeded in making myself into a thing, how should I subsequently reconvert myself to consciousness? Once I am free, I am not to be counted among things, and I must then be uninterruptedly free. Once my actions cease to be mine, I shall never recover them, and if I lose my hold on the world, it will never be restored to me. It is equally inconceivable that my liberty should be attenuated.5He goes on to argue that everything one is in view of nature or history is never for oneself alone, but for oneself and others as well. One remains free to consider the consciousness of others in relationship to oneself. What can we say of “freedom?” What is its ontological nature? What are its origins? How is it a necessary condition of any “examined life?” What moral questions are generated by attempts to achieve its reflective use in educational settings?
The “freedom versus determinism” split in educational theory construction is suggestive of one of the primary concerns of postmodernist and critical theoretical perspectives regarding how to liberate teachers and students from the hegemony of texts and dominant social forces. It is a necessary concern in any effort to identify the ontological onset of freedom in human life in general, or in educational settings in particular. Kant observed in the Preface to his Critique of Practical Reason that:
The concept of freedom insofar as its reality is proved by an apodictic law of practical reason, is the keystone of the whole architecture of the system of pure reason and even of speculative reason.6We have our freedom to perceive and from our perceptions to develop concepts. Reason, the cognitive (as well as affective) analysis of perception and conceptual formation enables the search for understanding to continue. Since educational processes can be said to succeed to the extent that they help people learn how to reason and to achieve control over the formation of their own perceptions of themselves in the world as well as their understanding of other persons and to understand those values which inform or construct a vision of a good and just life, their functional possession of an activated freedom to inquire about and question what they perceive is of critical importance. Since freedom is necessary for any free flowing consideration of alternative courses of belief or action or any independent discovery of propositions about life or culture or reality in general, consideration of the ontological status of freedom may contribute to our understanding of how persons learn; and, from this, our understanding of how we come to educate our “selves.”
The phenomenology of a person achieving freedom in pursuit of deliberately sought ends always involves the tension between self interests and the interests of others. We are all members of communities and the heirs of socio-cultural heritages. As C.A. Bowers has recently reminded us,7 we are the products of generations of cultures with deep generational roots, and we are interconnected with all of life and the totality of our environment. The dialectic between self and others is eternal; we are not just completely autonomous choosers. And yet, marvelously, we are capable of high levels of creative autonomy for which we also have to bear responsibility to our own selves as well as to our cherished beliefs. As Sartre once said, when we choose we choose for all of humanity in the sense that we cannot escape our moral responsibility for the well being of others as well as ourselves. Bowers calls for a broader conception of freedom which transcends the Enlightenment, rationalist conception of freedom as expressed by a purely autonomous self independently choosing ends and means as if the self were fully separable from communities of interrelated and conflicting interests. Certainly the use of freedom by any human self is an achievement directed toward some desired end. As such, the dialectic between the interests of self and others does reflect at times the results of struggle and overcoming as well as it sometimes reflects consensus and the coming together or sharing of different interests. Maxine Greene argues that freedom is an achievement which frequently involves resisting the world as it is and daring to pursue the projects of our interests and to transcend, to overcome, opposition to them.8
D. Bob Gowin noted in his foreword to Maxine Greene’s The Dialectic of Freedom that:
Likewise freedom of individuality and freedom of a shared world are in tension. These many dialectics co-exist, run their course, remultiply and extend. Perhaps for educators, the dialectic between received authority of external knowledge is in tension with the constructivist view that human knowledge is a human construction.9Greene asserts that her interest in freedom derives from a life of quest and pursuit of sought-after “projects” or goals.10 The tension between individual quest and the individual’s coexistence with others in a shared and frequently resistive world can, and often does, necessitate a struggle to achieve freedom in Eurocentric cultural contexts marked by Enlightenment conceptions of freedom as an achievement, often the outgrowth of either individual or collective effort. Such a conception of freedom is alien to some peoples who inhabit indigenous cultural worlds where all share equally a non-Eurocentric, communal conception of quest as quest for the whole community in shared effort and freedom as a birthright of a shared heritage of generations of the group. This broader ecological awareness of the best interests of peoples who live in a shared world in which all of the environment of a cultural group as well as all of its generations’ interests are to be considered by members of the group living now is what Bowers referred to as the counterbalance to a Eurocentric, Enlightenment, rationalist and individualist conception of freedom as the outcome of struggle.11
Truly, the dialectic described by both Greene and Bowers represents the very core existential dilemma in any inquiry into the ontological onset and the emergence in human thought and action of “freedom” as a real consequence of determined human effort in either individual or collective effort. We need to recognize as well that the very idea of “freedom,” its very conceptualization, is derived very differently under differing definitional criteria when it is sought from a purely individualist as opposed to a collectivist or communal social ethos. The present analysis does acknowledge, as Greene’s analysis does as well, that “freedom” is always to be situated in specific socio-cultural contexts. The impediments to the actualization of informed, free choices based on individuals’ awareness of the social realities of their life situations is something many young people are not encouraged or assisted to develop in their experiences in schools. Greene notes:
Rather than being challenged to attend to the actualities of their lived lives, students are urged to attend to what is “given” in the outside world — whether in the form of “high technology” or the information presumably required for what is called “cultural literacy.”12Students are usually encouraged to accept the social contexts of their lives as they are and not to challenge them. Yet “freedom,” as an achievement, can be the result only of personal interpretation of an individual’s world and of a decision making process which leads the person to seek to exercise critical thought and valued ends in the context of the give and take of his or her interests with those of what George Herbert Mead referred to as the “generalized other,” or society at large, what some French existentialists have referred to as les allons (the others). Freedom comes into being through thought translated into action in social contexts and in the funded, inherited values which influence persons in social contexts. Hence, freedom often has been sought in conflict with competing “others” and competing ideological configurations of the good life coexisting and competing with one another. As Greene says:
It remains a matter, for men and women both, to establish a place for freedom in the world of the given — and to do so in concern and with care, so that what is indecent can be transformed and what is unendurable may be overcome.13Teachers and students need a place for freedom. They need to be encouraged to seek it and to learn how to empower themselves to make effective use of it and to experience its liberating impact on their visions of their worlds. Students cannot learn to develop or to exercise (use) freedom of thought or action only by believing and obeying. The phenomenological development of a person capable of achieving functional freedom to pursue self-defined ends with a sense of justice for the well being of others as well as themselves can best be optimized by learning the skills of critical interpretation of their own social reality.
It has been argued here that freedom is a phenomenologically necessary primary condition for the use of critical reason. Its possibility is born with the onset of cognitive function. To the extent that human beings vary in cognitive capacity and affective sensitivity, they vary in the possibilities for optimum creative uses of freedom in thought and action. Freedom is not an object or a faculty. It is a condition of relationship which is possessed by every human being who has possession of his or her cognitive functions. It comes into existence as a part of the reality of those perceiving, defining, and decision making functions through which intelligent beings interact with their world and everything and everyone within it. The reality of the freedom people possess is demonstrated by their choices, by their decisions as to how to interact with others in relationship to their own survival and fulfillment.
In each person’s life, freedom is reflected in the actions one takes in one’s own behalf and that of others, whether for pathogenic or life-sustaining and humane motivations. In democratic societies freedom of inquiry and debate as well as the public communication of disputed points of view should be assured if well reasoned and adequate public consensus on controverted issues is to be possible. John Dewey commented in The Public and Its Problems that no government by experts operating without concern for the opinions of the general population “can be anything but an oligarchy managed in the interests of the few.” People have to be given real opportunities to use their freedom in debates regarding policies vital to their interests and/or their survival or their fulfillment as human beings. Dewey put the necessary conditions for the effective uses of freedom in democratic societies as follows:
The essential need, in other words, is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion, and persuasion. That is the problem of the public. We have asserted that this improvement depends essentially upon freeing and perfecting the processes of inquiry and of dissemination of their conclusions.14In order to optimize “freedom-in-use” in a society, there must be completely open dialogue and inquiry. This includes completely open inquiry from comparative ideological perspectives as well as full candor in the dissemination of all relevant information pertaining to any public issue. Intellectual freedom should include the freedom to consider alternative universes of discourse. To the extent that people are not permitted honest, open access to information and alternative points of view, their freedom is limited and constrained. The full affirmation of reason in public debate will occur only when the public has the courage to permit fully open inquiry and debate on all issues affecting it. This is the condition Dewey put forward as necessary for the public to define itself and for the Great Society to be transformed into a Great Community. He said:
Until secrecy, prejudice, bias, misrepresentation, propaganda as well as sheer ignorance are replaced by inquiry and publicity, we have no way of telling how apt for judgment of social policies the existing intelligence of the masses may be.15To achieve such a level of freedom-in-use in a society necessitates honesty and a commitment to open, affirmative acceptance of diversity of perspective in belief and opinion in the conveyance of information to the public via mass media and governmental and school sources. When we start believing our own propaganda, we limit our own freedom, and, to the extent we do this, we limit our selves. People who are proud to affirm a commitment to the primacy of the principle of the governance of thought and action on open, informed, just judgment can do much better than that. If we fear the consequences of a fully informed and ideologically knowledgeable and free public, we can be said to fear freedom of thought itself. We are not fully free in our lives in society if particular interest groups or coalitions control the agenda and the knowledge base on which public decisions are to be based about the education of persons or any other significant dimension of life.
For a response
to this essay, see Garrison.
1. The examination of the idea of freedom and how persons may achieve it has been a primary problem throughout the history of philosophy. Since the 1960s, a new critical literature which critiques the hegemonic control of texts and the social and political ideologies of dominant groups over popular thought has emerged. The teaching and learning of how to enable persons to construct their own visions of that it means to be a free person in society is a major issue of current concern.
2. John Dewey, The Public and its Problems (Chicago: Sage Books, The Swallow Press, originally published by Henry Holt and Company, 1927), 168.
3. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1982), 15.
4. Ibid., see especially 15 and 59-74.
5. M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge, 1989), 434-35.
6. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 3.
7. C. A. Bowers, “An Open Letter to Maxine Greene on ‘The Problem of Freedom in an Era of Ecological Interdependence,’” Educational Theory 41, no. 3 (Summer 1991).
8. Maxine Green, The Dialectic of Freedom (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1988).
9. D. Bob Gowin, foreword to The Dialectic of Freedom, by Maxine Greene, The Dialectic of Freedom (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1988), x.
10. Greene, The Dialectic of Freedom, xi.
11. C. A. Bowers, “An Open Letter to Maxine Greene,” passim.
12. Greene, The Dialectic of Freedom, 7.
13. Ibid., 86.
14. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, 208.
15. Ibid., 209.