Educational Autonomy Pluralistic Society

Introduction

The logical perspectives which are associated with the probable point of inflection between the right of the parents’ to get their children admitted to faith schools and the rights associated with children’s education, are multiple. The corresponding study would be concentrated upon the research perspectives which state that children have the right to have proper education which could equip and enable them for the situations which they could be experiencing during their lives within any liberal and democratic as well as syncretic and pluralistic society. The focus of the debate would be concentrated on the perspective that faith schools at the United Kingdom are capable to furnish the adequate educational framework and experience to the admitted students. Special emphasis would be provided on the underlying causality of such an observation and this could be stated as the adherence to a strictly theocratic philosophical approach by the faith schools. Specific discussion would be under taken concerning the impact of such religious principles and non-secular educational environment could have no educational right of children to develop autonomous individuality based upon rationality and logic. Apart from this, another aspect which would be taken into consideration would be the religious pluralistic and inclusive environment to which the child learners could be exposed to while undergoing their educational tenure at such faith schools.

Rights of the parents

According to the research of Adams et al (2015), the most frequently adhered to perceptions concerning the rights of parents could be understood to be the protection and ensuring of security for their children. The bone of contention, from the perspective of debatable actualities, could be understood to be the extent and the domain which could define the applicability of such rights and the exercise of the same. According to Chickering, Dalton and Stamm (2015), the right to avail services of educational establishments on part of children has been enshrined by the Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) through specific stipulations and the entitlement of such a right has been ascribed exclusively to the parents. The objective has been to lend credence to the general perception by the parents that both theocratic and philosophical convictions, which the parents conform to, could be facilitated to the children by the services of the faith schools. The parents of the child learners, according to the research of Herbert (2017), could entrust the perception that imparting theocratic convictions in their children could serve general purpose of conforming to religious and cultural lineage of theirs. It could be perceived as a general obligation by the parents of such children, to make sure that instillation of such religious convictions should be an integral part of the formal education received by their children at the schools. This could be considered to be of great significance as the rational learning capacities of the children are formed only at a slow and gradual pace and this makes the child learners to be always dependent upon the educational guidance which could be provided to them by both their peers and parents.

On the contrary to such perceptions, it could be argued, from the research perspective of Hungerman (2014), that the educational interests of the children could often have to be left attended. The reason could be considered in the manner that most often the children and later adult learners could prefer conditions of upbringing which could not have the prospect of religious studies as an integral component, either from a generalised or from a fundamental perspective of any specific religion.

From a definitive perspective, such observations could be only validated when the children under consideration could attain a mental maturity to absolutely comprehend the rational learning and analytical capabilities of themselves and this could lead them towards better realisation of the value of their upbringing through effective reflective practices. The question remains regarding the credibility of paternalism induced decisions on part of the parents to get their children admitted into faith schools. This leads into a discussion on whether parents sending their children to a faith school can be justified on the grounds of paternalism. As per the research of Dworkin (2017), paternalism could be defined in the form of consistent interference and attempts to control the decision of other without specific consent of those towards whom such paternalistic attitudes could be directed. The objective of such paternalistic behaviour is always to either assist in the progression of or to protect the psychological as well as physical safety of such personnel.

According to Hull (2019), within the perceptual understanding of every parent, it could appear to be of crucial to admit their children into theocratic orientation base faith school where the educational domain could imbue the ethos of religious philosophies. The objective in this regard is to direct the children into specific avenues of progression in their lives and more often than not, to indoctrinate them into adherence of particular religious morality based lifestyles. According to Ballantine, Hammack and Stuber (2017),

the National Curriculum of the United Kingdom which was established in 1988, is meant to furnish to all of the children with identical educational and learning experiences through same duration of educational training years at the schools, it could be observed that any inclusion or addition of elements which are reflective of religious doctrines and belief systems could be least possible to the formulation of any counter-intuition concerning the equality of such imparted educational experience to the particular groups of children which could receive their education at faith schools, in comparison with the children educated at non-faith institutions. The improvement of general moralistic disciplinary aspects in the learning experiences of the faith school attending children could be another positive effect which could find mention in this regard. However, the prospect of religious indoctrination is often a much debated topic which needs to be put into perspective in the course of the corresponding study.

From an academic perspective, it could be comprehended, as per the opinion of Dombrowski (2014), that benefitting and undermining the learning experiences of any child through particular upbringing and educational training, completely depends upon the cumulative influences of a multiplicity of factors. In this context, according to Franken (2016), the European Convention of Human Rights has attested to the fact that the parents of such children are primarily responsible concerning the decision of making such children attend any specific educational institution such as the faith schools or non-faith schools. However, the research of Neal (2016), has brought forward the perception that it is always the responsibility of the state to provide protection to the interests of the children till their attainment of adulthood and thus the impact of the beliefs and opinions of the parents should be necessarily kept at a minimum.

Furthermore, the supposed impracticality of the complete exclusion of the religious elements from the general educational curriculum and the prevention of exposure of the children to the same during the course of raring up, has been often discussed as well. The prevalent conceptions in this regard always emphasize upon the undertakings of the parents to ensure that the aspect of stability in the process of upbringing could maintained till the children could become prepared enough for the development into individuals who could think and formulate decisions on an autonomous measure. The inextricable association of religion with the socio-cultural dynamics and normative values within the overall architecture of any society is impossible to be denied and this has a direct impact on the deliberate endeavors of preventing children from gaining any exposure to the effects of religion during their formative educational years. The complete alteration of the educational discourse concerning the exclusion of religious effects could lead to certain situations where the children could experience predicaments in terms of having to adapt to particular conditions where they could be exposed to the effects of religious practices whenever they reach their adulthood and could enter their working fields. Exclusion of religious influences completely from the educational tenure of the children could indicate the alteration of the cultural and social practices which, if performed by the national governments of the United Kingdom, could directly infringe upon the fundamental right of practicing the religious beliefs by the parents of such children.

It is undoubtedly necessary to ensure and add value to the right to have education on part of the children, however, it is also essential to maintain the rights of the parents in the equal measure to exercise their religious beliefs and instil the same within their children. Concerning the case specific considerations of different accounts of paternalism involving the formative relationships between the parents and their children, such exercise of the rights of parents to determine the course of education of their children could be considered to be a justified proposition. This has a direct bearing upon the preference of the parents to get their children admitted into faith schools. There remains a considerable difficulty regarding the determination whether or not such processes could infringe upon the rights of the children. Mediation through the governmental child care institutions is thus always an activity fraught with well-established concerns in this regard. However, from a moralistic and evaluative perspective, the holistic development of the children could depend the most on the ability of the parents to determine the course of educational progression for the children. Thus, according to Covell, Howe and McGillivray (2016), the factor of unjust imposition of personal beliefs and religious inclinations on the impressionable children by the parents is not always a verifiable one from an empirical perspective.

Rights of the children

According to the research specifications of Martin (2016), the fundamental component of the educational rights ensured for the children as well as the environment of educational services to which the children could be subjected to could be identified as liberalism, inclusivity and pluralism of any properly developed and democratic society. Such democratic pluralism and inclusiveness could highlight undoubtedly the notions of providing the citizenry of any such democratic country with the right to bring into practice their personal religious belief systems and implement the same in their personal existence as well. However, the freedom of religious belief is most a modern concept which emerged on the global arena in the early 20th century. Under such a pretext, the decision of the parents to send their children to religious missionary schools or faith schools could not be out-rightly considered to be any contravention of the accepted norms of the post-modern social processes and practices. This could be further reinforced from the perspective that with the obtainment of adulthood and the ability of autonomous decision formulation, the students could then opt to select their belief systems and put them into proper practice in the likewise manner.

In the cases where faith schools could become the sources of active promotion of obstacles regarding the formulation of autonomy within the learning children, with the utilisation of the procedural instruments such as exposing the children to a predetermined collection of religious orthodox convictions and the enforcement of the same through varying form of indoctrination, the contravention of the fundamental rights of the children regarding autonomy could become a definite fact.

The prevalent perceptions attest to the proposition of the necessity to foster active exchanges in between the different members of the existing society with divergent religious lineages and this could be better contextualised from the evaluation of the objective of fostering syncretic effects as well as social cohesiveness to maintain the overall integrity of the social fabric of any nation such as that of the United Kingdom. With the absence of any multi-religious educational environment in the faith schools where the exchanges and exposure to multiple religious perspectives could become a reality, the instillation of the values of tolerance and liberal attitudes within the impressionable young minds could not be achieved. The critical balance infusion and maintenance is necessary in between the differing perspectives of ensuring the inclusion of individual religious convictions within the social discourse of UK and that of ensuring the respect for both religious as well as non-religious entities and collaboration between religiously divergent communities. The fundamental determinant of any measure of success of any pluralistic society is to concentrate upon the mechanisms which could provide consistent assistance in fostering positive and active religious exchanges at the school level. This could be better translated in the form of ensuring the components of the educational rights of children so that ultimate fostering of unity in diversity could become a possibility.

Effects of indoctrination and features of autonomy

Liberalism stands upon the core constituent of the notion of autonomous and independent decision formulation abilities on part of the individuals who could be members of any liberal society or community. This could be developed through autonomy of thought which completely depends upon the emphasis on the enhancement of independent thinking capacities of individuals. This directly relates to the scepticism of faith schools where the religious ethos based environment could lead to the enforcement of particular religious principles and this is primarily a contravention of the development of autonomy of thought and perception on part of the students who could be exposed to such conditioning at faith schools.

According to Striepe, Clarke and O'Donoghu (2014), the conditioning of the impressionable minds of the children in their formative years could be effective enough to resist any form of necessity of logical revision and this could negate the prospect of examination of the entire different range of thoughts and propositions and scrutiny of the personal beliefs and perceptions in the autonomous manner.

According to Vallier (2014), the necessity to properly delve into the theoretical constructs which are available to evaluate and explore the arguments which put forward the sceptic stance of whether or not such a practice could be utilised in terms of the entire range of the belief systems, including that of atheism and scientific convictions, is to be performed with much clarity. The contradiction in this perspective could be found in the element of postulation of the acceptance or denial of any religious or any other doctrine, based on the availability of empirical evidence. In most of the cases, the active practice of religious beliefs is associated with that of particular religious authorities such a scripture derived doctrines. The crux of the problem in this context could be identified in the fact that in the absence of any objective or scientific point of view and any other evidence based approach, the validation of religious beliefs could not be made into possibilities. On the contrary, Coleman (2018), has outlined that there have been a number of different scientific phenomena which had gained validation on the basis of assumptions and inferences. Thus, objective truth deduction could be a foregone conclusion since the prospect of inference could outline the inefficacies of intellectual authorities on the differential prospects of social phenomena such as religious beliefs. Apart from this, the observed tendencies in human beings to perform subjective assessment of collected and gathered evidence, regardless of these being empirical or not, could outline the fact that objective truth could be a difficult prospect to arrive at. The influence of human error could be thus an overarching aspect which could devaluate the validity of even the most academically and intellectually effective propositions. One fundamental aspect which could weed away the resulting confusion in this regard is the ability to question each and every information and perception which any person could come across including that of the self-perceptions of such a person. In this context, Hill (2017) has observed the core constituents of beliefs to be the continuity of the same set of perceptions and the absence of change.

Living in a pluralist society

The role of the educational institutions including those of the faith schools in formulation of the responsible social members of the future has been thoroughly acknowledged by the successive governments of the United Kingdom as well. The National Curriculum involves the study topic of citizenship as a compulsory subject which is mandatory to be taught at every school within the geographical precincts of the United Kingdom. Apart from this, other subject based topics involve the study of the democratic governance system and the judicial system in such a democratic social structure and finally the significance of a multicultural and multi-religious society such as that of the United Kingdom and the necessity to foster social cohesion which has to be emphasised upon consistently by the schools within the UK. The study concentration also could be found on the communication of the existing values and norms of the society through the educational framework to the students.

It is thus necessary to focus on the provisioning of the greatest extent of study exposure to students regarding the cultural and religious dimensions and dynamics of the existing society. The most extensive effort has to be expended towards providing the first hand experiences to the learning children about the religious pluralism which now exists within the UK based social structure. Only through such experiences, the impressionable minds of the children could be sensitised towards the necessity to foster the attitude of coexistence and tolerance.

In this respect, the focus of promotional activities regarding the particularities of the overall concept of pluralism could be outlined to be concentrated on two historical developments of the overall social attitudes in the 17th and 18th century respectively. These could be identified to be the direct outcomes of the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Emancipation and these changes in the social attitudes outlined the general shift of the human perception towards individual reasoning based independent thought process and shedding of the influence of the previously dominant religious authorities. These changes also reinforced the prospects of the development of the modern democratic principles within the governing systems. Such developments could be juxtaposed with the research observations of Neal (2016) which state that certain measure of compartmentalisation could be in existence at the individual levels of the society at any point of time. This compartmentalisation is reflective of the individual awareness of the adverse effects of personal religious beliefs could be imparted on the overall social issues whenever such beliefs are displayed in the public sphere.

Thus, Felderhof (2016) has observed that social justice has to gain the prominence over those of the religious belief mechanisms and the right to express such religious practices. Tolerance and liberalism could be reasonably curtailed when the religious beliefs, in existence at any point of time and at any particular society, could become the sources of considerable social tensions and tribulations and could thus not be able to be integrated with the fundamental values of the society in general. Furthermore, the elements of inclusiveness could be utilised to integrate religious beliefs even within the fold of predominantly secular societies. This could be performed through promotion of the religious and the non-religious members of any society to participate in the formulation of public policies where the advantage could be negated to either of the groups and social justice could prevail. From this perspective, the faith schools could be considered to be effective in preparation of the child learners in the most successful and efficacious manner through providing the discourse of any particular religion which could be a direct participatory element in the general process of social progression in this respect. The ultimate objective could only be the fostering of social cohesion.

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Conclusion

At the conclusive stage, it has to be acknowledged that the preceding study has evaluated the differential constituents of any modern, truly democratic society which could foster inclusion and social cohesion. However, the crux of the subsequent arguments have been on the debate whether the expansion of the presence and social roles of the faith schools at the United Kingdom could be considered to be a positive element for the development of a primarily secular social structure. In this respect, the focus of the debate has been on the question whether the parents of British children should increasingly prefer faith schools to be the institutions where their children could receive education. The debate has considered differing points such as the applicability of the notion of impartation of the religious ethos, which could not be in contravention of the right of the children to develop autonomous thinking capabilities, on their children and the necessity to develop rational autonomy within the faith school based educational environment. The consideration of the elements of pluralism and the principles of social co-existence and tolerance has also been juxtaposed with that of the corrosive effects of religious indoctrination which could be a major obstacle for the recipients of such religious education to mend their thinking processes toward development of the autonomous reasoning capacities by themselves, which could be considered to be the infringement of the children’s right of education.

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