All during the campaign, and for most of my life, I've heard a lot of talk about liberals and conservatives. I always considered myself a liberal but because of my alignment on certain issues. Pro-choice,pacifistic , green in thought if not in deed. I tended to disagree with conservatives on more things than not. But this year I tried to think a little more deeply. What did it really mean to be liberal? conservative?
Political liberalism strives for reform through laws and policies. Political conservatism prefers slow change and respect for tradition. Economic liberalism is market driven, there should be no or little government intervention. Liberalism got it's name in the first place that individual liberty is paramount. So, in this country we are really all liberals. But we are also all conservatives because our tradition is one that places high value on personal liberty. There was a bigger difference at the time of the revolution obviously. The liberals were the people who wanted self rule and the conservatives were the royalists.
In more recent history conservatives were supposed to be the people who wanted less government and as much individual freedom as a community could tolerate. Liberals were the people who stove to redress historical and economic inequites through government intervention. Now let's apply these ideas to Sudbury.
Individual freedom is paramount in a sudbury school (liberal) and the laws should be as few as possible(conservative). Rules change in response to situations and the needs of the students there at any one time but their purpose is to maintian a community where people are free to pursue their interests unmolested. The laws are not in place to improve the circumstances of any one group.
I don't know where I'm going with this. My original idea was to show that the Sudbury philosophy is more conservative in nature but seems to have been founded by a bunch of liberals but now I can't tell the difference. It's liberal in the fact that it's a radical departure from conventional forms of education but conservative in maintaining its own traditions.
The problem is differentiating between political and philosophical definitions of liberalism and conservatism. That is a job far beyond this little egghead.
4 comments:
I think you're exactly right--there are two different definitions of the words liberal and conservative--a political definition and a philosophical one. I think that's why the political discourse in this country is so muddled.
I have been read a fair amount on the differences between "conservative" and "liberal." There are several things that seem to be important about what cognitive scientists have found about the differences.
First of all, the ways we commonly talk about them do not reflect the real differences. The way the two categories are described gives the impression that they can be neatly lined up with everyone in nice simple row from one extreme to the other. This has nothing to do with reality, the truth is that people are far more complex and every single issue should be considered a dimension thus resulting in a political space in so many higher dimensions that even a mathematician would be confused.
The kernel of truth in the dichotomy is that the linear dimensionality seems to be a reflection of two basic moral orientations that guide how we think about particular issues. The basic (over-simplified) way of explaining it is as a manifestation of the state-as-family metaphor. For strictly liberal thinkers they take the nurturing family as a guide to deciding how the state should relate to its citizens. Whereas the strictly conservative thinkers would take the authoritarian family as a guide.
These are deep, unconscious logical structures that guide political thought and the other primary lesson is to understand that in dealing with the complexity of real life we need both kinds of moral thinking. The truth is that just like a parent the state needs to adjust its behavior according to the circumstances. Sometimes more authoritarian measures are necessary to protect citizens and sometimes more nurturing measures are necessary to encourage and empower them.
In my exploration of the ideas behind democratic education I found that there are important insights to be gained from looking at the moral logic. Here's a link to the page where that exploration ended up:
Moral Path of Curriculum
Also, you can read about the analysis of the differences in George Lakoff's book Moral Politics. Jonathan Haidt has also extended the analysis in an important direction to broaden the model of moral thinking that informs conservative thought, though I can't remember his book off hand. Here's his TED talk:
Jonathan Haidt
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Enjoy,
Don Berg
Site: http://www.teach-kids-attitude-1st.com
Blog: blog.Attitutor.com
Hey don,
thanks so much for your thoughtful comment. And congrats- you just outeggheaded the egghead!!
Thanks, I think.
Did I just earn a membership in the club?
Do you periodically award a prize for the most brainiacal egghead? :)
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