Session Information
Session 8B, Problems of Moral Education (Part 2)
Papers
Time:
2005-09-09
11:00-12:30
Room:
ENG
Chair:
Bo Dahlin
Contribution
The right of parents "to ensure their children the religious and moral education in accordance with their own religious and philosophical convictions" (European Convention on Human Rights, 1950, Protocol to the Convention, Article 2) is granted to parents as one of their basic human rights. The recognition of this right means that the State has a corresponding duty to let parents educate their children in such a way. Consequently, the State is forbidden to pursue an aim of indoctrination in public schools because indoctrination is considered to not respect parents' religious and philosophical convictions (Digest of Strasbourg Case - Law relating to the European Convention on Human Rights 1985, pp. 810-811). But in the context of the European Convention on Human Rights it is not evident why indoctrination is forbidden. It is clear, of course, that it is forbidden because it is seen as something bad. For, if it was not understood as something bad, there would be no need to forbid it. But the question remains: Is it forbidden because it is bad in itself or because it is bad only as a violation of the parents' right to educate their children in conformity with their own religious or philosophical convictions in public schools? If it was forbidden because it is bad in itself, then we would expect it to be forbidden also in private schools and at home as well. Since indoctrination is not explicitly forbidden there, it might make someone believe that it is forbidden because it is opposite to the previously mentioned parents' right. If so, then it seems that we should conclude either that indoctrination is something good when the indoctrinators are parents or teachers in private schools who indoctrinate children in accordance with their parents' religious or philosophical convictions, or that indoctrination in such cases is not possible. If we understand indoctrination in the sense which it has in predominant philosophical theories of indoctrination (Snook, Reboul), then both conclusions are false. Does this mean that parents have a legal right to indoctrinate their children? The answer to this question depends on how one understands education in accordance with parents' religious or philosophical convictions. For those who see such a form of education as distinct from indoctrination (understood as something bad), the answer is negative. And the opposite, for those who see in it, or at least in some forms of it, nothing other than indoctrination, the answer is affirmative. If the second opinion is correct, then parents have a legal right that they should not have, or, in other words, they have a legal right to do something that they morally ought not to do.
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