The Dilemma of Individual Autonomy Versus Choosing Rightly

Abstract

Many important goals or values of education are tokens of either one of these two meta-goals-values: raising our children to be autonomous, or raising them to choose rightly. Thus, the conflicts between many educational goals-values are tokens of the meta-conflict between these two, and the questions of priority that such conflicts invite are tokens of the meta-question of the priority between these two. Still, the discussion of this question is scarce. When engaged, it soon leads to an impasse, since priority cannot be meta-contextually assigned to either one of the two goals-values in question. Hope for progress seems to lie in our willingness to talk honestly about it all.