ABSTRACT
Some democratic societies, notably Denmark, have formulated education policies according to a basic constitutional principle of individual liberty. Alternatively, the freedom of British citizens to take educational initiatives is subject to the limitation mentioned in the previous chapter, that they should provide ‘efficient instruction and training’ and avoid ‘unreasonable public expenditure’. In the last chapter I suggested the need for vigilance about the interpretation of those reservations by governments and their agencies. Nevertheless, it will seem reasonable to most people that individual freedoms have their price, that the choices parents make should be required to meet certain standards consistent with the fundamental right of the child to education. The arguments presented in this book do not challenge that view. In fact they support the interconnected principles that educational rights require a robust defence but that those rights must be demonstrably about the child’s education and, moreover, that they should accommodate the child’s developing responses to it. However, I believe that the previous chapter identifies the need for a tolerant, impartial means of balancing these different requirements. Concepts like ‘efficiency’ are not value-neutral; they are related internally to philosophical judgments concerning the aims of education, whether these are acknowledged explicitly or not. The present chapter is concerned with this concept of ‘efficiency’ as it has been applied in education and examines the cogency of some definitions that have been elevated to the status of articles of faith by successive governments.
