ABSTRACT
Educational freedom—recognized by international law as a fundamental human right—is consistent with rival social policies, those seeking to promote autonomous development of individuals as well as those concerned about the perpetuation of freely chosen communities within civil society. What freedom cannot be reconciled with is a state monopoly on the formation of the loyalties of youth and their perspective on how and to what ends to live their lives. Totalitarian regimes seek to achieve such a monopoly (see Glenn, 1995a); but pluralistic democracies recognize that no freedom is more basic than that of seeking to shape the beliefs and convictions of one’s children.
