The Online Library of Liberty

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• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Economics and Ideology: Aspects of the Post-ricardian Literature
• I: Political Economy
• The Classical Model of Political Economy
• Modernization, Ideology, and Economic Freedom
• Individualism Vs. Collectivism?
• The Industrial Revolution and Literacy
• Parliamentary Enclosure and Uprooted Labor
• Smith's Critique of Monopoly
• Ricardo and the “dual Development”
• Ricardo On Money
• Inflation and Political Crisis: Germany
• Inflation and Unemployment
• Government and Inflation: the Mccracken Report
• II: Concepts of Liberty
• Liberty and Its Components
• Is the Right to Freedom Vacuuous?
• Liberty, Slavery, and Utilitarianism
• Individualism, Freedom, and Society
• Liberty and Habeas Corpus
• Should Britain Have a Bill of Rights?
• Locke, Women, and Freedom
• Locke, Women, Freedom, and Individualism
• Locke, Property, and Individualism
• Children, Freedom, and Individualism
• Liberty and Mental Illness
• Sismondi and Liberty
• Mill: On Liberty
• Mill, Freedom, and Happiness
• Freedom of Speech and Moral Development
• Freedom In Kant, Hegel, and Marx
• Marx, Freedom, and Property
• Neoconservatives, Liberty, and Equality
• Freedom: the Politics of Justice and Existence
• Liberty and the American Revolution
• American Libertarians
• III: Economics and Public Policy
• How Economics Influences Political Theory
• Why Democracies Choose Deficits
• Inflation and the Welfare State
• Monetarism and the Depression
• Asian Monetary History: Gold & Silver
• Specie Money Vs. Antibullionists
• Inflation Effects On Capital
• Consumption of Public Health Services
• Factory Regulation and Vested Interests
• Poverty Programs and Government
• The Costs of Regulating Market Information
• Rent Regulation
• Engels On Economics
• IV: Social Analysis
• The Depoliticization of Society
• Is Philosophy Politically Subversive?
• Plato's Republic As a Political Dystopia
• Cicero and Modern Political Philosophy
• The Roman Jurist Gaius and Social Thought
• The Myth of Social Hierarchy
• Contract and Political Thought
• Private Vs. Public: the Domain of Freedom
• Montaigne and the Value of Tolerance
• Commerce, Utility, Character, and Republicanism
• Quintin Skinner and Western Political Thought
• Public Choice
• Editorial Board
• Contents of Vol. 33 No. 2
• Contents of Vol. 33 No. 3

Children, Freedom, and Individualism

Kenneth Henley

• Florida International University

“Children and the Individualism of Mill and Nozick.” The Personalist 59 (October 1978): 415–419.

Defining the status of children is a major stumbling block for social systems based on free choice. How does one foster independent judgment on the part of the child? And, to what extent can the choices of the young be termed “free” or “independent?”

Utopian religious communities, like those of the Amish or Shakers, pose special problems in the thorny area of the child's right to choose. Freedom-oriented thinkers value the flourishing of these diverse “experiments of living.” Yet, such groups survive through the strict isolation of all members, including children, from the influences of the larger, pluralistic society. How does one safeguard the child's right to choose his own values, if the social (and particularly educational) setting shields him from alternative ways of living?

John Stuart Mill's responded to this dilemma by exempting children of Utopian communities from compulsory public education, while, at the same time, providing for compulsory state examinations, for which parents would have to prepare their children. The imposition of uniform standards of education upon nonpluralistic groups posed no problems for Mill, since his system provides no room for social experiments which seek coerced adherence to illiberal principles.

A prominent libertarian thinker of our own day, Robert Nozick, does recognize the right of utopian communities to seek intellectual isolation. In his Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Nozick admits that such isolation would limit the child's freedom to know and to choose. However, this difficulty is put aside to be dealt with at a later time.

According to Prof. Henley, both Mill and Nozick ignore the basic question of how socialization effects the person's ability to choose. Every human beingis born as a helpless infant in a society which molds him to have desires appropriate to his place in the community. Education within a certain community exercises profound influence upon the person's character and disposition. The more closed the community, the more profound the influence exercised. Even when presented with a full range of alternatives, a person thus formed would be disposed to make a certain limited number of choices. An Amish girl, raised with the view of women's radical subordination to men, would most likely regard news of her equal rights in the larger society as the erroneous notions of people “out there.”

In Prof. Henley's mind, the basic flaw of the individualist position is its blindness to man's social nature. Individualism presupposes a kind of Cartesian consciousness which freely expresses its preferences—unswayed by ingrained social values. This view arises from a fictitious notion of human development.

How then does the individualist reconcile the survival of nonpluralist groups with the child's need for early exposure to alternate values before the community closes his mind to them? To this dilemma, Prof. Henley proposes an admittedly imperfect solution. In Henley's view, the state would have to require pluralistic schools (public or private) whose faculties and student bodies would reflect the diversity of the larger society. In the child of the closed community, such an environment would foster an openness to the possibility of alternatives, while other children could benefit from contact with the utopian child. Socialization in the closed community would, of course, continue but it would be balanced to some extent by these pluralistic contacts.

To implement this solution and to expand the child's ability to choose, more would be needed than Nozick's minimal state or Mill's limited state. Nevertheless, this compromise is necessary in Henley's view, if the individualist is to reconcile freedom of choice (which he values) with the facts of human sociality (which he often ignores).