A commentary on Laura Purdy's In Their Best Interest?

Abstract

Introduction:  Laura Purdy's main purpose in writing In Their Best Interest, she tells us, was to make the case - or a case, in any event - against equal rights for children. In the process, she devotes considerable attention to making a case for universal, compulsory education. From there it is only a short step to advocating that public schools shoulder the burden of providing children with moral education. She does not trust parents to provide the moral bearings children need to function successfully in a complex world. She does not think that children can learn enough from their own experience and from their own mistakes to keep them from getting over their heads in trouble. She therefore contends that the public schools make up for the gap between what parents provide in the way of moral counsel and what the children need. She sees this as a middle path between libertarianism and protectionism, between equal rights and no rights, between allowing children to learn from their own experience and indoctrination. In exercising their rights, children should be given "monitored aid," which is to say "supervised practice in making decisions, starting with relatively small matters and moving on gradually to more significant ones" (p. 161). Children taking this route are thereby provided with progressively more responsibility before they are expected to deal with the structurelessness of the adult world" (Idem). Hence, her argument that universal, compulsory education is our best bet for making sure that everybody is exposed to the "perspectives, knowledge, skills and strategies necessary for dealing with values" (p. 157).