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Charles Ives
Should Muslim headscarves be banned in
French schools?
d i anne g e re luk
Roehampton University, UK

ab st rac t
The recent ban of ‘conspicuous’ religious symbols in French
state schools has
received international attention, especially the uncertainty of
whether Muslims
will comply with the ban. The issue, however, raises a number
of philosophical
dilemmas regarding toleration in a liberal democracy, the notion
of a ‘neutral’
public space in state schools and the protection of girls’ rights
in traditional
communities. I examine each issue accordingly and argue that
the French state is
unjustified in banning religious symbols.
keyword s autonomy, individual rights, neutrality, pluralism,
religion,
toleration
i nt roduc t i on
Th e re c e nt F re nc h government’s ban of all conspicuous
religious
symbols in French state schools has refuelled a contentious
debate about
religion and its place in schools. The justification for the ban is
the claim that
there should be a strict separation between church and state,
known in French
as laïcité. The legislation applies to the restriction of all
religious symbols in
the public sector. This article focuses on the ramifications it has
on children
and schools, and in particular, the issue of Muslim headscarves

(the hijab).
While the legislation has similar ramifications for other faiths,
national and
international debate has centred on the Islamic faith.
Defenders of the ban claim the following: France has
historically had a strict
separation of church and state, briefly following the French
Revolution, and
subsequently reflected in legislation in 1905. In recent years
this legislation has
been applied when a number of Muslim girls were expelled for
wearing the
[ 2 5 9 ]
Theory and Research in Education
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hijab in 1989 and during various periods in the 1990s.
Defenders point to a
policy of neutrality inside the boundaries of the school. The
protection of
individual rights plays out in the context of Muslim practices.
Muslim girls
may be vulnerable as members of a hierarchical tradition and

may thus
warrant certain protection, provided by the state, to ensure their
capacity to
become free and equal persons. Some initial surveys indicate
that close to 50
per cent of Muslim women are in favour of the prohibition,
which raises
suspicion that at least some Muslim women may see the state as
an ally in
their pursuit of gender equality (Economist, 2004).
However, reservations about the legislation abound. The
implementation of
laïcité is often applied in the prohibition of schools providing
religious instruc-
tion. Historically, laïcité did not apply to individuals wearing
religious symbols
to schools. Only in 1937 was a law put in place that prohibited
the wearing
of ostentatious religious symbols (Gutmann, 1996). Even so, the
law has thus
far only extended to ‘conspicuous’ religious symbols such as
the hijab, with
little consensus on other forms of religious symbols, such as
small crucifixes
or yarmulkes. Second, the nature of the increasing pluralist
society in France
does not necessarily warrant the curtailment of other
individuals’ rights. In a
pluralist society, reasonable doctrines should be allowed under
the principle
of toleration. Finally, the practice of wearing headscarves
should not auto-
matically assume that Muslim girls’ autonomy will be
compromised. One of
the rationales given for wearing headscarves is to protect girls

from sexual
harassment and, more generally, having girls viewed as sexual
objects. Further-
more, some, especially older, girls are capable of making
judgements about
these matters for themselves, so that the law is a restriction of
their freedom.
These issues question several philosophical dilemmas regarding
toleration
in a pluralist society (Rawls, 1993, 2001), special protection for
minority groups
through collective rights (Kymlicka, 1989, 1995) and concerns
about internal
practices in faith groups that may inhibit vulnerable members
(Moller-Okin,
1999; Gutmann, 2002). I argue that France has taken an
unreasonable stance
and is unwarranted in prohibiting girls from wearing
headscarves. I will address
these concerns accordingly.
tole rat i on i n a p lural i st s oc i ety
One question is whether laïcité infringes on individual rights to
freedom of
association and freedom of religion. Let one assume that
banning adults from
wearing religious symbols in public institutions is an
infringement of basic
human rights. The specific enforcement of laïcité on children
and their atten-
dance in state schools raises three points for consideration:
first, whether the
state is justified in banning religious symbols to protect
children’s future

Theory and Research in Education 3 (3 )
[ 2 6 0 ]
autonomy; second, whether parents have the right to raise their
children in a
particular way; and third, whether a child’s future autonomy
requires exposure
to different ways of life. Each point calls into question the
limits of tolera-
tion, the balance of parents’ rights to raise their children and
the state’s obli-
gation to protect children, and children’s capacity to develop
informed
judgements about how they wish to lead their life.
Liberal political theorists are not of one mind concerning the
limits of
toleration in a pluralist society. John Rawls (1993: 59), for
instance, does not
provide clear criteria in distinguishing what is reasonable and
unreasonable,
and instead remains fairly and purposefully ambivalent on the
matter.
Conversely, he contends that states should heed caution before
restraining
doctrines that may be unreasonable, ‘otherwise our account runs
the danger
of being arbitrary and exclusive’ (1993: 59). Doctrines,

according to Rawls,
may be unreasonable in two ways: (1) there is ‘a present or
foreseeable threat
of serious injury, political, economic, and moral, or even of the
destruction
of the state’ (1993: 354); and, (2) that the particular doctrine
‘proposes to use
the public’s political power – a power in which all citizens have
an equal share
– forcibly to impose a view affecting constitutional essential
about which
many citizens as reasonable persons . . . are bound to differ
uncompromisingly’
(Rawls, 2001: 183). In neither case would the state suggest that
Islam poses a
serious threat to the state, nor that they are trying to impose a
view forcibly
on other citizens.
Some people may argue that the terrorist attacks of September
11th 2001
in the USA reflect the Islamic faith and thus pose a serious
threat to the state.
But of course, Islam itself is, like all religions, diverse; taking
the actions of
fundamentalist Islamic organizations such as the Taliban as
exemplifying the
Islamic faith would be similar to suggesting that the IRA
exemplifies Catholi-
cism. Terrorist actions are obviously not to be condoned nor
ignored. Stating
that Islam is ‘unreasonable’ is a burdensome position to take –
one that has the
requisite consequence of banning a group – not simply the
certain practices
that we deem unacceptable.

Another interpretation of Rawls, however, might suggest that
the case is
not so clear-cut.While Rawls’ definition of reasonable doctrines
offers a wide
scope of permissible doctrines, he does have a stronger
conception when he
guarantees individuals’ primary rights through the political
conception of the
person.Rawls posits three ‘fundamental intuitive ideas’ as the
basis of his entire
theory, particularly the crucial idea of citizens being free and
equal persons
possessed of the capacity to develop and exercise a conception
of the good
(Rawls, 1993: 178). Developing one’s capacities to make
informed judgements
about how to lead one’s life is a fundamental concept in liberal
aims of
education. If the French state believed that either the exposure
of symbols in
Gereluk: Should Muslim headscarves be banned?
[ 2 6 1 ]
schools would compromise children’s future autonomy, or
children who wore
the religious symbols were being compromised in their ability
to develop

and exercise their capacity for a conception of the good, the ban
might be
justified.
If we consider Rawls’ criteria for the reasonableness of
doctrines, banning
religious symbols in state schools is not justified. State
intrusion onto children’s
and families’ ways of life through the restriction of religious
symbols goes
beyond the parameters of protecting the state from unreasonable
doctrines.
The issue of the state’s role in protecting children’s primary
interests,
however, may be more contentious. If there is a concern that
children’s
primary interests may be compromised by their upbringing, then
the state may
be justified in restricting various religious traditions, as a way
of allowing
children to exercise and develop a capacity for a conception of
the good. If,
for instance, the French state was particularly concerned about
girls being
forced to wear a hijab by their parents, the state may be
concerned that those
girls may be compromised in their ability to make informed
judgements about
how they wish to lead their life.
Yet, according to Muslim tradition, wearing the hijab is a
voluntary act of
religious observance. Further, unlike the crucifix, which is
generally thought
of as a religious symbol, the hijab is often considered to be an

integral part of
the Islamic way of life (similar to the yarmulke in Orthodox
Judaism). If the
state believes that the hijab is a symbol of oppression for
women, the state has
not explicitly used this argument to support the ban. The
religious doctrines
in question – that of Christian, Judaism and Islam – do not
prima facie fall
under the liberal notion of an unreasonable doctrine. It is the
burden of the
state to demonstrate otherwise, which it has failed to do.
While the ‘unreasonable doctrine’ argument does not provide
the French
state with a justification to ban religious symbols, the
suggestion that it is
appropriately balancing the rights of parents to raise their
children in a
particular way with that of the state’s obligation to guarantee
children’s future
autonomy may have more promise. The Yoder and Mozert cases
exemplify how
this tension is played out between state protection and parents’
wishes to limit
their children’s exposure to different ways of living, which I do
not wish to
reiterate here (see Peshkin, 1986; Reich, 2002). I believe that
this is not the
issue in this case because what is happening is not a case of the
parents restrict-
ing children’s exposure to different ways of living, but of the
state’s restric-
tion on exposure of religious symbols in public institutions. I
do, however,
wish to focus on the potential damage that this ban could have

on children’s
future autonomy.
I will start with the assumption that one of the aims of a liberal
education
is to facilitate a child’s capacity to develop and exercise a
conception of the
[ 2 6 2 ]
good; simply put, to develop children’s future ability to make
informed
decisions about how they wish to lead their lives.1 Given that
children will
learn and adopt many of the customs and traditions of their
parents, and their
parents’ local communities, children will be inducted into a
particular way of
life prior to even entering school. This induction into a
particular community
is not necessarily bad, and in many ways, provides children
with their parents’
values and customs that may be inherently important to them
both in the
present and in the future. However, schools provide a unique
opportunity to
expose children to different ways of living that may broaden the
child’s experi-

ences from the familial setting to the broader public sphere.
Meira Levinson
(1999: 62, 144) aptly points out that schools provide a public
space in which
children can be distanced from the commitments and values to
which they
are accustomed both at home and in their community. In one
way, schools
provide a space in which children can begin to realize the
commitments of
which they are a part; in another way, they can be exposed to
different back-
grounds and values brought by other children to the school.
Trying to negate
children’s different religious backgrounds at school
compromises this ideal
environment in which children can develop their capacity for
autonomy.
This leads to a second concern. If the school maintains its
‘neutral’ status2
as a secular institution, parents may send their children to
private schools.
Harry Brighouse (2005) conjectures this in the context of
contrasting US and
UK stances of faith schooling. The first potential concern is
similar to
Levinson’s in that schools provide a way in which to expose
children to differ-
ent ways of life by being around children who come from
different com-
munities and subject to different doctrines. The second concern
is that parents
who decide to send their children to private schools will create
more homog-
enous settings in both public and private institutions; children

who attend
secular schools may not have opportunities to be around other
children who
hold religious views; conversely, children who attend private
faith schools will
not be exposed to children who may be atheist or agnostic.
However, it is
conceivable that parents who hold strong religious beliefs may
still choose to
send their children to state schools so long as schools provide
some minimal
concessions to respect their faith. However, forced to make a
decision of
severely compromising their own faith, parents may choose a
private school
and create further divisions between them and the public culture
of that
society (Brighouse, 2005). This is not a far-fetched conjecture.
In the UK, for
instance, Muslim parents who cannot find single-sex schools for
their ado-
lescent girls are often tempted to send them back to Pakistan
during this
period of their life (Halstead, 1993). Similarly, in the USA,
growing numbers
of fundamentalist Christians segregate themselves from
mainstream society by
establishing their own physical communities and schools.
Policies that push
[ 2 6 3 ]

religious parents into private schools may limit schools’ ability
to develop
children’s future autonomy.
Now this may be less of a concern from the point of view of the
French
government. As it stands at present, there is currently one
Muslim private
school that was established in 2003 in Lille called Lycée
Averroes (Michaud,
2003). However, the main option for Muslims who wish to leave
the secular
state system is to enroll their children in Ecoles Confessionel,
which are most
often Catholic private schools. In their eyes, it is a lesser evil: a
school that
believes in a higher Being, rather than the total exclusion of
religion in state
schools.
In all three cases, the French state does not have a strong
position to justify
the ban. I acknowledge that this is not a position that the French
government
has used, so I now turn to the issue of neutrality and the
protection of the
secular state in France.
ne ut ral i ty and p rote c t i ng th e f re nc h way of l i f e
While the diversity argument does not bode well for justifying
the ban of

religious symbols in state schools, the idea of neutrality might
support it.
Unlike the USA,where the separation of church and state is
based on a notion
of neutrality of equal inclusion – that meaning, all conceptions
of the good
are accommodated in schools (at least in theory) – the French
state bases its
notion of neutrality on equal exclusion. This means that
students and teachers
are to shed their private conceptions once they enter the school
as public
equals (for a more comprehensive and comparative account of
the American
and French models, see Levinson, 1999: 116–30; Judge, 2004).
The principle
behind the notion of ‘equal exclusion’ is that a ‘secular and
national ideal is
the very substance of the Republican schools and the foundation
of its duty
of civic education’ (Levinson, 1999: 124). The principles of
neutrality date
back to the French Revolution and the subsequent breaking up
of the clerical
monopoly on education; in its stead the newly formed secular
Republic
wished to create an ideal of equal citizenship under the ideal of
egalité. The
hope was that people would unite under a defined national
character within
the public space of France.
However, assuming a notion of equal exclusion by detaching
one’s private
conceptions within public institutions is not actually what
occurs for all. By

embracing a civic secular tradition over religious conceptions,
the state creates
a default non-neutrality of secularism. The notion of neutrality
is defeated in
its acceptance of secularism over other conceptions of the good.
Further, the
ideal of equal exclusion fits conveniently with Christian ideals,
unlike the
Jewish or Islamic faiths. For instance, holidays coincide with
Christian
[ 2 6 4 ]
holidays, and individuals from the Christian faith do not have a
conflict on
the day of their worship being on Sundays. It is much easier for
Christians to
uphold their faith without seriously compromising their beliefs
than it is for
non-Christians. It is easy for the French state to enforce a
supposed ‘neutral’
state education system, which also falls alongside Christian
calendar practices.
Those who follow non-Christian faiths may be placed in more
compromis-
ing positions – challenging their practices and their faith.
There also seems to be an undertone of distrust of Islamic

traditions.Under
the proviso of neutrality, state schools have been strict in
enforcing the ban of
the hijab. Yet, bans of small crucifixes and small yarmulkes are
inconsistently
enforced, with many state schools turning a blind eye to similar
religious
symbols. This raises a worrisome question of why some
religious symbols are
not being prohibited, while other religious symbols are being
strictly banned.
One possibility is that the increase of Muslim immigrants to
France creates
a concern about protecting the secular (and Christian) French
way of life.
Approximately 5 million Muslims currently live in France. The
ban on
religious symbols was rarely enforced until 1989, when the
headmaster of a
school barred girls who wore the hijab from entering. The girls
would be
permitted to wear a scarf that covered their head and neck, but
not the face,
in the school ground, but would be required to take it off when
they entered
the school. After three months of standoff, the girls gave in, and
followed the
terms laid down by the school of when they could wear the
hijab.
This particular incident raised the profile of a larger national
debate over
the right to express their private conceptions in the public
sphere. The second
incidence occurred in 1993, when four girls were banned from

wearing the
hijab. This time, however, as a sign of support, 700 girls began
wearing the
hijab support that peaked with 2000 girls wearing the hijab
(Levinson, 1999:
126). During the autumn term of 1994, 68 girls were suspended
from school
for wearing the hijab.
A change of policy in the spring of 1995 from the Conseil
d’État rescinded
its decision to ban the hijab, and stated that the hijab was not
necessarily an
ostentatious religious symbol. The issue escalated up until the
latest legislation
made in February 2004, whereby a strict enforcement of laïcité
in the public
sector is now in force.
Unlike the issue of wearing the hijab in schools, such volatility
has not
erupted in the case of children from other faiths. It leads one to
speculate why
there is such a strict policy on the ban of hijab whereas other
religions have
faced lesser enforcement. Whether the events of September 11th
have influ-
enced other countries’ nervousness about Muslims is difficult to
ascertain, yet
have the events of September 11th been a catalyst for
legislation such as laïcité,
toward less toleration, in the hopes of preserving democracy?
The USA, for

[ 2 6 5 ]
instance, has introduced much more invasive legislation that
breaches the
privacy of individuals in the name of security. Why should not
one consider
that the French legislation of laïcité is a form of legislation that
attempts to
secure the civic republican sentiment in France?
We see similar issues arising in The Netherlands, which
previously had very
generous immigration policies.Yet, the large number of
Muslims entering the
country has raised concern about whether such immigration
patterns could
drastically change the progressive way of Dutch life. The rise in
popularity of
Fortuyn, a reactionary candidate for the Dutch elections (who
was subse-
quently assassinated prior to the election), was in part due to his
strong anti-
immigration policies (particularly anti-Islamic immigrants) and
a preservation
of the Dutch way of life.
The immigration of Muslims to France (and to The Netherlands)
raises an
important issue about whether groups have a fundamental right
to protect

their collective identity – in this case the French way of life.
Kymlicka (1989)
argues that individuals have a primary right to have access to
cultural member-
ship. Specifically,
(1) that cultural membership has a more important status in
liberal thought than is
explicitly recognized – that is, that the individuals who are an
unquestionable part of
the liberal moral ontology are viewed as individual members of
a particular cultural
community, for whom cultural membership is an important
good; and
(2) that members of minority cultural communities may face
particular kinds of dis-
advantages with respect to the good of cultural membership,
disadvantages whose
rectification requires and justifies the provision of minority
rights. (1989: 162)
Kymlicka suggests that to ensure this, external protection for
cultural com-
munities is acceptable in order that they can be sustained and
fostered within
the larger plural society.
Does Kymlicka’s argument hold in the case of France and the
French way
of life? Does the constraint of banning all religious symbols
preserve the
French civic republican nature of the public sphere? On the one
hand,
preserving the French way of life, through both the secular
public sphere and

the French culture, may warrant certain constraints to uphold
that way of life.
On the other hand, the Muslim community is not in the
majority, and
constraining their right to association of religion may curtail
their own
cultural rights.
There is a further, and difficult, question concerning what
constitutes the
‘French’ way of life. Any time we begin to try to label or
identify an indi-
vidual or a group of people by certain criteria of what it means
to be ‘black’,
‘woman’, ‘Chinese’, ‘American’, ‘English’, and so forth, we
begin to make
judgements or distinctions, overgeneralize or label – all of
which put indi-
viduals within or beyond the boundaries of that particular
identity (Gutmann,
[ 2 6 6 ]
2002). At times, individuals find strength in belonging to a
particular group,
and at others, are hostile at being categorically and, perhaps
unwillingly,
lumped into a group. In trying to define a group we, ‘tend to

treat cultural
groups as monoliths – pay[ing] more attention to differences
between and
among groups than to differences within them’ (Moller-Okin,
1999: 12).
Defining what is meant by being French creates similar
dilemmas and tensions.
Does being French mean drinking wine and eating pâté? Is it
determined by
skin colour, or by linguistic competence? Is it defined by
location? I am not
trying to be facetious here, but am trying to make the point that
it is not clear
that there are definitive criteria for what constitutes a French
person, and
setting up such criteria leads us along a dubious path.
It is not within the scope of this article to settle this dilemma.
To do so
would require investigation of whether the Muslim community
has threat-
ened the French way of life either through the actual numbers of
Muslims
living in France, or through changing the nature of public policy
in the
country. However, if I were to guess, I would think that the
French are threat-
ened at present neither by a growing Muslim community, nor by
their influ-
ence on public policies in the country to a degree that would
warrant
constraining external members’ rights in order to protect a
collective minority.
Unless stronger empirical evidence suggests that religious
groups (and

particularly the Islamic faith,which seems to be receiving the
strictest enforce-
ment) are threatening the French way of life, the argument of
collective rights
does not hold much sway. In any case, I am not convinced that
the ‘traditional’
French way of life (as is stereotyped), should be an ossified
construct, but
rather may evolve and include non-Christian ways of living.
While preserving the French way of life does not appear to be a
strong
defence of laïcité, protecting individual rights, and especially
children’s rights
offers the strongest argument for enforcing laïcité. I turn to the
issue of protect-
ing individual rights in this final section.
i nte rnal fa i th p rac t i c e s and c h i l dre n ’s r i g h t s
One of the strongest arguments for constraining certain internal
faith prac-
tices is that of protecting individual basic rights. One apparent
reason for this
constraint is that basic fundamental rights of an individual are
arguably necess-
ary for a person’s wellbeing. Without basic fundamental rights
individuals are
significantly constrained in their ability to lead the life of their
own choosing.
If individuals are denied access to schooling, maltreated,
oppressed or unable
to voice their opinions and concerns, they have little hope of
being able to
change the circumstances of which they are a part. In Is
Multiculturalism Bad

for Women? Susan Moller-Okin (1999) argues that whereas
advocates of group
[ 2 6 7 ]
rights focus on protecting practices and ideologies within the
public sphere,
these protections spill over to shield non-innocent practices
within the private
sphere. By accepting the practices of certain groups as simply a
part of their
tradition or belief system, we may abandon those who are
vulnerable (usually
women and children) within the entrenched roles of power in an
established
hierarchical community or tradition.
This has particular resonance in the case of the hijab. The
concern is that
dominant members of a community may hold considerable and
undue pressure
over vulnerable members of a community – in this case,women
and, in particu-
lar, girls. The Islamic faith attracts warranted suspicion with
respect to practices
directed at women and girls. From an outsiders’ perspective, the
hijab may be
seen as a form of oppression; Muslim girls being unable to

choose whether
they wish to cover their heads. We can point to numerous
narratives to illus-
trate this concern. In Azar Nafisi’s (2004) account of the
oppression of women
in Tehran where she taught as an English lecturer after the early
days of the
Iranian revolution, she recounts how the hijab stood as more
than a voluntary
symbol of the Islamic faith prior to the revolution, but had
evolved into a
symbol of oppression and suppression of women’s thoughts and
actions. Jan
Goodwin’s (1994) research into the lives of Islamic women in
10 Islamic
countries tells of similar human rights abuses including physical
and mental
abuse, inability to own property, inability to receive education
or to work and
other atrocities that have been imposed on Islamic women and
children.Unfair
treatment, exploitation and violation of basic human rights of
Islamic women
and children strike at the core of basic fundamental principles
of equality and
liberty.
From more fundamentalist Islamic perspectives, the hijab is not
a form of
oppression, but is a vital component of being an Islamic woman.
Muslims
argue that they recognize the importance of established
differences in the roles
of boys and girls, albeit both vitally essential and equal in
status (Halstead,
1993: 63). These roles are not seen as hierarchical between men

and women,
but rather are advocated as complementary to the relationship
between
husband and wife in Muslim society.
Muslim girls and boys are not allowed to intermingle outside
the extended
family once they reach puberty. For Muslims, adolescence is a
period in life
where girls and boys are particularly vulnerable, and one in
which proper
guidance from the family is essential to their development. Any
exposure to
sexual relationships, ranging from sexual harassment to
premarital relations, is
potentially very damaging. In one way, the hijab is significant
in covering the
girl, not as a sign of oppression, but for the girl to be seen as a
human being
rather than as a sexual object.
In France, the rise in girls’ wearing of the hijab also seems to
indicate a
[ 2 6 8 ]
voluntary act of support, rather than a sudden mandatory change
within the

Islamic communities in France. While one can easily point to
anecdotes of
girls being forced to wear the hijab, other incidents indicate
girls’ decision to
wear the hijab. It is difficult to know whether girls’ decisions to
wear the hijab
are reached independently and by their own informed
judgement. Whether
adults apply pressure, or whether pressure is felt from the larger
Muslim
community, is difficult to ascertain.
The issue here is whether wearing the hijab does compromise
girls’ future
autonomy as adults. Two considerations seem to be relevant at
this point. The
first is whether the banning of the hijab will protect those girls,
for whom
pressure is placed on them by their family or communities. The
second is
whether by banning the hijab we do a disservice to those
fundamentalist
families who may in fact force the girls to wear the hijab. By
pushing them
away from state schools, the state exacerbates the problem with
those girls
potentially dropping out of school. Let me consider both in turn.
If we knew that banning the hijab in state schools did deter
parents from
forcing their daughters to conform, and more importantly, if we
knew that
these same parents did not withdraw their daughters from school
as a result
from the policy, then the justification for laïcité would seem to
hold under the

‘basic rights’ principle. However there is no reason to believe
that this is the
case. The concern is that there is the potential for
fundamentalist parents to
withdraw their daughters from schools as a result of the policy.
If this is the
case we must balance the two: whether the ban of the hijab is a
sufficient
deterrent for parents to abide by the policy; or whether it will
cause parents
to withdraw their children. Given the two possible scenarios,
the potential for
parents to withdraw their daughters from state schools seems to
be a much
greater disadvantage for those daughters than if they are
currently being forced
to wear the hijab.Access to education is a strong indicator of a
person’s future
autonomy and jeopardizing that opportunity for those girls
would be far
worse than the internal pressures that they face in their private
lives. Given
this predicament, justification of the ban on religious symbols
based on the
principle of protecting individual basic rights may have the
unintended conse-
quence of creating worse circumstances for those girls’ future
autonomy.
conc lu s i on
The bold legislation of laïcité has raised a number of
philosophical issues about
the way in which we reconcile collective interests and
individual rights in
liberal societies.Defining the limits of toleration in a pluralist

society is relevant
in this case, as is protecting collective interests both from that
of the French
perspective and from the Muslim minority in France. Finally,
attempting to
[ 2 6 9 ]
protect children’s basic rights becomes much more complex
when we hypo-
thetically play out the potential consequences.
In the light of the considerations I have advanced it is difficult
to justify
the French government’s action. The French context does not
warrant the
constraint of ostentatious religious symbols. The fervour with
which the
French government and some particular heads of school have
enforced this
policy concerning the hijab, suggests a particular intolerance to
Muslims. It
also jeopardizes the wellbeing and autonomy of the girls it is
apparently trying
to protect, by risking a serious backlash among Muslim parents
against public
schooling. Such legislation takes a hard line that comes
dangerously close to,

and perhaps oversteps, the reasonable limits of liberal principles
that are
supposedly at the heart of France.
ac k nowle dg e m e nt
I would like to thank Ron Best, Michael Hand, Jo Peat and, in
particular, Harry
Brighouse, for their comments and suggestions.
note s
1. I am not going to belabour this point in this article. For an
articulated and well-
argued stance, see Brighouse (2000).
2. I will address the issue of neutrality in the following section.
case s
Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education (1987) 827 F.2d
1058.
Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) 406 U.S. 205 (U.S.S.C.).
re f e re nc e s
Brighouse, H. (2000) School Choice and Social Justice. Oxford:
Oxford University
Press.
Brighouse, H. (2005) ‘Faith Based Schools in the UK: An
Unenthusiastic Defense
of a Slightly Reformed Status Quo’, in R. Gardner, J. Cairns,
and D. Lawton
(eds) Faith Schools: Consensus or Conflict? London:
RoutledgeFalmer.

Economist (2004) ‘The war of the headscarves’, Economist 5
February: 25–7.
Goodwin, J. (1994) Price of Honour:Muslim Women Lift the
Veil of Silence on the Islamic
World. London: Warner Books.
Gutmann, A. (1996) ‘Challenges of multiculturalism in
democratic education’, in
R. Fullinwider (ed.) Public Education in a Multicultural
Society: Policy, Theory,
Critique, pp. 156–79. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University
Press.
Gutmann, A. (2002) Identity in Democracy. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University
Press.
Halstead, J.M. (1993) ‘The case for single-sex schools: a
Muslim approach’, Muslim
Education Quarterly 3(3): 49–69.
Judge, H. (2004) ‘The Muslim headscarf and French schools’,
American Journal of
Education November: 1–24.
[ 2 7 0 ]

Kymlicka,W. (1989) Liberalism, Community and Culture.
Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Kymlicka, W. (1995) Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal
Theory of Minority Rights.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Levinson, M. (1999) The Demands of Liberal Education.
Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Michaud, P. (2003) ‘France to get its first Muslim high school’.
Available at http://
www.algazeerah.info/News%20archives/2003%20News%20arch
ives/July%
(accessed 12 September 2004).
Moller-Okin, S. (1999) Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?,
ed. by J. Cohen,
M. Howard and M. Nussbaum. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Nafisi,A. (2004) Reading Lolita in Tehran:A Memoir in
Books.London: Fourth Estate.
Peshkin,A. (1986) God’s Choice:The Total World of a
Fundamentalist Christian School.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Rawls, J. (1993) Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Rawls, J. (2001) Justice as Fairness:A Restatement, ed. by E.
Kelly. London: Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press.

Reich, R. (2002) ‘Opting out of education: Yoder, Mozert and
the autonomy of
children’, Educational Theory 52(4): 445–62.
b i og raph i cal note
d i anne g e re luk is Senior Lecturer at Roehampton
University, London, UK.
Her forthcoming book, Education and Community (2006),
considers how Rawls is
useful in developing a philosophical conception of community
for discerning and
promoting particular types of communities that we may wish to
foster in
education policy and practice. Correspondence to: Dianne
Gereluk, School of
Education, Froebel College,Roehampton
University,Roehampton Lane, London,
SW15 5PJ, UK. [email: [email protected]]
[ 2 7 1 ]
Interrogating institutionalized establishments: urban–rural
inequalities in China’s higher education
Mei Li • Rui Yang

Received: 8 June 2012 / Revised: 22 March 2013 / Accepted: 13
April 2013 / Published online: 23 April 2013
� Education Research Institute, Seoul National University,
Seoul, Korea 2013
Abstract China’s urban–rural disparities are a funda-
mental source of China’s overall educational inequalities.
This article addresses the issue with data collected through
interviews with members at various Chinese higher edu-
cation institutions. It interrogates China’s current policies
together with the socio-political institutional arrangements
that underlie them and assesses the effectiveness of exist-
ing schemes to support higher education students. Based on
China’s experience, it challenges market transition theory’s
claim and debates the classical economic theory which
postulates that expansion of education will reduce
inequality. Believing that the educational gap is only part
of China’s urban–rural disparities, of which many resulted
from social institutional arrangements, it calls for changes
to established institutions and a reconsideration of the role

of private financing mainly through tuition fees.
Keywords Urban–rural disparities � Educational
inequality � China � Higher education
Introduction
Since the economic reform started, two major changes in
China’s higher education system have been enrollment
expansion and tuition hike. While increased opportunities
for higher education have raised the benefits for those who
attend colleges and universities, an increasing financial
burden of tuition fees has greatly hindered higher education
for some college-/university-worthy youth. There has been
recent outcry over growing disparities in higher educa-
tional equality, especially between urban and rural areas.
Higher education attainment closely relates to earlier
access to publicly and privately supported education at
lower levels as well as to the capacity of borrowing money
to pay direct and indirect higher education costs. Equity
challenges in China’s higher education finance need to be

addressed urgently, as sustaining China’s rapid economic
growth in the future depends in large part on the quantity
and quality of its human resources.
Educational inequalities are manifested in various forms
in China. Yet, urban–rural disparities are a fundamental
source of China’s overall educational inequalities (Qian and
Smyth 2008). Discussions tend to be confined to the matters
at issue without much theoretical orientation, although
Rawls’ (1971) principles of equality of opportunity are
frequently cited. Focusing on urban–rural disparities, this
article examines such a gap in the literature by interrogating
China’s current policies together with the socio-political
institutional arrangements that underlie them. Based on
national and institutional statistics and Chinese and English
literature, it investigates the extent and trend of China’s
higher education inequalities, with critical discussions on
the concentration of wealth in urban centers and the impacts
of this on higher education provision. It incorporates

empirical data collected through interviews with academic
and administrative staff at Chinese higher education insti-
tutions of various types: Shanghai Jiaotong University
(hereafter SJU, one of China’s oldest and most prestigious
national flagship universities in Shanghai), Anhui Medical
M. Li (&)
Institute of Higher Education, School of Educational Science,
East China Normal University, No. 3663 North Zhongshan
Road, Shanghai 200062, People’s Republic of China
e-mail: [email protected]
R. Yang
Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong,
People’s Republic of China
e-mail: [email protected]
123
Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. (2013) 14:315–323
DOI 10.1007/s12564-013-9262-0
University (hereafter AMU, located in the capital city of
less developed Anhui province), and Maanshan Teacher’s

College (hereafter MTC, a 3-year tertiary institution at a
medium-size city in Anhui). These institutions were selec-
ted because they belong to different categories of research
universities, provincial higher institutions, and regional
junior colleges, respectively, representing the larger sce-
nario of China’s higher education system. They were
accessible to the researchers during their fieldwork.
Both focus group interviews and individual semi-struc-
tured interviews were conducted during June–July 2010 to
elicit views from academic and administrative staff on
urban–rural (in)equities in higher education. In each insti-
tution, seven to eight staff were interviewed, including two
administrators at the institution level in charge of student
affairs and finance, one to two managers at the school/
faculty level in charge of student affairs and recruitment
and four academic staffs. Therefore, there were three focus
group sessions in every case institution.
This article first reviews the social and policy contexts

to investigate the status of disparities with China’s recent
major institutional reforms. It then assesses the effective-
ness of existing schemes to support higher education stu-
dents. Through some critical analyses of the underlying
values of and responses to China’s longstanding urban-
biased policies, it critiques the priorities unfairly given to
urban populations by Chinese public policy-makers.
Locating China’s current practices into historical, social,
and policy contexts, it argues that Chinese contemporary
policies are becoming increasingly inappropriate in a
transition from redistributive to market economy.
Social and policy contexts
China’s current educational disparities are resulted from its
long-term policy options. When the communist republic
was founded in 1949, its new democratic education policy
was in principle for the masses, representing the funda-
mental values of education equity. Yet, as a country with
poor financial conditions and a huge population, educa-

tional development was not only confined to the political
system and ideologies, but also hindered by its socio-eco-
nomic development level and ready resources. Under the
guidance of the new political ideologies, with aims at fast
industrialization, China was confronted with a number of
dilemmas and had to make hard policy choices.
Elite education versus mass education
Education for the broad masses was the basis for China’s
policy-making in the early 1950s. In addition to the
expansion of working people’s educational rights, another
urgent task of the new republic was to train professionals
badly needed for economic development and national
defense (People’s Daily 1950). The dilemma faced by
education was vacillation between equity and efficiency, a
matter of mass or elite education, with implications for
educational policy-making to decide the priority between
basic and higher education. During the 1950s and 1960s,
China’s actual policy opted to elite education. National

investment concentrated on higher education. Distribution
of institutions and disciplinary structure were heavily
imbalanced with particular emphases on major capital cities
and science and technology subjects. A number of institu-
tions were selected by the government to invest focally,
designated as key-point institutions under the jurisdiction of
the Ministry of Education or other ministries.
The most obvious advantage of such a policy option was
to provide strong intellectual and personnel support for
industrialization and national defense. Its major problem
was the imbalanced distribution of educational resources,
causing longstanding ignorance of basic education, dam-
ages to the majority people’s educational rights, and a huge
educational gap between urban and rural areas. The allo-
cation of educational resources was based entirely on
national development goals that prioritized fast industrial-
ization (People’s Daily 1952), with little consideration of
local needs, causing regional disparities. Few national key

institutions were in Central and Western regions. The
monopoly of educational resources by and the limited
financial capacity of the central government determined the
unfortunate combination of stress on higher education and
weak rural education.
Mao Zedong’s ‘‘educational revolutions’’
During the initial days of the republic, the broad masses
were endowed with educational rights directly by political
revolution. Popularization of education was idealistically
expected to rapidly change the educational outlook of
Chinese workers and peasants, an emphasis on basic edu-
cation for the majority people that immediately con-
tradicted with the goal to train specialists to develop heavy
industry. As the leaning to the Soviet Union went further,
the Soviet model of planned economy and a highly cen-
tralized higher education system were established.
Mao Zedong, however, opposed the overwhelming
dominance by Soviet-style education and initiated ‘‘edu-

cational revolutions’’ in the 1960s, based on his educational
ideals and values. With his main attention to the educa-
tional rights of working people’s children especially in
rural areas, he tried to achieve these goals through
smashing up examinations, shortening length of schooling,
relaxing the limits for university entry, and devolving
administrative power to lower levels of government to
316 M. Li, R. Yang
123
utilize multiple sources and methods to develop education.
The actual effect was a great damage to the majority
people’s educational rights. His personal obsession with
family origin led to wide-ranging deprivation of non-
working class people’s educational rights and created
injustice of other sorts.
Dengist discriminatory xianfu theory
China’s rapid expansion of inequality is directly resulted

from the economic reforms since 1978. With the reforms,
economy was redirected to the market, and its opening was
limited to specific areas, such as special economic zones in
coastal regions. Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour Lectures
in 1992 gave further impetus to the transition from redis-
tributive, egalitarian to market-based, meritocratic system
(Hannum 1999), leading to substantial changes in the
income inequality structure. The reforms prioritized mac-
roeconomic growth, even if it sacrificed equality of income
distribution and opportunities, as illustrated by Dengist
xianfu theory, which states, ‘‘Allow some people and areas
to get rich first.’’ Such discriminatory treatment justifies
income disparity, embraces the penetration of the market
mechanism into the Chinese economy, and accelerates
income gap between urban and rural areas. The xianfu
theory encourages marketization (Okushima and Uchimura
2005) and treats urban and rural areas unevenly.
A cost-sharing financing mechanism

Until the late 1990s, China’s public spending on higher
education was high by international comparison. Govern-
ment allocation per student was generous until the mid-
1990s. During the past years, the government has imple-
mented a series of reforms to reach a financing mechanism
where higher education cost is shared between central,
regional, and local governments, as well as with society
and individual students. Public spending per student has
been decreasing while educational costs per student have
increased substantially. Public funding of higher education
accounted for 29 % in 1984 and 19 % in 1994 of total
public education expenditures (World Bank 1997). Gov-
ernment subsidies declined as a share of total financing
from 64.6 % in 1990 to 53.1 % in 1998. The share of
financing contributed by tuition fee rose from 15.06 % in
1996 to 29.29 % in 2003 (Du 2007).
Policies of marketization, decentralization, and privati-
zation since the 1980s have significant equity implications

and increase inequalities in access across regions, espe-
cially as the poor regions have reduced capacity to finance
education at all levels. The private cost of higher education
is substantial. The average cost per student to study and
live on campus for an academic year far exceeds the
average family annual income of the country. In 2004,
higher education tuition fees grew to 5,000 RMB, accom-
modation costs increased to 1,000–1,200 RMB, a student’s
living costs rose to 4,000–5,000 RMB, making the total
expense of university study around 40,000–50,000 RMB,
which amounted to 4.2 and 13.6 years net income for an
urban dweller and a rural resident, respectively (Guo
2010).
Manifestations of inequalities in China’s higher
education
Inequalities in China’s higher education remain structural,
reflected in various dimensions of China’s higher education
system (Li 2011; Wang 2011) and caused by a number of

factors (Wang 2010; Liu et al. 2012).They are manifested
strikingly between urban and rural areas in terms of access
to higher education. Recent changes in public financing and
increasing reliance on tuition fees further reinforce this
trend. Urban students are over represented in higher edu-
cation while their share in the population is the opposite.
With better-educated parents in high-skilled occupations
and better family economic situation, they are more heavily
weighted to the upper social strata than their rural coun-
terparts. Students from better-off urban families are well
prepared to enter high-quality public universities which are
also the cheapest, while much disadvantaged rural students
are more likely to attend poor-quality second-tier or private
institutions which charge high fees.
Opportunities for receiving higher education
China’s urban–rural inequalities in higher education are
directly resulted from its urban–rural dual social structure,
a political institutional arrangement built on an unfair

household registration (hukou) system. They are also an
accumulative result of those in primary and secondary
schools. For decades, higher education opportunities
remain highly controlled by the central government, and
their distribution has been extremely imbalanced. The
planned enrollment figures of higher education institutions
are distributed with privileges given to major centers such
as Beijing and Shanghai nationally and to the capital cities
within provinces (Zhang and Kanbur 2003).
The admission system of higher institutions remains
centrally planned and segmented based on the administra-
tive and geographic unit of provinces/municipalities. Each
institution is designated a quota of students by the central
government. The nationwide admission system is divided
by province/municipality, with a quota unevenly distrib-
uted to each province/municipality. In 2004, for instance,
provincial enrollments reached 26.82, 51.94, 67.29, 53.85,
Interrogating institutional 317

123
20.81, 20.81, and 39.12 % at Peking, Fudan, Zhongshan,
Wuhan, Central South, and Sichuan Universities, respec-
tively (Wang 2011).
1
Research repeatedly confirms the negative impacts of
reforms on educational opportunities for rural population in
China (Hannum 1999; Tsang 1994). While the disparities
are widely acknowledged, the actual situation has been
described differently. A large-scale study, undertaken
jointly by the World Bank and the Ministry of Education in
1998, surveyed 70,000 students enrolled in 1994 and 1997
in 37 universities at various levels (Zhang 2004). It showed
that on average, the difference of educational opportunities
between urban and rural areas was 5.8 times nationwide,
with 8.8 and 3.4 times, respectively, in national key and
provincial universities. This was bigger than the income

disparity of 2.8 times. Fan’s (2008) research shows the
urban–rural access opportunity differences in various
higher education institutions after the expansion of
enrollment (see Table 1 below).
Zhang and Liu (2005) reveal an inverted pyramid shape
of the disparities among different social strata in Chinese
higher education, based on the data of the undergraduate
students in the 1990s collected from Peking and Tsinghua
Universities shown in Table 2 below. They found that the
more prestigious the institutions are, the lower percentage
of rural students is. The trend continued until the mid-
2000s, as shown in Fig. 1.
As family financial situation becomes increasingly
important in determining young people’s access to higher
education, the number of students from rural background
decreases in both the peak and the bottom of the hierarchy
of Chinese higher education institutions, as shown by
Tables 3 and 4 below:

This trend was also frequently confirmed by our
respondents. Interview-1 from SJU pointed out that about
20–30 % of our students were from countryside. Interview-
3 from the same institution further explained that more than
half of their students were from Shanghai.
The situation is different in provincial institutions. Both
the other selected case study institutions have a high pro-
portion of rural students. Interview-1 from AMU pointed
out that the regional university had the bulk of its students
from rural, workers, and peasants families. This was con-
firmed by Interview-3 based at MTC where ‘‘most students
are from rural, less developed areas.’’
A closer scrutiny of the situations shows some inter-
esting changes to the proportion of rural students in relation
to their peers from urban family background: While AMU
has managed to maintained its high percentage of rural
students (see Table 3), the proportion of rural students at
MTC has substantially dropped from 60 % in 1995 to 30 %

in 2010, as shown by Table 4.
Enrolled students from poor rural families
The issue of university students from impoverished rural
areas began to catch people’s attention since 1997 when
Chinese universities began to charge students tuition and
accommodation fees. Rising tuition fees have substantially
increased the difficulties of poor rural families in sending
their children to universities. The total private cost of one
student for a year in university during 2000–2001 exceeded
an urban resident’s annual income and was 4 times that of a
rural dweller. In 2006, undergraduate programs in science
and liberal arts in independent colleges charged 12,217 and
12,034 RMB, respectively, and 11,100 and 10,500 RMB in
private institutions, doubled those by the nation’s most
prestigious institutions (Zang and Shen 2010).
For those already enrolled, it is extremely difficult to
complete their university education. According to a survey
conducted by China Youth Development Foundation in

2006, about 26 % (4.05 million) of the total national
enrollment of 15.61 million by August 2005 were from
families with financial difficulties. The average amount
needed for a student’s basic living was around 6,780 RMB
while the average income of their families was 4,756 RMB
(Zhang 2008).
The Chinese governments at various levels and higher
education institutions have worked together to have some
policies on stage. However, within a globalized context of
corporate culture in higher education worldwide, ‘‘effi-
ciency’’ has been given the highest priority in China (Yang
2004). Such a policy orientation seems to be justified when
Table 1 Urban–rural access opportunity differences in various
higher education institutions after the expansion of enrollment,
2004
University type Urban-rural access
opportunity rate
Project 985 institution
a
2.42

Public key institution 1.85
Public ordinary institution 1.41
Public specialist institution 1.56
Private institution 3.85
Private specialist institution 2.76
Independent institution 4.97
Source Fan (2008). Cited from Wang (2011)
a
Project 985 institutions refer to the first tier public universities,
and
project 985 is a Chinese government policy launched in May of
1998
at the centennial anniversary of Peking University
1
The striking differences of percentages of local students
between
Peking and Fudan are mainly due to China’s unbalanced
distribution
of national flagship universities. Although Shanghai is the
nation’s
financial center, its concentration of higher education resources
is far

behind Beijing. Beijing hosts 8 ‘‘985’’ and 26 ‘‘211’’
universities,
while Shanghai has only 4 and 9, respectively.
318 M. Li, R. Yang
123
the central authority decides to hand responsibility to other
tiers and new actors, especially individual institutions and
local governments (Bray and Borevskaya 2001).
It is worthwhile mentioning that in the tough competi-
tion with their peers of urban family background, rural
students remain disadvantaged throughout their entire
education including their employment at graduation, as
illustrated by Interview-6 from AMU, ‘‘Most students from
countryside have much more limited chance to compete
with their fellow students from cities to find employment at
graduation because they do not have the same social and
family connections in cities.’’

Existing schemes to support higher education students
According to the Higher Education Law brought into effect
in January 1999 (Standing Committee of the People’s Con-
gress 1998), students from families with financial difficulties
may apply for subsidies or reduction in or exemption from
tuition fees (Article 54). The state establishes scholarships
and encourages higher education institutions, enterprises,
organizations, and individuals to establish scholarships in a
variety of ways in accordance with relevant regulations to
award students of good character and academic performance
(Article 55). A range of financial assistance measures have
been introduced nationwide.
The loans system was piloted in 1996 and fully imple-
mented in 1999, 2 years after the official unitary tuition
charge. Endorsed by the State Council, the Ministry of
Education, the Ministry of Finance, and the People’s Bank
of China launched loan programs. A total of 700 million
RMB were set aside to help cash-poor students in 136

institutions, but only in urban centers including Beijing,
Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Wuhan, Shenyang, Xi’an,
Table 2 Percentages of rural students of total undergraduates at
Peking and Tsinghua Universities, 1990–1999
Years Peking University Tsinghua University
Total enrollments Rural students Percentages (%) Total
enrollments Rural students Percentages (%)
1990 – – – 1994 433 21.7
1991 – – 18.8 2,031 385 19.0
1992 1,810 403 22.3 2,080 381 18.3
1993 910 168 18.5 2,210 352 15.9
1994 – – 20.1 2,203 407 18.5
1995 2,089 436 20.9 2,241 451 20.1
1996 2,164 425 19.6 2,298 431 18.8
1997 2,211 420 19.0 2,320 452 19.5
1998 2,240 415 18.5 2,462 510 20.7
1999 2,425 396 16.3 2,663 506 19.0
Source Zhang and Liu (2005)
Fig. 1 Ratio of new students by household registration in Peking
University, 2000–2005, Source: Liu et al. (2012)

Table 3 Urban and rural undergraduate students at Anhui
Medical
University
Years Urban students Rural students
Enrollment
number
Percentages
(%)
Enrollment
number
Percentages
(%)
2000 2,871 54.98 2,351 45.02
2005 5,507 60.46 3,601 39.54
2006 5,856 59.52 3,983 40.48
2007 6,447 58.26 4,618 41.74
2008 7,006 57.12 5,259 42.88
2009 7,582 55.48 6,083 44.52
Source Based on on-site collected information in July 2010

123
and Nanjing. They were expanded to more areas over the
next few years, targeting students from poor families and in
rural areas. Loan recipients were required to repay loans
with discounted interest within 4 years of graduation,
though the loan system offers students a 50 % discount on
interest. The amounts vary depending on the levels of
tuition fees charged by different institutions and regions,
with a maximum of 8,000 RMB for one student a year.
Implementation of student loan programs only started in
early 2000. By March, the loans taken had only absorbed
1.3 % of the 700 million RMB budgeted for the program,
and only 0.2 % of the total students with serious financial
difficulties received loans (Huang 2005). Actual start of
student loan programs and their detailed regulations dif-
fered among regions. In relatively less affluent areas, local

governments launched their student loan programs after
2001. The maximum amount of a student loan was reduced
to around 6,000 RMB per academic year, with an eligibility
quota of less than 20 % of student population.
Traditionally, Chinese people are reluctant to have debts
(Johnstone et al. 1998). While such values are still visible
as some students’ families try to avoid borrowing as long
as they can manage, a recent change in students’ attitude
toward debt is evident: They no longer think that ‘‘taking
loan is embarrassing’’ and exhibit confidence in their
ability to repay loans in the future. Huang’s (2005) study of
the Southwest Region showed that loan programs had
reached 32 % of the students and covered less than 50 % of
the costs of those students.
There have been problems with the implementation of
loan schemes because of the high default rate. Owing to high
subsidy element of the loans and the resulting low profit for
providers, the loans are poorly managed. Furthermore, banks

in Beijing and Guangzhou reported that at least 10 % and
38 % university graduates, respectively, were in arrears with
their payment (Du and Mao 2003). In 2004, a new system of
student loans was initiated to guarantee the continuation of
student loans. The government subsidizes the interest before
the student’s graduation from university. Students pay back
the loans within 6 years after graduation, but there is no
threshold for repaying. To mitigate the risk of bad payment to
the bank, the government and university jointly set up a risk
compensation fund for the bank, approximately 6 % of the
contract value. Government and university pay 50 % of the
compensation fund, respectively, to the contract bank. In
July 2006, the Ministry of Education and the Bank of China
finalized the financial arrangements between government,
university, and bank (Sun and Barrientos 2009).
China’s existing loan schemes are often criticized for the
small proportion of students they have covered and for
their low level of support (Huang 2005; Sun and Barrientos

2009). In 2008, enrollment in China’s regular higher edu-
cation institutions totaled 20.1 million. Among them, 4.74
million were from low-income families. Only 0.67 million
were able to receive loans (Cui 2012). Zang and Shen
(2010) reported only less than 10 % students were on
loans. Due to the lack of social trust and effective penalties
for dodging creditors, compensation for costs and risks for
banks cannot be guaranteed. There have been difficult
discussions and negotiations between higher education
institutions and banks. Moreover, loan schemes favor the
enrollments in public regular higher institutions. They are
less accessible for those students in private institutions and
independent colleges.
Another major part of the support system is scholarship
schemes established for all undergraduate candidates in
1986–1987 and later extended to postgraduate candidates
in 1991. Compared with loan programs, the impact of
scholarships is more limited especially for rural students.

This is due to the number and amount of available schol-
arships which reach only to a small number of best aca-
demic performers. Introduced in May 2002, the National
Scholarship Scheme targets 45,000 students annually and
provides up to 6,000 RMB per year per student, with
academic merit rather than family financial difficulties as
its foremost criterion. Scholarships are more a subsidy than
a grant, often beyond the reach of many in bad need of
support.
Table 4 Urban and rural
students enrolled at Maanshan
Teacher’s College
Source Based on on-site
collected information in July
2010
Years Urban students Rural students
Enrollment number Percentages (%) Enrollment number
Percentages (%)
1995 274 40 411 60

2000 262 52.09 241 47.91
2005 2,177 59.99 1,452 40.01
2006 2,962 60 1,975 40
2007 3,402 60 2,268 40
2008 4,259 70 1,825 30
2009 4,546 70 1,948 30
2010 4,510 70 1,933 30
320 M. Li, R. Yang
123
Findings from fieldwork
Our data show that while expansion has overall created more
opportunities for some students to receive higher education,
China’s contemporary higher education policies are based on
established institutional arrangements and have led to some
further inequalities between jurisdictions and urban–rural
areas. Tuition fees are causing great financial burden to many
rural students, despite that loans and scholarships amend

urban–rural inequality to a limited extent. The following
serves as a summary of major findings:
Impact of expansion on higher education access
While it is generally more difficult for rural students to
enter universities, some students have successfully man-
aged to get there. As remarked first by SJU Interview-1,
‘‘Our annual undergraduate admission is around 4,000.
About 20–30 % is from rural poor families. While one can
question the percentage as still a minority, we believe this
is quite substantial already.’’ This was confirmed by AMU
Interview-2: ‘‘Access to higher education for rural students
has been considerably increased after the expansion.’’
Impact of admission policies on higher education
access
Equality has generally been better achieved in undergrad-
uate admissions based mainly on scores of the national
entrance examination. However, some question the justice
of the examination, especially because there have been

regional variations and disparities. For instance, students in
Jiangsu and Zhejiang tend to score much more highly than
their peers in other provinces. Meanwhile, students in
major cities such as Tianjin and Shanghai can get into
universities with much lower entry scores. As commented
by SJU Interview-7 in a defensive way, ‘‘These (local,
enrolled with lower entry scores) students have their own
strengths such as better English proficiency and a higher
level of all-round development.’’
In contrast, AMU Interview-2 complained that ‘‘It is true
that equality in higher education remains a tough issue.
Within a national context of expansion, different situations
are in different areas. In our province, if one scores over
500 in the national entrance examination, she/he can never
enter the good universities in Beijing or Shanghai. She/he
can only choose low-tier institutions instead.’’
Impact of tuition fees on aspiration of rural students
to higher education

With the great difficulty in receiving high-quality tertiary
education, there has been wide-spread common practice in
rural areas that tertiary studies are useless, as explained by
SJU Interview-7: ‘‘There is a huge imbalance between
investment and return. If young rural people cannot get
admitted into good universities, they would rather give up
higher education and travel to cities to find jobs. Otherwise,
it would be difficult for them to get satisfactory return from
the education they receive from low-tier institutions.’’
Interview-2 from AMU echoed this judgment with more
positive view about China’s financial support system:
‘‘Tuition fees have little impact on those from middle-class
or above, but more on the very poor. However, with the
(financial) support policy, things are getting much better.’’
Effect of loans and scholarships on higher education
chances for rural students
Although students’ opportunities to secure their scholarships
and other forms of financial assistance vary, such schemes

have enhanced higher education chances for some rural stu-
dents. The positive signs of China’s existing support schemes
are well acknowledged first by SJU Interview-1: ‘‘In our
University, those eligible for financial assistance never have
problems in getting them;’’ then echoed by AMU Interview-3:
‘‘Due to the financial support measures such as student loans,
scholarships, aids and grants, and part-time work arrange-
ments on campus, all students enrolled in this university could
manage to pay their tuition fees;’’ and further confirmed by
MTC Interview-1: ‘‘Loan schemes are very helpful to support
our rural students and those who are from poor families.’’
The situation varies from institution to institution.
Financial issues are generally much less serious for those
admitted into the most prestigious universities, as SJU
Interview-1siad, ‘‘Due to our status, we promise our stu-
dents their educational opportunity wouldn’t be affected by
tuition charges.’’ The same view was expressed by Shang-
hai Jiaotong Interviews 2–7 who further pointed out that

inequalities are not a serious issue there as the institution
provides every student with sufficient financial support.
It is not surprising that our two other case study insti-
tutions are in very different situations. AMU Interview-2
said that ‘‘Scholarship opportunities are too limited. Insti-
tutions like us are very different from those major ones in
Beijing and Shanghai. Most of our students are from rural
background. We don’t have enough scholarships to meet
their need.’’ Institutions at the bottom of the Chinese sys-
tem are in an even more different situation, with much
heavier reliance on financial assistance.
Concluding remarks
In China’s long history, higher education belonged to high
class. Birth origin determined an individual’s social status.
123
After a variety of radical actions taken by the communist

government to fight against such traditions for decades,
today’s Chinese higher education has once again become
an institution of social stratification. Mao’s attempt to
fashion a mass-based educational system catering to the
needs of the peasantry is being transformed into a triumph
of middle-class ideology (Kelly and Liu 1998). The
expansion of education in China has not reduced inequality
(Hannum and Xie 1998) and has thus failed to contribute to
income equality. Our study challenges the claim by market
transition theory that market will replace state redistribu-
tion as the primary allocative mechanism of resources (Nee
and Metthews 1996). It also debates the classical economic
theory which postulates that expansion of education will
reduce inequality by increasing the supply of skilled
workforce (Kuznets 1955; Gottschalk and Smeeding 1997).
The educational gap between urban and rural segments
reflects both the widespread disparity in the level of eco-
nomic development and the longstanding historical and

socio-cultural differences between cities and countryside.
Students from rural areas face strong structural inequality
in educational opportunity (Postiglione 2006). It is insti-
tutionally legitimized and further enhanced as reforms go
on. As part of China’s urban–rural disparities, it is resulted
especially from the longstanding dual structure featured by
the great divide between cities and countryside and inher-
ited from the planned system.
This study has evident implications for China’s future
reform policies for marketization and privatization. The
growing educational inequality especially at the upper level
of schooling will fuel greater earnings inequality between
urban and rural communities. The government has just
started to tackle this only because it sees the possible grave
consequences of political instability (UNDP 2005). How-
ever, how successful its response could be remains highly
doubtful as this is not only a challenge to its imagination and
administrative skills, but a challenge to the power of many of

those within the system. It calls for a reconsideration of the
role of private financing mainly through tuition fees.
Our discussion of China’s experience sheds light on the
practices in some other Asian societies with similar issues
of shortage of educational opportunities for rural popula-
tion and imperfection of institutional development in the
process of marketization. For such societies, there is an
urgent need for changes to established institutions.
Researchers are duty-bound to alert policy-makers to the
existence of widespread educational discrimination against
rural people. This becomes an arduous and pressing task in
a context of globalization, something always used by
governments to legitimize their emphasis on economic
growth over the development of new social relations,
including more equal distribution of goods and services
and educational opportunities.
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123
LIBERAL EDUCATION: THE UNITED STATES EXAMPLE
Page 1 of 18
PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE

(www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University
Press, 2019. All
Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a
single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.
Subscriber: University of Washington; date: 02 January 2020
Citizenship and Education in Liberal-Democratic
Societies: Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and
Collective Identities
Kevin McDonough and Walter Feinberg
Print publication date: 2003
Print ISBN-13: 9780199253661
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2005
DOI: 10.1093/0199253668.001.0001
LIBERAL EDUCATION: THE UNITED STATES
EXAMPLE
K. Anthony Appiah
DOI:10.1093/0199253668.003.0003
Abstract and Keywords
Anthony Appiah’s essay on liberal education in the United
States begins by
identifying a distinctive feature of classical liberalism –
namely, that the state
must respect substantial limits with respect to its authority to
impose
restrictions on individuals, even for their own good.
Nevertheless, Appiah points
out, the primary aim of liberal education is to ‘maximize
autonomy not to
minimize government involvement’. Most of the essays in this
volume, including
Appiah’s, are attempts to address the question of what the

liberal commitment
to maximize personal autonomy means when it comes to the
teaching of what
Appiah refers to as ‘identity-related claims’. The aim of this
chapter is to suggest
how one might begin to think about some questions in the
philosophy of
education, guided by the liberal thought that education is a
preparation for
autonomy, and to show that this tradition is both powerful
enough to help with
this difficult question and rich enough to allow answers of some
complexity.
Keywords: education, liberal education, liberalism, personal
autonomy, personal identity, philosophy
of education, United States
Liberalism starts with views that are both modern and radical.
We are all equal
and we all have the dignity that was once the privilege of an
elite. When John
Locke speaks of “dignity” (in e.g. his draft of the constitution
of Carolina) he
means the title and privileges of hereditary land owners; it is
something
associated with a particular station in life. For him, dignity is as
much something
Page 2 of 18

Press, 2019. All
that the ordinary person does not have as something that
belongs to “persons of
standing”: for modern liberalism, in striking contrast, dignity is
something that
is to be respected in every human being. Dignity is still, then,
as it was for
Locke, an entitlement to respect. But now everyone shares that
entitlement.
Dignity is now human dignity: you get it just by showing up.
That is what makes
liberalism radical.
But liberals also believe that recognizing individual human
dignity entails—in
language we owe to Kant—respecting every person's autonomy.
The distinctive
thought of liberal political philosophy is that individual
autonomy is at the heart
of political morality. That is what makes it modern.
Kant first articulated autonomy as a philosophical principle, and
romanticism
lived a peculiarly intense version of this vision.1 But the central
notion is the
special province neither of philosophers nor of poets: the claim,
put simply, is
that what the good is for each of us is shaped by choices we
ourselves have
made.

This general moral conviction has profound consequences for
thinking about the
state. Simply put, liberalism values political liberty—freedom
from government
intervention in our lives—because it holds (p.57) that each
person has the right
to construct a life of her own. That right is not unlimited; it
must be pursued
within moral boundaries shaped, among other things, by the
rights of others. But
it is fundamental; and every limitation of it is, for liberalism, to
be conceded only
in the face of a powerful argument.
This picture grew up with Protestantism; which is what accounts
for the sense
that it is a creature of the West (and, more particularly, of
Germany—Kant—and
England—Locke). For Protestantism taught, as Locke put it in
his “Essay
Concerning Toleration,” that worship was a “thing wholly
between God and me
and of an eternal concernment.”2 This notion that the most
consequential
questions were to be decided individually by each person,
searching in his own
heart (so that conformity to outer forms was less crucial than
inner conviction)
placed what mattered most in human life decisively beyond the
reach of the
government. Locke's major argument in the essay is that state
regulation of
religious belief is wrong because it is impossible, “[T]he way to
salvation not
being any forced exterior performance, but the voluntary and
secret choice of

the mind. …”3 Locke wants religious toleration because the
only things the
government can regulate—the outward and visible signs—are
simply not what
matters; like Kant he thought that virtue lies in why you do
things not (or not so
much) in what you do. This makes him an ancestor of modern
liberalism; but our
concerns are, I think, somewhat different.
For the modern liberal objection to regulation of religion argues
that the choices
I make and the understandings I come to in my own search for
religious truth
Page 3 of 18
Press, 2019. All
are important in part because I chose them in the course of my
own search. The
modern point is not Locke's—which is that goodness (piety, in
this case) is a
matter of motive and intention more than behavior; it is that
what is good for me
to do depends, in part, on my reflective appropriation of the
beliefs and values

by which I guide my life. Merely adopting views “in gross”, as
Locke put it,
assuming religious “opinions … all at once in a bundle,“4 is not
enough.
It is a crucial point that this moral conviction is not only
modern but also, on a
world scale, decidedly controversial. It is not the view of the
Ayatollahs in
Teheran or the Party leaders in Beijing; it is not even the view,
to come
somewhat closer to home, of His Holiness and the various
eminences of the
Vatican. For all of these people hold that what is morally
required of people is
given in advance—by an eternal order for the Ayatollahs and
the Curia, by the
truths of Marx for the heirs of Mao Tse Tung. All of these
positions recognize (p.
58) that one can have obligations that arise out of choice: they
recognize
promises as binding and duties particular to vocation; and they
recog-nize that
roles bring obligations. But none of them agrees with the liberal
that sometimes
the right thing for me to do is right because I have decided that
doing it fits with
my chosen sense of the meaning of my own life: none of them
therefore accepts
the political consequence that in forcing me to do what is best
for me according
to someone else's conception, you may do me not good but
harm.
Notice that far from being relativist or indifferent to moral
truth, the claim of

autonomy, as made by the liberal, is a universal moral claim: it
is something we
believe the Pope and the others are wrong about. There is no
general answer to
the question how one should live one's life: not everyone should
be a priest or a
poet or a pipe fitter; there are lives worth living that focus on
family, and others
that center on work. Liberals are pluralists about human
flourishing, holding
that there are many ways for human beings to live good lives
and many projects
worth pursuing.5
But sensible antiliberals are pluralists too. What is distinctive in
the liberal
vision is that it holds that there may be an internal connection
between what is
good for you and the choices you have made: in particular, that
your good may
depend on the identities you have reflectively appropriated and
the values
embedded within them. Liberals do not deny that there are some
values that are
essential components of any good life: honesty, loyalty, and
kindness are virtues;
and cruelty, thoughtlessness, and unwarranted hatred are vices,
no matter what
choices you have made. But this essential moral core does not
fix everything that
matters; nor does it determine how these virtues and vices
should weigh against
each other in every situation.
Liberalism is a political morality which flows, like all
substantial political ideals,

from an underlying vision of human life. But, as a political
creed, it does not
claim to answer every ethical question, every shallow puzzle or
deep mystery
Page 4 of 18
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about how one should live. It stakes out a position about the
ethics of relations
between the state and the individual, a position that flows from
a vision of
human life; and that vision proposes that living up to the many
values is best
when it flows, in two respects, from the “voluntary and secret
choices” of your
own mind. First, it is best if people do what is right because
they recognize that
it is right (but this is a point on which the Curia concurs);
second, what is best
for people depends, in part (but only in part) on what they have
chosen. That is
why the liberal state has its most distinctive feature: a regime of
individual
rights, limiting what the state may require of us, even for our
own good.

(p.59) Liberals are not relativists, then. Nor need we be
skeptics. We need not
argue that each should be allowed by the state to make her own
choices because
there is no knowing who is right. I may, as a liberal, regard it as
proper for the
state to allow you to do what is, in my judgment, plainly wrong,
provided that, in
doing so, you interfere with no one's rights and have freely
chosen to do it in
pursuit of your aims and in the light of your own knowledge,
your best
understanding.
This is a separate point from the one about the dependence of
the good for you
on your choices. Sometimes what is good for me—committing
myself to the
nationalist struggle against imperial domination—is good
because I have
reflectively appropriated a nationalist identity; and that identity
now gives
meaning to much of my life. (Perhaps if I had not developed
that identification, a
life in the struggle would be worthless, a sham.) But the point I
am making now
is that sometimes the government should let me do what I have
decided to do in
the light of my own best understanding, even though what I
have decided is
wrong. Letting people do something does not, for the liberal,
reflect agreement
with them. Even when someone is wrong, the state has to have a
compelling
reason to intervene. And if someone asks why, I would say

because it is her life.
It is sometimes said that liberalism is not perfectionist, in the
sense that it does
not aim to shape the citizen to a vision of human good. I think
this is somewhat
misleading. Autonomy is a vision of human good; and the
liberal state will aim to
help the citizen exercise her autonomy, by, for example,
providing information
and encouraging rational public deliberation. What a liberal will
not do is use
the coercive power of the state against anyone, except to protect
the rights of
others.6 The liberal surgeon-general tells you that cigarettes kill
and requires
tobacco companies not to sell their products to those, like
minors, who are not
fully capable of autonomous decision. But if an adult person
chooses cigarettes,
knowing the harm they do, the most the liberal state may do is
limit her access
to health care for those harms, if the state does not have the
resources to
provide it.7
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Modern American liberalism, as an approach to the realities of
politics, goes
back to the New Deal, when to the classical liberalism of rights
was added a new
set of economic commitments: the federal government accepted
clearly, for the
first time, a national responsibility to guarantee a basic
minimum level of
welfare to every citizen. This undertaking occurred, of course,
in response to the
Depression: a massive failure on the part of the private
economy to deliver the
jobs and the income that were now recognized as a precondition
for enjoying the
fundamental civil rights—democratic representation, liberty of
(p.60) religion,
expression, and association, security of property, equality
before the law.
This pious simplification of history ignores a great deal. The
New Deal welfare
state, for example, did not spring full-fashioned from the brow
of the Roosevelt
administration. There were already provisions for the poor and
the destitute in
colonial Massachusetts; there were federal Civil War pensions
for veterans and
war widows; there were hundreds of charitable institutions,
supported by
churches and by secular philanthropy, often with tax-exemption
from the
government, aiming to help people in a thousand kinds of
trouble. Still, it was

clear to everybody that the New Deal took government
provision for the worst
off to a new level.
It is natural to see this concern with basic welfare as simply a
new addition to
the liberal register, not as something growing out of the basic
liberal vision. But
I think that is wrong. Basic welfare provision flows from the
same fundamental
concern with dignity. In a world where land has all been
parceled out (so that no
one can simply acquire land to work by moving into uncharted
territory); a world
where money is essential for adequate nutrition and proper
shelter; where a job
(or so much money you do not need one) is increasingly a
condition for minimal
social respect; guaranteeing that everybody has access to a
place to live, food to
eat, and a form of work, is simply making sure that everyone
has access to the
possibility of a dignified existence. It is increasingly clear, I
think, that a
guarantee of access to health care should be underwritten by the
state as well.
And, because everybody is equally entitled to dignity, whatever
minimum
conditions the state must guarantee, it must guarantee to
everyone.
More than this, autonomy requires, as we have seen, that people
be able to
shape a life for themselves, to make choices among options.
And this requires,
naturally, that there be such options—real choices to make; and

that the person
has some sense of the way the world actually is.
Each of these conditions is hugely important. The existence of
real options is
something that argues for multiculturalism within states and
cosmopolitanism
across them.8 And the importance of the truth entails that the
government has a
role in propagating knowledge. To do my will, to act freely, I
need not only to
have goals but a sense of how I can achieve them. You can
undermine my
autonomy not only by resisting what I will, but also by
depriving me of
Page 6 of 18
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information—truths—that might allow me to achieve what you
desire. Respect
for autonomy goes with truth telling, therefore; respect for
autonomy entails a
concern with knowledge.
(p.61) There are hard questions here, questions that, as we shall

see, matter
enormously for the politics of education. Respect for your
autonomy means that,
where your aims are morally permissible, it is best if you are
able to do what you
choose. But you choose to do things for reasons, and those
reasons are
dependent not only on your aims but also on how you believe
they can be
achieved. Characteristically, in reasoning out what I want to do,
I consider what
my aims are and what means are available to achieve them.
Suppose, then, you
know what my aims are, and you know that in pursuing them I
am relying on an
erroneous belief. Suppose, for example, that I am seeking to
abate my fever, and
I take the herbs the traditional doctor in my village concocts;
and suppose you
know that the herbs are mortally toxic in the long run and that I
can be cured
with the erythromycin in your pocket. If you secretly substitute
your authentic
medicine for my (as you think) bogus “medicine,” are you
respecting my
autonomy—helping me to the health you know I am after—or
failing to do so—by
ignoring my clear (but, as you think, fatally misguided) desire
to take this stuff
that the medicine man provided?
The answer, I believe, is that what respect for your autonomy
requires is neither
of these things; what it requires is that you tell me what you
believe is true (thus
putting me in a position to realize my fundamental aim by

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