Hi John, thanks for that. I didn’t mean to imply that De Botton wants to supplant institutional religion entirely, although I think it is quite likely he wants to indirectly transform it. His fond reference in the second video to the “culture instead of scripture” movement, for example, indicates (in my opinion) an eagerness to increase the influence of education systems in traditionally non-academic spheres of life. Wouldn’t this diminish the relative influence of other competing sources of guidance? I think that a zero-sum calculus is appropriate when measuring influence of various institutions on patterns of social behavior – perhaps that partially explains our different viewpoints.

I don’t understand the distinctions you are making in terms of improving society versus improving schools. My point was that De Botton laments the lack of ethical guidance in schools, but does not address the question of how that ethical guidance should be developed (in this interview at least - perhaps he has commented on this in other writings. I will look further). So my question still stands in a school-limited context – how can we foster democratic and tolerant values in children without addressing the fundamental hypocrisy of the intolerant and undemocratic structure of the schooling system?

Maybe this is what you were talking about in regards to top-down and bottom-up approaches, and maybe De Botton does agree with a bottom-up approach more than I suggest. I don’t, however, see any evidence of such agrement in this interview.

-- RohanGrey - 16 April 2012

I found this series of interviews by Alain de Botton directly relevant to our recent discussions regarding our law school experience and the challenges faced during our 1L year and in choosing a career. In particular, I think the second video, with its discussion of the historical superiority of religious institutions over universities in offering genuinely valuable life advice, is particularly interesting in the way it relates education to the idea Eben discussed in class of law being a weak social force. Perhaps it is precisely because religious and cultural institutions provide more valuable life guidance than formal educational programs that they exert such a relatively strong influence over normative social discourse compared to, say, ethicists or political scientists. If that is the case, then De Botton's proposals can be seen as attempts to implant respect for formal education (and the law) in younger generations to the point that their formative influence eventually exceeds countervailing religious and cultural forces. If that is his goal, I believe achieving it requires a far broader review of the politicization of the schooling process beyond the moral/spiritual element guidance he emphasizes. Current debates regarding charter schools, high-stakes testing and educational inequality tend to gloss over the surface of what appear to me to be more fundamental and pressing issues - lack of democratic student participation, inequity of access, and the poorly defined role of the state in child welfare. Unless those more fundamental institutional questions are addressed, how can we expect our education system to promote democratically active, tolerant citizens of a global community?

-- RohanGrey - 29 Mar 2012