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 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

Rohan, this is a really interesting series. As both Wright and de Botton touch on in the first video, most atheist literature out there is a lot less favorable to religion as an institution than de Botton seems to be. I agree that his look at practical education/self-improvement in religion vs. conventional schooling is particularly noteworthy and (at least to me) quite novel. And I think your conclusion about the influence of religion on social discourse being a result of its position as a life adviser is spot on. However, I think you go a little bit too far in suggesting that de Botton is ultimately trying to bolster respect for formal education in such a way that it supplants religion. Maybe as an atheist he wants this, but as a theorist of policy he seems more tolerant of religion as an institution (and says as such) and more focused on what we can learn from religion. His path for giving more credibility and significance to education is more of a top-down approach, whereas yours seems more bottom-up. I agree with you that the questions you asked regarding the inequities of education and its failure to achieve a democratic populace are certainly worth asking and devoting a lot of energy toward, but to me de Botton's message is simpler; he seems less focused on how to make society better and more focused on how to make school better. Of course they go hand-in-hand, but if you asked him how to make society better, even through formal education, I'm not so sure he wouldn't agree with you that the bottom-up approach must be the start of it.

John - 15 April 2012

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