Abstract
This chapter interprets Tocqueville’s project in Democracy in America and its elaboration by Vincent and Elinor Ostrom as a guide to pedagogy. It argues that those interested in advancing a Tocquevillian vision of society should consider how mores—intellectual and moral habits—are influenced in learning environments, not only by the explicit content of education but also by the “hidden curriculum” implicit in the form that education takes. Not only should education for self-governance promote an understanding of the ethics, economics, and political science of association, it should also promote habits of initiative, responsibility, and cooperation through modes of learning in which the arts of association are actively practiced.
One cannot doubt that in the United States the instruction of the people serves powerfully to maintain a democratic republic. It will be so, I think, everywhere that the instruction that enlightens the mind is not separated from the education that regulates mores.
Still, I do not exaggerate this advantage and I am still further from believing, as do a great number of people in Europe, that it suffices to teach men to read and to write to make them citizens immediately.
Genuine enlightenment arises principally from experience, and if one had not habituated the Americans little by little to govern themselves, the literary knowledge that they possess would not greatly help them today to succeed in it.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
How can we speak of Democracy or Freedom when from the very beginning of life we mould the child to undergo tyranny, to obey a dictator? How can we expect democracy when we have reared slaves? Real freedom begins at the beginning of life, not at the adult stage. These people who have been diminished in their powers, made short-sighted, devitalized by mental fatigue, whose bodies have become distorted, whose wills have been broken by elders who say: ‘your will must disappear and mine prevail!’—how can we expect them, when school-life is finished, to accept and use the rights of freedom?
—Maria Montessori, Education for a New World
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Tocqueville clearly engaged with the political economy of his day. He studied Jean-Baptiste Say’s Cours complet d’économie politique carefully in 1828 and organized his extensive notes for later reference (Drolet 2003). He and his traveling companion, Gustave de Beaumont, read Say again on the boat to America, along with a history of America. They evidently expected Say’s work to help them make sense of what they would observe on their journey. It is difficult to specify how Say’s thought influenced Tocqueville. Tocqueville does not refer to Say in his published works (Swedberg , 83). But according to Beaumont, Say’s work appealed to Tocqueville and him “very strongly” (in Tocqueville 2010, p. 12).
- 2.
Tocqueville’s self-interest well understood consists of more than a materialistic sense of man’s interests. He thought the new science should not only inform people about how to obtain their preferences, but guide them to some degree about what preferences will be worth cultivating for virtue, happiness, and a sustainable social order. In discussing a journal he was hoping to launch as a young man, Tocqueville wrote:
While all the efforts in political economy seem today to be in the direction of materialism, I would like the policy of the journal to be to emphasize the most immaterial side of this science, to try to introduce ideas and moral feelings as elements of prosperity and happiness, to try to rehabilitate the spiritual dimension in politics and make it popular by making it useful. (Tocqueville as quoted in Swedberg 2009, p. 3)
Tocqueville (2000) also expressed his opposition to modernist materialists and materialistic utilitarians, who strive “to make man into matter, to find the useful without occupying themselves with the just, to find science far from beliefs, and well-being separate from virtue” (p. 11).
See also Danoff’s discussion of Tocqueville’s views on the limits of calculative reasoning to establish the mores needed, and the need for some republican civic virtue, to preserve the conditions of self-government in his Educating Democracy: Alexis de Tocqueville and Leadership in America (2010, pp. 11–18).
- 3.
The importance of institutions and even mores has seen a recent re-emergence in political economic thinking. In addition to a surge of work in New Institutional Economics and Law and Economics, work on a variety of topics has also stressed the crucial role that informal-cultural institutions play in creating the context needed to generate and perpetuate economic development, a liberal social order, and entrepreneurship. See for example, Lavoie and Chamlee-Wright (2002) Culture and Enterprise; Boettke, Coyne, Leeson, and Sautet (2005) “The New Comparative Political Economy”; Boettke, Coyne, and Leeson (2008) “Institutional Stickiness and the New Development Economics”; Coyne (2008) After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy; McCloskey (2010) Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Cannot Explain the Modern World; Williamson and Coyne (2013) “Culture and Freedom”; Storr (2013) Understanding the Culture of Markets; Grube and Storr (2015) Culture and Economic Action.
- 4.
Boesche (1980) also discusses this under-appreciated connection in the Tocqueville literature in his article, “The Prison: Tocqueville’s Model for Despotism.” His interpretation is very similar to the one I propose and his examination contains complementary insights to those made explicit here. But Boesche seems not to appreciate the role of Tocqueville’s first observations of the Auburn system at Sing Sing, in particular, in jumpstarting and in formulating his understanding of the problems of despotism. Boesche focuses, rather, on Tocqueville’s later observations of the Pennsylvania system. While in the Pennsylvania system, the prisoners are kept physically isolated at all times, including while working during the day, in the Auburn system (1) the prisoners are physically proximate to one another, with no physical barriers between them, and (2) they work in an open air environment from which one might presume the prisoners could readily escape. Sing Sing was the first prison they observed, and Tocqueville was astonished at the sight (Pierson 1938, pp. 101–102). Isolation at Sing Sing was not achieved by walls and chains, but by rules that generated a despotism of the mind—silence and zero communication among the prisoners. This silence, of course, was enforced with the whip.
- 5.
Peart and Levy (2015) summarize the literature on experimental findings regarding the relationship between communication and cooperation: “There is perhaps no stronger experimental evidence than the conclusion, confirmed in many experimental studies, that discussion strongly enhances cooperation” (43). They argue that practice in the art and skill of discussion, such as in classroom discussion, can thus facilitate the skills of communication conducive to social cooperation.
- 6.
Boesche (1980, p. 555) raises and addresses this question similarly.
- 7.
Writing from a neo-Marxist perspective, Giroux and Penna (1979) provide an excellent overview of the idea of the hidden curriculum and provide suggestions for reform highly consonant with the argument presented in this chapter. See also Lillard (2019) for a discussion of the implications of cross-cultural and cultural psychology for how we think about culture within schools.
- 8.
In a note, Tocqueville (2000) quotes M. de Malesherbes from 1775 as using this word (tuteurs) to complain of the tendency of the French to over-govern by central power and then goes on to suggest the French tendency to centralize administration was brought to completion in the French Revolution (p. 692). One might wonder whether he has French tuteurs or American teachers of one-room schoolhouses in mind or both when he compares the over-controlling nature of bureaucratic centralization to a schoolmaster. Given what is said about one-room school houses above, it seems most probable that it is the first. But the aim of this chapter is not to uphold pre-Progressive American schools. Instead, this chapter aims to show parallels between over-controlling or over-helpful guardians in society and in the classroom and to the moral dangers inherent in both kinds of excessive guardianship.
- 9.
Although the central model of Socratic Practice is to practice making meaning of difficult verbal texts, the subject can include anything from a painting, to a movie, a cooperative game, a mathematical proof or scientific experiment, to the internal workings of a machine.
References
Aristotle. (n.d.). The Nicomachean Ethics. Retrieved from https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/aristotle-the-nicomachean-ethics
Beaumont, G. D., and Tocqueville, A. D. (1833). On the penitentiary system in the United States and its application in France; with an appendix on penal colonies and also statistical notes; (F. Lieber, Trans.). Retrieved January 1, 2019, from https://archive.org/details/onpenitentiarysy00beauuoft
Boesche, R. (1980). The Prison: Tocqueville’s Model for Despotism. Western Political Quarterly, 33(4), pp. 550–563. https://doi.org/10.1177/106591298003300408
Boettke, P. J., Coyne, C. J., and Leeson, P. T. (April 01, 2008). Institutional Stickiness and the New Development Economics. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 67, 2, pp. 331–358.
Boettke, P. J., Coyne, C. J., Leeson, P. T., and Sautet, F. (January 01, 2005). The New Comparative Political Economy. Review of Austrian Economics, 18, pp. 281–304.
Callahan, R. E. (1962). Education and the cult of efficiency: A study of the social forces that have shaped the administration of the public schools. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Coyne, C. J. (2008). After war: The political economy of exporting democracy. Stanford: Stanford Economics and Finance.
Danoff, B. (2010). Educating democracy: Alexis de Tocqueville and leadership in America. Albany: SUNY Press.
Drolet, Michael (2003). Democracy and political economy: Tocqueville’s thoughts on J.-B. Say and T.R. Malthus. History of European Ideas 29 (2):159–181.
Elster, J. (2009). Alexis de Tocqueville, the first social scientist. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Gatto, J. T. (2002). Dumbing us down: The hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers.
Giroux, H. A., and Penna, A. N. (1979). Social Education in the Classroom: The Dynamics of the Hidden Curriculum. Theory and Research in Social Education, 7(1), pp. 21–42.
Grube, L. E., and Storr, V. H. (2015). Culture and economic action. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing
Lavoie, D., and Chamlee-Wright, E. (2002). Culture and enterprise: The development, representation and morality of business. London: Routledge.
Lillard, A. S. (2015). Montessori: The science behind the genius. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lillard, A. S. (2019). Shunned and Admired: Montessori, Self-Determination, and a Case for Radical School Reform. Educational Psychology Review.
Lillard, A. S., Heise, M. J., Richey, E. M., Tong, X., Hart, A., and Bray, P. M. (2017). Montessori Preschool Elevates and Equalizes Child Outcomes: A Longitudinal Study. Frontiers in Psychology, 8.
Llewellyn, G. (1998). The teenage liberation handbook: How to quit school and get a real life and education. Eugene, Or.: Lowry House.
McCloskey, D. N. (2010). The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Montessori, M. (1917). Spontaneous Activity in Education. Retrieved from https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24727
Montessori, M. (1946). Education for A New World. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.36346/page/n81
Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ostrom, E. (2006). A Frequently Overlooked Precondition for Democracy: Citizens Knowledgeable About and Engaged in Collective Action. In G. Brennan, M. Baurmann, and R. Zintl (Authors), Preconditions of democracy (pp. 75–90). Tampere: Tampere University Press.
Ostrom, E., and Ostrom, V. (2014). Choice, rules and collective action: The Ostroms on the study of institutions and governance. Colchester: ECPR Press.
Ostrom, V. (1997). The meaning of democracy and the vulnerability of democracies: A response to Tocqueville’s challenge. Ann Arbor, Mich: University of Michigan Press.
Peart, S. J., and Levy, D. M. (2015). On “strongly fortified minds”: Self-restraint and cooperation in the discussion tradition. In: E. Chamlee-Wright (Author), Liberal Learning and the Art of Self-Governance. London, England: Routledge.
Pierson, G. W. (1938). Tocqueville in America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
Sen, A. (1977). Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 6(4), 317–344. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2264946
Storr, V. H. (2013). Understanding the culture of markets. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge.
Strong, M. (1996). The habit of thought: From Socratic seminars to Socratic practice. Chapel Hill, NC: New View Publications.
Swedberg, R. (2009). Tocqueville’s political economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Tocqueville, A. D. (2000). Democracy in America (H. C. Mansfield and D. Winthrop, Eds.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tocqueville, A. D. (2010). Letters from America (F. Brown, Ed.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Tocqueville, A. D. (2012) Democracy in America. (Vol. 1.) English Edition. (E. Nolla, Ed.) (J.T. Schleifer, Trans.) Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Retrieved from https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2735#Tocqueville_1593-01_580
Tyack, D. B. (2003). The one best system: A history of American urban education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
Williamson, C. R., and Coyne, R. L. (2013–2014). Culture and Freedom. The Annual Proceedings of the Wealth and Well-Being of Nations, VI, 83–104. Retrieved from https://www.beloit.edu/upton/assets/VOL_VI.Williamson.Coyne.pdf
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Humphries, A.G. (2020). Tocquevillian Education for Self-Governance. In: Boettke, P., Martin, A. (eds) Exploring the Social and Political Economy of Alexis de Tocqueville. Mercatus Studies in Political and Social Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34937-0_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34937-0_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-34936-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-34937-0
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)