What is an ‘Open Future’?

The term ‘open future’ originates with Joel Feinberg in his well-known essay “The Child’s Right to an Open Future” (1980). The right in question is one of the few

rights, perhaps the only right that is peculiar to children. This right in general requires

protecting children’s future interests in having autonomous choice, by presently

guaranteeing the conditions that will enable them as adults to make informed decisions.

On this view, a child’s autonomy is held in trust just as one might hold in trust the legal

decision-making authority vis-à-vis another’s estate, with the proviso that this authority may only be exercised in a way that would meet with the approval of the person in whose

interest such authority is held (Noggle 2002; Feinberg 1980).113 Contestation over the

specific content of this right in any given instance fills reams of scholarly books. Virtually all commentators agree, however, that any convincingly liberal society must provide a set of minimal conditions for child-rearing in which the future pursuit of chosen activities is made possible. In other words, the possibility for future choice may not be irremediably closed-off. What then distinguishes the ‘open future’ view from among other views that generally agree to the need for minimal conditions to protect future capacities to choose? The answer is both a difference in degree and in kind.

According to Arneson and Shapiro autonomy requires: “(1) the maximization of options and (2) the development of critical reason” (Arneson and Shapiro 1996: 388). On this analysis, an ‘open future’ distinguishes itself by positing a difference in degree by choosing to espouse ‘maximal’ rather than ‘minimal’ choice-sets as being what children require to protect future autonomous choice (Feinberg 1980: 136). Additionally, it distinguishes itself by virtue of its difference in ‘kind’. The understanding of ‘critical reason’ is based upon “generally accepted methods of enquiry” (in Fish 1999: 92). The phrase ‘generally accepted methods of enquiry’ is a broad one into which much could fit,

but here it includes basic canons of scientific evidence, that is, that evidence garnered from the fields of physics and biology can be adduced to understand most natural

phenomena.114 Moreover, it includes the idea that every value and conception of the good

is a potential candidate for unbiased, critical assessment.

The ‘open future’ argument is proffered on putatively ‘Millian’ grounds, that is, on the grounds that autonomous choice is a basic liberal precept. The argument is twofold: First, individuals have a right to an autonomous choice about the kinds of lives they want to lead and second, they require certain kinds of critical capacities in order to make good democratic citizens. In the literature these two reasons are, almost invariably,

conflated (Gutmann 1980: 338, 350; Feinberg 1980).115 Theorists argue that children

require an ‘education-for-autonomy’ for reasons of independent self-governance, which

argument is thought to subsume both our first and second reasons. Self-governance is a

vague concept generally related to the ideal of non-imposition, that is, the right not to

114 _{The notion of ‘scientific enquiry’ is all-important. This is because much (though not all) of the}

controversy over what values children will be exposed to has its basis in religious belief. And where this is the case, the question of values is inextricably linked with questions of fact (Carter 1987). This is also the case when it comes to the link between fact and values that are not religiously based. For instance, the ‘culture wars’ and the controversy over what curriculum should be taught to children takes as its base a difference over what facts ought to be emphasized. For instance, ought we to focus upon the good that the founding fathers did or the fact that they were slave-owners? For detailed accounts of the ‘culture wars’ see Ravitch (2002). The link between facts and values here still incorporates canons of evidence that, broadly speaking, are scientific even if they do not actually adduce evidence from the ‘scientific’ fields, such as biology and physics. This is because the pursuit of historical knowledge, which incorporates scientific canons based on observable data, that is, physical evidence, is relevant to the question of which facts to emphasize. That presidential hopeful Michelle Bachmann claimed in an Iowa speech that America’s love of diversity and tolerance extended to the founding fathers who fought “tirelessly until slavery was no more in the USA” reveals the depth of the problem Ravitch explores (2010).

115 _{In Mozert v. Hawkins, the opinion of Justice Kennedy most reflects this. Mozert regards the case of a}

reading series to which some parents objected owing to its depiction of themes and values which they found incommensurate with their own. Objecting parents argued to be able to ‘opt-out’ of classes in which the books were to be used, as a means of remedying what they argued was a First Amendment violation. Justice Kennedy claims that preparing students for “citizenship and self-government” requires that they be taught to think about “complex moral and social issues” in such a way that would invariably increase their capacity to assess opposing values, which capacities would likely extend to questioning their own values (in Burtt 1994: 57). For a thorough account of the legal and ethical issues involved in Mozert see Stolzenberg (1993).

have the views of others imposed upon oneself. It is thought by proponents of a child’s right to an ‘open future’ that roughly the same capacities that are necessary from the point of view of the child’s right to live the life to which she is most suited and which most coheres with her espoused values and conception of the good are also necessary for equal citizenship and that equal citizenship is required in order to give substance to the ideal of non-imposition.

By contrast, I argue that the two parts of the argument actually lead to different

rather than the same conclusions and that they actually amount, therefore, to two separate

arguments. The reason this is so is because the subjectof the right, while thought to be

the same, that is, the ubiquitous ‘child’, is actually different. In the first argument, the subject of the right is the child herself (or more accurately, the ‘future adult’ she will become). The concern here is to safeguard her right to choose for herself, in the future, the particular kind of moral values and conceptions of the good she will want to adopt and abide once she is of an appropriate age to make that determination. I argue that in the second argument, the subject of the right is twofold: The subject of equal citizenship is

both herself and others. The concern here regards the ability to make appropriate

decisions that will contribute to the society in which she is a part whose decisions will,

necessarily, affect other people and not herself alone. In order to bring out the

implications of each more clearly, then, I shall distinguish between these two arguments, which I call, respectively, the ‘liberal-in-waiting’ and the ‘democrat-in-waiting’

argument. The remainder of this chapter will be devoted to the former. I will take up the ‘democrat-in-waiting’ argument in the subsequent chapter.