See-It Writing Reflection

SEE-IT Writing Reflection

In the first chapter of ON Education the main focus is on autonomy. Brighouse emphasizes the importance of self-directing freedom for students. He believes that no child should be deprived of the opportunity to live autonomously.

The first chapter of the book emphases on what he will talk about in the whole book and on autonomy. He starts out by talking about how in his town the Amish had a case of how the children of these people were deprived of autonomy. The Amish people did not want their children to be influenced by secular influences. They believe that their children are best educated on their system of beliefs. They do not want education from outside there society to influence and potentially change the views that could harm their society. Brighouse firmly believes that this is damaging a child's future. Brighouse states, "The key problem is that the children appear to be deprived of the opportunity to make and act on well-informed and well-thought out judgments about how to live their own lives" (Brighouse 14). He believes that if children are educated autonomously they are at there best to become the best possible person. They will be able to have the best possible out come by having all the information needed to make their own decision. They will have both sides of the story per say to make as an unbiased decision as possible.

Brighouse goes on to mention how children that are not brought up autonomously are more narrow-minded and do not flourish to their full potential. They are not as successful as their counter parts that have experienced all sorts of points of views and interacted with people different than them. He gives the example, "First, notice that children from ethnic and religious minorities already, when they come to school, experience a potentially fruitful discontinuity between their home environment and the public culture" (Brighouse 22). He is stating they may very well have "culture shock". They might have no understanding of other people's points of views and things of that nature.

He for instance provides the following example, " A school with Muslim, Hindu, atheist, Roman Catholic, and Jewish children will do better, other things being equal, than one in which all the children are Roman Catholic" (Brighouse 21). This he believes cause a child will have many points of views and life styles and will gain all sorts of knowledge from his peers than a student that only learns one point of view. The child will benefit from his peers in being able to understand why they believe what they do and not just conform to all this classmates point of view.

Another example he gives is he states is "Since autonomy with respect to one's religious and moral commitments require exposure to alternative views. It also requires that this exposure be done in a controlled and non