It is fitting that the BHA’s follow-up to the Atheist Bus Campaign – billboards featuring children asking “Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself” – focuses on the autonomy of children in the year when we also celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of On Liberty by J S Mill. In the BHA’s briefing on On Liberty (PDF) Dr Alan Haworth calls Mill’s volume “the classic philosophical statement of a liberal position which continues to play a considerable role within political thought in the world at large, not just within academia.”

If the relevance of Mill, writing 150 years ago, seems remote to some, it’s worth thinking about his own description of those times, expressing a view far from unheard of today especially from skeptics of religion and critics of blasphemy laws.

In the present age–which has been described as ‘destitute of faith, but terrified at scepticism’–in which people feel sure, not so much that their opinions are true, as that they should not know what to do without them–the claims of an opinion to be protected from public attack are rested not so much on its truth, as on its importance to society. [On Liberty, p19]

What does the campaign say?

A few commentators argued that rather than encourage the free development of children, the “Please don’t label me” message is in fact illiberal toward the rights of parents to raise their own children as they see fit. In many cases this is down to an exaggeration of what the campaign is about, with critics variously asserting that the billboards: censure parents for conveying any “philosophical framework of their choosing”; suggest that “one does cultural violence to one’s child by [merely] exposing him or her to religion”; and imply that children should be raised “without the sharing of any moral or philosophical convictions”.

Let’s call this the “Please Don’t Influence Me At All” interpretation of the campaign.

The BHA rejected this straw man interpretation of the billboards. One should not – and cannot, anyway – raise a child without influencing them in the broad sense, and moral education is obviously hugely important.

If “Please Don’t Influence Me At All” is a bad interpretation anyway, then criticisms based on it pose no problem for the actual message of the “Please Don’t Label Me” campaign, of course. But the straw man is a good place to start thinking.

The “Please Don’t Influence Me At All” interpretation

On the “Please Don’t Influence Me At All” interpretation of the billboards, parents and teachers would be compelled either to provide no education whatsoever (Mill values education, of course, and the notion is preposterous anyway, so need scarcely be considered), or more likely to act in some kind of impossibly objective way, offering an indisputable universalist education. This is what, for example, the Bible Society thinktank Theos claimed to believe the campaign was about, their Director suggesting the campaign “assumes that there is a position of philosophical neutrality out there, a value-neutral cultural space in which children can grow up. The suggestion is dubious, to put it kindly.” Indeed it is, but we can still ask what Mill would make of this exaggerated form of the slogan.

The notion of a hypothetical, one-size-fits-all, objective education, would have run up against Mill’s considerable respect for diversity of opinion and specifically his strong preference for a plurality in educational approaches. Disagreement and a range of differing approaches are required in order for a society not to become set in its ways, Mill says (p63). He writes appreciatively of the multiple autonomous approaches humankind is capable of adopting in parallel:

the only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty, since by it there are as many possible independent centres of improvement as there are individuals. [emphasis added, p62]

This ‘multiple approaches’ approach is applied specifically to education:

All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity in education. [p95]

Government operations tend to be everywhere alike. With individuals and voluntary associations, on the contrary, there are varied experiments, and endless diversity of experience. What the State can usefully do is to make itself a central depository, and active circulator and diffuser, of the experience resulting from many trials. Its business is to enable each experimentalist to benefit by the experiments of others; instead of tolerating no experiments but its own. [p99]

Mill’s concerns about a homogeneous state education stem from a fear that it will “mould” people into an form designed by the state, priesthood, aristocracy, or a tyrannous majority of the population (p95). It would be interesting to know what he’d think of the National Curriculum and whether this left sufficient room for his multiple “experiments” in education. But that’s another question. The point is that Mill would fear a totally uniform education which falsely assumed that the whole truth was already in hand.

Thankfully, though, the billboards don’t say “Please Don’t Influence Me At All”, they say “Please Don’t Label Me”.

Labelling and “boxing”

If neither total abandonment of children’s education nor one-size-fits all conformity are implied by the campaign, the message is rather that “Some practices, some ways of speaking, some implied threats of severe parental disapproval, serve to prejudice a child’s free development in a way which goes beyond merely conveying one’s own deeply held opinion” (see BHA’s “Responses to our critics”). Examples given include:

Parents who do not educate their children about the range of positions that people hold (“protecting” them from the big wide world) while over-educating them about their own position

Parents whose faces and attitudes grow ominous in response to critical questions about their personal beliefs, especially if their child moves toward “abandoning” the parents’ religion

Teachers who bend over backwards to teach about one religion to the exclusion of all others (we hear a lot about this happening)

Any adults who naturally think of the children of religious parents as “belonging” to the same religion – and refer to the children as ‘Muslim’, ‘Christian’ and so on

So what, when it comes to his more narrowly defined sense in which adults can “box children in” to a particular worldview, would J S Mill have made of the billboards? For a start, would the grand daddy of liberalism want to interfere in family life at all?

Is it liberal to interfere in a family?

At a superficial glance it might seem that the message of the billboard campaign (even on the proper “Please Don’t Label Me” reading) is illiberal because it would interfere in the more or less sacrosanct  relationship between parent and child. For some modern liberals (and, Mill tells us on page 98 of On Liberty, many of those called ‘liberals’ in his own time) any intervention in a family or even a ‘culture’ other than one’s own is regarded as illiberal and paternalistic. Even if such a liberal found the “boxing in” of children repugnant, they might favour standing back rather than “intrude” into the dynamics of that parent-child relationship.

But for Mill things were not so black and white. Or perhaps, in a way, they were more black and white, because his position is that questions of liberty and intervention rest at the level of the individual. Higher level collections like families and nations do not have collective rights of non-interference, precisely because one individual within a ‘collective’ of this kind might be intruding on the liberty of another. Even for groups of people which some will regard as quite natural sets, like nuclear families, there is a kind of arbitrariness to defining multiple people as one unit qualifying for liberty in its own right. (If the whole state were defined as a collective in which no one from outside should interfere, then the government could abuse the liberties of individuals at whim!)

If we run this position against examples like abusive parent-child relationships then it becomes clear why it is individuals, not the corporate family or other collections, that are the atomic units in Mill’s liberal framework, and why intervention between individuals need not be illiberal and can in fact be a moral obligation.

Richard Reeves, speaking at the Bentham Lecture 2009, regards this kind of moral intervention, even into a family, as characteristic Mill and an essential ingredient of liberalism. As an example of this moral intervention Reeves cites Mill’s views on the capacity of families to raise children:

The laws which, in many countries on the Continent, forbid marriage unless the parties can show that they have the means of supporting a family, do not exceed the legitimate powers of the State: and whether such laws be expedient or not (a question mainly dependent on local circumstances and feelings), they are not objectionable as violations of liberty. [p97]

Our own contemporary “circumstances and feelings” would probably lead most of us to reject any means-testing of the bride and groom before their big day! In Mill’s time contraception was considerably less accessible and less effective and the purpose of marriage more singular; but today we do not see marriage as solely, often not even primarily, as a framework for raising children.  But Mill’s point in and of itself is not unreasonable and is made by many today (usually in the context of child benefits), namely that if we do not have the means to support them then we should not wantonly churn out offspring (Mill warns of “a life or lives of wretchedness and depravity to the offspring, with manifold evils to those sufficiently within reach to be in any way affected by their actions.” p98).

In principle, then, Mill will allow us to interject into a family relationship. When impinging on the actions of others Mill makes a distinction between on the one hand “reprobation, and social stigma” and on the other hand “legal punishment” (p98). The “Please Don’t Label Me” billboards are about raising consciousness on the issue of presuming religion of children (as Richard Dawkins said it’s about trying to get people to cringe at the sound of children being labelled); the campaign does not call for any legal reprimand. So we needn’t decide whether Mill would outlaw the “boxing in” of children. But would he regard religious presumption of minors as itself illiberal and worthy of becoming a “social stigma” as the billboards intend?

Limiting their options

A particularly insidious manner of “boxing in” someone’s beliefs is the removal of other options, the Orwellian redaction of language such that words are only available in support of your own view, the silencing of questions by editing out the question mark. Living with a label and being told “You are a Christian” or “You belong to this religion” can serve to have this effect, and in some cases discussion of alternative beliefs within a family are taboo, even explicitly forbidden.

Mill gives his reasons for calling freedom of opinion and expression a “necessity”:

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. [p46]

There is something prideful then, arrogantly sure of yourself, in limiting the options on the table. Mill goes on to say that even if a silenced opinion happens to be false, it may still contain some “portion” of truth that we might have learned from, so even when open debate opens up false beliefs it still has utility. The “collision of adverse opinions” is essential for coming to the truth, says Mill: even if the pedagogue happens to be in possession of the truth, being entirely correct in their religion, a contest with other opinions is still essential if that position is to be anything more than a prejudice.

Furthermore, in an argument which should move even someone intent on labelling a child as faithful for faith’s sake, Mill suggests that if an alleged truth is forced on others then:

the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character of conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience. [p46-47]

Mill is very wary of the closing down of options, then. And closing down options is just one way of attempting to perpetuate your own beliefs by coercing others toward conforming to your point of view, something else Mill warns against.

Conformity to “Custom”

Writing in 1859 in terms we would now stand back from, Mill asserts (p63) that “Custom” holds sway over much of the world including “the whole East”; for these other cultures “justice and right mean conformity to custom”. The contemporary philosopher is unlikely to ascribe a universal conformist traditionalism to almost all foreigners! But Mill’s point is that any society which has become stagnant and uncritical was not always so.  The countries he alludes to once possessed “originality” and “were then the greatest and most powerful nations of the world. What are they now?” he asks.

His answer is that these aged and decrepit cultures have lost out in the game of civilizations, even succumbing to the title of being ‘colonies’ of European states.

A people, it appears may be progressive for a certain length of time, and then stop; when does it stop? When it ceases to possess individuality. [p63]

The capacity not to conform, not to blindly inherent Custom from society, the public recognition of individuality as a virtue: these are crucial to the vitality of a civilization.

We can extrapolate and apply the same argument to families: a child’s education, like a country’s culture, needs to allow for individuality and non-conformity, so that unexpected ideas can enter into the space of ideas and provide vital new energy.

But we don’t have to extrapolate from Mill’s argument. He is concerned about enforcing conformity both from the State and a the social level. At the social level the dogged perpetuation of Custom is local and most often familial. There is a reason that the pressure to conform in most coming-of-age stories comes from parents and elders! It is through the cosy inheritance of ideas from generation to generation that “Custom” will stagnate a whole society. Mill abhors the widespread “atmosphere of mental slavery” (p29) brought about by any stagnant conformity. Talking about social inability to challenge fundamentals he says the price paid “is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.” (p28)

Religious authoritarianism

Mill speaks often against religious dogmatists and explicitly considers the specific case in which religion is the “Custom” being illiberally enforced on society. In the context of discussing blasphemy laws and Sabbatarian legislation, which Mill puts firmly on the wrong side of liberty, he claims that:

The notion that it is one man’s duty that another should be religious, was the foundation of all the religious persecutions ever perpetrated, and, if admitted, would fully justify them. [p81]

Of course, the mindset of an inquisitor attempting to force a heretic or unbeliever into conformity, even murdering them before accepting their differing beliefs, is usually far more demonic than is a parent’s desire to raise ‘a Christian child’! Nevertheless, Mill brings the point back down to a more day-to-day level:

Though the feeling which breaks out in the repeated attempts to stop railway travelling on Sunday, in the resistance to the opening of Museums, and the like, has not the cruelty of the old persecutors, the state of mind indicated by it is fundamentally the same. It is a determination not to tolerate others in doing what is permitted by their religion, because it is not permitted by the persecutor’s religion. It is a belief that God not only abominates the act of the misbeliever, but will not hold us guiltless if we leave him unmolested. [p81]

Now, Mill is here using Sabbatarian attempts to legislate against working on Sundays as his example, and the case is very much a matter of the state and its laws, not of domestic norms and parental demagoguery. But the logic of the argument is not far removed. A child in a family home (where the rules and the taboos and the ‘established religion’ and the terms of engagement are all decided by their elders) is not so much unlike a citizen in a state under the same conditions decided upon by their government. The attitude of a religiously pushy parent – who feels it a duty not to leave the child “unmolested” and instead to inculcate the child into her religion – carries the same weight of implication: that God in some way demands belief even if it must be obtained through coercion.

Varieties of influence

Mill speaks ironically of over-bearing moralism: “we are eager for improvement in politics, in education, even in morals, though in this last our idea of improvement chiefly consists in persuading or forcing other people to be good as ourselves.” (p63) But he’s not trying to prevent all moral discourse, or all kinds of influence on others (after all, On Liberty is itself a moral essay aiming to convince others to behave according to its principles). It’s how you go about moral persuasion that is important. Listing types of influence that would not violate the ‘harm principle’ (i.e. measures that are allowed when trying to stop someone from causing harm to themselves), Mill gives:

Advice, instruction, persuasion, and avoidance by other people if thought necessary by them for their own good, are the only measures by which society can justifiably express it dislike of disapprobation of his conduct. [p84]

So for the sake of someone else’s “own good” certain kinds of persuasion are acceptable, but you still cannot force someone down a particular route. This has implications for both the way in which some kinds of influence “cross the line” and become something closer to coercion than to free expression. Would religious presumption of infants and children constitute ‘force’? Would predetermining their religious identity be a kind of permissible “instruction” or a kind of illiberal intrusion?

Kinds of compulsion

Mill’s essay, On Liberty, turns pivotally on his ‘harm principle’.

That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. [p8]

Whatever else it is, labelling children is not remonstrating, reasoning, persuading or entreating. It’s more like presuming. But is it therefore a form of compulsion? The word ‘compulsion’ is often used of an active force in the here and now, but as discussed above (“Limiting their options”) making presumptions and taking certain questions off the table is something more like prejudicing the child’s development, a kind of compulsion by stealth. This compulsion by stealth is in some ways more sinister than overt compulsion, especially when applied to children, because it can remain invisible until the child is old enough to think outside the box. Let’s call it a ‘pre-compulsion’. Children who are labelled and boxed in have suffered an act of pre-compulsion. They have been pre-compelled. To label a child as “belonging” to your own creed it to pre-compel them to adopt your own views.

“… to grow and develop itself on all sides …”

Mill was hugely, abundantly keen on autonomous development, not just of individuals as adults, but in terms that speak of the whole person developing from birth without being compelled or (as we’ve shown above discussing the heredity of “Custom”) without being pre-compelled or forced to conform to a particular identity. He talks of “framing the plan of our life to suit our own character” as an essential domain of liberty (p11). “One whose desires and impulses are not his own,” he says, “has no character” (p53). And speculating on historical development he says, “society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences.” (p54) The rhapsody continues:

It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves, but by cultivating it, and calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation [p55]

In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others. There is a greater fulness of life about his own existence [p56]

One crucial passage, often quoted, gets to the core of the humanism within Mill’s position.

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing. [p52]

“Please Don’t Label Me” is about when a parent’s free expression crosses the line to be a pre-compulsion of the child. It’s about a failure to respect something like ‘fair play’ as young minds are developing. Mill writes:

To give fair play to the nature of each, it is essential that different persons should be allowed to lead different lives. In proportion as this latitude has been exercised in any age, has that age been noteworthy to posterity. Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men. [p56]

Conclusion, and blame

In an essay only 104 pages long Mill has a whole chapter on individuality. He is terribly concerned about the illiberalism in anything which unfairly detracts from individuals’ free development, compelling them toward conformity and “Custom”. And despite the dangers in doing so, he talks at length about the particular offences of religion in this area. It is no stretch of the imagination at all to think that Mill would see the “Please Don’t Label Me” message, properly understood, as correctly identifying an extremity of influence which goes beyond the parent’s right to express their religion to impinge on the liberties of their children and infringe on the autonomous development of their individuality.

Writing on the the manner in which arguments are conducted, Mill says that:

Undoubtedly the manner of asserting an opinion, even though it be a true one, may be very objectionable, and may justly incur severe censure. But the principal offences of the kind are such as it is mostly impossible, unless by accidental self-betrayal, to bring home to conviction. The gravest of them is, to argue sophistically, to suppress facts or arguments, to misstate the elements of the case, or misrepresent the opposite opinion. [p47]

Labelling children from infancy is prior to sophism; so distorting is it that it forestalls any need for discussion let alone any need for sophistry. In addition, if a parent suppresses the facts about other religions or the arguments raging within their own, or misstates what it means to “belong” to their religion, or sullies the name of conflicting worldviews, then Mill it would seem is committed to turning that portion of their parenting into a “social stigma”.

Would he blame them, though? The billboard campaign is light in tone, framed in colourful letters as a plea from children rather than as a castigation of parents. Even Dawkins’ claim that “Please Don’t Label Me” is about “raising consciousness” assumes that people who label children are not yet aware of the illiberalism it embodies. Well, Mill also gives us a lot of room to be ‘consciousness raising’ rather than castigating. Immediately following from the above, he continues:

But all this, even to the most aggravated degree, is so continually done in perfect good faith, by persons who are not considered, and in many other respects may not deserve to be considered, ignorant or incompetent, that it is rarely possible, on adequate grounds, conscientiously to stamp the misrepresentation as morally culpable; and still less could law presume to interfere with this kind of controversial misconduct. … Yet whatever mischief arises from their [rhetorical "weapons"] use  is greatest when they are employed against the comparatively defenceless; and whatever unfair advantage can be derived by any opinion from this mode of asserting, accrues almost exclusively to received opinions.” [p47-48]

Page references are to On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government, Basil Blackwell Oxford edition (1946).

Bob Churchill is Head of Membership and Promotion and the British Humanist Association

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