The problem of education in liberal democracies is to ensure the intergenerational continuity of their constitutive political ideals while remaining open to a diversity of conduct and belief that sometimes threatens those ideals. Creating Citizens addresses this problem. The book identifies both the principal aims of political education—liberal patriotism and the sense of justice—and the rights that limit their public pursuit. The public pursuit of these educational aims is properly constrained by deference to the rights of parents, and these are shown to have some independent moral weight underived from the rights of children. The liberal state's possible role in the sponsorship and the control of denominational school is discussed, as are the benefits and hazards of moral dialogue in morally diverse educational environments. The book draws heavily on John Rawls's theory of justice.

This article examines the concept of indoctrination in the context of education. It explains that a pejorative meaning is now firmly attached to the word indoctrination and argues that the basis of the moral condemnation that accusations of indoctrination have come to convey is unclear in the absence of philosophical argument. It discusses the historical concept and conception of indoctrination, its outcome, its moral status, and its role in moral responsibility.

Recent student demands within the academy for "safe space" have aroused concern about the constraints they might impose on free speech and academic freedom. There are as many kinds of safety as there are threats to the things that human beings might care about. That is why we need to be very clear about the specific threats of which the intended beneficiaries of safe space are supposed to be relieved. Much of the controversy can be dissolved by distinguishing between "dignity safety," to which everyone has a right, and "intellectual safety" of a kind that is repugnant to the education worth having. Psychological literature on stereotype threat and the interventions that alleviate its adverse effects shed light on how students’ equal dignity can be made safe in institutions without compromising liberty. But "intellectual safety" in education can only be conferred at the cost of indulging close-mindedness and allied vices. Tension between securing dignity safety and creating a fittingly unsafe intellectual environment can be eased when teaching and institutional ethos promote the virtue of civility. Race is used throughout the article as the example of a social category that can spur legitimate demands for "dignity safe space."

Autonomy is important to leading a good life but a common liberal instrumental construal of the way in which it contributes to the leading of a good life is defective. A one‐sided focus on the development of capacities for revision of conceptions of the good should be corrected by attention to the value of developing capacities permitting a rational adherence to a conception of the good. Exposing children to a diverse but shallow secular and consumer culture might not facilitate goodness‐enhancing autonomy in a way that is superior to the more insular strategies of religious minorities whose child‐rearing practices are criticized by liberals.

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