ERIC Number: EJ793659
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2008
Pages: 16
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1477-8785
EISSN: N/A
Should Arranged Marriages for Teenage Girls Be Allowed?: How Public Schools Should Respond to Illiberal Cultural Practices
McAvoy, Paula
Theory and Research in Education, v6 n1 p5-20 2008
In this article I offer a framework for thinking about how public schools in liberal societies ought to respond to instances of arranged marriages for girls from deeply communitarian cultural groups. Focusing on three cases of culturally and religiously arranged marriages from the Hmong, Islamic fundamentalist and Mormon fundamentalist communities, I show that neither the type of tolerance demanded by group rights theorists, nor Susan Okin's claim that liberals should "enforce" women's rights, provides liberals with a satisfactory response. Instead, I argue that Rawls' concept of overlapping consensus provides us with a more just way to think through these tensions between cultural values. Through this discussion it becomes clear that: (a) specifics matter; and (b) what we must not do when making policies is move girls from one autonomy-limiting situation into a different non-autonomous situation. (Contains 8 notes.)
Descriptors: Marriage, Adolescents, Females, Public Schools, Religious Cultural Groups, Hmong People, Personal Autonomy, Civil Rights, Cultural Differences, Poverty, Sex Role, Political Attitudes
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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