Freedom in the Classroom

by Nick Boden

Mafalda sees an even smaller child and goes over to speak to them.	Mafalda: Hello! You’re really small!  What’s your name?	FREEDOM … the child replies.	Mafalda doesn’t reply. After a beat, the child says … Reached a conclusion yet stupid? The whole world reaches their own stupid conclusion when they meet me.
Mafalda ‘Freedom On the Beach’ Mafalda Digital, Quino (1970). Available at: https://x.com/MafaldaDigital/status/1769836759280468016?mx=2 [Accessed 24 Feb. 2025].

The Bristol Curriculum Framework (2025) highlights the importance of creating an intellectually stimulating environment that is multidisciplinary, creates a sense of belonging, contributes to personal development and inculcates a sense of global and civic engagement. These are ambitious goals for practitioners in a world saturated with information. Given this context, it is essential to consider how students engage with content as this can be beneficial to meet these challenges.

Barnett (2009) highlights the difference between ‘knowing’ – the ability to recall information – and ‘being’, which is developed through engagement with material overtime. In this process, “worthwhile dispositions and qualities may develop”, leading to the formation of epistemic virtues such as the ability to think critically, act ethically and contribute to a meaningful society.  Barnett’s epistemic virtues can offer a framework for considerations of freedom in the classroom. Forms of ‘authentic assessment’ such as oral or written assessments allow certain freedoms, while methods like problem-based learning and capstone assessments may also promote or restrict student freedom. In traditional lectures, for example, students are free to attend or leave but they are less free to participate; almost by definition, a lecture is a monologue! In contrast, group-based learning allows students more freedom to cooperate and self-direct part of the session; it can allow freedom from intrusion by the instructor. Indeed, most forms of delivery and of assessment invoke restrictions or allowances. This blog post invites practitioners to reflect on students’ ‘being’ in education through the lens of freedom. What are students free to do? This thinking can mirror how students engage civically with the ‘real world’.

Positive freedom vs negative freedom

At first glance, Isaiah Berlin’s (1958) idea of positive and negative freedom offers a useful conceptualisation of freedom. Positive freedom can be thought of as the freedom to. Rules or regulations are put into place to guarantee individuals have access to certain actions. Negative freedom, on the other hand, is often explained as freedom from. Removing barriers and constraints leaves options available. However, this distinction between freedom to and freedom from provides little clarity (Swift, 2006). For it follows that if you have positive freedom, you necessarily possess negative freedom. Consider, for instance, the example of freedom of religion. Are you free from the state telling you what type of religion to practice, or do you have the freedom to practice the religion of your choosing?

It is worthwhile taking time to sketch out further Isaiah Berlin’s idea of positive and negative freedom as they are commonly used in international law and peace studies.¹ Positive freedom can be understood as the possibility of action and the ability to take control of yourself.  Applying positive freedom to the classroom would ensure that students are given visible and available options to enable them to take ownership of learning. The removal of barriers to student agency might include a group activity allowing students the space to collaborate away from the pressure of whole-class discussion, or activities designed to promote student choice in how they attain classroom objectives, through different medium and media. To allow some students to attain positive freedom, the teacher may need to intervene to ensure the objectives of the lesson, or the longer term aims of the course are met. This could perhaps be achieved through approaches such as the ‘Guide-on-the-Side’ or ‘Meddler-in-the-Middle’ (McWilliam, 2009) where the teacher supports rather than directs the learning process.² This approach aligns with Barnett’s (2009) emphasis on ‘being’: encouraging learners to engage meaningfully with content to develop intellectually and personally. However, this example exposes a limitation with Berlin’s ideas: having positive freedom is dependent upon having negative freedom. For example, consider a student who is provided by the teacher with the conditions to speak, to voice their point on a topic. Yet they are unable to do so because another student dominates the conversation and replies for them. Or they cannot reply as they fall victim to shyness or embarrassment. In this case, while the student does have guaranteed negative freedom and the opportunity to exercise positive freedom, they have not been able to realise their full potential in the classroom.

In group work outside of class, students are free from intervention by the teacher and free to make decisions about how they work in the group. In an oral assessment students are free from the pressure of writing an assignment and have the freedom to choose their language, content, examples and how they speak. Yet, they are not free from assessment if they want to be granted an academic award.

Cumming and Rose (2021) highlight how universal design for learning can allow learners to engage with the learning process via multiple methods of representation, expression and engagement. Are learners free to engage with the content in various ways or free from having to conform to the teacher’s preferred methods? Alternatively, consider open-ended tasks such as giving students the choice of producing either a poster, an essay or a presentation; this would include freedom from direction by the teacher and freedom to create the product however the student wishes. These examples show that freedom is a deeper issue than that of a tension between the external conditions that enable freedom and the internal capabilities that allow individuals to realise and exercise that freedom.

A tripartite understanding

Gerald MacCallum (1967) offers a broader understanding of autonomy which can offer a clearer framework for understanding freedom in education.  MacCallum’s model includes three components: X the agent, (or subject); Y the constraint or obstacle; and Z, the goal, or end. Applied to the classroom context, students are the agents (X), the constraints (Y) are the learning material or curriculum, and the goal (Z) can be thought of as both the long term qualification and the short term objectives of the class. This conception avoids conflating positive and negative freedom as seen in Berlin’s freedom from and freedom to, something described as the ‘two sides of the same coin’ issue (Cooper and Mtawa, 2023). MacCallum’s approach allows us to view learning as a process that is actively worked on, with a clear goal in mind, which aligns more clearly with the everyday work of an instructor. In contrast, Berlin’s conception of freedom lacks a goal. Instead, the idea of freedom is defended as an intrinsic value – something that exists as an end in and of itself. MacCallum’s model does not attempt to define freedom yet provides a structured model that can allow the creation of educational goals. Autonomy and freedom remain dynamic unanswered concepts. This allows a student to work on their own unique personal goals. Rather than freedom as an end in and of itself, freedom becomes a goal that requires consistent work. The notion that freedom is something to be worked towards avoids the pitfalls of definition and abstraction.

However, MacCallum and Berlin both fail to explain how to create the conditions in which all students feel like they have freedom and are empowered to act in a classroom setting. Student A may have the positive freedom to express their views on a certain topic as they have the confidence to enable them to act. Student B may have a logically stronger idea; however, due to A’s confidence, B feels unable to express the counterargument. Mapping Berlin’s concept of positive freedom, the second student lacks a mastery of themselves. Berlin contends that one does not have positive freedom if one is not a master of oneself. Plato, in book four of The Republic, offers a criticism. The phrase ‘master of oneself’ is a ridiculous absurdity as both phrases refer to the same person: to be master of oneself implies one is also a slave to oneself.³ This critique brings us back to the problem that negative freedom (freedom from) is dependent on positive freedom (freedom to). Carolyn M. Stone (1990) noted “[t]he notion of autonomy, which links up with ideas of self-direction, self-motivation and ‘being a chooser’ became popular during the liberal progressive era of the 1960s and early 1970s. Conceptualisations of autonomy from this period failed to consider the “role of feelings, emotions and desires” (Stone, 1990). In the example of the student who is not willing to speak, we can see how freedom is dependent on others; we need to promote responsible ‘being’ in the world through responsibility to others … in this case, through the simple act of listening. Freedom is a shared concept that must be worked on together, not simply a dichotomy of freedom to and freedom from. Thus, to account for feelings and motivations, it might be more useful to arrive at freedom with, instead of from and to. In other words, the freedom of one rests on the freedom of others. In the words of Mikhail Bakunin (1871) “I am not myself free or human until or unless I recognize the freedom and humanity of all my fellowmen”; my freedom depends on your freedom.

Back to Berlin

Negative freedom refers to the absence of interference or ‘freedom from’ rules and constraints. It is the absence of interference which guarantees freedom. If your negative freedom is infringed upon you ‘suffer from external bodies’ (Carter, 2021) which refers to the type of totalitarian governments Berlin feared. In the context of the classroom, the concept of negative freedom appears to be very similar to positive freedom such as for example, when inviting students to self-direct their learning or be a chooser. The distinction lies in the framework within which this freedom exists, such as the parameters set by assessments.  If a student enjoyed the freedom from, they may not have the freedom to do something else within that framework. For example, if a student is instructed to write philosophical essay on freedom but then chooses to write an essay on problem-based learning, they risk receiving a low mark because the freedom from writing a fully an open-ended essay guarantees that certain criteria will be used to assess their work. In essence, negative freedom guarantees freedoms within set conditions, such as laws or rules. This promotes an aspect of self-regulation as individuals must follow these rules (in this case, the writing of an essay with set guidelines and deadline). The existence of a separate notion of positive and negative liberty is unclear. Referring to the case of the essay on problem-based learning, in the negative sense, the student is free from completing an essay on a topic of their choosing. In the positive sense, the student has the freedom to write the essay in their own language and style. A further negative freedom is the freedom to choose not to complete the essay within the set deadline. Thus, somewhat confusingly, in the positive sense the student also has the freedom to not complete the essay. Berlin himself admits positive and negative liberty “seem concepts at no great logical distance from each other – no more than negative and positive ways of saying the same thing” (Berlin, 1958).

 

The Bristol Curriculum Framework highlights a challenge for practitioners to create an intellectually stimulating environment one that is multidisciplinary, creates a sense of belonging, and contributes to personal development alongside a sense of global and civic engagement. How we conceptualise freedom has an important role in meeting these aims. Through an exploration of Berlin’s positive and negative freedom it has been argued that these conceptions are not useful when considering how to design learning. Freedom is not a dichotomy: it cannot be divided into freedom to and freedom from. I have argued that freedom with is a more comprehensive understanding of freedom, as it considers how we exist in the world through our actions with others rather than just a focus on ourselves. In this way, the freedom of one person is interconnected with the freedom of others – my freedom depends on your freedom. Therefore, freedom becomes something to work on, to actively engage with, a goal to pursue rather than an end in and of itself. Thinking about freedom this way allows everyone to consider how they can contribute to the freedom of others, avoiding an individualistic conception of freedom from and freedom to, which often solely focuses on ‘my freedom’.

Footnotes

1. 
   Consider, e.g., the positive and negative obligations of a state in international human rights law, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966). Article 2.1 claims “Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation, especially economic and technical, to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the present Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures.” Johan Galtung (1964) further offers a conception of negative peace, which can be explained as freedom from direct violence, and positive peace, considered the promotion of capabilities for peace to be brought about and maintained. ↩︎
2. 
   In Berlin’s political thought this would be the state intervening to ensure the realisation of positive freedom; the extent of such intervention is debatable, and he feared could lead to totalitarian control. ↩︎
3. 
   “Now the phrase ‘master of himself’ is an absurdity, is it not? For he who is master of himself would also be subject to himself, [431a] and he who is subject to himself would be master. For the same person is spoken of in all these expressions.” ↩︎

 

Bibliography

Bakunin, M. (1871). Man, Society and Freedom. In: Dolgoff, S. (1971) Bakunin on Anarchy Translated and Edited by Dolgoff, S. New York: Vintage Random House, pp.234-243. Available at: https://files.libcom.org/files/Bakunin%20on%20Anarchy%20(1971).pdf [Accessed 28 Feb. 2025].

Barnett, R. (2009). Knowing and becoming in the higher education curriculum. Studies in Higher Education, 34(4), pp.429–440.

Berlin, I. (1958). Two Concepts of Liberty in A. Quinton (Ed.) Political Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford Readings in Philosophy, 1967, pp.141-52.

Bristol Institute for Learning and Teaching. (2024). Curriculum Framework, University of Bristol. [online] Available at: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/bilt/our-work-and-who-we-are/curriculum-enhancement/curriculum-framework/ [Accessed 24 Feb. 2025].

Carter, I. (2021). Positive and Negative Liberty (Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy). [online] Stanford.edu. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/ [Accessed 28 Feb. 2025].

Cooper, A. and Mtawa, N. (2023). Comment on Yunus Ballim’s ‘The place of teaching, learning and student development in a framework of academic freedom: Attending to the negative freedoms of our students’. Journal of Education, (89), pp.1-6. doi: https://doi.org/10.17159/2520-9868/i89a11

Cumming, T.M. and Rose, M.C. (2021). Exploring universal design for learning as an accessibility tool in higher education: a review of the current literature. The Australian Educational Researcher, 49(5). doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-021-00471-7

Ferrer, F. (1913). The Origins and Ideals of the Modern School Translated by Joseph McCabe. London: Watts and Co. Available at https://wellcomecollection.org/works/c2vbnt62/items?canvas=7 [Accessed 28 Feb. 2025].

MacCallum, G.C. (1967). Negative and Positive Freedom. The Philosophical Review, 76(3), pp.312–334.

McWilliam, E. (2009). Teaching for creativity: From sage to guide to meddler. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 29(3), pp.281-293.

Möller, K. (2009). Two Conceptions of Positive Liberty: Towards an Autonomy-based Theory of Constitutional Rights. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 29(4), pp.757-786. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqp029

Plato (1997). The Republic Translated by John Llewelyn Davies and David James Vaughan, Introduction by Stephen Watt. London: Wordsworth.

Snyder, T. (2024). On Freedom. Crown Random House: New York.

Stone, C. M. (1990). Autonomy, emotions and desires: Some problems concerning R. F. Dearden’s account of autonomy. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 24 (2), pp.271-283. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1990.tb00239.x

Swift, A. (2006). Political Philosophy: a beginners’ guide for students and politicians. Cambridge: Polity.