In the United States today, liberals embrace the logic of “congruence” as the basis for their educational systems. They seek, insofar as possible, to ensure that their children's educations—both at home and at school—reflect the political, social, and cultural tenets they, as adults, prize most. Children, the theory of congruence posits, most reliably develop liberal-democratic qualities such as self-sufficiency, tolerance, and independent thinking in educational environments that treat them as autonomous individuals and allow them to learn relatively unconstrained by (adult) authority.

In Liberal States, Authoritarian Families, Rita Koganzon argues that such faith in congruence is both misguided and injurious for the construction and maintenance of a liberal-democratic society. “In a liberal democracy,” she asserts, “the practices of childrearing and education must run counter to those of civic life” (p. 12). To achieve the educational outcomes they seek, contemporary liberals must reject congruence. They must abandon their modern efforts to align family, school, and society and instead return to the family-centered structures of adult authority advocated by the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century educational theorists John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Koganzon arrives at her recommendations for the twenty-first century by turning to the past. She begins with two chapters on Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes that trace the development of sovereignty theory in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and show that this influential school of thought gave rise to the earliest arguments in favor of congruence. In chapters 3 through 6, she turns her attention to Locke, Rousseau, and their efforts to address one of the central problems produced by the rise of liberal-democratic societies: namely, the tyranny of majority or public opinion. To advance their anti-authoritarian agendas, Koganzon persuasively argues, Locke and Rousseau rejected congruence and instead “viewed the ‘authoritarian’ family as a necessary educational buttress for children against the new forms of social tyranny that liberal, commercial states would develop” (pp. 11-12). Rather than embrace a system of childrearing and education that mirrored their political-social programs, Locke and Rousseau believed that the emergence of the liberal state and its new threats—the specter of public opinion, fashion, and the attitudes of the majority—required strengthening, rather than diminishing, the private or personal authority of the family. Authoritarian parents and other educators, they believed, were necessary to protect children from the new sources of public authority so potentially detrimental to the cultivation of their self-sufficiency, independence, and liberty. In short, Locke and Rousseau saw the authoritarian family—and, by extension, an authoritarian educational system—as an integral component of the liberal state.

Koganzon shines in her analysis of the distant worlds of early modern Europe. Two excellent chapters on Rousseau demonstrate that he conceptualized the family as an essential bulwark against the modern state, especially the tyranny of the majority or public opinion. In so doing, they shed new light on Rousseau's views on the interplay between private and public authority and his recognition of “how indispensable personal authority is to liberty” (p. 202). Koganzon's discussion of Locke in chapters 3 and 4 is particularly illuminating. Unlike many philosophers, political scientists, and educational theorists, who often separate Locke's political writings (e.g., the Two Treatises of Government) from his philosophical and educational works (e.g., An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Some Thoughts Concerning Education), she demonstrates the payoffs of a richer, more holistic reading of the seventeenth-century polymath. This approach yields fresh insights into Locke's views on authority in childrearing and education. For example, Koganzon shows that he “reverse[d] the logic of congruence” and believed instead that the sort of state he advocated (one “grounded in equality and individual liberty”) demanded “a hierarchical, authoritarian family to sustain itself” (p. 14). As a result, she convincingly argues that Locke's divergent attitudes toward authority in the public and private realms of the state and family are best understood as complementary—rather than contradictory—positions.

Liberal States, Authoritarian Families provides an important and exciting reinterpretation of public and private authority in early modern thought and will be of great interest to historians of education, childhood, and the family, as well as political theorists and philosophers. The only shortcoming is that Koganzon's sharp historical analysis in the body of the book does not entirely justify her recommendations for contemporary society—which, it bears mention here, feature prominently in both the introduction and conclusion. Without, for example, a clearer disambiguation between “school” and “family” in the twenty-first century and without a case study or two to elucidate the contemporary implications of lessons from the past, it remains unclear whether—not to mention how—present-day policymakers, school boards, families, or politicians should seek to implement these insights from early modern Europe. As a result, Koganzon falls short of one lofty goal she sets herself: to explain how “permitting the adult authority they've over-cautiously withheld” might allow “modern liberals [to] strengthen liberal education” in the twenty-first century (p. 12). Would, for example, a more authoritarian approach to early childhood education really neutralize the effects of public opinion? Would greater parental control over K-12 education effectively combat the tyranny of the majority? Would the curricula taught in decentralized, locally controlled school systems today resemble those promoted by Locke and Rousseau in their effects on liberal-democratic society? Ample evidence from the more recent past would suggest not.

Of course, full engagement with these questions in the context of present-day policy concerns falls outside the scope of a work on early modern thought. But in 2022, readers cannot help but marvel at the obvious dissimilarities between their own world and that of Koganzon's historical subjects. The absence of prescriptive religious and political material in Locke and Rousseau's authoritarian educational plans may be striking and noteworthy, as Koganzon rightly points out, but there are few indications that authoritarian, parentally controlled education in the age of partisan politics, politicized school boards, and social media bubbles would be similarly free. Nevertheless, even those readers of Liberal States, Authoritarian Families not (yet) persuaded that authoritarian families and schools are among the best available solutions to the problems faced by liberal states today will learn a great deal from Koganzon's nuanced and penetrating study.