Can Attempts to Make Schools More Reliable Render Them Less Trustworthy?

This paper has two aims. One is to draw a distinction between two types of trust. The other is to argue for its applicability in academic discourse on educational policies. One of the two types of trust is "ethical trust" that rests on beliefs about others' ethical virtues. The other is "institutional trust" that typically depends on law enforcement and economic incentives. Ideas about a social order based primarily on institutional trust have haunted political thought since the time of Thomas Hobbes. Such ideas may seem realistic if we focus on business relations, where conformity to contractual terms suffices to meet the needs of all concerned. Intimate relationships rely more on ethical trust. In the first half of the paper the difference between these two types of trust is explained. In the final sections it is argued that successful schoolwork depends on ethical trust and that measures to make schools more reliable in the institutional sense, through supervision and accountability, need to be applied with caution. Such measures can undermine ethical trust because they, at least implicitly, question the moral integrity of teachers and school-heads.