This article comments on an essay by Ryan Bevan published within this issue which calls for dispensing with the mode of cultivating autonomy based on the liberal consumerist model, which sees traditional as a stumbling block to children's educational progress. Bevan argues that education should cultivate from within benign traditions the very values and deliberative processes necessary for liberalism. For Bevan when the traditions themselves contain the values to be cultivated, it is counterproductive to guide students to challenge these traditions. Bevan calls for the affirmation of these traditions by students and use such traditions to cultivate the values and processes required of liberal citizens.