Educational adequacy and educational equality: a merging proposal

ABSTRACT

Proposals of distributive justice in childhood education are mainly divided in two camps: educational adequacy and educational equality. This paper shows that the compelling insights of both camps are complementary. I begin by distinguishing two kinds of views of educational adequacy. One identifies the thresholds of adequate education with essential capacities to be autonomous (John White) and to participate in public deliberation (Amy Gutmann). I defend the priority of these thresholds, but also their compatibility with other principles of justice that regulate educational inequalities above the thresholds. Another kind of adequacy view is posed by Elizabeth Anderson and Debra Satz. In their view, a just distribution of educational resources derives from the demands of relational equality. An adequate education should develop social, political, and civic equal relationships among children, and the adult citizens that they will become. The other camp of proposals of distributive justice in childhood education is educational equality. Its defenders, like Harry Brighouse and Colin Macleod, identify two prima facie reasons to offset inequalities in educational resources among children. I argue that these reasons are compatible with educational adequacy views. My central claim is that all-things-considered proposals of educational justice should contain the compelling insights of both camps.

KEYWORDS:

• Educational justice
• educational adequacy
• relational equality
• educational equality
• childhood education

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Serena Olsaretti for very helpful feedback in various drafts of the paper. I would also like to thank Luis Rodríguez Abascal, Alfonso Ruiz Miguel, Adam Swift and an anonymous reviewer of this journal for very useful comments and suggestions on a previous version of this paper, and Matthew Clayton for very fruitful discussion on issues addressed in the paper. Besides, I would like to acknowledge the audience at the Public Law and Legal Philosophy Ph.D. seminar at the Autonomous University of Madrid. In any case, mistakes are mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Education may be bad (e.g. by teaching false knowledge). In the following, when I talk about the benefits of ‘education’, or the interests that ‘education’ satisfies, I mean ‘a good education’.

2. Hereinafter, any reference to ‘educational justice’ shall mean justice in childhood education. For my purposes, childhood education ends up when people are considered autonomous and start to assume responsibility for their educational choices. This statement is intendedly vague. First, it allows differences in the end of childhood education among different states depending on their education systems and other social conditions. Second, it opens the door to a progressive end of childhood education, just as children may obtain their autonomy progressively (Bou-Habib & Olsaretti, 2015, pp. 27–32).

3. See, also, Mason (2006).

4. For instance, see Brighouse (2002) and Macleod (2010a).

5. ‘An educational resource is effective if it can be used for education by the particular student to whom it is provided. […] Providing blind students with braille books or audio tapes is effectively equal to providing sighted students with ordinary books’ (Brighouse, 2002, pp. 138–139).

6. For a different attempt to reconcile educational adequacy and educational equality, see Weishart (2014).

7. In addition, this paper adopts a liberal egalitarian framework. It excludes, for instance, libertarian positions that reject the distribution of educational resources by social institutions.

8. See Casal (2007) for an excellent and thorough analysis and evaluation of adequacy views of justice (in general). Discussion about educational adequacy (in particular) of the first kind owes a lot to Casal’s text.

9. I leave aside cases of children who are not capable to learn the relevant abilities and skills.

10. For a well-developed list of educational goods, see Brighouse et al. (2016, pp. 7–12).

11. This point raises the distinction between justice and legitimacy. The outcome of a democratic deliberative procedure gains legitimacy (and may even be empirically likely to be just), but whether it is just or unjust depends on the reasons that support it rather than on the procedure that led to it. Although the outcome of democratic deliberation and voting does not alter our view of educational justice, it might be relevant for what is just overall. Specifically, the fact that the majority opted democratically for one educational policy might justify adopting that policy, despite its drawbacks for educational justice. Respect for democratic processes is independently valuable, and this value may sometimes clash with educational justice (Brighouse et al., 2016, pp. 17–18).

12. This mirrors the criticism of Macleod (2010a, pp. 170–173) to the adequacy views of education of Anderson (2007) and Satz (2007), as we shall see later.

13. See Clayton (2015, pp. 253–255) for further elaboration of children’s interest in the capacities to become free and equal in Rawlsian terms, and how such interest implies a threshold of adequate education.

14. Clayton (2007, p. 418) raises a similar objection to the adequacy view of Mason (2006). Namely, adequacy views fail to justify why reducing inequalities beyond the threshold point is not valuable at all.

15. See Schemmel (2011). In his view, distributive justice is ‘purely recipient-oriented’, whereas relational equality focusses on the attitudes of social institutions towards different social groups, that is, whether social institutions show hostility or contempt towards socially identifiable groups, or whether they neglect the interests of some of those groups, even in cases where the distribution of the relevant goods is just.

16. See Macfarlane (2018, pp. 768–771) for justificatory and policy implications specific of a relational approach to education.

17. This is the so-called levelling down objection (Parfit, 2000, p. 98).

18. To be sure, some egalitarians label as unjust inequalities that are nonetheless justified overall. By this, they mean that there are reasons to regret these inequalities. To wit, the world without those inequalities would be a better place. This holds even if rectification of the relevant inequalities is not attainable (Cohen, 2004, p. 4). By contrast, other egalitarians restrict justice to what can be done (Dworkin, 2004, p. 339), and to what we owe to each other (Scanlon, 1998). Nonetheless, the dispute is merely terminological. In practice, both egalitarian views permit inequalities to the extent that they are justified overall.

19. For a thorough analysis of different conceptions of desert for the purposes of justice, see Olsaretti (2006).

20. Between brute luck and autonomous choices, there is option luck (Dworkin, 1981, p. 293). It derives from taking a risk. Whether the risk materializes or not is a matter of luck. But the choice to take it entails responsibility for the outcome.

21. This prima facie reason for educational equality is indebted to responsibility-sensitive egalitarianism. The main contenders of this kind of egalitarianism have been Arneson (1989), Cohen (1989), Dworkin (1981), and Roemer (1998). I cannot discuss here all the different versions and formulations of this kind of egalitarianism. Their main difference is where they draw the line between what is a matter of luck, and what is people’s responsibility instead. For my purposes, these differences are irrelevant because, as I argue in this section, children are not responsible for their education in any case.

22. I import the list of sources of inequalities from Nagel (1991, p. 70).

23. This worry is widely shared among liberal egalitarians. A prominent example is the Rawlsian principle of fair equality of opportunity (Rawls, 1999, pp. 57–65).

24. Debates about the scope of parental partiality illustrates this concern. See Brighouse (2002, pp. 151–161), Brighouse and Swift (2009b), Clayton (2006, pp. 48–81; 2018, pp. 453–455), Clayton and Stevens (2004), Fishkin (1983, pp. 35–82), Macleod (2010a), Miller (2013, pp. 135–138), Satz (2007, pp. 633–634) and Swift (2009).

25. This thought is shared by Rawls (1999, pp. 57–65), despite the priority of fair equality of opportunity over the difference principle. Debates about this priority prove that egalitarians share the thought that differences in native endowments are beyond children’s control. See Arneson (2015), Clayton (2001), Mason (2006, pp. 82–87), Scanlon (2018, pp. 57–59), Shiffrin (2004) and Taylor (2004). Nonetheless, there is disagreement regarding the justification of inequalities due to differences in native endowments, all things considered. For my purposes, it is sufficient to endorse the uncontroversial claim that differential responsibility does not ground the justification of those inequalities.

26. As Rawls argues, ‘[e]ven the willingness to make an effort, to try, and so to be deserving in the ordinary sense is itself dependent upon happy family and social circumstances.’ (Rawls, 1999, p. 64).

27. See Segall (2013, pp. 142–151).

28. Rewarding effort also involves a compensation because exerting effort is burdensome (Rawls, 2001, p. 179). Such justification for rewarding effort applies to children and adults alike, but autonomy and responsibility play no justificatory role.

29. I purposely talk about ‘people’s position in the hierarchy of rewards’ rather than ‘people’s rewards’ because a separate question concerns how unequal those rewards should be (Jacobs, 2004, p. 4).

30. A different conception of desert grounds it on performance, adjusted against luck integral to performance (Miller, 2004). In this view, it is irrelevant that some people faced disadvantaged circumstances in the background that prevented or hindered their performance. By contrast, I align with the view that a relevant conception of desert for justice should require fair opportunity to deserve in the background (Olsaretti, 2004, pp. 12–33).

31. This argument is imported from Shiffrin (2010, p. 125): ‘other things being equal, I have a claim to as much of our social product as is compatible with your claim, so because my claim is no stronger or weaker than yours, our claims turn out to be the same.’ See, also, Shiffrin (2010, p. 131). For a different way to argue that inequalities in the distribution of social resources require a justification, more akin to relational egalitarianism, see Segall (2013, pp. 22–27).

32. For the difference between desert and entitlement, see Feinberg (1970, pp. 85–87), and Rawls (1999, pp. 273–277; 2001, pp. 72–74).

33. In addition, some levelling down strategies require coercive interference with the autonomy of the family (Fishkin, 1983, pp. 64–82).

34. For a contrary view, see Temkin (2000).

35. For an exploration of this Rawlsian claim, see Williams (2006, p. 489, fn. 1).

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Fernando De-Los-Santos-Menéndez

Fernando De-Los-Santos-Menéndez is a doctoral researcher in the Faculty of Law at the Autonomous University of Madrid. He works as a member of a constitutional reform research project, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. His current research focuses primarily on issues of justice in childhood education and the rights of children.