Abstract
Many principles characterize educational justice in terms of the relationship between educational inputs, outputs and distributive standards. Such principles depend upon the causal pathway view of education. It is implicit in this view that the causally effective aspects of education can be understood as separate from the normative aspects of education. Yet this view relies on an impossible division of labor between empirical and normative work in educational research: it treats the causal roles that are understood and explained objectively through empirical research as separate from the normative theorizing that informs the assessment of particular policies and practices. Such principles therefore rely on unreliable causal claims and are unable to make prescriptions about practices even according to their own conceptions of justice. Furthermore, such principles obscure other relevant considerations of justice that pertain to the internal processes of education and the structural relation of education to external social conditions.
Notes
1. It is worth noting that such principles are concerned with formal education in particular. Education might still happen if there were no formal schools or educational institutions within society. But in the discussion that follows, education is taken to be a deliberate social enterprise with particular goals and formally recognized ways of imparting knowledge and skills within educational settings.
4. Notable here is (Satz Citation2007). Aristotle’s (Citation1984) claim that education should equip individuals for their particular role in the state and their role in securing the common good is relevant here, as well: ‘… the excellence of the part must have regard to excellence of the whole, women and children must be trained by education with an eye to the constitution, if the excellences of either of them are supposed to make any difference in the excellences of the state …’ (Politics 1260b10–20).
6. For a discussion of the role of education in living the good life, see Curren (Citation2014). For a discussion of the relationship between education, individual freedom, and civic virtue, see Gutmann (Citation1993).
7. For a discussion of children’s interests in attaining autonomy and how this can be reached given both state and parental involvement in education, see Reich (Citation2009).
9. This is an improved argument that draws off of the initial formulation in Brighouse (Citation2000, 112–140).
10. For their specific discussion of Winch, see Smeyers and Smith (Citation2016, 31–48). Cf. Phillips and Burbules (Citation2000) on the relationship between natural science and social science research.
11. The discussion in Smeyers and Smith (Citation2016, 129–138) should also be of interest.
13. For a discussion of issues such as accountability, validity, and fairness in relation to educational assessment and the aims of education, see Holloway-Libell and Amrein-Beardsley (Citation2015), Curren (Citation2009), and Davis (Citation2003).
16. Curren (Citation2017), and Young (Citation1990, 192–225) contain critical discussions of credentialism in education.
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