The dimensions of social justice in education
This is the first in a series of blogs about social justice in education.
Most of us believe that state education should in general give all learners a ‘fair go’. And it’s only natural for all of us to want that, first and foremost, state education should give our children a fair go in particular. Some of us who do more than just OK in the Aotearoa New Zealand economy and society (i.e. in work and social life) are prepared to accept that our children will get a little bit less through our inadequately funded state education system in order that the children of those who do less than just OK in work and social life, and who are disadvantaged through the bad luck or poor choices of their parents, or both, will get a little bit more. We call this a ‘social justice’ perspective.
Some others believe that everyone gets no more and no less than they deserve in life and that what we end up getting is mostly within our control. On this view, as at work and in life, so in education; we all have more or less the same opportunities to succeed, so what we get out depends on what we put in (or, ability + effort = merit). We call this a ‘meritocratic’ perspective.
And for some others again, social justice for other children is fine provided it does not get in the way of me and my children getting every bit of our just deserts or rewards from state education. We could probably call this stance something like a ‘have my cake and eat it’ perspective because people who adopt this stance want the appearance it gives them of being concerned for social justice, but not the actual substance of what it would then require from them.
It’s also a form of ‘zero-sum’ thinking. If ‘their’ children gain, my children must have to lose something. For instance, I know the research evidence says that children do better as a whole in mixed-ability classes, but my child needs to be in a streamed class, not lumped in with those ‘other’ children who aren’t as bright, or as motivated, or as engaged. Or, in principle, I firmly believe that higher taxes are required to pay for the better public services we want for everyone, but in practice, I won’t ever vote for them because it will mean a little more tax taken from me and a little less income to me and mine.
And so on, round in ever-decreasing vicious circles of injustice. Meanwhile, the demands on, and the costs of, good quality public services continue to rise inexorably, while people’s willingness to pay for them through progressive general taxation gradually falls (note, for instance, the change over the last several decades in the way we describe our normative concern to protect others’ basic dignity and quality of life when they need it – from providing social security, to social welfare, to, now, workfare). And in the real world, how many party-political election manifestos promise voters to raise taxes? Instead, the family unit thinking in increasing numbers of households might well be something like: let’s focus on our children only and pay directly for what we choose to get from the system. And while we’re at it, let’s also make sure our children mix only with those from families who have the same aspirations as we do. That will be a ‘fair go’ for us from here on, they might well say.
What chance of achieving greater social justice in and through state education now?
Whatever their political party and irrespective of the make-up of any governing coalition, all Ministers of Education make law and introduce regulation and policy on a mixture of pragmatism and ideology. Pragmatically and concretely, within a three-year electoral cycle, they aim measurably to increase the banner headline percentages of students who achieve well (i.e. benchmark achievement and credentials) and to reduce some of the most egregious inequalities of achievement between cohort groups (e.g. boys/girls, Pākehā/Māori/Pasifika/Asian etc). More ideologically and abstractly, perhaps, Ministers hope that what they introduce in the course of a parliamentary programme of legislation will be seen by voters to distribute the benefits and burdens of ‘taxpayer-funded’ state education more effectively and efficiently than the policies of the opposition that preceded them on the government benches. Ministers will only occasionally be prepared to ‘burn political capital’ and alienate significant fractions of likely ‘floating’ voters by making unpopular or unsettling changes to the status quo. They will also only very rarely concede that their predecessors in government may conceivably have introduced any effective education policies whatsoever. This can prove very puzzling and frustrating for students, families, educators, community groups and employers most of whom just want to see sound, bipartisan, evidence and reason-based improvements in the public education system. But as we have seen, fewer and fewer among us may be willing to pay more to get these. For our children, heck yes, but for ‘theirs’, no way.
Because their political ideologies differ, Ministers of Education make quite different laws and introduce quite different policies to progress what to all intents and purposes are often broadly identical, aspirational education goals. One perennial political battleground, though, is over line-by-line Vote Education funding: What to prioritise, how and why? Today the financial cost of early learning services, compulsory schooling and post-compulsory education is covered partly by government in the form of a public subsidy and partly by private user pays charges. The public and private proportions tend to vary according to what the ideology of the government of the day thinks is appropriate in terms of the relative public and private benefits that arise, and what proportions a sufficient majority of voters will tolerate.
The reality is that government funding of our core social institutions like education will never be enough to meet all the expectations of learners, families, business and civil society, which continue to grow as our knowledge base about learning and teaching grow. So, Ministers of Education must make political judgment calls about where to ration and target funding, and when to require private contributions, even in a system like ours that, for example, claims to provide free compulsory schooling but in reality, does not (e.g. uniforms and equipment, paper and digital stationery packs, education outside the classroom and co-curricular activity charges). They do this based on what they think voters will consider fair and just, but fairness and justice in this context are often no more than slippery and ambiguous but rhetorically appealing political media bites underneath which lie hard-nosed meritocratic and zero-sum bedrock assumptions. Is there an alternative? Can we think differently and more expansively about social justice in education in ways that do not focus exclusively on the money?
The answer, of course, is yes. There are very sound conceptual and practical frameworks for thinking about how to develop more socially just institutions, like state education, which draw on the experiences of people (children, young people, parents) who have been systematically and structurally ignored, marginalised or excluded from the existing system in ways that go far beyond increased financial resources, essential as these are in their own right. I will call these the dimensions of social justice. They fall into two groups. The first group includes the long-standing kinds of redistribution through tax and transfer (both universal and targeted) I have been discussing thus far, but also the well-established recognition and representation dimensions of social justice. The second group includes dimensions of social justice identified by people whose individual and group experiences of injustice certainly include one or more of the dimensions of the first group but are also in some ways additionally unique and distinctive and therefore deserving of their own consideration. This second group comprises affective, contributive, epistemic, intergenerational and psychic dimensions of social justice.
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The next blog in the series looks at the ideals of social justice and fairness in institutions such as state education, drawing primarily on the work of the American political philosopher John Rawls.
Bio: John O’Neill researches in the area of critical education policy scholarship. For many years he has been an education spokesperson for Child Poverty Action Group and the Quality Public Education Coalition.