Chapter 4EQUAL EDUCATIONAL

OPPORTUNITY

“There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.”

Thomas Jefferson

The concept of equal educational opportunity should extend to all children, and provisions should be made to enable each child to reach his/her highest potential. Equal educational opportunity does not mean providing the same education for every child but providing the opportunities through which every child can maximize his or her individual potential. True equality is providing equal opportunity to benefit from education according to ability and need. To use the same methods and materials for all children is not providing equal educational opportunity. Setting expectations too high may frustrate some students and create an environment for failure. The same is true of a student with high ability who will not reach his/her potential if required to perform at exactly the same level as all other students.

Three sorts of claims:

1. Moral claims:

Principle of Equal Treatment –

In any given circumstances, people who are the same in those aspects relevant to how they are treated in those circumstances should receive the same treatment. (Corollary: Those relevantly different should be treated differently.

2.Relevancy claims:Injustice occurs when consideration is given to irrelevant characteristics when deciding between people or groups (ex. Race, age, gender, religion, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, etc.)In a job interview, reliability would be a relevant characteristic for hiring, while gender would not. Some examples of relevant educational differences include “a student’s needs, interests, and ability to profit from instruction” (p. 62).

3.Efficacy claims:Such claims are linked to desirable results and efficient use of resources.

Criterion of Need

“[S]o far as compensatory education is concerned … justice demands that we give those that have been deprived a chance to catch up with others so they can become the real equals of others.” (p.59)

Criterion of Ability (justified based upon the principle of benefit maximization)

“The gifted are society’s greatest human resource. They are our future doctors and medical researchers, our scientists and engineers, our educators and political leaders. In the long run, given the best education, they will improve the lives of all of us the most.” (p.59)

James Gallagher wrote in 1978,”…failure to help the gifted child reach his potential is a societal tragedy, the extent of which is difficult to measure but which is surely great. How can we measure the sonata unwritten, the curative drug undiscovered, the absence of political insight? They are the difference between what we are and what we could be as a society."

A Fundamental Principle of Democratic Community:

“A genuinely democratic community is one that values all of its members and values them all equally. It grants to each individual a full measure of dignity and respect.” (p. 61)

Distributive Justice

Justice is closely related to the concept of equality; we consider equal treatment to be an important part of a just society. Distributive justice theorists believe that to accomplish such equality, then all of the goods and material wealth available to a society must be divided equally among all citizens. These theorists would make the argument that if all citizens are equal, then all citizens deserve a proportionate amount of resources. The question, though, is what the word 'deserves' means in this situation. If you believe in a meritocracy, then you believe that individuals deserve only as much as they worked to get, and they should get to keep the fruits of their labor. On the other hand, you'd have to question whether every citizen had an equal opportunity to such success.

“Maximin Principle” : In the distribution of scarce resources, this principle requires us to maximize the welfare of those that receive the minimum share. Unequal resources are distributed only when everyone benefits as a result (forbidden to trade the welfare of some for that of others).