Moral Problems of Contemporary Society PDF

Moral problems of contemporary society Peter Dietsch Professor, Department of Philosophy University of Victoria Fall semester 2024 Week 2 – Equal opportunity in education  Overview Is equal opportunity enough? Walzer’s ideal of education divided into two domains: the...

Moral problems of contemporary society Peter Dietsch Professor, Department of Philosophy University of Victoria Fall semester 2024 Week 2 – Equal opportunity in education  Overview Is equal opportunity enough? Walzer’s ideal of education divided into two domains: the democratic school & specialized schools A potential blind spot of Walzer’s account What about private schools? Two facets of diversity in education Alternatives and objections  Conventional wisdom: equal opportunity See for instance the second part of John Rawls’s second principle of justice: “Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest expected benefit of the least advantaged and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.” (Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1999: 72) Interpretation of fair equality of opportunity: “those who have the same level of talent and ability and the same willingness to use these gifts should have the same prospects of success regardless of their social class of origin” (Rawls, Justice as Fairness – A Restatement, 2001: 44) Rawls distinguishes “fair equality of opportunity” from “careers open to talents.” Walzer argues that things are more complicated. Walzer’s larger project: Spheres of Justice “I call a good dominant if the individuals who have it, because they have it, can command a wide range of other goods. It is monopolized whenever a single man or woman, a monarch in the world of value – or a group of men or women, oligarchs – successfully holds it against all rivals.” (10, my emphasis) Walzer’s remedy: “complex equality” Schools as institutions between family and state “Autonomous schools are mediating institutions; they stand in a tension with parents (but not only with them). Abolish compulsory education, and one loses the tension; children become the mere subjects of their families and of the social hierarchy in which their families are implanted. Abolish the family, and the tension is lost again; children become the mere subjects of the state.” (216) - Cf. Rawls on the role of the family and its impact on equality of opportunity - Tensions between different educational priorities (see Gutman)  The democratic school - Teaching about the basic functioning of society has to be inclusive: “… if there is a body of knowledge that citizens must grasp, or think they must grasp, so as to play their parts, then they have to go to school; and all of them have to go to school.” => principle of equality “The aim is not to repress difference but rather to postpone them, so that children learn to be citizens first – workers, managers, merchants, and professionals only afterward.” (203) “The goal of the reading teacher is not to provide equal chances but to achieve equal results.” (203)  Specialized schools “Democratic education begins with simple equality: common work for a common end… But simple equality is entirely inappropriate as soon as the core has been grasped and the common end achieved. After that, education must be shaped to the interests and capacities of individual students.” (206 / 208) ⇒ What is the purpose of education now? ⇒ note: the more successful the system of basic education, the more intense the competition for specialized schools will be (cf. 210)  Where to draw the line? What is an appropriate moment in the structure of our educational system to switch from a school whose purpose is education to citizenship to schools whose purpose it is to prepare individuals for certain specialized roles in the social division of labour? Note differences between countries Does Walzer propose a specific age for where to draw the line? Where would you draw the line?  A blind spot in Walzer’s account An argument about the “non-preparatory dimensions of justice in education” (Macleod, “Just Schools and Good Childhoods”, 2018): Education should facilitate access to goods not just in adulthood, but also in childhood Childhood offers opportunities for special kinds of flourishing in its own right: e.g. play, imagination, innocence (Macleod 2018, 79) Schools participate in providing access to these goods Macleod defends equal access to the non-preparatory dimensions of education  Public policy on private schools? Should private schools be allowed? Take 5 minutes in a group to debate this question. One or two groups will report back to the class. Some food for thought: Does our answer to this question vary depending on the circumstances? If so, how? Is it hypocritical to favour a law against private schools, but send your kids to one?  Social privilege beyond the school “But how can one prevent parents from spending their money on a little extra preparation?” (Walzer, 213) Consider the following example: “…IvyWise in Manhattan, offers a two-year ‘platinum package’ of college admissions help for $32,995[…]. For this handsome fee, Katherine Cohen, the founder of the firm, starts early with her clients and tells them what extracurricular activities, volunteer work, and summer experiences they should undertake in high school to burnish their résumé and boost their chances of admission. […] For some parents, the scramble to package and position their children for admission to an elite college begins in early childhood. Cohen’s partner offers a service called IvyWise Kids that caters to parents eager to win spots for their children in the most coveted private elementary schools in New York City (the so-called Baby Ivies), and in the highly sought nursery schools that feed into them.” (Michael J. Sandel, The Case Against Perfection, 2007, 56-57)  The importance of diversity “… a principle of association. Who goes to school with whom?” This is a question of distributive justice for two reasons (cf. 215): a) Curriculum varies with the configuration of the group b) “The content of the curriculum is probably less important than the human environment within which it is taught.” “Randomness is the most obvious associative principle.” (215) Walzer rejects randomness. Why? What alternative does he endorse?  Gutman on diversity Theoretical starting point: alleged disagreement between political versus comprehensive liberals on what education for citizenship requires and how much room this leaves for social diversity. Two US case studies: Wisconsin v. Yoder; Mozert v. Hawkins “Neither comprehensive nor political liberalism denies that these ways of life have value, but both deny parents the right, even in the name of religious freedom, to prevent their children from being taught toleration of other religions, along with mutual respect and deliberation among people who pursue many different ways of life.” (576) Some observations about practical proposals a) Private Schools and Educational Vouchers b) Talent Tracks c) Integration and School Busing d) Neighborhood Schools A more radical approach: liberal egalitarianism 2.0 Liberal egalitarianism 1.0 (John Rawls): Elimination of social contingencies, mitigation of natural contingencies Liberal egalitarianism 2.0 (e.g. Ronald Dworkin, GA Cohen, Richard Arneson): Rawls does not go far enough with regard to natural contingencies => call for the “endowment-insensitivity” of the distribution of social advantage (cf. Dworkin’s hypothetical insurance market) Challenge: delineating choice from circumstance, especially in educational contexts Walzer’s critique: looking for one global (i.e. encompassing all spheres) principle of justice is misguided  A potential danger: a “tyranny of merit” “Assuming a limited number of places, however, these procedures will only multiply the number of ultimately frustrated candidates. There is no avoiding that, but it is morally disastrous only if the competition if not for school places and educational chances so much as it is for status, power, and wealth conventionally joined to professional standing.” (Walzer, 210-11) This relates to the analysis of Michael Sandel in The Tyranny of Merit (2020): “Meritocratic hubris reflects the tendency of winners to inhale too deeply of their success, to forget the luck and good fortune that helped them on their way. It is the smug conviction of those who land on top that they deserve their fate, and that those on the bottom deserve their, too.” (25)  Equality in different contexts See Bernard Williams, “The Idea of Equality”, 1962 (cf. course outline). An example for a context where need provides an operative reason to receive a good: health care. vs. Conditions under which equality of opportunity comes into play (122): - The good in question is “desired by large numbers of people in all sections of society” - “goods which people may be said to earn or achieve” - “goods which not all the people who desire them can have”