北京师范大学
教育研究方法讲座系列 (2):
教育政策研究
第四讲
教育政策研究的规范基础：政策價值争议的综述
A. The Value Dimension of Policy Studies in Education
a. Stephen Ball indicates that “Policy is clearly a matter of the ‘authoritative
allocation of values’; policies are the operational statements of values,
‘statements of prescriptive intent’ (Kogan 1975 p.55). But values do not
float free of their social context. We need to ask whose values are
validated in policy, and whose are not. Thus, The authoritative allocation
of values draws our attention to the centrality of power and control in the
concept of policy’ (Prunty 1985 p.135). Policies project images of an
ideal society (education policies project definitions of what counts as
education).”(Ball, 1990, p. 3; my emphases)
b. Emile Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of sociology, asserted in
the first decade of the twentieth century, “Each society sets up a certain
idea of man, of what he should be, as much from the intellectual point of
view as the physical and moral; that this ideal is, to a degree, the same
for all the citizens; that beyond a certain point it becomes differentiated
according to the particular milieux that every society contains in its
structure. It is this ideal, at the same time one and various, that is the
focus of education. Its function, then, is to arouse in the child: (1) a
certain number of physical and mental states that the society to which
he belongs considers should not be lacking in any of its members; (2)
certain physical and mental states that the particular social group (caste,
class, family, profession) considers, equally, ought to be found among
all those who make it up. (Durkheim, 2006/1911, p. 79-80; my
emphasis)
b. “The purpose of education, according to Aristotle, is to reproduce in
each generation the ‘type of character’ that will sustain the constitution:
a particular character for a particular constitution. But there are
difficulties here. The members of society are unlikely to agree about
what the constitution , in Aristotle’s broad sense, actually is, or what it is
becoming, or what it should be. Nor are they likely to agreeabout what
character type will best sustain it or how that type might best be
produced.” (Walzer, 1983, P. 197)
d. What are the values and ideals that education policy strives to attained?
B. Value Inquiry: An Integral Part of Policy Studies of Education
1. What is value? and How to enquiry it?
a. D.N. Aspin’s formal definition of value: “Conduct, performances,
situations, occurrence, states of affairs, production, all these is
associated with the ways in which we perceive them, appraise them,
judge them, and the way we are inclined towards or away from,
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attract to or repelled by. We choose them. We prefer them over other
things in the same class of comparison. We want to follow their
model or to replicate them. We want to emulate them.” (Aspin, 1999,
p.125) Simply put, value is the attributes endowed in an object which
we find attractive, appreciative, desirable, adorable, pleasurable, etc.
However, these desirable attributes may entail different
understanding by different perspective in value inquiry.
b. Hedonistic emotivist’s understanding: Value can be construed simply
as physical and/or psychological pleasures and enjoyments which a
person experiences from the encounter of a state of affair, an object,
a situation, or other persons. (MacIntyre, 2007, 11-12)
c. Pragmatic and instrumental understanding: From the perspective of
pragmatism, any state of affairs or objects will be taken as valuable
as long as they can bring about desirable outcomes. In short, they
are any effective and efficient means, which fit with the practical
calculation of instrumental rationality. (Taylor, 1985, Pp.21-23) This
kind of value has been commonly called extrinsic value. “An extrinsic
value is valuable not for its own sake, but because it facilitates getting
or accomplishing something that is valuable for its own sake.” (Ellis,
1998, p.12)
d. Reflective and critical understanding: It refers to the evaluation which
goes beyond the criteria of quantitative calculations of outcome.
Instead, the state of affair under evaluation is critically assessed to
see whether they possess some qualitative distinctions of good or
worth of its own. Furthermore, the criteria of evaluation in use may
also reflectively relate to the well-beings, mode of life or kind of
person that the persons concerned ought to lead. (Taylor, 1985;
Dworkin, 1995) This kind of value has commonly called intrinsic value
2. Constituents of critical and “strong” evaluation: Charles Taylor has
coined the term “strong evaluation” to kind of value inquiry which aims
to substantiate an attribution of an intrinsic value to a state of affair, an
object and even a person. He has outlined the numbers of constituents
for such a strong-evaluation inquiry. (Taylor, 1985; see also Dworki,
1995)
a. Justificatory with articulacy and depth: The first constituent of a
strong evaluation is that the evaluation must be supported with
explicitly articulated justifications. Furthermore, these justifications
must be grounded on ethical, moral and/or political validities and
“depth”.
b. Supported with sense of responsibility and agency: A strong
evaluative assertion must also be supported with human practices
and actions, i.e. human agencies. Furthermore, those who are in
support of the strong evaluative positions are not just paying lip
services but are ready to bear the cost or even lost for its fulfillment
c. Embodied with notion of identity: A person who are in support of a
strong evaluative stance are most probably hold that value
orientation continuously over time, consistently in various
circumstances and coherently with the other aspects of his life. In
other word, the value orientation becomes part of his own identity.
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d. Embedded in community: The last constituents of strong-evaluation
inquiry is to look beyond human agency or identity but into human
community, which may be defined as a group of human agents who
share and identify with a particular value stance. In other words, the
strong and intrinsic value in question has been embedded into the
lifeworld of a community.
3. Levels of value inquiry: Ronal Dworkin has made a distinction between
three levels of value. He suggests that “ethnics studies how people best
manage their responsibility to live well, and personal morality what each
as an individual owes other people. Political morality, in contrast,
studies what we all together owe others as individuals when we act in
and on behalf of that artificial collective person.” (Dworkin, 2011, Pp.
327-8) Accordingly, value can be categorized into
a. Ethical value: It refers to desirable traits and features we attributed
to human behaviors, actions, and conducts.
b. Moral value: It refers to desirable traits and features attributed to
human interactions and relationships among fellows humans.
c. Political values: It refers to the ethical and moral values taken by a
given society as of prominent importance that they should be
imposed onto all members of that society coercively.
4. Accordingly, value inquiry in public policy studies may be defined as part
of the inquiry of political value which focuses on the legitimacy of a
public authority (the modern state) in substantiating those prominent
values, which are to be imposed coercively onto the civil society which
falls under its sovereignty. This line of inquiry falls mainly within the
purview of political philosophy and jurisprudence.
C. Policy Discourse of “Quality Education”: In Search of the Intrinsic Value
1. Techno-efficient conception of quality education
a. Quality education outcome: Acquisition of
i. Skills and competences, which can be standardized, quantified,
calculable, predictable and controllable
ii. Skills and competences, which are employable, marketable and
convertible in money terms
iii. Skills and competences, which are governable
b. Quality learning and teaching processes
i. Students are materials, which can be value-added
ii. Teachers are workers, who can be benchmarked
iii. Teaching and learning are processes, which can be audited in
“time-motion” terms
c. Quality school organizations
i. School organizations are structures, which can be standardized
and benchmarked
ii. School organizations are processes, which can be audited with
standardized indicators
iii. School organizations are cultures, which can be measures with
school ethos checklists
d. Assumption of prefect causality in education enterprises in
techno-scientific conception of quality in education
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2. Empathetic-practical conception of quality in education
a. Quality in education outcome: Attainment of
i. Practical efficacy in interaction with fellow beings
ii. Empathetic understanding in social interactions
iii. Social identification and integration in particular human
communities
b. Quality in learning and teaching processes
i. Teachers as professionals working in communal bonds of
intellectuality, practicality and trust
ii. Teachers and students are in professional-client relationships,
which are bonded by empathetic understanding and trust
iii. Teaching and learning are practical interactions of uncertainty,
which can not be lock-stepped into calculable and controllable
processes
c. Quality in school organizations
i. Schools as communities of empathetic understanding and caring
between the elderly and offspring
ii. Schools as professional communities of intellectuality, practicality
and trust
d. Assumption of education as an uncertain practice of Reflective
Practitioners (Schon, 1983)
3. Emancipatory conception of quality in education
a. Quality in education outcome: Capacities to
i. To excel beyond the current state of being
ii. To speculate
iii. To better the status quo
b. Quality in learning and teaching processes
i. Teachers are transformative intellectuals working for the
betterment of the status quo and the coming generation
ii. Students are potentials to be excel
iii. Teaching and learning are experimental, surprising and risk-taking
processes of liberating speculative spirits
c. Quality in school organizations
i. Schools as liberating communities of human potentials
ii. Schools as communities of praxis
d. Assumption of education as risk-taking praxis of speculative or even
revolutionary spirits
D. Equality as Prima Facie Value in Education Policy Argumentation
1. Policy search for equality of education: The US experiences
a. Horace Mann, one of the founders of US public school system,
advocated three century ago, “Surely nothing but universal education
can counterwork this tendency to the domination of capital and
servility of labour. If one class possesses all the wealth and the
education, while the residue of society is ignorant and poor, it matters
not by what name the relation between them may be called: the latter,
in fact and in truth, will be the servile dependents and subjects of the
former. But, if education be equally diffused, it will draw property after
it by the strongest of all attractions. ... Education, then, beyond all
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other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions
of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.” (Horace Mann,
1848)
b. James Coleman’s conceptualization of equality of educational
opportunity
i. Equality of access to education
ii. Equality of educational process
iii. Equality of educational result
iv. Equality of educational outcome
2. Douglas Rae’s structural grammar of equality
a. Subject of equality: Equality for whom
i. Individual-regarding equality
- Simple subject
- Segmental subject
ii. Bloc-regarding equality: Bloc-equal subject
b. Domain of equality - Equalizing what?
Do X's domain of allocation (supply) cover Y's domain of account
(demand)
i. Straightforward equality
ii. Marginal equality
iii. Global equality
c. Objective of equality
i. Direct equality (of result)
ii. Equality of opportunity
- Means-regarding equal opportunity
- Prospect-regarding equal opportunity
d. Value of equality
i. Lot-regarding equality
ii. Person-regarding equality
- Utility-based equality
- End-based equality
- Need-based equality
e. Relativity of equality
i. Absolute equality
ii. Relative equality
2. Application of Rae’s structural grammar equality on education
a. Classification of students
i. Simple individual equality: Universal, free and compulsory
education
ii. Block-regarding equality: Special education
iii. Segment-regarding equality: Positive-discrimination education for
racial minorities, the socioeconomic disadvantaged and female
b. Distribution of educational resources
i. Marginal equality: 9-year compulsory education
ii. Global equality: Positive discrimination education
c. Equality of educational opportunity rather result
i. Means-regarding equality of educational opportunity
- Equality of educational access
- Equality of education process
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ii. Prospect-regarding equality of educational opportunity
- Equality of education output
- Equality of education outcome
d. Equality of educational value
i. Lot-regarding equality of education: Principle of respect,
compulsory education common-school and common-curriculum
policies
ii. Personal-regarding equality of education:
- Utility-based personal-regarding equality of education
- End-based personal-regarding equality of education
- Need-based personal-regarding equality of education
- Principle of praise and fair educational sifting and selection
e. Relativity of equality
- Absolute educational equality
- Relative educational equality
E. Justice as Intrinsic Value in Policy of Distribution in Education
1. Aristotle's formal definition of justice (Benn and Peters, 1959,
Pp.108-114)
Treating equal equally or treating unequal unequally is just.
Treating unequal equally or treating unequal equally is unjust.
Equal Attribute
Unequal Attribute
Equal Treatment
Just
Unjust
Unequal treatment
Unjust
Just
2. John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice
a. Justice as fairness: The meaning of fairness that Rawls reckons is as
follows:
“Fundamental to justice is the concept of fairness which relates to
right dealing between persons who are cooperating with or
competing against one another, as when one speak of fair games,
fair competition, and fair bargains. The question of fairness arises
when free persons, who have no authority over one another, are
engaging in a joint activity and among themselves settling or
acknowledging the rules which define it and which determine the
respective shares in its benefits and burdens. A practice will strike the
parties as fair if none feels that, by participating in it, they or any of
the others are taken advantage of, or forced to give in to claims which
they do not regard as legitimate. This implies that each has a
conception of legitimate claims which he thinks it reasonable for
others as well as himself to acknowledge. …A practice is just or fair,
then, when it satisfies the principles which those who participate in it
could propose to one another for mutual acceptance under
aforementioned circumstances.” (Rawls, 1999[1958], p. 59)
b. Two principles of justice: Rawls stipulates that “justice is the first
virtue of social institution” (P.3) and “the primacy of justice” over other
social values. Hence, the basic structure of a just society is to be
constituted in accordance with “the two principles of justice”.
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i. “First Principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most
extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with
similar system of liberty for all.
ii. “Second Principle: Social and economic inequalities are to be
arranged so that they are both
- to the greatest benefits of the least advantaged, …and
- attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of
fair equality of opportunities.” (Rawls, 1971, p. 302)
c. Applications of the principles: “These principles primarily apply …to
the basic structure of society. They are to govern the assignment of
rights and duties and to regulate the distribution of social and
economic advantages….These principles presuppose that the social
structure can be divided into two more or less distinct parts.” (Rawls,
1871, p. 61),
i. The First Principle applies to those distinct “aspects of the social
system that define and secure the equal liberties of
citizenship. …The basic liberties of citizens are, roughly speaking,
political liberty (rihght to vote and to be eligible for public office)
together with freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of
conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of person along with
right to hold (personal) property; freedom from arbitrary arrest and
seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of law. These liberties
are all required to be equal…, since citizens of just society are to
have the same basic rights.” (p.61)
ii. The Second Principle applies to those aspects of social system
“that specify and establish social and economic inequalities.” More
specifically, it “applies…to the distribution of income and wealth
and to the design of organizations that make use of differences in
authority and responsibility, or chains of command.” (p. 61)
d. Interpretation of the second principle
i. Rawls qualifies that the two constituent phrases in the Second
Principle, namely to “everyone’s advantage” and “equally open to
all” need further interpretation.
ii. Rawls interprets the two phrases as follows (Rawls, 1971, p. 65)
“Everyone’s advantage”
“Equally open”
Principle of
efficiency
Difference principle
Equality as careers
open to talent
System of Natural
Liberty
Natural Aristocracy
Equality as equality
of fair opportunity
Liberty Equality
Democratic Equality
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e. Priority and lexical orders between principles of justice
i. The priority of liberty: The First Principle, namely the principle of
liberty) has lexical priority over the Second Principle: This ordering
means that a departure from the institutions of equal liberty
required by the first principle cannot be justified by, or
compensated for, by greater social and economic advantages.” (p.
61)
ii. The priority of democratic equality over the other three systems, in
other words, the priority of difference principle and equality as
equality of fair opportunity over principle of efficiency and equality
as careers open to talent.
3. Ronald Dworkin’s theory of equality of resource:
Dworkin, a prominent figure in the field of jurisprudence and political
philosophy, has criticizes that Rawls has based his theory of justice
solely on the distributive result of primary goods (i.e. the welfare) among
people. This is especially true in the Second Principle of Justice, which
stipulates that inequality of primary goods should only be distributed
unequally to the benefits of the least advantaged. Dworkin points out
that Rawls has failed to address the causes contributing to the state of
least advantaged and least well-off in which people found themselves.
a. Types of the least well-off: Dworkin has made three distinctive
causes of the least well-off.
i. People are least well-off because of unequal share of natural
endowments, such as talent, heath, physical ability, etc. Dworkin
characterizes them as personal resources.
ii. People are least well-off because of unequal share of
socioeconomic endowments, such as socioeconomic
backgrounds, cultural-linguistic background, or even racial and/or
ethnical backgrounds, which are disadvantageous in a given
society. Dworkin called them impersonal resources.
iii. Given equal shares in resources, people may end up being least
well-off because of costly or even unwise choice, such as
gambling or wasteful life-styles; or voluntary choice, such as
religious belief.
b. Injustice in the Second Principle: Accordingly, Dworkin underlines
that Rawls’ Second Principle may have unfairly provided
compensation to people even though they appear to belong to the
least well-off.
i. For Type (i) least disadvantaged, a blanket and
non-discriminating compensations with the other types of least
well-off is itself unjust. Given their disadvantages in natural
endowments, they may need more compensation in order to be
able to develop and research to the similar level of well-being as
those having average level of natural endowments.
ii. Apart from the amount of compensation, to Type (i) least
disadvantaged, the content of the compensation is also essential.
In Rawls’ Second Principle compensation only comes as welfare
(i.e. end result in the form of primary goods) but numbers of
political philosophers have argued that they should also come at
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the commencing stage of their developments, as resources
(Dworkin, 1995), as capacity (Sen, 1995) and as Access (Cohen,
2011).
iii. For Type (ii) least advantaged, they should of course be
compensated in the form of both as resource and as welfare.
iv. As for Type (iii) least advantaged, especially those of costly
and/or unwise choosers, Dworkin argues that it is unjust to
compensate them.
Hence, as Will Kymlicka aptly put it “Rawls himself leaves too much
room for the influence of natural inequality, and at the same time
leaves too little room for the influence of our choice.” (2002, P. 70)
c. Dworkin’s theory of justice of liberal equality: To address the internal
problems of Rawls’ Second Principle, Dworkin construct his theory of
justice in a series of articles. (1995, see also 1981a & b, 1987a &b,
1989)They theory can presented diagrammatically as follow.
And Dworkin claims that his model of “liberal equality represents
equality, liberty and community as fused together in an overall
political ideal.” (Dworkin, 1995, P. 226)
(see Figure 9-1)
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4. Michael Walzer’s concept of complex equality:
Walzer, a prominent political philosopher in the US, published a book
entitle Spheres of Justice in 1983, to criticize Rawls’ ambition to
construct a, if not the, theory of justice and at the same time outline his
theory of complex equality and spheres of justice.
a. Pluralistic conception of distributive justice:
i. Walzer begins with the argument that “to search for unity is to
misunderstand the subject matter of distributive justice.” (Walzer
1983, P. 4)
ii. Instead he underlines, “Different political arrangements enforce,
and different ideologies justifiy, different distributions of
membership, power, honor, ritual eminence, divine grace, kinship
and love, knowledge, wealth, physical security, work and leisure,
rewards and punishments, and a host of goods more narrowly and
materially conceived―food, shelter, clothing, transportation,
medical care, commodities of every sort, and the odd things
(printings, rare books, postage stamps) that human beings collect.
And this multiplicity of goods is matched by a multiplicity of
distributive procedures, agents, and criteria.” (Walzer, 1983, P. 3)
b. Membership of distributive community: According to Walzer’s
formulation distribution could only take place within definitive
community and distribution could also be undertaken among eligible
and entitled members.
i. In his own words, “human society is a distributive community. …It
is important that: we come together to share, divide, and exchange.
We also come together to make the things that are shared, divided,
and exchanged; but that very making―work itself―is distributed
among us in a division of labor.” (Walzer, 1983, P. 3)
ii. Accordingly, the first and most important question in distributive
justice is: How is the distributive community is constituted? Who
are members who are entitled to share, divide, and exchange?
Who are the non-members who are excluded from the distributive
game? In short, how membership is defined?
iii. Walzer has listed of matrix of membership commonly found in
human society for our reference.
- enemy,
- stranger,
- refugee,
- guest worker,
- resident in a territory,
- citizen of a sovereign state,
- national of a nation,
- member of ethnic group,
- neighbor,
- clansman,
- family member, etc.
iv. Walzer underlines that “the distribution of membership is not
pervasively subject to the constraints of justice.” (Walzer, 1983, P.
61) In fact, throughout human history, we have witnessed
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numerous arbitrary and accidental assignments of membership
among socioeconomic, political and cultural communities.
5. Walzer’s sphere of education and its principles of distributive justice
a. Education as a special and enclosed sphere: Education is “what John
Dewey called a ‘special environment’. The students are granted a
partial moratorium from the demand of society and economy. The
teachers, too, are protected from the immediate forms of external
pressure. They teacher the truths they understand, and the same
truths, to all the students in front of them, and respond to questions
as best they can, without regard to the students’ social oirigins.”
(Walzer, 1983, P. 199)
b. According, “the most interesting and hardest distributive questions”
arising from the sphere of education are: “Which children is it who are
admitted into the enclosed communities? Who goes to school? And
to what sort of school? (What is the strength of the enclosure?) To
study What? For how long? With what other students?” (Walzer, 1983,
P. 199)
c. As a results, there have been various kinds of schooling developed
according to diverse principles of distributive justice
i. Common schools for all: As Aristotle advocated centuries ago “the
system of education in a state must … be one and the same for all,
and the provision of this system must be a matter of public
action.” (Aristotle, Politics; quoted in Walzer, 1983, P. 202; my
emphasis) And again as R.H. Tawney, a prominent historian and
socialist in the twentieth-century England, underlined, “To serve
educational needs, without regard to thee vulgar irrelevance of
class and income is part of the teachers’ honor” (Tawney, 1964,
quoted in Walzer, 1983, P. 202)
ii. Compulsory schools for future citizens of the state: If common
school for all is based on the distributive justice by “need” of
individuals, then compulsory schooling can be conceived as
distribution for the need of the society or more specifically the
sovereign state. The principle of simple equality could then be
construed as in conflict with individual liberty.
iii. Schools for the minorities: Minorities by ethnicity, language,
religion, etc. may dispute compulsory schooling from the value
stance of liberty to preserve its cultural integrity and heritage. And
ask for separate school.
iv. Private schools for the wealthy: Separate school argument can
also be waged by other social groups, such as the wealthy, who
can based their argument on the distributive justice by “free
exchange”.
v. Talent track: Separate school policy can also be proposed not from
the principle of “free exchange” but be based on the principle of
justice by “desert”. For example children who are exceptionally
talent may desert to be educated separately. By the same token,
children who are handicapped (especially intelligently) should also
be rendered separate education.
vi. Neighborhood schools: Given the fact that education or more
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specifically schooling must be delivered in group in a definite
locality, with whom and where are children educated have been
one of the central contention in distributive justice of education.
Since most students’ residences are socioeconomically and
ethnically located, social and ethnical segregations in education
have been one of the major controversies in education policy. This
is most evidenced in the controversies swirled form the first two
Coleman Reports explicated in Topic 2.
E. From Distributive Justice to Relational Justice: Reframing Education Policy
of Justice
1. In 1990, Iris Young published her work entitled Justice and the Politics
of Difference, in which she criticizes that the theoretical discourse
about justice has been dominated by the distributive paradigm. Instead
she put forth her theory of relational justice.
2. “Contemporary theories of justice are dominated by a distributive
paradigm, which tends to focus on the possession of material goods
and soical positions. This distributive focus, however, obscures other
issues of institutional organization at the same time that it often
particular institutional and practices as given.” (Young, 1990, P. 8)
3. “Justice should refer not only to distribution, but also to the institutional
conditions necessary for the development and exercise of individual
capacities and collective communication and cooperation. Under the
conception of justice, injustice refers primarily to two forms of disabling
constraints, oppression and domination. While these constraints include
distributive patterns, they also involve matters which cannot easily be
assimilated to the logic of distribution: decision making procedures,
division of labor, and culture.” (Young 1990, P. 39) Hence, the concept
of justice should also apply to the social relational domain, which strives
for social relations guaranteeing
a. Self-development, i.e. free from oppression
b. Self determination, i.e. free from domination
4. Oppression as injustice: “Oppression consists in systematic institutional
processes which prevent some people from learning and using
satisfying and expansive skills in socially recognized settings, or
institutionalized social processes which inhibit people’s ability to play
and communicate with others or to express their feelings and
perspectives on social life in contexts where others can listen.” (Young,
1990, P. 38)
Accordingly, young has specified five “faces of oppression” (Pp. 39-65)
a. Exploitation: “The injustice of exploitation consists in social
processes that bring about a transfer of energies from one group to
another to produce unequal distributions, and in the way in which
social institutions enable a few to accumulate while they constraint
many more.” (Young, 1990, p.53) These exploitation social
institution may appears in class, gender and/or racial relation.
b. Marginalization: “Marginalization is perhaps the most dangerous
form of oppression. A whole category of people is expelled from
useful participation in social life and thus potentially subjected to
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severe material deprivation and even extermination.” (p. 53)
“Even if marginals were provided a comfortable material life within
institutions that respected their freedom and dignity, injustices of
marginality would remain in the form of uselessness, boredom, and
lack of self-respect.” (p.55)
c. Powerless: It is a status in which “the powerless lack the authority,
status, and sense of self.” (p.57) As a result, they will experience
“inhibition in the development of one’s capacities, lack of
decisionmaking power in one’s working life, and exposure to
disrespectful treatment because of the status one occupies.” (p.58)
d. Cultural imperialism: “Cultural imperialism involves the
universalization of a group’s experience and culture, and its
establishment as the norm. Some groups have exclusive or primary
access to … the means of interpretation and communication in a
society. … This, then, is the injustice of cultural imperialism: that the
oppressed group’s own experience and interpretation of social life
finds little expression that touches the domanint culture, while that
same culture imposes on the oppressed group its experience and
interpretation of social life.” (p.59-60)
e. Violence: “Members of some groups live with the knowledge that
they must fear random, unprovoked attacks on their persons or
property, which have no motive but to damage, humiliate, or destroy
the person. (p.61)
5. Domination as injustice
a. “Domination consists in institutional conditions which inhibit or
prevent people from participating in determining their actions or the
conditions of their action Persons live within structures of domination
if other persons or groups can determine without reciprocation the
conditions of their action, either directly or by virtue of the structural
consequences of their action. Thorough social and political
democracy is the opposite of domination.” (Young, 1990, P. 38)
b. “Justice…requires…participation in public discussion and process of
democratic decisionamking. All persons should have the right and
opportunity to participate in the deliberation and decisionmaking of
the the institutions to which their actions contribute or which directly
affect their actions. …Democracy is both an element and a condition
of social justice. …Democracy is also a condition for a public’s
arriving at decisions whose substance and implications best
promote substantively just outcomes. …The argument for this claim
relies on Habermas’s conception of communicative ethnics.” (Pp.
91-92)
c. Habermas’ communicative rationality and ethics
i. Communicative rationality
- “An assertion can be called rational if the speakers satisfies
the conditions necessary to achieve the illocutionary goal of
reaching an understanding about something in the world with
at least one other participant in communication.”(Habermas,
1984, P.11)
- Definition of communicative rationality: “Concept of
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.
communicative rationality carries with it connotation based
ultimately on the central experience of the unconstrained,
unifying, consensus-bringing force of argumentative speech, in
which different participants overcome their merely subjective
view and, owing to the mutuality of rationally motivated
conviction, assure themselves of both the unity of the objective
world and the intersubjectivity of their lifeworld.”(Habermas,
1984, P.10)
ii. Communicative ethics (also termed argumentative ethics or
discourse ethics): It refers to the principles that communicatively
rational participants in an argument are willing to observe in
conducting their argumentative claims with the aim of arriving at
a mutually acceptable consensus on the subject matter under
discussion or even dispute. Habermas suggests that these
communicative ethics are the normative bases for the
constitution of the ideal communicative situation in which
unrestrained communications can be conducted and mutually
acceptable consensuses are to be researched. These principles
include (Habermas, 1979, P.68; Habermas, 1988, P.23;
Forester, 1989)
- Truth and efficacy: This set of principles applies primarily to
statements or argumentative claims relate to the validity of
cognitive propositions or instrumental plans of actions. It
requires speakers engaging in a discourse to put forth
cognitive propositions concerning the natural world that are
true and the instrumental (mean-end) plans of actions that are
practical efficacious
- Rightness: This principle applies mainly to argumentative
claims relate to the validity of moral and practical prescriptions.
It requires speakers in discourse to yield statements that are in
compliance with the general norms of the community in which
the discourse takes place or refers to.
- Relevancy and/or legitimacy: This set of principles applies
specifically to argumentative claims made in evaluative and
more specifically public evaluative context, such as evaluation
on public policy discourse. It requires its respective speakers
to make evaluative statements based on standards of value,
which are relevant and/or legitimate to the issues under
evaluation.
- Truthfulness and sincerity: This set of principles applies to the
internal and expressive positions of the speakers themselves.
It restricts the speakers from put forth deceptive and illusive
utterances and to only utter statements that are truthful and
sincere.
- Comprehensible: This last principle applies to the linguistic
and discursive situation itself. It requires all parties engaged in
the discourse are speaking a common language and rendering
statements and utterances that are structured in mutually
comprehensible format.
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F. Care as Prima Facie Value in Education Policy Argumentation:
1. Nel Noddings in her work The Challenge to Care in School: An Altenrative
Approach to Education (2005) defines care as a relational concept. In a
caring relation, it is “a connection or encounter between two human beings
─ a carer and a recipient of care, or cared-for. In order for the relation to
be called caring, both parties must contribute to it in characteristic way.”
(p.15)
a. On the part of the carer, he supposes to be in the state of conscious,
which can be characterized as (i) engrossment and (ii) motivational
displacement
i. By engrossment, it indicates “an open, nonselective receptivity to
the cared-for. Weil characterizes this state of consciousness as
follow. “The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to
receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his
truth. Only he who is capable of attending can do this. (Weil, 1950;
quoted in Noddings, 2005, p.16)
ii. By motivational displacement, it specifies the disposition that the
carer is ready to redirect his motive energy away from his own
concern and project and to replace it the project of the cared-for.
b. On the part of the cared-for, they have to express explicitly the
reception, recognition, and response to the caring in the ways which
are found appropriate in a given society.
c. Noddings further indicates that caring is not just a relational concept, it
also indicates capacity, that the capacities of the carer and the
cared-for. Teacher-student relation is by definition a caring relation
i. On the part of the teachers, it part of their job to create caring
relation, in which they must first of all care for whether students
understand the subject matter as well as their interests, motives,
concerns and feelings.
ii. One the part of the students, they are to learnt the capacities to be
the cared-for. As most of the children grow up in affluent societies
and well-off families (especially those from single-child families),
they do not only lack the capacities to indicate (not to mention
appreciate) reception, recognition and response to caring, but may
also demonstrate a kind of “could-care-less” attitudes towards
carers, such as parents, teachers, etc.
d. Apart from caring relations between human being, caring relation can
also extend to other creatures, ideas and objects. They include
i. Care for animal rights, environmental rights and ecological
sustainability;
ii. Intellectual care for ideas, academic disciplines and pursuit for
truth;
iii. Care for material objects, especially those relics, which preserve
collective and communal solidarities, cultural meanings and
“collective memories”.
e. Lastly, In paraphrasing Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher,
Noddings underlines that caring education should also emphasizes
helping children to care for themselves and to develop the capacities of
caring their own identities, existences, and well beings.
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2. Katchadourian’s conception of care
a. Caring can be construed “the ‘natural piety’ of humankind: a natural
piety prior in time to the idea of a duty, including a moral duty to care
about others ─ spontaneous, unreasoning, unquestioning caring
─flowing from love and affection for those close to oneself and, even
sometimes, not close to oneself.” (Katchadourian, 1999, p. 61)
b. Caring “includes a gamut of kinds of actions and activities designed to
serve the other’s interest.” (p.62) Hence, caring about others
comprises of “a variety of important traditional moral virtues, including
i. concern and responsibleness,
ii. kindness and compassion,
iii. sensitivity and considerateness,
iv. helpful and supportiveness,
v. cooperativeness and solidarity, …
iv. selflessness and great eagerness to further the others welfare and
happiness.” (p. 64)
3. Knowledge and empathetic understanding in caring
a. “Caring requires proper knowledge not only of the best means for the
realization of the other’s real interest, …but also proper knowledge or
understanding of the interest …itself.” (p. 66)
b. “Empathetic understanding, or ‘existential knowledge about the other, it
is considerably more than …simply being in possession of the abstract
intellectual information about her that is call ‘knowledge about’.” (p.67)
Accordingly, empathetic understanding consists of at least
i. “understanding of the other as a ‘concrete other’ as unique person
in a specific context and circumstance, at a particular time.” (p. 67)
ii. “awareness of the other’s important attachment and relationships,”
which define one’s self and identity. (p. 67)
G. Trust as Prima Facie Value in Education Policy Argumentation
1. In concluding their findings generated from a large-scale study of the
Chicago School Reform, Anthony Bryk and Barbara Schneider assert
that trust in schools is the core resource for school improvement. (2002)
2. Typology of social trust
a. Organic trust in family institution
b. Contractual trust in market institution
c. Relational trust in school institution
3. Relational trust in school institution
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H. Reflection on the Normative Assumptions of Education Policy Scholarship
1. According to Aristotle, education is public act aiming to constitute
institutions, rules, organizations and practices through which a society
is to inculcate the ideal characters into its future members and
consequently constitute the ideal image of the society itself.
2. To accomplish such an aim, Amartya Sen, the winner of Noble Prize in
economics in 1998, suggests that there are two distinctive approaches
for us to constitute such an education institution and any social
institutions of justice in general.
3. In his book entitled The Idea of Justice, Sen writes in the introductory
chapter, “There are two basic, and divergent, lines of reasoning about
justice among leading philosophy.” (Sen, 2009, P.5) “The distance
between the two approaches, transcendental institutionalism, on the
one hand, and realization-focused comparison, on the other, is quite
momentous.” (P. 7)
a. By Transcendental institutionalism, it refers to the approach in
political philosophy “led by the work of Thomas Hobbes in the
seventeenth century, and followed in different ways by such
outstanding thinkers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, concentrated on
identifying just institutional arrangements for s society. This
approach…has two distinct features.” (Sen, 2009, P. 5)
i. “First, it concentrates its attention on what it identifies as perfect
justice, rather than on relative comparisons of justice and
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injustice. …The inquiry is aimed at identifying the nature of ‘the
just’, rather than finding some criteria for an alternative being
‘less unjust’ than another.” (PP. 5-6)
ii. “Second, in searching for perfection, transcendental
institutionalism concentrate primary on getting the institutions
right, and it is not directly focused on actual societies that would
ultimately emerge. …It is important …to note here that
transcendental institutionalists in search of perfectly just
institutions have sometime also presented deeply illuminating
analyses of moral and political imperative regarding socially
appropriate behavior. This applies particularly to Immanuel Kant
and John Rawls, both of whom have participated in
transcendental institutional investigation, but have also provide
far-reaching analyses of requirements of behavioural norms.” (P.
6-7)
b. Realization—focused comparison: It refer to “comparative
approaches that were concerned with social realization (resulting
from actual institutions, actual behavior and other
influences). …They were all involved in comparisons of societies
that already existed or could feasibly emerge, rather than confining
their analyses on transcendental searches for a perfectly just
society. Those focusing on realization-focused comparisons were
often interested primarily in the removal of manifest injustice from
the world that they saw.” (Sen, 2009, P. 7)
4. In light of Sen’s distinction of two approaches to the normative
foundations of social institutions, education policy scholars, who work
for educational equality, just distribution of educational treatments, and
just relations in educational processes; are required to reflect on their
normative foundation of their undertakings, namely transcendental
institutionalism or realization-focused comparison.
Additional References
Benn, S.I. and R.S. Peter (1959) Social Principles and the Democratic State.
London: George Allen & Unwin.
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