Jencks -> Whom must we treat equally for educational opportunity to be equal?
Everyone’s conception of equal educational opportunity requires that educational institutions treat
equals equally. But we have different views about whom educational institutions should treat equally
and whom they can legitimately treat unequally.
This paper -> five common ways of thinking about equal educational opportunity. Case -> third-grade
reading class in small town, taught by Ms. H.
Before starting Ms. H. is likely to imagine she should give every pupil equal time and attention. Once
she starts she probably deviate from this idea -> five possibilities:
1. Democratic equality -> give everyone equal time and attention, regardless of how well they read,
how hard they try, how deprived they have been in the past, what they want to do, or how much
they or others will benefit.
2. Moralistic justice -> rewarding those who make the most effort to learn, reward virtue and
punish vice.
3. Weak humane justice -> compensate those student who have gotten less than their
proportionate share of advantages in the past by giving them more than their proportionate
share of attention (no genetics).
4. Strong humane justice -> compensate those who have been shortchanged in any way in the past,
including genetically.
5. Utilitarianism -> attention is a prize, it should go to the best readers.
Equal opportunity can imply either a meritocratic distribution of resources (favour those who try
hard or who achieve a lot), a compensatory distribution of resources (favour those who have
suffered from some sort of handicap in the past or those whose current achievement is below
average), or an equal distribution of resources.
Democratic equality -> Having more experience it is likely that you feel dissatisfied with idea that you
must distribute time equal to all kids.
Moralistic theory of justice -> When students make no effort to do what the teacher asks of them,
moralistic justice tells her ‘do not waste time on them’. Moralistic justice encourages teacher to think
of her class as a moral community, held together by an unwritten contract which states that I’ll do
my best if you’ll do yours. In principle, a moralistic view of the classroom should focus on intentions
(effort). But moralistic justice treats the third graders motivation as fixed.
Humane theories of justice -> Since we are all equally human, our claims as members of the species
are all equal. Such claims are commonly labelled ‘rights’. Since there is no general agreement about
the nature of these rights, there are many versions om human justice (from strong to weak):
Strongest variant -> humane justice asserts that all individuals have an equal claim on all of
society’s resources. This version demands equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity.
Strong variant -> society can make an adult’s claim to resources conditional on various forms of
socially useful behaviour, but that society must offer all children an equal chance of meeting
whatever requirements it sets. When children need unusually good schooling to compensate for
an unusually unfavourable home environment or physical handicaps, society must make sure
they get it.
Weak variant -> students have a claim to additional educational resources if they are currently
disadvantaged because of some deficiency in their previous education but not if they are
disadvantaged form non-educational reasons. If students lack ability for genetic reasons, weak
human justice does not require the teacher to give them extra help. Logic behind this variant is
that society is responsible for the environment in which children are raised but not for the genes
they inherit. But if we have chosen a high level of socioeconomic inequality among parents and
have thus acquired a special obligation to its victims (their children), can it not equally well be
, said that we have chosen not to limit the fertility of the genetically disadvantaged? Such a policy
appears to create some societal obligation to the children on whom it imposes either genetic or
environmental costs.
But the reason most of us want to limit society’s responsibility for the genetically disadvantaged
is prudential, not ethical. Most of us assume that it is harder to offset the effects of genetic
disadvantages than environmental disadvantages.
Conclusion the moral and empirical foundations seem very shaky. But experience suggests that
Ms. H. is more likely to endorse the weak interpretation of humane justice than the strong
interpretation.
Another weak variant / moralistic humane justice -> pursue equal educational outcomes only
when students make equal effort to do what she asks of them. Because society must provide all
students with equal educational resources (environmental and genes), but not that society is
responsible for an individual’s values of character. So Ms. H mustn’t compensate children for the
consequences of having the wrong values. If parents teach a child that mastering unusual words
is a waste of time, Ms. H has no obligation to alter the child’s values, even if these values will be
socially and economically costly to the child in the long run. The only way to be sure that all
children value learning equally is to make child rearing a collective rather than an individual
responsibility. This being politically unacceptable, making all children value learning equally is
impractical. Equalizing access to educational resources requires less drastic institutional changes
and is therefore more practical.
The argument that society is responsible for children’s values also creates a moral hazard for the
children. If children are not responsible for the consequences of their own choices, they have no
incentive to make choices that are disagreeable in the short run but beneficial in the long run.
While it is impossible to ensure that all children value learning equally, the way in which we
organize schools can surely reduce the gap between students whose parents have taught them
to value learning and students whose parents have not.
Human justice and socioeconomic inequality -> equal opportunity is traditionally defined as requiring
that children from different socioeconomic backgrounds have the same probability of learning to
read competently, attending good colleges, getting good jobs, and enjoying a good life. If these
probabilities vary, opportunity is unequal. Most liberals and radicals also seem to assume that
children from different socioeconomic backgrounds are genetically indistinguishable. This
assumption persists despite the fact that there are powerful arguments against it. We know for
example that genes have some influence on academic achievement. And that academic achievement
has some effects on adults’ socioeconomic position. Logic suggests that a child’s genes must have
some influence on his or her adult socioeconomic position. If that is so, adults in different
socioeconomic positions must differ genetically. It follows that their children must also differ
genetically. Few liberals or radicals will even entertain the possibility that genes contribute to
achievement differences between socioeconomic groups. Based on that people are more likely to
believe that society should try to help the environmentally disadvantaged than the genetically
disadvantaged. Some advocates of humane justice also deny that middle-class children are unusually
eager to master cognitive skills. Those who take this position typically insist that working-class
children enter school eager to learn and are then turned off by large classes, authoritarian teachers,
low expectations and a curriculum that assumes knowledge or experience they do not have. If we
define effort in a comprehensive way (which games they play, things they think about at breakfast
etc.), the claim that middle-class children value cognitive skills more than working-class children is
almost surely correct, though there is no hard evidence.
If children from different socioeconomic backgrounds are to have equal chances of doing well in
school, teachers must find ways to offset the effects of whatever genetic and motivational
