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Fair Educational Opportunity and the Distribution of Natural Ability: Toward a Prioritarian Principle of Educational Justice
Author(s) -
Schouten Gina
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of philosophy of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.501
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9752
pISSN - 0309-8249
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9752.2012.00863.x
Subject(s) - flourishing , meritocracy , economic justice , distribution (mathematics) , sociology , natural (archaeology) , distributive justice , epistemology , metric (unit) , philosophy of education , law and economics , environmental ethics , psychology , social psychology , law , economics , political science , higher education , philosophy , mathematics , mathematical analysis , archaeology , history , operations management
In this article, I develop and defend a prioritarian principle of justice for the distribution of educational resources. I argue that this principle should be conceptualized as directing educators to confer a general benefit, where that benefit need not be mediated by improved academic outcomes. I go on to argue that it should employ a metric of all‐things‐considered flourishing over the course of the student's lifetime. Finally, I discuss the relationship between my proposed prioritarian principle and the meritocratic principle that it is presumed to supplement.