Abstract
In our essay, we challenge the hegemonic Kantian discourse of defining justice as equality (in a broader sense) and injustice as inequality in education (and elsewhere). We argue that this discourse is based on the underlining assumption of replaceability and measurement of people and of educational practice itself. In contrast, we argue that people and their education are unique. Thus, it is necessary to develop an alternative notion of justice based on uniqueness and immeasurability of people and their education. We found that Bakhtin’s dialogic ethics framework is helpful for developing such an alternative approach. According to the Bakhtinian dialogic ethics, people are engaged in self-contradictory deeds, charged with ethical tensions. These ethically problematic deeds must be challenged by others and the self in critical dialogue and must demand responses by the authors of the deeds striving to achieve justice. Taking responsibility is not merely a discursive process of answering – it is not “answerability” – but rather another ethic deed of defining ethically good or bad, defining quality and values, accepting blame, standing grounds, committing to fixing negative consequences, emotional sympathy, and so on. The process of challenging people’s deeds in critical dialogue and their taking (or not taking) responsibility defines (in)justice of people’s deeds. We examine two cases of educational injustice based on the Bakhtinian dialogic ethics framework of uniquness. We try to show that education and its justice are essentially authorial and, thus, unique processes. Even when justice involves measurable things like money, it is still about unique people with unique educational goals, interests, and needs in unique circumstances that these measurable resources afford. We consider a case of allocation of measurable resources as a compromise between the Kantian formulistic and the Bakhtinian dialogic ethics approaches. We conclude our essay with developing a vision for a just educational practice based on students’ academic freedoms for authorial education.
Highlights
If one is going to base an egalitarian politics on that understanding, the logic would have to be: since there’s no basis for ranking such unique individuals on their merits, everyone deserves the same amount of those things that can be measured: an equal income, an equal amount of money, or an equal share of wealth (Graeber, 2013, p. 301). The purpose of this editorial essay is to discuss the notion of educational justice, criticize the mainstream Kantian discourse on educational justice as a discourse on equality or inequality of educational outcomes, and propose a new definition of educational justice based on the Bakhtinian dialogic ethics framework of human uniqueness (Bakhtin, 1999; Matusov, 2009, ch. 5; Morson & Emerson, 1990)
We criticize the mainstream definition of educational justice based on the discourse of equality and inequality and discuss why it has been so prevalent in the past and currently, but not necessarily in the future
Inspired by the Bakhtinian dialogic ethical framework, we argue that justice is not defined by individual complains about injustice, not by resolutions that satisfy all or many, not by some universal or conditional principles
Summary
The purpose of this editorial essay is to discuss the notion of educational justice, criticize the mainstream Kantian discourse on educational justice as a discourse on equality or inequality of educational outcomes, and propose a new definition of educational justice based on the Bakhtinian dialogic ethics framework of human uniqueness (Bakhtin, 1999; Matusov, 2009, ch. 5; Morson & Emerson, 1990). It doesn’t matter!” The first girl counted imaginary round ball-like Martian pencils in the air with her hands, “Two and two: one, two, three, FOUR!” The noise in our group attracted attention of the rest of the class but when I looked at the teacher, she smiled in apparent appreciation that the kids in my group enjoyed a discussion of math.
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