Spheres of justice: The case of education

Abstract

Social justice in education has not attracted much attention from sociologists of education. In educational policy, considerations of social justice in the distribution of educational provision have only been accepted as valid arguments when meeting the demands of economic efficiency. Greater attention is currently being drawn to social justice in education as demonstrated by the debate on Michael Walzer's Spheres of Justice (1983). The argument developed in the present article is that criteria based on social justice should be carefully considered. Such criteria can help clarify the problems of legitimation which are confronting the government in at least the Netherlands and illustrate the need for critical analysis of the actual educational policy of decentralisation and its consequences. Some recent ideas on social justice in education from Dutch sociologists are presented, followed by a short consideration of alternatives to the dominant criterion of achievement in education. The ideas of Walzer (1983) are then discussed in light of a number of insights from the sociology of education.