Educational Justice and the Value of Knowledge

How should a liberal democratic society value knowledge and understanding, and does this valuation inform how we ought to reason about the justice of our educational institutions? In scholarly and public discourse, it is orthodox to argue that because educational institutions bring about various goods—goods of character such as wellbeing or economic goods such as social mobility – they ought to be structured by principles of political justice. In this paper, I argue that knowledge and understanding valued for its own sake should also inform judgements of educational justice.     

Education,Despair and Morality: A Reply to Roberts

In a recent thought‐provoking piece, Peter Roberts argues against the central role of happiness as a guiding concept in education, and argues for more attention to be paid to despair. This does not mean cultivating despair in young people, but allowing them to make sense of their own natural occasional despair, as well as the despair of others. I agree with Roberts about happiness, and about the need for more attention to despair, but I argue that focusing too much on despair is dangerous without paying simultaneous attention to goodness. Roberts argues that students must be helped to face the despair born of the realisation that (i) we can never be sure of the moral grounds on which our actions are based, (ii) we can never fully know ourselves, and that (iii) education should make us more appreciative of what we don't know. I argue against all three claims: (i) there are some moral truths that we can know; (ii) we can know enough of ourselves in certain contexts; (iii) education should not only teach intellectual humility, it should also give us confidence in appreciating the sources of meaning that are ordinarily available, e.g. personal relationships. The paper concludes with a response to the objection (perhaps by Roberts, as well as by liberals) that my position is little more than old‐fashioned moralism and conservatism.