教育机会平等:实践反思与价值追求

我国的教育机会分配机制在近30年期间发生了很大变化,教育机会不平等现象成为社会普遍关注的问题。政府是保障、维护教育机会平等的决定性因素,建立公立学校系统,向社会提供平等的公共教育服务是政府保障教育机会平等的基本做法。然而20世纪90年代以来的教育体制改革使公立学校在保障教育机会平等方面的作用出现了一系列极为复杂的情况,由于过多地强调了效率,有限的教育机会通过一种竞争和选拔制度加以分配,由此导致的教育机会不平等已经成为一个亟待解决的问题。当前,更多地强调平等,实行较为刚性和均衡的教育机会分配政策和教育发展模式,以此保证教育机会平等就是一种理性的选择。公立学校必须坚守公共性质,切实履行责任。平等、效率、公平竞争、自主选择构成了中国教育机会平等问题的独自特色,问题的关键并不在于这四者之间应否作出非此即彼的选择,而在于这四者之间如何达到协调,并取得社会的普遍认同。

Opportunity Equality of Education:Introspection from Practice and Value Pursuit

The allotment of education opportunity has witnessed tremendously changes in the past 30 years or so,and the unequal phenomenon has become the focal attention of the whole society.The Government should be the decisive factor for guaranteeing and maintaining the fairness,and to set up public school system and to provide equal public education service should be the fundamental way for equal opportunity of education.However,a series of extremely complicated situations have appeared in the education system reform since 1990s.To be specific,owing to overemphasis on efficiency,limited education opportunity has been unequally allocated for a kind of competition and selection policy,a problem that awaits imme-diate solution.Currently,more attention to equating and implementing the rigidity and proportionality for the ensurance has turned out to be a rational choice.That is,to run public schools must adhere to the publicity and duly fulfill the responsibility.Therefore,equality,efficiency,equal competition,and autonomous selection then constitute the particular trait of the opportunity equality of Chinese education.The key problem,therefore,does not lie in whether an one-or-the-other choice;rather,there is needed a balance among the four and a wide acknowledgement of them.