Equality and education

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Melbourne, 1977Recent influential writings about the future directions of education in Australia show a clear inclination to justify particular recommendations in the name of some form of equality. This inclination reflects a wider acceptance in Western societies of the fundamental priority of equality as a social principle. In the first part of this thesis, an examination is made of the principle of equality as it is currently interpreted in Western democracies. Three main sets of interpretations are isolated, those in which its force is essentially prescriptive, those in which its force is essentially prescriptive and those in which recommendations about opportunities are being made. In the second part of the thesis, the three reports of the Schools Commission are used to illustrate the kinds of criticisms which are currently being made of education as a result of a commitment on the part of the critics to some form of equality. The criticisms are grouped together according to whether their target is the aims, the content or the methods and procedures of education and schooling, and the appropriateness of the criticisms is examined. In the third part of the thesis, an attempt is made to clarify the implications of the application of each of the three interpretations (outlined in Part I) to educational questions. It is argued that, generally, acceptance of the principle of equality ought not to be promoted by means of the school curriculum, that questions about equality of distribution are properly related to schooling rather than to education and that the principle of equality of opportunity has only limited force in debates about education