The aim of this chapter is to explore the key concept of educational equality from its philosophical origins from the late eighteenth century onwards. Chapter 2 has elaborated on the three hypotheses outlined in Chapter 1 and the factors related to these to explain the difference between how France and England go about reducing social inequality in education. Chapter 3 has the objective of defining social equality in education and how it will be interpreted in this thesis. It will do this by exploring this key concept within its philosophical origins from the 18th century onwards and incorporating modern
social theorists and their definitions of social equality in education. It will take into account these definitions and literature on equality in order to arrive at a definition of social equality in education. This definition will be used to constitute a framework for analysing the historical data in Chapters 4-7 and for interpreting the findings in Chapter 8. It will focus on the link between social class and inequality. It will not, however, be within the scope of this thesis to include race, ethnicity and gender in this analysis, although, it acknowledges, there are important inequalities which relate to these factors.
The concept of social equality derives from the fundamental normative principle at the basis of modern society that is: that all people are equal and have equal rights before the law. This notion of equality before the law has its origins in the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen’ proclaimed at the outset of the French Revolution in 1789. The Revolution introduced a system of uniform laws and taxes, which meant that all were equal before the law and all could enjoy the same political rights without distinction. There is an inherent weakness here in this interpretation of equality in that it has little impact on social and economic inequalities. This simple concept of legal and political equality has been supplemented by social and economic elements of which the universal social welfare system is a prime example.
For people to exercise their rights equally and participate in society, for example, through universal suffrage, depends on a certain level of education. Thus the basic principle of equality of human rights transfers into the educational domain as the right of access to education. Furthermore, the principle of equality of opportunity takes as its point of departure that one’s place in society is not determined by inherited wealth or position and that society should therefore put in place mechanisms for promoting social mobility. The equality of opportunity ideal is broadly accepted as a normative principle in democratic societies. While this principle can be interpreted in several ways it may be optimally defined according to Rawl’s second principle of justice which states that while the distribution of wealth and income are not equally distributed, this should be arranged in a way that is advantageous to everyone, and that positions of authority and responsibility should be accessible to all (Rawls, 1999, p. 53). The operationalising of this principle of action has taken different forms according to the particular period and place (Dupriez, V., Orianne, J-F. et Verhoeven, M, 2008) and has been the arena of much struggle and controversy. .
Any discussion of equality of educational opportunity necessitates a discussion of how it relates to social justice and to the broader theories of distributive justice. It is interesting to note here the distinction between the distribution of social and natural goods. Primary goods such as rights, liberties, opportunities, income and wealth and self-respect are social goods (Rawls, op. cit.). Primary goods such as health and vigour, intelligence and imagination are natural goods which while they are influenced by the social structure are not directly under its control (Rawls, ibid). The distribution of social goods, in particular that of educational opportunity, is what will be dealt with in this thesis.
Principal theories of Social Justice and Equality
The following section will outline the ideas of two contrasting theorists of social justice, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith. They are chosen
because of their contribution to the philosophies of egalitarianism and liberalism respectively. Their ideas have also had a large impact on the revolutionary and liberal ideologies, which, this thesis argues, lie at the heart of French and English education systems respectively.
Rousseau’s theory of justice and equality.
More than any other philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau propounds a theory of egalitarianism in its purest form. The essence of Rousseau’s theory of justice and equality is contained in the Social Contract (1762, trans. in Dent, 1913) which sets out in detail the principles and institutions whereby human society can live in a state of freedom and equality. For Rousseau, humans in their primitive conditions achieve a certain harmony and live according to a natural order which cannot endure in society beyond a certain point when humans need to act in cooperation with others. As society developed the division of labour and private property led to divisions and inequality between people. Human beings became increasingly competitive and at the same time dependent on one another. A new social order based on reason founded by means of a social contract was needed. Thus for Rousseau, human nature is good but what is evil in human society derives from bad institutions and these can be replaced by better ones (Hall, 1973).
The natural order represents for Rousseau a harmony which is lacking in forms of social organisation based on the principle of the private ownership of property. Individual and collective interests would be reconciled through a political order which embodies the application of reason to social life. Political sovereignty for Rousseau originates in the people and encompasses the general will whereby, through the submission of individuals to its sovereignty, inequality and injustice can be eradicated (O’Brien and Penna (1998).
Freedom and justice are achieved by the subordination of individual interests to the general, or common good which is defined by equality rather than inequality (O’Brien and Penna, op. cit. p. 14). This notion of the alienation of
each member of the society of his/her rights to the community, i.e. the state, has been controversial and has been criticised for tending towards totalitarianism. In this situation the community could dominate individual citizens and minorities would be forced to consent to the decisions of the majority. Such conceptions of sovereignty where the limits to the scope of political action are not demarcated should be treated with caution (Hamilton, in Hall and Gieben, 1992).
Rousseau saw a difficulty in individuals retaining certain rights that could not be subject to the law, or the general will, which would mean limited sovereignty. At the beginning of Book II, Chapter I, Rousseau declares:
The first and most important deduction from the principles we have so far laid down is that the General Will alone can direct the State according to the object for which it was instituted, i.e. the common good: ... (Rousseau, op,cit, p, 20)
The implication is that the sovereign people has the right to enforce whatever the general will requires and where this requires state intervention, no appeal can be made against it on behalf of individual rights. The state cannot justifiably intervene, however, except when the common interest requires it. Cole, in the introduction to his translation of The Social Contract (Rousseau, op. cit.), argues (in answer to the critics who hold that civil liberty has sacrificed individual liberty) that a certain amount of state interference is necessary to secure liberty and that individuals are more free when restrained from doing damage to each other. Rousseau differentiates between the will of all and the general will with the latter taking account only of the common interest while the former ‘takes private interest into account and is no more than a sum of particular wills’.
The idea of the general will is essentially ethical and is a principle of moral conduct applied to political behaviour. This process is referred to in The Social Contract, Part I, Chapter VIII where Rousseau states:
... We might, over and above all this, add, to what man acquires in the civil state, moral liberty, which alone makes him truly master of himself;
for the mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty (Rousseau, op. cit., pp. 15-16).
The general will was Rousseau’s solution to the problem of how humans can associate with each other without losing their freedom. This can be obtained if each individual does what is in the interest of all, instead of what is in his/her own interest, without reference to the interests of others. What is also important is that the interests of all include our own interests (Hall, 1973, p. 73).
Rousseau’s theories have been influential in his own century and down to the present. His political ideas gained prominence during the French Revolution, particularly its radical phase following the proclamation of the Republic in 1792, when they were espoused particularly by Robespierre. Rousseau’s egalitarian arguments were influential in early socialist-utopian and non- utopian ideas and when communist ideas were being developed in France towards the end of the 19th century (Hobsbawm, 1982). Rawls, the most
recent of social contract theorists (see above p. 55) is indebted to Rousseau in his theory of justice as fairness (Hall, op. cit., p. 140). Hall sees Rousseau’s general will theory as similar to Rawl’s two principles of justice as fairness in two ways: (i) ‘that the just principle must serve the interests of every participant’, and (ii) ‘that liberty has, for each individual an independent value. Rawl’s hypothetical agreement, according to Hall (ibid.) is analogous to Rousseau’s social contract in the following way:
Both Rousseau and Rawls recognise that self-interested individuals will not put the common interest before their own interest on particular occasions unless subject to constraint, and that the constraint must be accepted by all and known to be so before the practice can be accepted as just (Rawls) or the society as legitimate (Rousseau). Both maintain that such acceptance will only be forthcoming if the rules to be enforced are such as to promote the common interests of the participants (p.
143).
(For a discussion of Rawls theory of justice as fairness see below in this chapter, pp 66-67.)
Adam Smith and political economy
The previous section has put forward Rousseau’s philosophical theory of egalitarianism and the general will. In direct contrast, this section sets out Adam Smith’s theory of political economy. Smith’s theory with its exposition of the division of labour and the market has been interpreted as a philosophical justification of capitalism. His philosophy has also had a profound influence on liberalism.
Adam Smith in An Inquiry into the Naure and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations (1776), published fourteen years after the Social Contract, put
forward the principles of political economy which incorporated a theory in direct contrast to Rousseau’s egalitarianism. Rousseau and Smith were contemporaries of the commercial society, the precursor to capitalist society, whose critiques differed dramatically. Both were concerned with how individuals could live together in a society where they were increasingly in competition as well as dependent on one another. In contrast to Rousseau, this competitiveness was of benefit to the whole economy and the public. Also, rather than having the interest of the individual as subordinate to the collective interest as was proposed in Rousseau’s Social Contract, social advantage would be achieved, according to Smith (1776) by allowing the individual to pursue his own self-interest. The pursuit of self-interest by the sum of individuals that make up society would also lead to the wealth of the nation.
Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage indeed and not that of society which he had in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally or rather necessarily leads him to prefer that employment which is of most advantage to the society (op. cit. I, p. 398, cited in Fraser, 1973, p. 92).
Smith gives the quasi-religious explanation that this felicitous change from self-interest to the interest of society as a whole occurs by means of the individual being ‘led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention’. This is directly opposed to Rousseau’s viewpoint when he wrote how private interest and general good are mutually exclusive
(Rassmussen, 2008). As opposed to Rousseau, Smith saw the interdependence of people through economic exchange as the means which gave its unique strength to commercial society. Rather than trade breeding corruption Smith thought that it brought a new kind of freedom and independence from a particular lord or feudal master through the impersonal market and its contractual social system (Porter, 2000, p. 391-2).
By linking the individual’s natural instincts towards self-interest with the good of society, Smith is arguing that there exists a fundamental harmony between the profit-seeking imperative and the general good. By emphasizing this relationship, Smith is thought to be separating politics from economics to the advantage of the latter and at the same time is arguing against the involvement of the state in the economy. He is also arguing that the public good does not depend on the ‘general will’ but that it would be promoted through the interplay of particular wills (Porter, op. cit.). This also has implications beyond economics for it is individual happiness and material well-being which were given a higher value than moral virtue – and at the public level this implied an emphasis on the republic of commerce rather than on the Rousseauan republic of virtue. Smith’s words quoted below capture the ethos of the emerging capitalist society.
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages (Smith, 1999
I, Ch. 2. P. 119).
Smith identified the mechanism of the responsiveness of competitive market price to the supply and demand principle and showed how the free market could exist. This analysis along with the notion of the ‘invisible hand’ as well as labour theory of value came to form the basis for the 19th century doctrine
of laissez-faire and advocated the non-interference of government in the economy. This doctrine dominated during the 19th century and was to
become an essential component of the ideology of liberalism.
Another economist, David Ricardo, went on to develop and refine Smith’s political economy and used it to criticise the non-productive landowning class
and to champion the emergence of capitalism. Later Karl Marx with the publication of Das Kapital (1867) challenged Smith and argued that The Wealth of Nations was an ideological defence of capitalism which he maintained was characterised, not by a harmony of interests, as Smith claimed, but by an irreconcilable conflict between capital and labour. Marx emphasized the exploitation of the working-class and called for the overthrow of capitalism (Brown, in Hall and Gieben, op. cit.).
Philosophies of Social Justice
Moving from particular theorists it is appropriate now to consider the principal philosophical schools of distributive justice, that is, libertarianism, utilitarianism, egalitarianism and liberal-egalitarianism, and to distinguish within them the degree to which interventionism to achieve educational equality is involved. Much of the following section is based on Dupriez, Orianne et Verhoeven (2008) who have drawn together these ‘philosophical schools of distributive justice’.
Libertarianism
From a libertarian viewpoint freedom of choice is most important and much importance is accorded to procedures and rights. Thus parents would be free to choose the most appropriate schooling for their children and teachers would be free to offer the kind of curriculum they preferred (Dupriez, Orianne et Verhoeven 2008). The role of the state would be limited to protecting against crime, violation of fundamental rights and to ensuring that contracts are respected (Dupriez, Orianne et Verhoeven op. cit., Howe, 1997). Thus little intervention would be permitted in the pursuit of equalising educational opportunity beyond a formal equality of access. As long as the pupil’s right to education is respected, inequality in school careers does not pose a problem from the libertarian perspective.
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is a theory of rational choice whereby each person makes his/her choice on the basis of their own self-interest and whereby this pursuit of self-interest will lead to desirable social institutions through the action of
the ‘invisible hand’ as Adam Smith described it (Coleman, 1990). From the utilitarian viewpoint, utility or well-being and efficiency are of major importance. Unlike the libertarian, the utilitarian is interested in results principally in order to maximise utility and efficiency in society, for, given the correlation between the level of income and well-being on the one hand, and the level of education and income, on the other, utilitarians are interested in maximising the level of education (Dupriez, Orianne et Verhoeven, op. cit.). Educational meritocracy and the equalising of opportunity on the basis of talent is important from this theoretical perspective. However, meritocratic utilitarianism, because of its commitment to efficiency and economic productivity can militate against equalising educational opportunity. The criterion of efficiency is indifferent to the issue of distribution and inequalities of distribution are not reduced through market forces (Coleman, op. cit., p. 34). In education, an example of this would be if a cost effectiveness focus caused a shift in investing resources to specific categories, such as, scientifically gifted pupils to the detriment of those less advantaged (Howe, op. cit.).
Egalitarianism
For egalitarianism, unlike in utilitarianism, the reduction of inequalities in education is paramount, independently of its effect on average achievement or efficiency. Thus equality of educational achievement would be more important than average achievement and policies would be advocated which would further the former rather than the latter situation, although these may not necessarily be in conflict. Compensatory and positive discriminatory policies through public action would be called for, for example those which would allow for the distribution of educational resources in a differentiated manner so that individuals or groups who are disadvantaged would receive a greater investment of resources than those who are more advantaged. Another example of egalitarian educational policy would be the demand that the proportion of places in schools should reflect the demographic characteristics of the population. If, for example, there are 10% of a minority ethnic or socio-economic group in a country, a redistributive educational
policy should ensure that 10% of pupils in good schools, or in universities are from the minority group ((Dupriez, Orianne et Verhoeven, op. cit.).
One difficulty with a strict form of egalitarianism is the preoccupation with results to the detriment of the causes of these. It does not, for example, take into account the characteristics of the pupils, for example, talent, effectiveness or effort which could contribute to inequality of results as well as unequal distribution of resources (Dupriez, Verhoeven et al, ibid). It is