Abstract

ENGUITA, Mariano Fernández. Equality, equity and other complexities of educational justice. Rev. Port. de Educação [online]. 2013, vol.26, n.2, pp.205-224. ISSN 0871-9187.

Most debates on educational systems structures lean on either egalitarian or meritocratic concepts of educational justice. In this paper the author proposes that all those societies have an idea of social justice that, even in different degrees, combine both criteria of equality (the right to equal access to resources) and equity (the right to receive a compensation according to one's contribution). This is appropriate to economies in which people live both on resources received from past times (nature and heritage) and produced at present (work and thrift). Educators need to translate to the educational field those social values, so combining equality and equity. But they also have to face two extreme but not infrequent possibilities: on one side, those who, not having fairly treated by nature or by history, would be condemned to a disadvantaged position if they were treated merely in a formally equal way, and so they need and deserve a compensatory effort, that is, solidarity; on the other side, those who possess extraordinary abilities, who also have the right to develop them to their maximum and so requires a policy that sustains excellence. These four criteria, in mutual tension but not incompatible, form together educational justice.

Keywords : Equality; Equity; Solidarity; Excellence.

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