Can We Distribute Education? Formative Justice as Critique

• In Event: Fulfillment of Self Through Adherence to Law: Formative Justice and Educational Politics

Abstract

The ideal of universal access to education that begins with the evangelical Christian tradition and continues today through programs such as UNESCO, Teach for America, and the Peace Corps relies upon the assumption of a highly efficient causal function in which the ends of education can be achieved by distributing the means: the truth shall set you free. Religious missionary work differs from contemporary universalist discourses of education insofar as the former offers salvation without limits, guaranteed by divine power, whereas the latter offers participation in a global economy in which the student can depend upon its continued position of relative dependency. Yet both operate under the assumption of a total transformation of the individual or cultural group to whom educational means are distributed. The problem is that the assumption of radical transformation stands at odds with the definition of educational equity as a simple distribution of neutral goods.

Robbie McClintock describes formative justice, or “fulfillment, in the conduct of a person’s life within the flux of his or her actual circumstances,” in deliberate contrast to Rawls’ notion of formal justice as insufficient to the task of theorizing education. In the first part of this paper I employ formative justice as a critique by contrast, demonstrating that, unlike other basic goods, the ends of education are impossible to describe within a distributive model. Based on the limits of the distributive model in relation to education, I turn to formative justice as a possible supplement.

In the second part of the paper, I follow McClintock’s description of formative justice as a concept first articulated in Plato’s Republic. Considering Plato’s emphasis on mythological narratives in the founding of various forms of justice, I inquire into the pedagogical power of myth and of poetic images in establishing subjective positions in relation to the law. Based on the status of individual agency and achievement in contemporary Western culture, I consider distributive justice as a myth of contemporary educational politics. I close by demonstrating the influence of distributive justice as an ideological framework in educational policy by drawing upon examples from court decisions involving educational equity.

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Author

• James Stillwaggon, Iona College