Cultivating Educational Opportunity

• In Event: 25.086 - Sheraton Roundtable Session One - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 25.086-12 - The Challenge of Cultivation

Abstract

The value of equality of opportunity captures a paradox in American education: the means to equality is also the means to inequality. Equality of opportunity helps us to envision a social state where there is a fair chance to compete for scarce and coveted goods, or in the words of sociologist James Coleman, "...those positions which give high income and social reward” (Coleman 1973, p. 130). Although realizing the concept is meant to militate against social class, parents who have reaped rewards are inclined to favor their children's success in educational competitions. This poses a problem for equality of opportunity. The problem is exacerbated by the educational market, which instrumentalizes the fears of well-off parents and sells them the means of their child's advantage (Halliday 2016). As a result of parental partiality and market forces, the "level playing field" that Americans cherish is now dramatically skewed (Putnam 2016). Attempts to "square this circle" (Hochschild & Scovronick 2003) have led to important philosophical insights related to the distinction between equal and adequate educational opportunities (Reich 2013) and the boundaries of "legitimate parental partiality" (Brighouse & Swift 2014). Such work has increased our understanding of educational opportunity and the values at stake in the distribution of educational resources. However, the less we assume competitions for coveted positions are worth pursuing, the more conformist and unimaginative work on educational opportunity can appear (Schaar 1967). Must we aspire towards "...those positions which give high income and social reward” (Coleman 1973, p. 130)?
The purpose of this study is to explain what can be learned from historical accounts of cultivation that dispose readers to see opportunities to achieve predominant forms of social status as mindless and base, without eliminating the possibility of social distinction. I argue that these accounts offer a resistance to status monopolies and forms of social distinction which can expand our vision of educational opportunity, more specifically, by substantiating our vision of a pluralistic opportunity structure—i.e., a greater variety of privileged positions and thus a less competitive, zero-sum pursuit of them. To make this argument, I first show, by way of demonstration, how dominant paths to social status are eschewed and a conception of social distinction is developed in Rousseau's Emile (1979). To illustrate variety, I examine related passages in Plato's Republic (2004), Nietzsche’s "Schopenhauer as Educator" (1997), and Weber's "Science as a Vocation." I then explain how the above can be used to flesh out Joseph Fishkin's formal theory of opportunity pluralism (Fishkin 2014). Using historical accounts of cultivation to flesh out opportunity pluralism, I conclude, contributes to and productively complicates a recent effort to parse educational values (Brighouse et. al. 2018). The broader significance of my study is to show how writings in the history of philosophy of education can be used to enrich contemporary work in educational justice.

Author

• John Peter Fantuzzo, Valparaiso University