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15The Egalitarian Virtues of Educational VouchersJournal of Philosophy of Education 28 (2): 211-220. 1994.The paper argues that there is no fundamental incompatibility between the use of vouchers and managed market mechanisms in the distribution of education und the principled aims of egalitarian educational policy. It takes those aims to be equality of opportunity, education for autonomy, and democratic education, and shows in each case how a voucher scheme could accommodate the aim. It explains why a judiciously designed voucher scheme may constitute a more politically feasible method of achieving…Read more
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14What's Wrong with Tuition‐Free Four‐Year Public College?Educational Theory 73 (6): 833-859. 2024.Advocates of tuition-free four-year public college make the argument for it too easy by asserting that it would be paid for out of taxes on the wealthy. Other uses of the revenues are possible. In this paper, Harry Brighouse and Kailey Mullane establish two criteria for comparing different uses of the revenues: the first criterion is, will the policy increase the overall level of educational goods?, and the second is, will the policy reduce inequalities of educational goods? Here, Brighouse and …Read more
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14Educational goods: values, evidence, and decision makingUniversity of Chicago Press. 2018.We spend a lot of time arguing about how schools might be improved. But we rarely take a step back to ask what we as a society should be looking for from education—what exactly should those who make decisions be trying to achieve? In Educational Goods, two philosophers and two social scientists address this very question. They begin by broadening the language for talking about educational policy: “educational goods” are the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that children develop for their own ben…Read more
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12The Educational Responsibilities of PhilosophersSATS 24 (1): 53-69. 2023.Perpetuating the discipline of philosophy is not the main educational responsibility of philosophers. Instead, it is to equip students with those distinctively philosophical intellectual resources that will serve students in serving the public good through participation in the economy (broadly conceived) and democratic life. Given this responsibility philosophers, individually and collectively, have a duty to take teaching and learning more seriously than they do. The paper offers some confident…Read more
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11Most of the estimated 855 million people in the world (one sixth of the population) without access to schooling are women and girls. Two thirds of the 110 million school age children not in school are girls (UNGEI, 2002). This injustice has been a focus of attempts at coordinated international policy interventions since the 1990s, sometimes loosely referred to as the Education for All (EFA) movement. The first of the millennium development targets - gender equity in education - is supposed to be…Read more
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10Debating Education: Is There a Role for Markets?Oup Usa. 2019.Debating Education puts two leading scholars in conversation with each other on the subject of education-specifically, what role, if any, markets should play in policy reform. The authors focus on the nature, function, and legitimate scope of voluntary exchange as a form of social relation, and how education raises concerns that are not at issue when it comes to trading relationships between consenting adults.
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10Is There a Neutral Justification for Liberalism?†Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 77 (3): 193-215. 2017.Neutralist defenses of liberalism fail because they cannot account for essential features of an acceptable liberal theory: a firm guarantee for a sphere of individual liberty, an account of our interest in being able to revise our moral commitments, a wide range of applicability, and the possibility of legitimate government in the face of rejection by unreasonable citizens. A liberalism based on the value of autonomy can address the problems which motivate neutralists, while succeeding in provid…Read more
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10Educational Equality and JusticeIn Randall Curren (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Education, Blackwell. 2003.This chapter contains sections titled: Objections.
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9A Modest Defence of School ChoiceJournal of Philosophy of Education 36 (4): 653-659. 2002.This is a response to Samara Foster’s engaging critique of my book School Choice and Social Justice. In this response to her criticisms I clarify and try to correct some apparent misunderstandings of the book, but also take the opportunity to pose again a challenge to opponents of choice which neither she, nor other of my critics, has taken up.
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7Is There Any Such Thing as Political Liberalism?Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 75 (3-4): 318-332. 2017.
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7Educational Justice and Socio‐Economic Segregation in SchoolsIn Mark Halstead & Graham Haydon (eds.), The Common School and the Comprehensive Ideal, Wiley‐blackwell. 2008-10-10.This chapter contains sections titled: I Justice in Education II The Comprehensive Ideal III Socioeconomic Segregation and Educational Injustice IV Liberty, Family Values and Justice V Justice without Structural Reform? VI Justice without De‐Segregation? VII Concluding Comment Notes References.
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5Education: Not a Real Utopian DesignPolitics and Society 42 (1): 51-72. 2014.This paper identifies four criteria, all of which an ideal real utopian proposal would meet. We argue for a moderate skepticism that it is possible to give a real utopian proposal to guide the design of education for a society that meets these criteria; both for the practical reason that what happens in schools depends on the background environment within which they operate, and for the principled reason that when educating children we should attend to their individual future well-being in ways …Read more
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1CitizenshipIn Catriona McKinnon (ed.), Issues in Political Theory, Oxford University Press. 2008.
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1Who should make decisions about children's education?In Randall R. Curren (ed.), Handbook of philosophy of education, Routledge. 2023.
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Values and evidence in educational decision-makingIn Randall R. Curren (ed.), Handbook of philosophy of education, Routledge. 2023.
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In my contribution today I want to talk about the place of private schooling in a society devoted to educational justice. I should say at the outset that although there are no principled reasons for opposing private schooling - certainly none in favour of the idea that the state should have a monopoly on provision - I do not share the enthusiasm that many of today's speakers have shown for private schools. Whether or not they are consistent with a just distribution of schooling is a highly conti…Read more
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10. Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (pp. 820-823)In Stephen Everson (ed.), Ethics, Cambridge University Press. 1998.
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Who should make decisions about children's education?In Randall R. Curren (ed.), Handbook of philosophy of education, Routledge. 2023.
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An education resource account for early school leaversIn Greg Bognar & Axel Gosseries (eds.), Ageing Without Ageism: Conceptual Puzzles and Policy Proposals, Oxford University Press. 2023.This chapter argues that school should cease to be compulsory at age 16 and that an education resource account (ERA) should be established for students who leave school at that age. The ERA would be sufficient to cover three years of full-time education. It could be linked to inflation and early school leavers could use it in accredited non-profit educational institutions at any later point in their lives. Two sets of arguments are discussed in support of the proposal. The first, building on the…Read more
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Liberal legitimacy and civic educationIn Stephen Everson (ed.), Ethics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 108--4. 1998.
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