There are two leading accounts of the principles of educational adequacy by Elizabeth Anderson and Debra Satz. Anderson’s and Satz’s accounts have been criticized for being insufficiently value-pluralist, and both lack a metric of justice. In this paper, I revise the principle of educational adequacy in order to address these problems. I argue that although the principle of educational adequacy cannot be the only principle in a complete theory of educational justice, it can tell us what basic ju…
Read moreThere are two leading accounts of the principles of educational adequacy by Elizabeth Anderson and Debra Satz. Anderson’s and Satz’s accounts have been criticized for being insufficiently value-pluralist, and both lack a metric of justice. In this paper, I revise the principle of educational adequacy in order to address these problems. I argue that although the principle of educational adequacy cannot be the only principle in a complete theory of educational justice, it can tell us what basic justice in education requires in measurable terms. I highlight two core commitments that Anderson and Satz share: a commitment to 1) democratic egalitarianism and 2) sufficientarian equal citizenship. Then, I reformulate these commitments in a way that accounts for the role that other egalitarian values have to play in a complete theory of justice in education. Finally, I claim that progress towards educational adequacy can be measured using the capabilities approach.
