Inequality in Education

2019 ◽  
pp. 333-354
Author(s):  
Judith Kafka
Keyword(s):  
Educational Opportunities ◽  
School Systems ◽  
Formal Schooling ◽  
Educational Inequalities ◽  
Political Justification ◽  
Inequality In Education ◽  
History Of

This chapter reviews research on the history of inequality in education. Across the globe and since the advent of formal schooling, children from wealthier families have had access to more education, and more costly education, than their less affluent peers. More physically and intellectually advantaged children have also, on average, had greater educational opportunities than their less fortunate peers. Yet within this general historic truth lies considerable variation in terms of how, to what extent, and by what political justification educational inequalities have existed and persisted. Historians have sought to explain variations in inequality in education across time and place and to situate those inequalities within a larger sociohistoric context. One overarching finding from this large and varied body of research is that reform of school systems’ organization and practices is frequently a necessary but insufficient strategy in reducing inequalities in education.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Whyman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
Formal Schooling ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literate Society

The introduction shows the convergence and intertwining of the Industrial Revolution and the provincial Enlightenment. At the centre of this industrial universe lay Birmingham; and at its centre was Hutton. England’s second city is described in the mid-eighteenth century, and Hutton is used as a lens to explore the book’s themes: the importance of a literate society shared by non-elites; the social category of ‘rough diamonds’; how individuals responded to economic change; political participation in industrial towns; shifts in the modes of authorship; and an analysis of social change. The strategy of using microhistory, biography, and the history of the book is discussed, and exciting new sources are introduced. The discovery that self-education allowed unschooled people to participate in literate society renders visible people who were assumed to be illiterate. This suggests that eighteenth-century literacy was greater than statistics based on formal schooling indicate.

From Toleration to Laïcité

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-161
Author(s):  
Gerhardt Stenger ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Saint Augustine ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Political Justification ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
Pierre Bayle ◽  
The Right

This paper traces the history of the philosophical and political justification of religious tolerance from the late 17th century to modern times. In the Anglo-Saxon world, John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) gave birth to the doctrine of the separation of Church and State and to what is now called secularization. In France, Pierre Bayle refuted, in his Philosophical Commentary (1685), the justification of intolerance taken from Saint Augustine. Following him, Voltaire campaigned for tolerance following the Calas affair (1763), and the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) imposed religious freedom which, a century later, resulted in the uniquely French notion of laïcité, which denies religion any supremacy, and any right to organize life in its name. Equality before the law takes precedence over freedom: the fact of being a believer does not give rise to the right to special statutes or to exceptions to the law.

IS THERE AN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF EARLY AMERICAN WOMEN?

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLINE WINTERER
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Formal Schooling ◽  
John Adams ◽  
James I ◽  
Early American History ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
Early American ◽  
History Of

Catherine Kerrison, Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005)Susan Stabile, Memory's Daughters: The Material Culture of Remembrance in Eighteenth-Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004)Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America's Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2006)Consider Abigail Adams. Known to us mostly through over one thousand letters that she exchanged with her husband, John Adams, she was a woman of redoubtable intelligence and energy. Wife of the second president of the United States, she was mother to its sixth. She traveled to France and England, rubbing elbows with dukes and diplomats; she read deeply in history and literature; she supported the literacy of black children; she was a conduit for the American reception of Catharine Macaulay's republican-friendly History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line (1763–8). The letters between John and Abigail fly so fast and furious, are so full of learned banter and palpable yearning, that their marriage appears strikingly modern, a union of equals. Let us not be deceived. Abigail Adams, like other women of her generation even in the social stratosphere, had no formal schooling, and her erudition was dwarfed by the massive learning bestowed upon John. He had a Harvard BA and read law for three years. He took for granted a vast public arena in which to unleash his colossal, if tortured, political ambitions. Abigail never published a word.

scholarly journals The Attitudes of Russian Officials in the 1880s Toward Jewish Assimilation and Emigration

Slavic Review ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Michael Aronson
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Opposite Direction ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Educational Opportunities ◽  
Political Condition ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Jewish Intellectuals

The significance of the reign of Alexander III as a turning point in the history of Russian Jewry is beyond dispute. This reign witnessed a sharp deterioration in the Jews’ economic, social, and political condition. Jewish hopes for emancipation from the prevailing discriminatory legislation were dashed. Instead of emancipation, the Jews were presented with new restrictions, on their residence rights, educational opportunities, economic and professional pursuits, and participation in the institutions of local government. Faced with starvation, many thousands of Jews chose to leave the Russian Empire. Others chose to convert to Christianity in order to throw off the yoke of persecution. Moving in the opposite direction, many Jewish intellectuals who had previously believed in the beneficial results to be achieved by assimilation began to question this assumption. Some began to turn to Zionism. Others turned to active Jewish self-defense.

scholarly journals Inclusion’s Historical Entanglements in Alberta

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Gilham
Keyword(s):  
Inclusive Education ◽  
Children And Youth ◽  
School Systems ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
History Of

Inclusive education in Alberta is entangled in a long, dark history of exclusion. Hermeneutics can help illuminate and interrupt this entanglement in order to ask what might be taken for granted within it. Our notions of inclusion could be interpreted as suffering from an inability to recognize what is still historically at play, especially in the case of students diagnosed with emotional and behavioural disabilities. Seeing and understanding this through a hermeneutic sense of historical inquiry and play can help us move towards socially just school systems for children and youth.

The American Welfare State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Klosko
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Early History ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Causal Factors ◽  
Political Justification ◽  
History Of

Background on the American welfare state. What we mean by welfare states; early history of American welfare state; causal factors in regard to how it developed, and the American welfare state in comparative perspective. We also look at the role of political justification in the development of American welfare programs.

scholarly journals Privileging the Privileged: The Effects of International University Rankings on a Chilean Fellowship Program for Graduate Studies Abroad

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulina Perez Mejias ◽  
Roxana Chiappa ◽  
Carolina Guzmán-Valenzuela
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Selection Criterion ◽  
Educational Opportunities ◽  
University Rankings ◽  
Educational Inequalities ◽  
Mediation Model ◽  
Fellowship Program ◽  
Graduate Studies ◽  
International University

In the last few decades, many developing countries have dramatically expanded the number of government-sponsored fellowships for graduate studies abroad to increase their participation in the knowledge economy. To award these grants, these programs have typically relied on international university rankings as their main selection criterion. Existing studies suggest these fellowships have been disproportionally awarded to applicants from privileged social backgrounds, thus intensifying existing national educational inequalities. However, this evidence is mostly anecdotal and descriptive in nature. In this article, we focus on a Chilean fellowship program, an iconic example of these policies. Using a causal path analysis mediation model and relying on social reproduction and stratification theories, we investigated whether the distribution of fellowships varied across applicants from different socioeconomic backgrounds and how university rankings affect applicants’ chances of obtaining the fellowship. Our findings revealed that, in a context of high social inequalities and a stratified education system, using international rankings as an awarding criterion reinforced the position of privilege of individuals who accrued educational advantages in high school, as well as the disadvantages of those less fortunate who faced fewer prior educational opportunities.

National Education Systems

2019 ◽  
pp. 181-198
Author(s):  
Craig Campbell ◽  
Maxine Stephenson
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Social History ◽  
School Systems ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
National Education ◽  
Curriculum And Pedagogy ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
British Colonization ◽  
National Education Systems ◽  
History Of

With British colonization from the late eighteenth century came attempts to school indigenous and nonindigenous populations in ways familiar to colonizers. This was so in Australia and New Zealand. Writing histories that respect the indigenous experience of education has been a challenge. Mainstream historiography concentrated on the growth of schools and school systems as they provided for the colonizing populations from Britain. Colonial and postcolonial struggles among private interests, churches, and the state over schooling were the common subjects of research. Beginning in the 1970s revisionist historians have often written in terms of social history. Relationships between schooling and different social classes, indigenous students, teachers, and girls and women students often inform more recent writing. Traditional biographies of educators, histories of schools and school systems, and curriculum and pedagogy have not been neglected, but the influence of recent international historiography has impacted research into the history of education in Australia and New Zealand.

Rethinking social mobility in education: looking through the lens of professional capital

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Elliot Major ◽  
Jennie Miles Weiner
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
After School ◽  
School Systems ◽  
Educational Inequalities ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Professional Capital ◽  
Central Tenet ◽  
Intense Light

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to argue that current ways school systems have addressed social mobility is misguided at best and, at worst, hurts social mobility. Instead, we call for a focus on investment in teachers' professional capital as a primary lever for enhancing the likelihood they can effectively prepare and develop all children to lead successful lives after school. These arguments have become even more pertinent with the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachUsing contemporary research, and grounded in our collective decades of research in these areas, we define social mobility and document how the aim of improving it has become a central tenet of our governments' stated ambitions and the yardstick by which school systems' success is measured. We then show how the application of market-based approaches to schools and teachers' work has hindered social mobility and offer a new path forward.FindingsAfter 50 years of neoliberal policies incentivising individualistic and competitive behaviours, it is time to move towards policies that enhance professional capital and promote high quality collaboration between teachers. We call for a new path forward: a re-orientation to invest in teachers' capacity to realise the potential of education to improve the life prospects for all children, irrespective of their background.Originality/valueAs with so many issues, the COVID-19 pandemic has shone an intense light on the role of educators in society. There are credible concerns that economic and educational inequalities resulting from the crisis have the potential to trigger a fall in future social mobility levels. Yet this should also be seen as a new dawn for renewed thinking in which we seriously consider a shift away from neoliberal to professional capital policies to create an education system that nurtures teaching professionals, promotes collective behaviour and helps rather than hinders efforts to improve social mobility.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document