Unequal Opportunities and Individual Achievements: Effect of Family Background

Equal opportunity theory is based on the idea that inequality of individual achievements is a complex phenomenon. It is formed by two groups of factors: (1) one's own decisions and efforts (inequality of efforts) and (2) circumstances beyond one's control (inequality of opportunities). Therefore, wealth inequality caused by effort factors (1) is fair and is not to be compensated for, whereas differences in welfare caused by objective circumstances (2) are unfair and should be compensable (the compensation principle). This paper introduces an assessment of circumstances associated with family background: composition, psychological atmosphere, well-being, occupation, education, etc. Parents' education and two-parent status appeared to be the most important circumstances. Respondents who grew up in a two-parent family with both biological parents had a higher income than those who grew up in one-parent families or with one biological and one stepparent. The low economic status of the parental family also proved to affect the well-being of grown-up children. Thus, efforts to provide equal opportunities can have a long-term effect on social inequality and build a more just society.

Salvatore Veca per noi

Salvatore Veca (31 October 1943 - 7 October 2021) was not only a lecturer in many universities, including eventually Pavia, but also an active intellectual in many important civic structures. A brilliant pupil of Enzo Paci at the University of Milan, editor of the journal «aut aut», Veca chaired the Fondazione Feltrinelli and the Casa della Cultura in Milan and was the author of many books on philosophy based on the critical introduction of Anglo-Saxon analytical culture. The presentation in Italy of the work of John Rawls was important and marked the liveliest interest in the problem of the “just society”. He played a leading role in the debate on the possible developments of the Italian left after the fall of the Berlin Wall. For the Expo Laboratory he was responsible for drafting the “Milan Charter” on environmental sustainability.

Inclusions and Exclusions of Tribal Narratives in the Indian Education Policies of India

The COVID-19 situation in India exposed the deep social and economic divide that exists within. Revealing these existing inequities and vulnerabilities, the pandemic situation critically questions what this divide means for the already marginalized communities in India. The founding fathers of the Indian Constitution foresaw the profound challenge of creating social, political, and economic equity with huge diversity. They saw education with development as a solution to create a just society. Therefore, the structures of reservation and economic support were built into the Constitution. However, these government policies of development and education were intensely geared towards integration as a nation-building exercise. Meanwhile, access to education is still provisional, subject to factors like lack of infrastructure, and that access is not always enough for emancipation. Through this chapter, the nation-building exercise will be critically examined in the light of diversity and the missing narratives of the consent of marginal citizens through the post-colonial lens.

Promoting Prospective TESOL Educators' Critical Reflection Through the 4D Framework

Within the field of teacher education, the significance of promoting critical reflection is highlighted by scholars because it is generally believed that teachers engaging in critical reflection are more able to examine bias, challenge embedded assumptions, and take actions toward educational justice. In the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), there is a growing interest in the cultivation of educators with critical reflection ability. In this chapter, the authors introduce a set of effective tools by which worldwide pre-service TESOL educators can practice critical reflection. The sets include a 4D framework and a worksheet. By incorporating this tool into learning and future English teaching lives, pre-service TESOL educators can be involved in continuous cycles of high-level critical reflection. Through learning on their own reflections, teachers can gain new insights, improve teaching skills, and ultimately, create a more just society for students.

Carlos Giménez, España, Una, Grande y Libre (1976-1977), and Comics of the Transition

I reexamine the Spanish Transition in terms of the interventions that cartoonists in the 1970s used to lay bare the machinations of the old regime still in power. Specifically, I analyze Carlos Giménez’s España, Una, Grande y Libre series, an exemplary counter-narrative against the dominant discourse produced by post-Franco government officials and economic power brokers. This collection—which denounces state-sanctioned violence and champions popular mobilizations in the name of a more just society—is also a pioneering work that makes visible the victims of the long-silenced crimes of Francoism.

A Method to Develop Critical Thinking: Playing the Devil’s Advocate

The ability to think critically is at the foundation of an equitable and just society. One aspect of critical thinking (CT) is the ability to create and develop structurally sound arguments. Curricular requirements often restrict addressing this issue. Furthermore, students arguing their own opinions often assume agreement and therefore do not see a need to fully explain. As such, I examined how CT can be developed through the use of a timed-writing activity wherein the students argue against their own positions. I employed an action research approach to compare CT development in the intervention class with another class that did not receive the intervention. Analysis of the data suggested that this method was effective, and that encouragement of dissociation has a positive effect on CT development in students.

The Prophetic Lens: A Missiological Function of Film for Black Social Movement from Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Camera Phone

Through technological advances and its democratization, the camera is found to have dual functionality. It is both a prophetic and a missiological tool used to awaken the collective conscience of a nation apathetic towards the Black experience and to offer a counter-narrative reorienting the US to becoming a more racially just society. This paper considers definitions of gospel, missions, and the prophetic, outlining a framework for how the camera functions in all three. It briefly explores the use of the camera from Martin Luther King, Jr., during the Civil Rights Movement, to the contemporary citizen with a camera phone, all capturing anti-Black violence. As we will see, like the parables of Jesus were to his kingdom message, the content of the camera has proven vital to acquiring justice by exposing the realities of racial injustice, confronting the status quo, and energising viewers to take positive action.

Global and national dimensions of the socio-economic inequality problem

The article is devoted to the study of socio-economic inequality as one of the key problems of the modern economic system. The author analyzes the evolution, scale and specificity of the manifestation of the phenomenon of inequality in the context of the intensification of economic globalization and the post-Fordist / neoliberal regime of capital accumulation in the global dimension. The national context of inequality is investigated on the example of Ukraine, as one of the post-Soviet countries, consistently implementing the principles of neoliberalism in practice throughout the post-Soviet period. The author pays attention to the study of the social consequences and changes in inequality in the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that the intensification of negative trends in the development of society in the context of the corona-crisis is a natural consequence of the policy of the pre-pandemic period. The growth of poverty and inequality, as well as the generally negative consequences of the pandemic for the majority of the population, were largely the result of the depletion of state and public institutions in the context of neoliberalism. The way out of the current crisis lies in the implementation in practice of the public demand for building a more “equal” and just society in the interests of the majority of the population. The author bases her conclusions on a large array of domestic and foreign sources on this issue, as well as the results of public opinion polls. In particular, the article uses the data of sociological measurements of the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the sociological company Research & BrandingGroup, as well as the international research company Ipsos, conducted in 2020-2021.