Abstract

What are the purposes or aims of education in general and of democratic education in particular? And what are the appropriate ways and means of such an education? This chapter offers an overview of some of the more important approaches to these questions in contemporary, mostly anglophone, conceptions of educational justice in primary and secondary education. Section 16.2 starts with some provisions of some important goals of education. Section 16.3 turns to educational justice in gerneral. Section 16.4 asks about the spheres of educational justice: Is it education and socialization in general, or the school system in particular? Section 16.5 distinguishes three different levels of education: (i) basic education for all; (ii) the cultivation of individual talents and capacities; and (iii) selection for higher education and the job market. Section 16.6 outlines the differences between five principles of justice and equality in the field of education: (i) strict equality, (ii) a conception of fair equality of opportunity, (iii) a conception of luck-egalitarian equality of opportunity, (iv) a prioritarian conception of educational justice, and (v) democratic adequacy as a conception of educational justice.