Theorizing Educational Justice

Meira Levinson
Harvard University
meira_levinson@harvard.edu
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of good articles and books about justice and
education. Philosophers have done robust work on topics including school choice, the aims of
education, the content of the curriculum, school financing, special education and inclusion,
parents vs. states vs. childrens rights, creating just classrooms and schools, school discipline,
and dozens of other salient issues. I am struck, however, by the fact that no contemporary
theorist has proposed a comprehensive theory of educational justice itself.
My purpose in this paper is to offer some initial reflections about the project of
theorizing educational justice on its own terms: why we should do so, how we might go about
it, and if we were to do so, what we would be theorizing about. For reasons of time and
coherence, I will treat education as referring to formal, school-based teaching and learning; I
will also concentrate solely on children. I take it as given that schools aims, practices, and
policies with regard to children are an appropriate central focus of educational justice, and
hence that starting with children in schools is a reasonable place to begin, even if not to end.
1. Rocky Choices: One Dilemma of Educational Justice1
Rivers Elementary School is a state primary school in a wealthy suburban district in the
United States. It has a reputation for outstanding academics, a nurturing school culture, and
ready responsiveness to parents concerns. Kate, the eight year-old daughter of an art historian
and a doctor, has proved to be one of Rivers more challenging students. Her first few years
were delightful, in the words of her first grade teacher. During the summer before second
grade and into that fall, however, Kate became increasingly oppositional for reasons that

1

I have slightly adapted this case from Meira Levinson and Sigal Ben Porath, Rocky Choices: Scientific Inquiry,
Discipline, and Mental Illness at Rivers Elementary, in Meira Levinson and Jacob Fay, eds. Dilemmas of
Educational Ethics: Cases and Commentaries, (Cambridge: Harvard Education Press, 2016).

no one, including Kate herself, could identify. By the spring of second grade, she was regularly
disrupting class by shrieking and banging her desk, causing other children to cry or even cower
in fear. After being diagnosed with nonspecific opposition-defiance disorder, she received an
Individualized Education Plan (IEP) that included a part-time inclusion aide and other
accommodations intended to help her remain in a mainstream setting. Her parents also agreed
that during her outbursts, she would be removed to the Think Room, which is a form of
solitary confinement used to help children contain themselves. Although the Think Room is
controversial within the districtmany teachers and parents see it as developmentally
inappropriate and punitiveboth Kate and her parents were grateful to have a place that she
could go when school became overwhelming.
Kates third grade teacher, Ms. Brown, was a twenty-two year veteran with
certifications in general education, special education, and science. Ms. Brown had a soft spot
for tough kids, and asked to have Kate assigned to her class; Kates parents were thrilled,
and Mr. Thomason, the school principal, readily agreed. Knowing that Kates classmates got
upset about her behavior, Ms. Brown led conversations with the students about inclusive
communities that honor many kinds of difference. The children excitedly identified their many
differences and discussed how classroom norms and procedures enable everyone to be their
best selves. At the same time, many children privately expressed concern about Kates
continued disruptions. Although they knew that Ms. Brown was not open to accusations that
Kate messes everything up, they did complain to their parents and each other when an
exciting learning activity came to an abrupt end during one of Kates mini-explosions. Some
children also seemed so concerned about setting Kate off that they concentrated more on
mollifying her than on the subject of the lesson.
In light of these concerns, a group of parents met in November with Principal
Thomason to discuss Kates participation in class. These parents expressed concern about

classroom safety and culture. They also questioned the academic rigor of a class that was
sporadically disrupted. In response, Mr. Thomason expressed support for Ms. Brown, and
emphasized that all children are entitled by law to the least-restrictive appropriate educational
setting. At the same time, Mr. Thomason reassured the parents that it is of paramount
importance that every child feel safe and secure in class, ready and able to learn. At the end of
the meeting, one of the lead parentsthe only father in the groupthanked Mr. Thomason for
his concern and said he hoped he wouldnt have to take it to the next level in response to
continued disruptions.
Mr. Thomason met with Ms. Brown the next day. She was frustrated that the parents
had not contacted her directly, and said that the parents own concerns were feeding their
childrens worries. Its not the kids who are scared of Kate; its the parents, Ms. Brown
explained. They say stuff to their kids over dinner, about how Kate shouldnt be there or is
disrupting other kids learning, and then the children come in the next day with complaints that
they never had and blow things all out of proportion.
In response, Mr. Thomason emphasized that he was responsible for all children and
their families. If you see Kate starting to get upset, I want you to ring for help so an adult can
escort Kate to the Think Room, Mr. Thomason instructed. Remove Kate from the classroom
before she explodes. That way, Kate can feel some success that she hasnt disrupted another
day of learning, and her classmates can feel confident Kate wont be allowed to get out of
hand. We cant afford to let this escalate. No need to get the superintendent involved. Mr.
Thomason was firm; although Ms. Brown tried to protest, he made it clear their meeting was
over.
The following Monday, Kate came in late, looking agitated. Her parents told Ms.
Brown she had had a rough morning, but was eager to get to school to learn about rocksa
favorite subject. Students were working in small groups to classify rocks by their sedimentary,

metamorphic, or igneous characteristics. Ms. Brown assigned Kate to work with two boys,
Philip and Frank. Both boys were welcoming, although Philip, who identified as a future
world-famous inventor, had occasionally gotten upset about Kates disruptions in the past. It
was his father who had threatened Mr. Thomason with taking it to the next level. Frank was
a soft-spoken, reserved child. A struggling reader, he often seemed to disengage from
classroom activities if they seemed too challenging. Ms. Brown worried about his selfconfidence, reminding him frequently that he was a great thinker and observer, even if your
brain needs extra help matching letters to sounds.
Initially, the group work went smoothly. Frank took on the role of holding each rock up
for examination. All three children expressed their opinion about its classification; finding that
they were unanimous, Philip recorded the groups decisions on a worksheet. About ten minutes
in, however, the two boys began to squabble over the designation of a rock. Philip insisted it
was igneous; Frank was sure it was metamorphic. Kate did not take a position in the debate.
Instead, she squirmed and moved away, as if trying to shield herself from the conflict. She then
returned to the table, but again seemed undone by the boys vehement disagreement. The boys
werent misbehavingto the contrary, they were passionately involved in the science task at
handbut their argument continued unabated.
Ms. Brown was across the room, helping a group that was struggling with the
classification exercise; they kept trying to organize the rocks by shape and size. Noting Kates
increasing distress, however, Ms. Brown crossed the classroom and quietly asked Kate if she
would like to switch groups. Kate refused, seeming hurt. She did not want to walk away from
the important work she had already done sorting rocks! Ms. Brown then turned to Philip and
Frank. Why dont you present your debate to Kate, and let her be the judge? But Kate
nervously shook her head, feeling pressure at being in the spotlight. Frank,

uncharacteristically, also scowled. He was on the verge of convincing Philip he was right, he
felt; this wasnt the time to start over!
Ms. Brown could tell that Kate was close to breaking down. She had little time to
decide what to do. Should she pursue her tactic of having the boys present their argument to
Kate for adjudication, potentially agitating Kate to the point of no return, leaving the other
group to founder, and risking censure from her principal? Should she send Kate preemptively
to the Think Room, causing her to miss the lesson for which she had worked so hard to get to
school? Should she move one of the boys out of the group, effectively punishing them for
doing their work, and undercutting Franks newfound academic engagement and selfassertion? Should she shift to whole class instruction, scrapping the current lesson plan and
perhaps diminishing all childrens active engagement in learning? What was the right course of
action?
2. Theorizing Educational Justice: Necessary Presuppositions and Features
There are a number of struggles and dilemmas built into the case above: curricular,
pedagogical, political, social, administrative, and ethical (among others). Some of these are
certainly dilemmas of justice: of who is owed what and why. What are Kate, Frank, Philip, and
the other children in the class each owed, and how should potential conflicts in satisfying those
obligations be resolved? Furthermore, who is responsible for making such determinations, for
setting the conditions under which justice might be done, and for actually enacting just
decisions? Are these the same or different agents? Ms. Brown clearly has duties of justice, and
presumably Mr. Thomason does, too, as head of school. How about the parents? The children
in the class? The federal government has taken a stand in declaring that Kate has the right to a
free and appropriate public educationa right that notably the federal government does not
attribute to students without diagnosed special needs; is this claim a defensible one, and is the
federal government the right entity to make it? Some (but not all) of these dilemmas of justice

are bound up in questions about sameness and difference: what does it mean to treat like as like
in this case? Which differences matter, how, and why? Of what relevance are Kates mental
illness, Franks dyslexia, Philips confidence, or the other groups confusion over principles of
classification?
I raise these questions not to answer them, but to highlight how the case embodies
some paradigmatic dilemmas of justice in general, and of educational justice in particular. I
also wish to note that this is arguably an ideal case, in that it occurs in a well-resourced
school and district with highly trained school personnel, involved parents, and no evident
history of domination, oppression, or other forms of institutionalized social injustice more
broadly speaking. It is the kind of case that would arise even in a well-ordered society.2 The
question I want to address is how we might go about theorizing educational justice in a way
that would help us address a case such as Kates. Most specifically, what features of the
educational context or subjects would any theory of educational justice have to take as given in
order to reason meaningfully about the kinds of dilemmas that arise in this case?
2.1 Children are appropriately non-compliant, sometimes because theyre also unreasonable
and/or irrational
Lets begin with Kate herself. Kate poses a challenge in large part because she is
defiant and disruptive. She does not allow the class to get on with its work. In some ways, Kate
is an outlier in this regard. But on the other hand, misbehavior and disruption of others
projects are normal, even developmentally healthy, features of childhood. We would be very
worried about a toddler or adolescent, for example, who never acted out, tested limits, or tried
to substitute his or her independent judgment in place of adults advice/directions. This is true
in matters of justice and morality as much as in anything else. Children snatch things from one
another, refuse to share, attack others physically and emotionally, renege on promises,

2

John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971).

manipulate parents and siblings, lie, coerce, and wantonly interfere with others projects
often all in a days work. In theorizing educational justice, therefore, one must assume that the
primary subjects of such justicechildrenwill at least sometimes be non-compliant and fail
to fulfill their obligations to others.
Such normatively condemnatory terms as attack, snatch, renege, and coerce, may feel
like the wrong way to characterize childrens actions, since young children, at least, are not
morally responsible for their non-compliance. But this illuminates another essential
presupposition of any plausible theory of educational justice: namely, that children have not
yet learned to reason properly about moral obligations to others.3 Thats one important
responsibility of adults, to teach children to understand sharing, promising, and so forth as
normatively-laden acts, so that children learn to substitute wanton wish-fulfillment with
behavioral compliance and, eventually, adoption of action-guiding moral norms.4 Its also
important to note that children may be unreasonable or even irrational about non-moral
actionsnot only as Kate is when she is in the throes of her mental illness, but also as Frank
arguably is when he withdraws from lessons that are specifically designed to help him learn
essential reading skills, or as Philip and Frank both are when they push their argument to the
stage that is likely to trigger an outburst from Kate. It would be much easier for Ms. Brown to
fulfill her duties of educational justice (whatever those turn out to be) if Kate could recognize
the boys argument as a part of learning, if Frank would reliably engage with equal vigor in
future lessons were he to be shut down now, if Philip would recognize that his own behavior
was partly to blame when he tells his father over dinner that Kate exploded during science
class (leading his father, say, to contact the superintendent), and even if the other group could
figure out that classifying rocks by their origins has nothing to do with classifying them by

Such reasoning may have a very strong affective component; nothing here is intended to imply a strictly
cognitive account of moral development. See, e.g., Martha Nussbaum, Political Emotions, (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2013).
4
I dont mean anything to ride on this specific Kohlbergian account of moral development; substitute in virtually
any other account and the point still holds.

size. But such complaints also miss the point. Sure, Ms. Brown would have an easier time
enacting justice if her charges were consistently compliant, reasonable, and rational. But then
she wouldnt actually be dealing with children, who are the primary subjects of any theory of
educational justice. Again, therefore, any theory of educational justice must take account of
the fact that its primary subjectschildrenare sometimes non-compliant and unreasonable,
and similarly that methods for fostering compliance and reason are themselves an essential
object of theorizing about educational justice.
2.2 Corrective and distributive justice need to be theorized simultaneously
Because both compliance and reason (including reasonable emotions) are products of
educational justice, rather than being stipulated presuppositions as they are, say, in Rawlsian
ideal theory, any exercise in theorizing educational justice must simultaneously address both
corrective and distributive concerns. In other words, the theory must address the just correction
of childrens behavior, and also the just distribution of educational goods. Neither can be set
aside for a future date.
Furthermore, distributive and corrective justice are not only each part of any theory of
educational justice, but they are also intimately intertwined. This is true for two reasons. First,
a theory of educational justice has to clarify which elements of childrens development are
subjects for distributive versus corrective justice. When Ms. Brown works with Kate to help
her control her behavior, for example, is she helping Kate acquire key social and emotional
skillsand hence distributing educational goodsor is she teaching Kate how to comply with
others appropriate expectationsand hence administering corrective action? Is such a
distinction even meaningful? A plausible theory of educational justice could potentially
characterize all exercises in corrective justice in distributive terms, insofar as the aim of
correction is to help children develop social, emotional, and intellectual capacities (otherorientation, perspective-taking abilities, self-control, capacity to delay gratification, etc.) that

are essential for shared social life. A competing and equally plausible theory of educational
justice, however, could define corrective justice as that which fosters childrens development
as moral agentsas people who can properly be held morally responsible and be evaluated as
deserving (or non-deserving)while defining distributive justice as that which, say, enables
childrens acquisition of essential primary goods or capabilities. This maintains conceptual
distance between the two. I take no position here on the proper definition of or relationship
between distribution and correction in a theory of educational justice; my point is simply to
show that any theory of educational justice will need to attend to such questions.
Second, distributive and corrective justice are also intertwined on an empirical level,
insofar as how teachers deal with a disruptive child has both corrective and distributive
consequences for all concerned. A child like Kate who removed from the classroom in
response to (the threat of) an outburst, for example, is not only experiencing (lets say)
corrective justice, but is simultaneously being denied access to educational goods. She can no
longer learn about rock classification, nor about working effectively in groups, by directly
observing rocks characteristics and discussing their features with Philip and Frank. She is also
potentially being prevented from developing the skills and dispositions that will help her
remain in class more consistently, which negatively impinges on her social, emotional, and
academic development. If Ms. Brown leaves Kate in the classroom until she explodes,
however, then this impinges on all the other students access to academic educational goods.
At the very least, they will stop classifying rocks for the time it takes Ms. Brown to call for
someone to remove Kate; they will also likely be distracted for a few minutes afterward. It may
also affect their emotional and social well-being, making it further challenging the next time
Kate is in the classroom for some children to concentrate on learning rather than on mollifying
her. If Ms. Brown alternatively reassigns Philip to a different group or shifts to whole-class
instruction about rocks in hopes of preventing Kate from exploding, then this also has

distributive consequences for other students in the class. So for both conceptual and empirical
reasons, a theory of educational justice must attend to both distributive and corrective
considerations and theorize appropriate relationships between them.
2.3 Educational justice even in a well-ordered school is neither closed nor stable
I now suggest, educational justice must be a transitional theory rather than one that
assumes stability and self-replication. It must be responsive to childrens needs and rights in
the here-and-now, while also helping to prepare them to help create and inhabit a more just
world in the future.
Consider, for instance, childrens efforts to make ethical meaning via incompletely
developed cognitive and emotional capacities. In doing so, they adoptat our
encouragementreasons that are developmentally appropriate but not intrinsically defensible:
e.g. Its never okay to hurt someone. We teach children principles at one stage that we want
them later to reject. Rather than a stable system providing an exemplar that all are moved to
embrace and maintain, therefore, just educational institutions will constitute a dynamic system
that intentionally accommodates itself to imperfection, but with the goal of moving toward a
more inspiring ideal. In this respect, educational justice is both being and becoming,
bootstrapping itself from the imperfect present to the more perfectly imagined future. As with
other transitional justice theories, it must clarify how children can learn and enact justice
arising out of compromised circumstances, not just how they can learn from and perpetuate
ideally just systems.
One reason for describing these as compromised circumstances is, as I just discussed,
because of childrens own limited understanding. Even if schools or teachers took what adults
would all agree is the most just action, children might not understand their actions that way,
and might therefore learn worse rather than better lessons about justice moving forward. A
second reason to describe even an ideal theory of educational justice as necessarily

10

contending with compromised circumstances is because, as I mentioned in earlier, we cannot

hold children fully responsible for their actions. Determining what children are due is hence
a complex and even compromised endeavor. We would consider it outrageous if the fact that a
child was obstreperous at age five, for example, was offered as a moral justification for his
failing in school at age 13, let alone his inability to qualify for living-wage work or a place in
college at age 18. One can easily give a causal account of this childs trajectory: getting in
trouble initially leads him to develop a self-concept as a bad kid; he fulfills his expectations
by misbehaving and being punished further; these punishments cause him to miss lessons and
get behind; he eventually disengages from school altogether since he feels like a failure at
every stage. This is a depressingly common occurrence. But we would presumably disavow
any theory of educational justice that claimed this childs poor life outcomes were just deserts
for his behavior as a five year-old. So a theory of educational justice has in some way to
disavow responsibility in at least some of its subjects, while also giving an account of why,
when, and how the transition from blamelessness to blameworthiness, from childish innocence
to adult responsibility, is both effected and administered.
A third, rather different reason for recognizing that even an ideal theory of educational
justice must incorporate compromised circumstances is that children enter and exit school
every day from institutionsnamely, familiesthat are themselves not necessarily internally
ordered by justice, and that also externally interact with schools in unequal and sometimes
destabilizing ways. This is not to say that considerations of justice are irrelevant to family life.5
But it is to say that justice is not the highest good within families; love and care should trump,
as might a number of other values.

For convincing arguments as to why justice is an important value both within and among families, see Susan
Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family, (New York: Basic Books, 1991); Harry Brighouse and Adam
Swift, Family Values: The Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2014).

11

There will also always be significant differences between families that, even if they do
not result from injustice, threaten the stable realization of educational justice. Children from a
linguistically minority family who do not speak the language of school instruction will be at
least temporarily disadvantaged when they start school, for example, and they may continue to
be disadvantaged if their parents and teachers remain unable to communicate with one another.
There may also be cultural mismatches in expectations about, say, what it means for a parent to
support a childs learning. A child whose parents are undergoing a nasty divorce may come to
school distracted and angry. A quiet child may get somewhat lost in the shuffle of a large,
emotive family with lots of siblings. Examples also obviously fall on the positive side of the
ledger; a child whose parents are authors may enter school with a strong identity as a capable
writer, while a family with lots of children at the same school may benefit from institutional
knowledge about how the place runs and what is essential for success. Note that none of these
differences necessarily reflects any broader social injustices or even any disagreements
between families about the value of school successbut they still have a profound influence
on childrens preparation for and potential for success in school.
Once such further differences do enter the picturedisagreements over the value of
higher education, say, or over a childs obligations to concentrate on school versus church
versus domestic chores or paid workthen educationally-relevant inequalities become even
further exacerbated, and any pretense to the schools being able to function as a closed and
stable system (even under idealized circumstances) becomes impossible to hold onto.6
I suggested above that educational justice should be considered a form of (neverending) transitional justice, always moving children from the compromised now toward a
more perfect what might be. Now we see that schools are also daily effecting a second kind
of transition, from the disorderly, unregulated education that families are providing their

6

This is not even to mention parents direct interactions with the school in trying to claim educational benefits for
their children, and potentially denying them to others. I do not address the parents meeting with Mr. Thomason
due to space constraints, but it obviously raises important questions about parent partiality and educational justice.

12

children outside the school day to the orderly, regulated education being provided within the
school walls. The schools porosity means that it cannot treat its own educational provision as
a self-contained, closed system. Rather, it must constantly mediate between what it expects of
and for children and what childrens parents and guardians expect of and for them. Any theory
of educational justice must offer an account of the schools responsibilities, if any, to address
such differences.
2.4 Educational justice is recursive and plastic, as are natural and socially constructed
differences
One reason these non-school-based inequalities matter in the context of educational
justice is that they both shape and are shaped by what happens in schools. Ideal theories of
justice about adults tend to talk about natural endowments, treating individuals capacities
essentially as fixed, and then debating the extent to which such endowments should influence
life-chances in a variety of ways. Meritocratic theorists may embrace the association between
endowments and life success, while luck egalitarians, say, may try to mitigate the effects of
such endowments on the grounds that they constitute brute luck. From an educational
perspective, however, this approach is nonsensical. The whole point of education is that it is an
inherently developmental enterprise: education enables people to master and apply new
knowledge, ideas, skills, habits, dispositions, etc., that they did not previously have.7 Any
theory of educational justice, therefore, must treat childrens capacities as plastic; thats what
makes it a theory about education. Furthermore, as we consider what is owed to children, we
must recognize that childrens capabilities are themselves developed or retarded by the
provision of education itself. Hence, educational justice is also recursive: what happens at one

For a developmentally-attuned account of corrective justice in an educational context, see Randall Curren, 'A
Neo-Aristotelian Account of Education, Justice, and the Human Good', Theory and Research in Education, 11
(2013), 237-38.

13

point in time may profoundly influence a childs ability to benefit from educational resources
at a later point in time.
This recursivity and plasticity are central to what makes theorizing educational justice
so challenging, because it means that difference is both an input and an output: it is both an
independent and a dependent variable. Students come in with differences, and these differences
will shape not only what they potentially need from schools, but also how they will make use
of or respond to what schools do for/with/to them. Consider Frank and Philip, for example.
Philip is a strong reader and confident learner. He sees himself as embracing intellectual
challenges; his aspiration, after all, is to be a world-famous inventor. By contrast, Frank is a
struggling reader who feels self-conscious about his dyslexia. He disengages from learning
activities when he suspects they will be too hard for him. Frank is not only starting further
behind, therefore, but he also will likely need much more support simply to move the same
amount, let alone to catch up with Philip. Helping Frank learn and succeed in third grade may
well be much more resource-intensive than helping Philip learn and succeed in third grade. On
the other hand, these differences arent fixed. Once Frank does learn how to compensate for his
dyslexia, for example, his newfound confidence plus his native intellectual skills may kick in
and enable him to catch up to or even surpass Philip academically. If Frank gets intensive
literacy support in third grade, therefore, he could be an academic high-flyer for the rest of his
school career. These services may come at a cost to Philip, however, as his opportunities to
develop his talents are restricted by Ms. Browns inattention. Frank and Philip may end up
with equal outcomesbut at a cost to equality of opportunity, which is usually thought to
trump equality of outcomes in contemporary theories of social justice.
Part of the task of any theory of educational justice is thus to set boundaries around the
social construction of difference: around incoming difference, outgoing difference, and
differences required to mediate childrens pathways between the two. At Rivers Elementary,

14

for example, there is disagreement about whether Kates incoming differences are socially
acceptable. Should a classroom be expected to accommodate a child who frequently disrupts
academic learning and makes other students fearful? Ms. Brown clearly believes yes; Philips
father is far more skeptical. Students capabilities leaving school are also significantly
constructed by their educational experiences. How much heterogeneity versus homogeneity
should be produced and/or tolerated by a just educational system?
2.5 Educational justice must address both the aims and the practices of education
In grappling with these questions about the social construction of difference, a theory
of educational justice must therefore address both the aims and the practices of education. A
classroom that prepared all children equally to work compliantly and efficiently on the factory
floor, for example, would not be just simply because it treated students equally. But at the
same time, a theory of educational justice cant be confined to the aims of education, nor can
the aims of education help us derive everything we need to know about educational justice.
When there are a number of children in a classroom with a variety of academic needs, and a
teacher has to judge how to address them, then her knowing that the ultimate aim of education
is to foster students capacities for autonomy, say, is likely insufficient for guiding her lesson
planning. Furthermore, depending on the circumstances in which she is teaching, the teacher
may rightly judge that she is unable to achieve that aim altogether. What we might think of as
the technology of educationpedagogies, setting, resources, contexttherefore partially
determines what aims are possible. But likewise, the aims also partially shape which
technologies are developed and deployed.
Theorizing educational justice thus needs to take place on multiple levels. In part, a
theory of educational justice should address questions that arise in the classroom, school, and
districtfor example, questions about what principles and practices should guide a teacher like
Ms. Brown when she is trying to meet diverse students needs, or how a school district should

15

allocate places at high-quality schools. But theories of educational justice also need to address
questions about these spacesquestions such as what range of students should be in the
classroom in the first place, or what aims schools should strive to achieve. Furthermore,
educational justice needs to be theorized in part in the intersection between these spaces in and
about schools, since judgments about justice at one level has implications for what questions
arise, and what answers are delivered, at the other level. There is value in integrating micro,
meso, and macro perspectives in the process of theorizing about educational justiceif there is
some way to do so without ending up with a bloated or incoherent theory.
Furthermore, these different levels of analysis may be useful only if they are informed
by the kinds of pragmatic perspectives and understandings that arise in practice, and not just in
theory. Although theorizing educational justice is an inherently philosophical activity, it should
be informed by concrete understandings of pedagogy, child development, organizational
perspectives on schools and districts, political analyses, and so forth. Otherwise, I fear that we
will end up asking the wrong philosophical questions, and reaching the wrong answers,
because we misunderstand the landscape of possible actions in any particular situation. In
thinking about Ms. Browns decisions regarding Kate, Philip, and Frank, for instance, it is
essential that we recognize that her choices include not just corrective or administrative moves
(such as removing Kate from the class) but also a wide variety of pedagogical moves, such as
shifting to whole-class instruction, making Kate the judge of the boys debate, or changing a
students group.

7. Some final thoughts about epistemology, methodology, and completeness

These considerations are obviously not exhaustive. They arise solely from one case; other
cases will raise utterly new issues that a theory of educational justice would need to address.
There are important questions about the epistemology and methodology of constructing a

16

theory of educational justice from the ground up that also require attention: case selection, case
analysis, saturation, connecting ideal and non-ideal theory and principles, and so forth.
Theorizing educational justice is also an explicitly multidimensional exercise. It demands that
one address issues specific to education, such as indoctrination, human capital development,
teaching and learning, and education as a primary good or resource. It demands that one
address issues specific to children, such as development, childrens interests in the present
versus their interests as future adults, and family membership. Educational justice will also
benefit from being theorized with respect to schools as institutions, including discipline,
control, and curriculum provision. And of course there are considerations of justice itself,
regarding the aims, criteria, procedures, goods or resources or opportunities, etc.
This is simply a beginning, therefore, not an end. But I hope it is a constructive starting point
for theorizing educational justice from the ground up.

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