Conceptualizing the widening of access to education as social justice

Abstract

The widening of access to education-as idea, principle, policy, and practice- has gradually become a tangential manifestation of social justice. That is the main "kernel of truth" that the whole of the present book aims to illustrate, both from the theoretical and the practical treatment of the subject. What we would like to propose in this chapter is that there can be no genuine economic and social development in the absence of a recognizable widening of access to education. Over the years, widening access to education seems to have fit well into what Todaro (1979) has defined as development, that is, a multidimensional process encompassing changes in structures, attitudes, and institutions, as well as the acceleration of economic growth, the reduction of inequality, and the eradication of absolute poverty (Todaro, 1979 cited in Onokerhoraye, 1991: 3-5). This is so because widening access to education is the result partly of the acceptance of changes in attitudes that had previously favored restricting access and partly of extensive efforts to promote equality, equity, and social justice for accelerated socioeconomic development, on both an individual and a societal scale. In forging a link between the widening of access to education and social justice, one is obviously "fishing in troubled waters." For the concept of social justice is itself highly controversial. The controversy stems from the fact that we no longer have, nor can we have in the foreseeable future, a generally accepted principle of social justice that is applicable in all contexts. To provide a clearer sense of what we are after in this chapter, but also in this book as a whole, we must briefly explore the concepts of social justice and access, as well as the global contexts in which the widening of access to education is applied as social justice. © 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.