Education as a common good from the capability approach

Abstract

The capability approach is a very fruitful framework for thinking about and assessing the human development of societies. Our purpose in this paper is to analyse whether the capability approach is a suitable way to illuminate education as a common good and how education must be understood as a common good. For this purpose, it is important to first consider the criticism that the capability approach is excessively individualistic. Rather than dwelling on the concept of ‘collective capability’, we will explore the extent to which the capability approach enables us to understand the concept of the ‘common good’ of education not in non-collectivist terms but in terms of human development of individuals and communities as custodians of humanity.