Rawls and Educational Recalibration

In his second principle, Rawls’ fundamental argument that social and economic inequalities are only just when they benefit “the least advantaged members of society” (13), what he calls the difference principle, has interesting ramifications for education reform. Rawls’ idea that people with similar talents should have similar life prospects requires that the basic structures of society be recalibrated and redesigned, not simply reformed. 

Applied to education, a just society must ensure that students who are similar in terms of ability have similar life prospects regardless of where they happen to be born. But consider a situation where two students are below average in cognitive ability. One lives in a wealthy suburb with well-funded public education, experienced teachers and college counselors. The other attends an underfunded school with poor infrastructure and a comparatively worse learning environment. They both are disadvantaged in the labor market, so to Rawls, both students would require additional resources so that they have the opportunity to succeed in their career endeavors, just as a student with higher intelligence would. However, the situation is clearly not conducive to this, as the difference in schools would result in different resources. Then, a redistribution of resources towards the latter would be necessary, but that also leaves the former student worse off — fewer college counselors, teachers, etc. Another consideration is for a third, higher intelligence student, in which no resources are moved away from them, but are still hurt by redistribution since they now also have to compete with the first student for the same jobs. Rawls' principle would make the least advantaged far better off, but it is also possible that some are made worse off in relative terms by that improvement. In the latter situation, no resources are taken from the higher intelligence student, but loses competitive ground simply because their peer has improved. An entire educational recalibration would thus be necessary, which is an extremely difficult endeavor. 

Rawls’ distinction of pure procedural justice, where an outcome is just if “the procedure has been properly followed” (75) is also important, because Rawls is not trying to guarantee that the two students end up in identical jobs or wages, but that the school system and funding is arranged fairly. The resource gap between the two students is a serious problem because it isn’t just unfair to the worse-off student in terms of outcomes, but also represents failures in justice procedure. Rawls’ framework is interesting because this problem with the three students intuitively feels unfair, but upon a deeper understanding of his principles, would be the necessary course of action. Thus, a deep, wholly encompassing societal reform, on the entire background structure, appears to be necessary to achieve pure procedural justice.