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The History of Inequality in Education and the Question of Equality Versus Adequacy

Although the U.S. Constitution espouses equality, it clearly is not practiced in all aspects of life with education being a significant outlier. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote about inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These two theories are related to education through educational adequacy and equality. Sufficientarianism, or educational adequacy, says that what is important is that everyone has “good enough” educational opportunities, but not the same ones. Egalitarianism, or educational equality, says that there is an intrinsic value in having the same educational opportunities and only having good enough opportunities misses something important, which causes problems for those who have not had the same opportunities. I will argue that the latter theory of egalitarianism, or educational equality is a better approach to the education system in America than sufficientarianism because every child deserves an excellent education and equal access to opportunities regardless of irrelevant factors.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses-1144
Date01 January 2016
CreatorsDominguez, Diana Carol
PublisherSTARS
Source SetsUniversity of Central Florida
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceHonors Undergraduate Theses

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