Rob Reich

Families and Schools as Compensating Agents in Moral Development for a Multicultural Society.

Many experts in moral education agree that the potential for empathy, a key moral emotion, is innate. However, it is also evident that this potential needs to be developed if children are to acquire crucial moral qualities such as honesty, concern for others and a sense of fairness. Our central claim is that important structural changes in both families and schools may be necessary for the development of empathy and, hence, the fostering of these moral virtues. Since many families and schools are far from ideal, both are likely to need help from the other and each can compensate to some extent for the others failings. However, unless families become more sex-egalitarian, and schools become more multicultural in their student and faculty populations as well as their curricula, both lack components necessary for their success as moral educators. If such changes occur, the resulting dynamic between families and schools may be ideal for the healthy moral development of citizens.

Repugnant to the Whole Idea of Democracy? On the Role of Foundations in Democratic Societies

© American Political Science Association, 2016 doi:10.1017/S1049096516000718 ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Gift Giving and Philanthropy in Market Democracy

ABSTRACT Classical liberals and libertarians assign fundamental importance to economic liberties and champion bottom-up approaches to social welfare. They point to the significance, even superiority, of philanthropy in providing for societys most disadvantaged citizens, and they defend rights of inheritance and intergenerational transmission of wealth. So one might think that John Tomasis “market democracy” would defend gift giving and philanthropy. But market democracy leaves far less room than might be thought for an enthusiastic defense of gift giving and philanthropy, and this distances market democracy more than we might expect from the territory of classical liberalism and libertarianism.

Introduction to the symposium on equality of opportunity and education

Equality of opportunity is an ideal that finds a place in almost all theories of a just society. This ideal is also prevalent in our own political discourse, especially in debates about education policy. Given the myriad and significant dimensions of individual and collective well-being that flow from education – including health and access to health care, rewarding employment, income, leisure time, and civic participation – equality of opportunity matters deeply in the education realm. And it is within this realm that the meaning of this ideal is perhaps most deeply contested. How should limited educational resources be distributed to best honor equality of opportunity (e.g. by merit, by need)? What inequalities in educational opportunity, if any, are permissible? Can equality of educational opportunity be secured when large inequalities in educational inputs and outputs remain in place? The papers in this symposium focus on different dimensions of these questions. This symposium is part of a larger multi-year project at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford, funded by the Spencer Foundation, which examined the relationship between the ideal of equality of opportunity and the public provision of education. The impetus for this issue, and the larger project of which it is a part, is that despite widespread agreement that equality of opportunity is an essential ideal, its meaning, goals, and application to education are highly contested. Gaining greater clarity about this fundamental ideal is especially urgent given mounting evidence about the increasing scope of income and wealth inequality, and the role of educational disparities in exacerbating those inequalities. The symposium begins with a paper that enters the debates about the conceptual meaning of equality of opportunity of education and proposes a framework to remedy confusion surrounding the ideal. In this paper, ‘What is Equality of Opportunity in Education?’ Hugh Lazenby distinguishes equality of opportunity through education from equality of