Question

Respond to the following ideas from the perspective of your representative. Utilize specific quotes, policy positions etc., to the degree possible:

b) What other types of program or models would you propose to respond to social and economic inequality? Strengthen education? Improve access to affordable housing?

c) What role does education play in equalizing the public and/or creating economic opportunity?

d) What specific education (early, secondary or higher education) policies does your representative have?

Answer 1

b)Six policies to reduce economic inequality

• Increase the minimum wage. ...
• Expand the Earned Income Tax. ...
• Build assets for working families. ...
• Invest in education. ...
• Make the tax code more progressive. ...
• End residential segregation.

To strengthen education

1. Aim for a comprehensive system: state funded schools, colleges and universities should have a single status and belong to the community, providing everyone with the opportunity to participate and benefit as equals. They should offer access for all to a wide range of educational opportunities as part of a lifelong entitlement to free education.

2. Offer a broad liberal education to all: we should collectively define what key areas of knowledge acquisition and skills development are desirable and use this as the basis for an outline national curriculum and a school leavers’ diploma accessible to all. This should be based on a definition of the educated person and provide a good platform for lifelong learning.

3. Introduce elected education forums: those who shape and oversee the education system in an area should be accountable to, and elected by, local people. Education policy is the rightful concern of the whole community.

4. Establish service learning: every student should be expected to engage in service learning which benefits others. In return they would be entitled to an equivalent amount of support from a mentor.

5. Link learning and work: learning and work should be inextricably interwoven. Every employer above a certain size should offer apprenticeships or paid internships and be prepared to release their staff to mentor students.

6. Educate for global citizenship: education should acknowledge that we are global citizens and need to understand and address the great global challenges facing us: injustice, inequality, conflict, disease, environmental degradation.

7. Encourage action, reflection and connection: every course or programme should be set in a wider context, encourage reflection and judgement and make connections between past and present, with other areas of knowledge or skill and with other people and different perspectives.

8. Develop a research culture: every student should have the opportunity to undertake substantial useful research and produce an outcome which could be of some benefit to others.

9. Create schools for democracy and leadership: every education provider should see itself as a school for democracy where people’s enthusiasm for making things better should be encouraged through opportunities for discussion and debate, community activity and community leadership. People have enormous potential which can be released by working with others.

10. Promote mastery and creativity: making things and changing things requires creativity and teamwork. Everyone should have the opportunity to be creative and master at least one skill or craft in depth and “find their genius”. This requires much experimentation and some failure.

c)

It is widely accepted that educational opportunities for children ought to be equal. This thesis follows from two observations about education and children: first, that education significantly influences a person’s life chances in terms of labor market success, preparation for democratic citizenship, and general human flourishing; and second, that children’s life chances should not be fixed by certain morally arbitrary circumstances of their birth such as their social class, race, and gender. But the precise meaning of, and implications for, the ideal of equality of educational opportunity is the subject of substantial disagreement (see Jencks 1988). This entry provides a critical review of the nature and basis of those disagreements.

To frame the discussion we introduce three key factors that underscore the importance of treating equality of educational opportunity as an independent concern, apart from theories of equality of opportunity more generally. These factors are: the central place of education in modern societies and the myriad opportunities it affords; the scarcity of high-quality educational opportunities for many children; and the critical role of the state in providing educational opportunities. These factors differentiate education from many other social goods. We follow this with a brief history of how equality of educational opportunity has been interpreted in the United States since the 1950s and the evolving legal understandings of equality of opportunity. Our subsequent analysis has implications for issues that are at the center of current litigation in the United States. But our philosophical discussion is intended to have wider reach, attempting to clarify the most attractive competing conceptions of the concept.

d)The National Policy on Education (NPE) is a policy formulated by the Government of India to promote education amongst India's people. The policy covers elementary education to colleges in both rural and urban India. The first NPE was promulgated in 1968 by the government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and the second by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1986. The government of India has appointed a new committee under K. Kasturirangan to prepare a Draft for the new National Education Policy in 2017.