On Education and Justice

I was struck by two things in this week's readings: our ideas about education and about justice.

Education
In Book VII of the Republic, we read that "man ought not to learn any study slavishly. . .don't use force in training the children in the studies, but rather play. In that way you can also better discern what each is naturally directed toward." (page 216) Given all the things that Plato writes about education, it may seem silly to focus on this small nugget. But I think that Plato was on to something.

We can interpret this in two ways. On the one hand, Plato can be telling us that people need to be taught through genuine interest and discovery. This is not at all how our current educational system is structured, though it does call to mind my own utopian view of home schooling. What better way to learn than to be curious about something and be in the company of a teacher who encourages and fosters discovery of that topic?

The second way to interpret this is much more literally. All people - young and old - need time to play. Society doesn't place nearly enough emphasis on the importance of play. I used to work for an organization that had (and still has) a game room. Here you'd find comfy couches, lots of natural light, video games, puzzles, books, and small tchotchkies on which you could while away some time when you were particularly flustered by a task. Playing is not a bad thing. Sometimes, we need to not be productive in order to ultimately be productive.

Justice
Disclaimer: I believe in right and wrong, but not in society's ability to define those categories.

I really enjoyed the interview with Amartya Sen, and found specific threads of the conversation that I was able to apply to my own personal experiences, and to the scholarly issues with which I grapple as an anthropology student.

• Sen talks about the idea of global justice, about whether or not some official global justice entity would be a good thing. I can certainly see how global justice could be useful. However, it could also be very dangerous. Laws and practices exist within individual cultures, and to suggest that there can be a global justice is to deny the defining characteristics of a time/place that called for those specific laws. Of course, I'm not thinking about basic human rights like the right to food and clean drinking water. I'm thinking of moral hot-button issues like female genital mutilation, abortion, capital punishment, and the like. Would we really want to be subject to laws agreed upon by an international group?
• Sen addresses my fear somewhat by claiming that we have to be open to ideas that don't necessarily come from within our own local communities. To develop a complete and reasonable understanding of justice, we have to be able and willing to adopt international ideas that further the basic notion of justice. Reason will prevail, or at least make a significant dent in any argument that could lead to an abuse of a global system of justice.
• My favorite concept from this interview is this: It is important that we not ask what a perfect justice looks like. Rather, we need to focus on identifying injustices that exist, and remedying those one at a time. This seems like a manageable way to bring about positive changes - both in our local communities and in the world. Nevertheless, making justice "bite-sized" like this is not to make seeking justice any less daunting. Pockets of injustice can be found throughout the world. Can it ever really be possible to address them all?

Finally, I'll close with a somewhat disconnected thought. It this week's readings, we read about Justice, Society, and Education. And I struggled with this a bit because I feel like we lost sight of the ideas of justice, society, and education (lower case). I don't think about justice as a single entity that is or is not present in society as a single entity. Rather, I operate on a daily basis in lots of mini-societies. I work in New York. I live in New Jersey. I am part of a community of women, of lesbians, of the larger queer community. I am a student, a democrat, a cyclist. All of these things with which I identify are societies that both perpetuate and defend against their own unique injustices. How are we to understand these micro-societies and the notion of justice in the context of this week's readings?