Culturally Inclusive and Responsive Curricular Environments (CIRCLE scale)
Category: Student Well-Being
This essay asks what justice requires for children who are already thriving in school and argues that the dominant frameworks in educational philosophy do not answer the question. Priority, equality of opportunity, adequacy, and capabilities treat public education chiefly as redistribution to the disadvantaged and therefore offer no affirmative reason to continue educating students once thresholds are met. I diagnose two background assumptions that sustain this silence, that no harm occurs when enrichment is withheld from thriving students, and that any remaining responsibility lies with families rather than the state. I then develop a positive account grounded in two ideas. First, democratic equality requires the sustained cultivation of civic capacities as societies grow more complex. Second, following Israel Scheffler, respect for persons requires supporting the development of human potential understood as a noncomparative, path-dependent propensity. Together these yield a principle of sustained development, the claim that every child is owed not only competence for citizenship but also meaningful next steps appropriate to their capacities. I show how this principle reframes policy debates about restricting advanced coursework, standards that become ceilings, and weighted funding formulas that already presume a universal base entitlement. The result is a conception of public education that prioritizes need while refusing to abandon those who thrive.
Keywords
educational justice; adequacy; equality of opportunity; sufficiency; democratic education; human potential; philosophy of education
Education level
Topics
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/g59a-4y48
