《教育機会の平等》の再検討と《公共財としての教育》の可能性 : 公立学校からの退出を事例として  [in Japanese] Re-examining the "Equality of Educational Opportunity" and the Potential for "Education as a Public Good" : Problems Seen in Exit from Public Schools  [in Japanese]

A significant body of literature has questioned the effectiveness of education in equalizing society. In addition, certain developed countries, such as the U.K. and the U.S.A., have begun to emphasize efficiency over equality and, consequently, to apply market mechanisms to their education systems, as has Japan since the mid-1980s, despite its reputation for a centralized and standardized education policy. It is far from impossible, however, to justify the public provision of education. Therefore, this paper attempts to demonstrate the benefits of public education from the perspective of "education as a public good" instead of "education as a private good" which is often the goal of researchers aiming at "equality of educational opportunity." For this purpose, the following three problems are considered in this paper. Firstly, the author describes the tendency to regard education as a private good, or an opportunity for an individual to acquire credentials, as a limitation on equalizing society. This is because the price mechanism under which private goods are provided does not guarantee the equality of outcome, and depends on circumstantial value judgments in a society, namely whether or not a private good is supplied by the government. Secondly, when defining education as a public good, public provision in turn can be justified by its characteristic as a good. Education is determined to be a public good because it supplies the knowledge and people which support our modern lives and systems. However, the current education policy is shaking the foundation of "education as a public good." Hence finally, the author examines the substantial problems accompanying the new standard of achievement in public schools, using qualitative data collected from members of the upper social strata who had their children exit the public school system and enter private schools. It is discovered that not only has the legitimacy of the knowledge been declined, but also an exclusion mechanism (hurting children's self-respect, which is defined by Rawls as the most important primary good), caused by its evaluation system which covers various aspects of personality, has taken place in public schools. These findings suggest that in order to prevent exclusion, knowledge as a public good must be characterized as follows : it must be standardized, stable and able to overcome the negative effect of instability and short-term vision human beings often acquire. Even though education policy has fewer practical effects on the final provision of goods than other welfare state policies, it has become clear that it has an important role to play in supplying the knowledge needed to execute other policies. We accordingly have to place education in the broader context of equalizing society. In concrete terms, in addition to the inequality between social groups in providing "education as a private good, " the individual hardship of being excluded from "education as a public good" should be taken as a social problem.