Justice and its implications on South Africa’s education system.
In South Africa, there is a huge difference in urban schools and rural schools as urban schools have better resources at hand to teach effectively and the learning environment is better while poor schools aren’t able to afford much resources to be able to teach children effectively. This is why there is a huge need for social justice within the context of education and this is mainly through the notion of distributive justice, S. Pendelbury and P. Enslin (2004:32) further stated that, “Social justice is generally understood as largely about distributive justice. From an educational perspective, this raises crucial questions about the distribution and – in the case of post-apartheid South Africa – redistribution of educational goods and access to them”. In the past our education system was more focused on Good schools were learners can excel while ignoring those schools who weren’t that productive in pass rates while now it has changed a bit with more schools from a poor background getting more resources from the government such as laptops, Wi-Fi, etc.
The need for justice and just education in SA is crucial as it can help create a more equal society. Just education can help poor learners to have the same opportunities as those learners who attend privileged schools. John Rawls best described justice when he described it as “fairness” and through this he created the “principles of justice” in which he discusses what is needed for education to be fair and equal. Julia de Kadt (2009, 26) “Most would agree that at least some level of equality, defined in terms of either access to opportunities or of outcomes, is essential to justice”. The need for justice and just education in South Africa is very much needed in order for us to develop our country. Julia de Kadt (2009:26), “Education has the potential to play a key role in addressing societal injustice by equalizing opportunities, facilitating development, and strengthening democracy”.
The need for a just society is crucially needed within South Africa as it can help us fight the inequality within our country. Marian Wright Edelman described the need for justice in our country the best when she said, “The challenge of social justice is to evoke a sense of community that we need to make our nation a better place, just as we make it a safer place”. As a country we need to understand that education is the key to a developing country and if resources are not equally distributed between schools then our economy may fail to develop. There have been multiple theorist who have dealt with the same issue at hand such as John Rawls who developed the “principles of justice”. Just education has to be implemented in such a way that it can really help poorer communities develop and so that our economy can go up.
Firstly in order for us to implement justice and just education, we have to understand what it is and how these two concepts link toget...
