Just Education: The Right to Education in Context and Conversation. Values and Ethics Series, Volume 3.

This book takes an interpretative look at a common phrase in American educational equity lexicon, "the right to education." It addresses the educational disputes and issues of policy, procedure, and popular will that are associated with this phrase. Interpretation of the phrase is based on a focus on the everyday situations in which a right to education is assumed through: (1) analysis of ordinary language; and (2) existential-phenomenological descriptions of the subjective experience. Following the introduction, chapter 2 sketches seven typical scenarios in which the assertion of the right to education seems to make sense. These scenarios constitute the starting point and the data for a contextual analysis of language and intention. The following chapters draw out a multidimensional portrait of what we affect when we claim "a right to education." The conclusion discusses whether the phrase helps or hinders the advancement of justice in education. (Contains 62 references.) (LMI)