Education Fairness: From The Perspective Of Politics

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, social fairness in China, education fairness, in particular, has been becoming increasingly prominent, and has been attracting much attention from the public. Observed from current policy-orientation, two major issues concerning education fairness have drawn much attention, i.e., offering aids to the weak community, and balancing the improvement of education quality; if viewed from the height of democratic politics, however, less knowledge than expected has been acquired about education fairness, and no specific political measures have been taken for making policies for education development. Many a research has been done on education fairness in education circle and academic world; greater advancement has been achieved at empirical basis as well, however, little progress has been made in the research at theoretical basis, since the research on education fairness covers several disciplinary sectors. Researches on education fairness from the perspective of politics, in particular, are rarely mentioned, let alone forming primary concepts and constructing category system.In view of the current situation in the research on education fairness, the author has made an attempt in the present dissertation to conduct a theoretic research from the perspective of politics in the hope of constructing a primary frame system on it. Moreover, empirical investigations and a series of suggestions for improving education fairness in China have been made by the author, with reference to the researches as well as the overseas experiences.The present research has been conducted along two paths:The first path is the derivation of political-theory system for education fairness. After investigating the political functions that education performs in and outside education field, education fairness can be defined from the perspective of politics as follows:"education fairness refers to the allocation of educational resources by education power, as well as the assessment on whether such allocation conforms to principle of right to education equity."With such a hypothesis, the author has put forward and justified three primary categories on education fairness from the perspective of politics: educational power, the rights to education, and educational resources; the author has also identified four political characteristics of education fairness: being of justice, being rights-oriented, being of conflict, and being compromise.Upon the completion of constructing concept system, and after a review on the historical evolution of rights to education― the logical starting point of education fairness, the author has explored the interrelation between education fairness and social fairness, and that between education fairness and political advancement. For the former, the author has focused his attention on exploring the primary relations, paradoxical relations, and practical relations between them two; for the latter, the author has put emphasis on discussing the prescriptive action of political advancement upon the quality of education fairness, as well as the promotive action of political advancement upon the quantity of education fairness. The author has also discussed the promotive action of education fairness upon political advancement, as well as the negative hindering action of education fairness upon political advancement.From the perspective of politics, political-theory system for education fairness is the theoretical innovation of education research concerning two research purposes: one is to provide theoretical direction for the empirical investigation which is the second research path mentioned in the thesis. Base on the research of three fundamental categories of education fairness, that is, the protection of rights to education, rational distribution of education resources and the standardization of education power and policies on education, in the following chapters: "The Analysis of Education Fairness in China"( ChapterⅢ), "International Review of Education Fairness" (Chapter IV), and "Strategies for Education Fairness in China" (Chapter V), the consistency of the thesis has been maintaining. The other basic research on the definition of education fairness on politics, the categories and political attribute of education fairness will provide guidance of political-theory system on education fairness for other researchers, strive to arouse the attention of education fairness from the field of political science, enrich the achievements unceasingly in this field, and furnish the theoretical basis and the policies reference for setting up national education policies with a fair viewpoint.The second path is the empirical investigation on education fairness, including investigation into the status of Chinese education fairness, international investigation into education fairness and policies as well as policy recommendation rendered to improve Chinese education fairness on the basis of study of upper two aspects.Observation on China's education fairness will be conducted in three respects: rights to education, education resources, and education power as well. To begin with, the author has made an in-depth investigated into the status of equal rights and relevant national policy adjustments of China's education fairness; and after that, the phenomena and reasons of unfair allocation of Chinese education resources have been combed and analyzed from hardware educational resources, human resource of educational resources, to equality education resources. Moreover, from the angle of whether the educational power can be available as standardized operation, the political responsibilities of educational leadership, legislative and executive power under the promotion of education fairness have been illustrated respectively, so that the trend of education fairness development in China can be perspective.On international investigations of the education fairness, distinct from the previous scholars who researched the education fairness in the West mainly focused on that of different countries, the background of political trend of thought of education fairness has been recommended to card the social, political, and economic causes and theoretical basis which have promoted the education fairness in the West. Then, aiming at the main issues in China's education fairness, the thesis comprehensively made a survey of all countries' policy choices and some beneficial experience from three aspects, namely, to maintain the equality of education rights, to narrow the education gap and to offer aids to weak communities, to sum up several enlightenments for promoting China's education fairness.On promoting China's education fairness, some relevant policies and measures have been proposed from three basic categories after making empirical investigations on education fairness both home and abroad, namely, taking equality in rights to education as fundamental , taking power restraint and supervision as guarantee, taking reasonable education resources allocation as an approach, to supply the value orientation for China's education policies' setting up and construct a general policy framework for China's education fairness as a whole.At the end of this thesis, the author summarizes the research achievements and points out the limitations of the study and the future research orientation.