Moral Issues in Special Education. Robert F. Ladenson
thing to which we’re most entitled is the thing we’re not getting—an education. (emphasis added)2
These words of Agassi reflect a firm conviction, shared widely and felt deeply throughout the American democratic body politic, that American children have a moral right to receive an appropriate K–12 education. This right is ordinarily understood as what philosophers of law term a claim-right.3 In the case of every claim-right there is a claimant—that is, a right holder—and a correlative responsibility bearer—that is, someone responsible for providing whatever the claimant is entitled to.
In the case of the right to an appropriate K–12 education, American children are the right holders. The correlative responsibility to provide such an education is shared. The fulfillment of this responsibility poses complex, multidimensional issues, which no one organization or single person could adequately address. Accordingly, the co-bearers of this shared responsibility are lawmakers (elected legislators and judges), K–12 educators (school administrators, teachers, and other educational staff members), and parents of K–12 school-aged children.
Articulating the moral justification of the above view of American children’s moral right and of the correlative shared responsibility of lawmakers, educators, and parents to provide such an education raises fundamental questions of moral justification. These are addressed immediately below.
The widespread acceptance and strong affirmation of the judgment that American children in Group A have a moral right to receive an appropriate K–12 education do not in themselves morally justify the judgment. Gravely unjustified judgments from a moral standpoint have been (and, sadly, continue to be) shared widely and affirmed strongly in various social groups, even large ones. Entire nations have judged that slavery, racism, religious persecution, subordination of women, or discrimination against LGBT persons is morally permissible.
An adequate moral justification of the judgment that children in Group A have a moral claim-right to receive an appropriate K–12 education must specifically address the crucial issues, identified below, related to the concept of deprivation of freedom.
Anyone with even a minimal understanding of morality considers it wrong to deprive a person of freedom. This does not mean that he or she regards the rule “Do not deprive of freedom” as an absolute. It means instead that he or she considers the rule morally basic in the sense that, along with other basic moral rules such as “Do not kill,” “Do not cause pain,” “Do not cheat,” “Keep your promises,” and so forth, violating the rule “Do not deprive of freedom” always calls for a moral justification.4
The vast majority of American children in Group A receive their K–12 education in public schools financed by taxation. Thus a moral justification is needed for governmental efforts to assure that children in the United States are provided an appropriate K–12 education, as such efforts unavoidably deprive some individuals (i.e., taxpayers) of freedom (e.g., the freedom to decline making tax payments used for operation of K–12 public schools).
The widespread acceptance and strong affirmation of the moral judgment that Group A children have a moral right to receive an appropriate K–12 education reflects general underlying agreement with three points, to be enumerated immediately below and then discussed in depth. The three points concern, respectively, (1) the essential objective of an appropriate K–12 education for children in Group A, (2) what it means to be an educationally deprived person in contemporary America, and (3) the moral responsibility of American government to prevent and to remedy educational deprivation.
When analyzed adequately and understood in relation to one another, the three points respond persuasively to the concern raised above regarding deprivation of freedom.
The points will be discussed individually in the following subsections:
(1) An appropriate K–12 education for American children in Group A has a two-pronged objective. It must be reasonably calculated to help children acquire knowledge and develop abilities central to the following:
(a) exercising the rights, fulfilling the responsibilities, and exemplifying the ideals of membership in the American democratic body politic and
(b) having a reasonable chance for success in seeking the basic human good of self-fulfillment.
(2) In contemporary America any child in Group A not provided an appropriate K–12 education is an educationally deprived person.
(3) Government in the United States has a moral responsibility to take steps reasonably calculated to prevent educational deprivation; the most important step relative to American children in Group A is to assure that they are provided an appropriate K–12 education.
The Two-Pronged Objective of an Appropriate K–12 Education for Children in Group A
For purposes of clarifying the first prong of the essential objective given in (1), some additional words are needed again concerning terminology. Throughout this chapter the phrase “American democratic body politic” will be used to refer to everyone protected by the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection and due process clauses of the U.S. Constitution. This group encompasses many more persons than either all eligible voters in the United States or all U.S. citizens. It also includes, for instance, children, individuals with the legal status of permanent residency, and artificial persons (i.e., diverse kinds of organizations).
The rights of membership in the American democratic body politic are grounded in the U.S. Constitution.5 The responsibilities concern standards of conduct to which members of the American democratic body politic must adhere widely in order for American government to function at all. The members of the American democratic body politic must also significantly exemplify the ideals if democracy in America is to flourish.6 The preceding points will be elucidated below.
The jurisprudential scholar Robert Cover defines a “nomos” as a “normative world . . . of right and wrong, lawful and unlawful, and valid and void” that persons in a human society “create and maintain”—a world whose apprehension is inseparable from the sense of oneself as a social being.7 “To inhabit a nomos,” says Cover, “[means] to know how to live in it.”8
Knowledge and abilities underpin the exercise of rights, exemplification of ideals, and fulfillment of responsibilities required for membership in the American democratic body politic. They are indispensable for identifying, understanding, and taking part in discussion of public issues, and for acting upon them. This is especially true in regard to the moral dimensions of public issues. Knowing how to live in the nomos of contemporary America requires such knowledge and abilities.
With regard to self-fulfillment, the subject of the second prong of (1), the following words of philosopher Alan Gewirth express its core elements:
[S]elf-fulfillment consists in carrying to fruition one’s deepest desires or one’s worthiest capacities. It is a bringing of oneself to flourishing completion, an unfolding of what is best in oneself so that it represents the successful culmination of one’s aspirations or potentialities. In this way self-fulfillment betokens a life well lived, a life that is deeply satisfying, fruitful, and worthwhile. . . . To seek a good human life is to seek for self-fulfillment.9
Given the integral relationship between self-fulfillment and a good human life, helping children acquire knowledge and develop abilities central to seeking self-fulfillment is surely an essential objective of an appropriate K–12 public education.
The discussion below addresses a critical question concerning the two prongs of the essential educational objective for children in Group A (as set out above in [1]): Which knowledge and abilities that an appropriate K–12 public education may reasonably be considered able to provide are essential for (a) participating in the American democratic body politic and for (b) having a reasonable chance for success in seeking the basic human good of self-fulfillment?
(a) Rights, Responsibilities, and Ideals of Membership in the American Democratic Body Politic
Political theorists Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson place the concept of democratic