Education Commons^™

From The Constitution To The Classroom: Educational Freedom In Antwerp’S Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Schools, Lotem Perry Dr.

Dr. Lotem Perry-Hazan

This study explores how the constitutional right to educational freedom penetrates to the schools of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish (Haredi) community in Antwerp, which is one of the largest Haredi communities in the world. Previous studies exploring the schooling of ultra-religious communities were conducted through a normative lens, focusing on the content of the legal rules governing the schools. This study contributes empirical findings regarding the impact of these rules, which are formulated, interpreted, and applied by various agents. The methodology combines legal analysis with fieldwork, aiming to reveal the connections between the different metaphorical cogwheels operating education policy. The findings …

A Theory Without A Movement, A Hope Without A Name: The Future Of Marxism In A Post-Marxist World, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Just as Marx's insights into capitalism have been most strikingly vindicated by the rise of neoliberalism and the near-collapse of the world economy, Marxism as social movement has become bereft of support. Is there any point in people who find Marx's analysis useful in clinging to the term "Marxism" - which Marx himself rejected -- at time when self-identified Marxist organizations and societies have collapsed or renounced the identification, and Marxism own working class constituency rejects the term? I set aside bad reasons to give on "Marxism," such as that the theory is purportedly refuted, that its adoption leads necessarily …

Contesting Religious Authoriality: The Immanuel “Beis-Yaakov” School Segregation Case, Shulamit Almog, Lotem Perry-Hazan

Dr. Lotem Perry-Hazan

This paper will focus on two textual articulations that emerged in the Immanuel “Beis-Yaakov” school segregation case. The first is a declaration of the Admor from Slonim that was published when the Ultra-Orthodox fathers who refused to send their daughters to an integrated school were imprisoned. The second is a letter to the Supreme Court that was written by an Ashkenazi mother whose daughter attended the "Beis Yaakov" school. A semiotic reading of the articulations reveals several opposing characteristics. The Admor's audience is determined by his choice of medium and rhetoric, which guarantee hegemonic reading, corresponding with the textual code …

Applying International Human Rights Standards To National Curricula: Insights From Literature Education At Jewish And Arab Israeli High-Schools, Lotem Perry, Shulamit Almog, Nohad Ali

Dr. Lotem Perry-Hazan

In this research we explore the ways in which the right to adaptable education is realized by high-school literature curricula designed for the Jewish and Arabic sectors of the Israeli National-Education Stream. Literature studies have a special role in the realization of the right to adaptable education in light of their contribution to the formation of a rich perception of the self. The methodology used is two-layered: first, elements of adaptability in each of the texts are traced, and than a critical examination of aspects of adaptability in the curricula is conducted. Our main finding is that in the curriculum …

Conceptualizing The Right Of Children To Adaptable Education, Shulamit Almog, Lotem Perry-Hazan

Dr. Lotem Perry-Hazan

The contention put forward here is that conceptualization of the right to adaptable education, derived from international human rights law, may be a key factor in interpreting and reviving the notion of multiculturalism in education. We will begin by analyzing three interrelated dimensions of the right to adaptable education: adaptability to the children's circles of cultural affiliations, adaptability to the children’s preferences, and adaptability to the changes of time. We will continue by describing the need to balance between the right to adaptable education and other features of the right to education - available education, accessible education and acceptable education …

Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …

The Ability To Claim And The Opportunity To Imagine: Rights Consciousness And The Education Of Ultra-Orthodox Girls, Lotem Perry-Hazan, Shulamit Almog

Dr. Lotem Perry-Hazan

In this article we explore the linkage between human rights education and the development of rights consciousness - the process that enables people to define their aims, wishes and difficulties in terms of rights. We argue that the factors that develop rights consciousness - human rights knowledge and the implementation of rights - are particularly important for the development of the rights consciousness of children. The Israeli Ultra-Orthodox education for girls offers a unique opportunity to explore our contentions, since it combines wide general education with extreme messages of gender inequality. We demonstrate that their wide general education is not …

One L Revisited: Tales From The Back Bench, Robert R.M. Verchick

Robert R.M. Verchick

My move to Harvard Law was an exciting, but sometimes frustrating transition. The law school community was large and anonymous, the famous Bauhaus dormitories (designed by Walter Gropius) part Habitrail and part shoebox factory, the eyes of campus administrators a baleful gray. I had come with a bachelor's degree in English (English!) from a west coast univer-sity that called itself “the Farm,” a campus known for fragrant eucalyptus and a pride of lion-colored hills. Harvard Law was certainly no “Farm,” and to my eye it was no “Hundred-Acre Wood” either. Whimsy? Forget it. . . .

International Human Rights Law And Co-Parent Adoption, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Children would benefit substantially if governments legally recognized same sex marriages and parenting. This article analyzes international human rights law, co-parent adoption, and the recognition of gay and lesbian families. It addresses civil marriage and adoption challenges for same sex families and assesses European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence relating to same-sex adoption. This article considers the international community's efforts to implement the best interest of the child standard concluding that recognition of same sex families is in the best interest of the child and should be facilitated in a timely manner by jurisdictions at all levels.

Rights Of Inequality: Rawlsian Justice, Equal Opportunity, And The Status Of The Family, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Is the family subject to principles of justice? In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls includes the (monogamous) family along with the market and the government as among the "basic institutions of society" to which principles of justice apply. Justice, he famously insists, is primary in politics as truth is in science: the only excuse for tolerating injustice is that no lesser injustice is possible. The point of the present paper is that Rawls doesn't actually mean this. When it comes to the family, and in particular its impact on fair equal opportunity (the first part of the the Difference …

Rising Temperatures: Rising Tides, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Transboundary environmental problems do not distinguish between political boundaries. Global warming is expected to cause thermal expansion of water and melt glaciers. Both are predicted to lead to a rise in sea level. We must enlarge our paradigms to encompass a global reality and reliance upon global participation.

In Defence Of Exploitation, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

The concept of exploitation is thought to be central to Marx's Critique of capitalism. John Roemer, an analytical (then-) Marxist economist now at Yale, attacked this idea in a series of papers and books in the 1970s-1990s, arguing that Marxists should be concerned with inequality rather than exploitation -- with distribution rather than production, precisely the opposite of what Marx urged in The Critique of the Gotha Progam.

This paper expounds and criticizes Roemer's objections and his alternative inequality based theory of exploitation, while accepting some of his criticisms. It may be viewed as a companion paper to my What's …

The Paradox Of Ideology, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A standard problem with the objectivity of social scientific theory in particular is that it is either self-referential, in which case it seems to undermine itself as ideology, or self-excepting, which seem pragmatically self-refuting. Using the example of Marx and his theory of ideology, I show how self-referential theories that include themselves in their scope of explanation can be objective. Ideology may be roughly defined as belief distorted by class interest. I show how Marx thought that natural science was informed by class interest but not therefore necessarily ideology. Capitalists have an interest in understanding the natural world (to a …

Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A number of (present or former) analytical Marxists, such as Jon Elster, have argued that functional explanation has almost no place in the social sciences. (Although the discussion is framed in terms of a debate among analytical Marxists, the point is quite general, and Marxism is used for illustrative purposes.) Functional explanation accounts for what is to be explained by reference to its function; thus, sighted organism have eyes because eyes enable them to see. Elster and other critics of functional explanation argue that this pattern of explanation is inconsistent with "methodological individualism," the idea, as they understand it, that …