Ethical Education as Normative Philosophical Perspective

Abstract

As the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights reminds us: fair conditions for higher education are met not when most basic conditions and rights to education are solely met, but when an additional condition has been fulfilled--when “higher education […] [is] equally accessible to all on the basis of merit”: “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.” “(c) Higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education” . Merit as capacity is either related to epistemic and cognitive processes, apprenticeship of any given discipline including pedagogy and ethics in education, and can be grounded on innate structures and capacities, as when we say we would empower people to develop their own potentials (or knowledge innateness) in a given domain, or ground apprenticeship on the empirical experience, built by social interactions.