ABSTRACT
With one exception, all the essays included in this collection on race and racism in Educational Philosophy and Theory were originally published in the last 25 years. Some of the reasons why race and racism were not central to philosophy of education before relatively recently are explained in this 1998 essay by Morwenna Griffiths. In it, Griffiths explores the ways in which educational theorists have pursued the themes of equality and social justice over time, and their inadequacies in relation to real-world educational challenges. As Griffiths illustrates, a key problem has been the use of liberal perspectives in western societies. In such framings, as Griffiths shows in the case of England, the individual and their rights loom large. However, when this orientation is applied in education, serious challenges arise. As Griffiths notes, diverse students who are taught, shaped and developed through education are not the independent, fully-formed individuals central to liberal views of equality and justice. In this case, the problems educators face in terms of treating students equally and the just distribution of resources are simplified in unhelpful ways. Thus, Griffiths argues that new theories must focus more on the complex and particular challenges of schools in order to make values, liberal or otherwise, coherent with possibilities for practice. This article is commendable for its overview of the state of historical theorisation of equality and justice in education, its recognition of the importance of race and gender in relation to educational equality and its forecasting of emerging trends, such as the use of Critical Race Theory, which would come to dramatically transform the landscape for conceptualising race and racism among other key concepts in philosophy of education in the future.
