On The Ethics Of Educational Policy

Educational policy refers to the prescribes and rules of the educational resource's distribution or adjustment, which is directly concern about the interest of all different educatees' groups. For either the equal or the different treatment of educational requirements of social classes members, how to deal with the interest relationship between all kinds of the groups is the unavoidable problem for the establishment of the educational policy, and is also the core issue of the ethics of educational policy. To a certain extent, educational policy is not only the simple technology project, but also need to accept the people's ethical judgment.The ethics of educational policy is the principle of ethical value kept by the national public power department during the process of adjustment and distribution of the limited educational interest resources, which is to achieve the special educational goals. The ethics impenetrate the practice of the educational policy, which is the unity of the ethics of policy content, policy procedure and policy subject. Accordingly, the ethical basic problems of the educational policy reflect the contradiction relationship between the public educational interest and the individual educational interest, between the science and democratization of the policy procedure, between the power of the public education and the social responsibility. Among them, the contradiction relationship between the public educational interest and the individual educational interest decides the essential tropism of the educational policy content ethics, which reflects the following two aspects: one is the contradiction between the universal, uniform national educational interest and the various individual educational interest, and the other is the interest contradiction among the members of different social groups. The democratization and science of the educational policy procedure refers to the status of the order and the rules arrangement during the process of the government department's distribution of the educational resources. It is the formal safeguard that can effectively solve the contradiction between the public educational interest and individual educational interest during the educational policy activity. The basic issue of the policy subject's ethics is the contradiction between the public educational power and the social responsibility, that is how to ensure the policy subject not to abuse the public power to buck for individual self-interest when he execute the public power to pursue the public educational interest.In the view of the ethics, the ethics of educational policy mainly solves the problem about what is good or just educational policy. The judgment and choice about what is the "good" or "just" educational policy refer to the basic tropism of the educational policy ethics. Different ethics schools hold different understanding about the term "justice". Based on the basic viewpoint of different ethics schools, this study is probing into three basic tropisms of the educational policy ethics: the ethical tropism of the social common good priority in the view of the teleological theories, the ethical tropism of individual power priority in the view of the deontological theories, the ethical tropism of the compatible character, which mixed the common good and individual right in both but different in list. In the view of the tropism of the social common good in priority, the standard which is used to measure whether one educational policy is justice or not lies in the fact that whether the government project can increase the total amount of the whole national and social educational interest. In the view of the tropism of the individual right in priority, the standard is justice or not lies in the fact that whether the policy project itself can ensure every educatee has equal educational right; when conflict exists between the individual educational interest and the whole social educational interest, the state should not harm one social members' educational right for the sake of the national interest. The compatible tropism of the ethics of the educational policy represent the following two types, one is the social common good in priority together with the individual right, the other is the individual right in priority together with the social common good.The educational policy during different periods of history represents different ethical value tropisms. The kind of value tropism is not only the subjective reflection of the governmental decision-maker to know the real educational problem and to choose the solving project, but also objective reflection of the structural relationship of the different social members' interest during in a certain period. Since the establishment of PRC, during the different periods of history, the characters of the practical ethical tropism of our national educational policy reflect that: the ethical tropism of "serve for the worker and farmer, serve for the construct of production" during the period of the initial stages of the establishment of PRC(1949-1965), the ethical tropism of "equalitarian, politics is supreme" during the period of the "Great Cultural Revolution"(1966-1976), the ethical tropism of "efficiency first and then equity" during the period from the early 1980s to the mid-last 1990s, the ethical tropism of "equilibrium development" during the period from the last 1990s to this day.Since China's reform and opening, with the setting and developing of the market economy system, there are a series of change in the field of our national education, which concretely reflect the following aspects: the intervention of the power of market and mechanism, the transformations of the power of the public education and the advance of the power of self-determination of the school. Meanwhile, the educational reform causes many ethical problems, such as educational choice, pubic interests, equity and competition. There are more and more interest subjects and complexity of interest mechanism in the area of educational reform under the market-based background. Therefore, in order to improve the justice of the educational reform and policy, it must be insisted on that is the harmony of the government dominating and multi-participation, different equity and compensation for vulnerable groups, individual choice and educational pubic interests, classified management and fair competition. Meanwhile, in the aspects of the subject and procedure of the educational policy, we should establish and perfect the social-supervising mechanism, responsibility-locating mechanism,public-participating mechanism and appraising-revising mechanism in new times.