The UNESCO publication recognizes the limits of public good theory to argue
for common goods in the era of globalization in part because it goes beyond the
instrumental notion framed by individualistic consumption and more easily admits
of conceptions of well-being within diverse communities. The“common good”
emphasizes a participatory process served by collective responsibility and collective
action aimed at enhancing the role of civil society.
The chapters in this part demonstrate the applications of some of these concepts
and arguments. Poonam Batra in“Quality of Education and the Poor: Constraints
on Learning” examines the arguments emerging in the 1980s and after that
emphasized the role of education in reducing poverty and argues“that poverty
research as well as educational research fail to capture the dynamics of how poor
children experience schooling”. Batra shows how children of the poor with access
to school suffer from a deficit perspective that limits the conditions of capability.
References
Dittmar, J. E. & Meisenzahl, R. R. (2016).“State Capacity and Public Goods: Institutional
Change, Human Capital, and Growth in Early Modern Germany,”Finance and Economics
Discussion Series 2016-028. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
http://dx.doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2016.028
Froese-Germain, B. (2013).Reframing public education as a public good. Retrieved fromhttp://
files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED546892.pdf
Keeping, J. & King, D. (2012, Summer).“What happened to the‘public’in public education?”
Education Canada, 52(3), 16–19. http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/what-
happened-%E2%80%9Cpublic%E2%80%9D-public-education
Samuelson, P. A. (1954). The pure theory of public expenditure.Review of Economics and
Statistics, 36, 387–390.
416 Part V: Teacher Education as a Public Good