Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the construction of equal educational opportunity through participatory democracy and to examine the related changes and to make clear the affinity between "distribution" and "dominant culture" inherent in the distribution of resources as a compensation principle, focusing on the "justice" and the "equality" concepts of Iris Marion Young and Kenneth Howe. In the past, research on equal educational opportunity was based on providing compensation to disadvantaged persons. However, aporia of reproducing the dominant culture existed in the distribution of resources as a principle of compensation. The concept of participatory democracy is useful in overcoming such aporia. Young criticizes distributive justice as disregarding the institutional context which has produced injustice. This institutional context does not accept a different cultural value in order to understand a constituent's cultural value to be mainstream culture. She notes that participatory democracy is useful because such a difficult point can be overcome, the reason being that a group with different cultural values can insist on its needs if it is based on the idea of participatory democracy. Howe developed the research of Young further, criticizing the idea of equal educational opportunity based on compensation theory, such as Head Start Education, as increasingly marginalizing children already marginalized. The theory of participatory democracy overcomes this problem because the affinity between mainstream culture and schooling is separated, and children feel an approval of different cultural values. This paper has considered the "justice" and "equality" concepts of Iris Marion Young and Kenneth Howe. One clarification is that the theory of participatory democracy enables a needs manifestation of a group with different cultural values and that children who have a separate affinity from mainstream culture and schooling and children who have different cultural values, can be supported in the system.
