As I’ve been reading and listening and learning more about equity and the social justice aspects of open education, I’m developing a clearer articulation of its nuances. As such, I feel it’s necessary to update the definition of “Equity” on EmpoweredOER to include this nuance.
Terminology and conceptualisation in the equity space continues to grow and deepen and we are seeing the disambiguation of equity/equality mature further to address longer term systemic solutions, rather than interim individualistic solutions.
Advocates such as Lily Zheng assert that equity solutions should focus on fixing the root problem, not patching the symptoms. This deeper level of equity is often referred to as ‘justice’ and is well-exemplified in the tree visualisations in the 2019 Design in Tech [pdf] report by John Maeda and artist Tony Ruth. Subverting the classic baseball fence analogy (pictured above), the series of four apple tree images towards the end of the report demonstrate in turn: Inequality, Equality, Equity, and Justice.
I would include the images here if I could, but I’ve been unable to find a licence on the images or establish contact with the creators to seek permission. So, you’ll have to make do with looking at the pdf and reading my descriptions below (dontcha wish it was CC-licensed?).
Inequality
In the first image, the apple tree is unbalanced, leaning towards one person on the left who can’t reach the tree to pick an apple, but is well-positioned to collect all the falling apples. This leaves the person on the right side of the tree with a fruitless endeavour.
Equality
In the second image, the tree remains at a lean to the left; however, both people are given a ladder of the same height to better reach the tree.
Naturally, this approach provides the person on the left with even better access to now reach and pick as many apples as they please, and leaves the person on the right still unable to reach the apples due to lean of the tree.
Equity
In the third image, the person on the right is given a taller ladder so they, too, can reach the apples.
This is typically where the analogy ends as both people now have equal access to the apples due to the extra support given to the person who started at a disadvantage. However, this is only addressing the symptom of the deeper problem – the tree that is growing on a lean, perpetually disadvantaging anyone who tries to access it from its right side.
Justice
The fourth image depicts justice: the tree is propped up on the left side and tethered down on the right side, retraining it to grow without a lean, and both people are given the same sized ladder.
People on the left and on the right are now able to reach the apples with the same tools because the tree is no longer disadvantaging one group of people by design.
These visualisations show us we should work to rebalance the tree to prevent further inequity (i.e. addressing the issue in the system) rather than enable the systemic issue to grow by continuously providing different sized ladders until one fits to solve the problem after it has been encountered (i.e. addressing the symptom).
This is not to say these interim measures should cease – they are absolutely crucial while we have a broken system. The message here is to highlight the unsustainability and inherent inequity of only ever addressing the symptom.
Ok, but now what?
At the core of Open Education is the value of empowerment. Open Educators seek to create real systemic change in a worldwide socially unjust education system to empower everyone to learn whatever they want to learn and in whatever form works for them. To feel they are not only welcome in a knowledge-sharing environment, but that they belong.
It’s clear that our community no longer accepts interim solutions as “good enough”. And we are no longer willing to wait. The community calls for genuine systemic change now. However, it’s difficult to enact systemic change if even our own advocates aren’t advocating for it! (because we are too focused on finding taller ladders.)
I created this post to act as a small step in the direction of helping us have better discussions about equity. We can start by deconstructing this issue and its surrounding assumptions (as this post attempts to do), before rebuilding our understanding to clearly articulate the true problem of deeply embedded inequities in education at the systemic level. Perhaps then we can design actionable guidance on how to begin to solve it.
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Image by Angus Maguire from Interaction Institute for Social Change, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
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