'We must recover our own selves ...' Cultural justice as ethical issue in higher education - Piet Naude and Elize Naude

In discussing the ethical challenges related to 'cultural education' below, we take as assumptions the moral agency of higher education institutions individually and collectively as a system, as well as the implicit social contract between universities and the societies in which they function. We first argue that globalisation is a homogenizing cultural force to which higher education is subjected, but to which it also contributes. Thereafter we highlight two broad ethical challenges emanating from this, namely globalisation as cosmological narrative of identity formation, and as constituting cultural injustice by forcing people to surrender what is taken for granted. We then translate these two challenges into the context of higher education, and close with a brief outline of a curriculum project that attempts to address at least some of these issues.
From: Journal of Education, Vol 37 (2005), pp. 59-78