What can education learn from recent thinking around the concept of dignity in the intersection between identity and protected groups?

International UN declarations link dignity to equality as foundational ideas. They then connect dignity to education in the vision of education expressed those declarations and documents. Dignity is also a concept much debated in current literature in law, medicine, philosophy and theology. It is an idea rarely explored directly in educational literature. This paper explores an application of contextual conceptual analysis to the 'dignity discourses' that offer insights and clarify challenges in navigating the intersections between key groups that have baring on educational settings. The method of contextual concept analysis was developed in a doctoral thesis in human rights education (Bowie 2011), and in this paper this method is applied to current and recent dignity literature. The focus is the work of two scholars: First, George Katab (2011) and the idea dignity links status and stature of present human life, however unequally endowed with talent, with a view to future human beings through a serious engagement with those of the past; Second, Jeremy Waldron with his 2009 Tanner lectures that argued from a juridical perspective to retain a connection between dignity and rank.

Education is an exercise in hope in the future, with an enquiring eye to the learning of the past. It is frequently predicated on a presumed equality of opportunity for all rather than rank or status, though educational structures may be permeated with inequality and status. How different groups perceive future flourishing differ and this difference requires negotiation in any common educational enterprise.