1 Educational policy and the social justice dilemma Paul Carr In this chapter Paul Carr reveals a controversy at the heart of Canadian educational policy making. The unacknowledged power and privilege of 'whiteness' and the ways in which white people can define the agenda to support their own power, leads to marginalisation of minority groups and contributes to continuing racism in society. He critiques the complacency of public education in its attempts to inculcate social justice and democratic values in the absence of proper accountability and transparency. While these are recognised components of the educational reform agenda, there is nothing equivalent for social justice at the institutional level. The result is lack of accountability or transparency in decision making, policies, funding, resources and activities, and unsatisfactory outcomes with respect to social justice. Introduction ho determines what is a controversial issue, and how do we deal with such issues? Such questions, rightly the focus of this book, are themselves controversial. This chapter focuses on how controversial issues are manufactured, massaged and manipulated before they make it to the formal curriculum and policy level. Before teachers have the mandatory policies, directives, guidelines and course-content with which they are to educate and engage students, there is an entirely different, and problematic, process at play that leads to the conceptualisation and development of educational policy. This process, as mysterious as it is misunderstood, is pivotal in determining the shape and parameters of what takes place in the classroom. A particular concern involves the area of social justice: if the educational policy process has not fully internalized social justice considerations, could the curriculum then be caught in such a way as to address social justice concerns. W