Social Justice in the Classroom

Defining Social Justice is a difficult thing to do. As I've looked over a multitude of articles, blogs, etc, that is what I keep reading. But is think the simplest definition I found does in fact work. That the idea of social justice is to address the injustices of society. It is backwards and files almost neatly into a logical fallacy, but it is correct. Societies throughout the world are struggling with issues that are destructive to their ways of life. Famine, war, genocide, disease... People are suffering. There is also the idea of racial injustice/inequality that can hit a little closer to home for people in the US. The disparities of the socioeconomic system - that's another good one. But a definition isn't enough. It's not nearly enough. As educators (or future educators) it is our job to move beyond informing future generations that bad things happen and into a special place where we drive them to ACT.

Every person can make a difference.

This is a hard fact for many to swallow. Sure, the idea has been thrown at us on a regular basis. Sure, we talk about wanting to help others when we hear about some disaster. But how many of us have actually done anything? Even a small anything? That is what educators need to strive for in their classrooms.

Shelley Wright is a teacher and blogger from Canada who waits with baited breath for the portion of the year where she can teach her students about social justice.

Everything about this semester is intricately crafted. As a class we’re going somewhere. I teach the Holocaust for a reason beyond the fact that my students find it interesting. I teach the Rwandan genocide for reasons other than to show them that genocide has happened, and continues to happen, repeatedly. The truth is I teach both of these to show my students that the bystander effect is lethal, often on a scale beyond our imagination.

She quotes Bono

We can be the generation that no longer accepts that an accident of latitude determines whether a child lives or dies — but will we be that generation? Will we in the West realize our potential or will we sleep in the comfort of our affluence with apathy and indifference murmuring softly in our ears? Fifteen thousand people dying needlessly every day from AIDS, TB, and malaria. Mothers, fathers, teachers, farmers, nurses, mechanics, children. This is Africa’s crisis. That it’s not on the nightly news, that we do not treat this as an emergency — that’s our crisis.

Future generations flipping through these pages will know whether we answered the key question. The evidence will be the world around them. History will be our judge, but what’s written is up to us. We can’t say our generation didn’t know how to do it. We can’t say our generation couldn’t afford it. And we can’t say our generation didn’t have reason to do it. It’s up to us.

And this is just the point I am hoping to make. Social Justice is a broad and convoluted topic, but teaching our students to ACT is not! We can review the racism is Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird As Wright did. Or we can attack more recent issues in the world as another teacher by the name of Johnathan J. Cavallero did in 2011 when the earthquake and tsunami ransacked Japan. He offered an alternative to his normal research paper to students who would like to do a service learning project. This project would still require research and writing, so he did not give up on those skills. But the students were also able to create and enact an extra step where they actually set up a fundraiser for those affected in Japan. They may have raised $320, but one of the student's journal entries sums up what Cavallero hoped for them to take away from the project.

"The money was not the most important part of it for me. I learned that people can change the lives of others, even ones all the way across the world."

I am a passionate supporter of teaching social justice in schools. By this I do not mean the intellectualized and separated-from-self regurgitation of information that has been taught in the past. I mean teaching the students to be empowered by their own ability to influence the world. With the Internet and our global connectivity, all current and future generations have a distinct advantage in acting to better the world. As educators we should all be striving to instill the drive for this action within our students!




Credits -

Shelley Wright - The Power of the Connected Classroom: Why and How I'm Yeaching Social Justice
http://plpnetwork.com/2011/05/23/the-power-of-the-connected-classroom-why-and-how-im-teaching-social-justice/

Cavallero, Jonathan J. "Engaging Millennial Students In Social Justice From Initial Class Meetings To Service Learning." New Directions For Teaching & Learning 2013.135 (2013): 75-80. Education Research Complete. Web. 4 Feb. 2015.