How Can We Not Teach for Social Justice

How can we not teach for social justice

?

Day after day, children are denied the right to be children. The world treats rich kids as if they were money, teaching them to act the way money acts.

The world treats poor kids as if they were garbage, to turn them into garbage.

And those in the middle, neither rich nor poor, are chained to televisions and trained to live the life of

prisoners.

The few children who manage to be children must have a lot of magic and a lot of luck.

(Galeano, 2000)

no fence to sit onteach for justice or

be a cog in the wheels of injustice

schooling has a purposereproduction of labour & social

relations (dominant ideology)

schooling is about regulating the“way the world enters into the students”

(Freire 1970)

but knowledge breeds questionsschools can breed change

"Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger

generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or

it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with

reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."

Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

What sort of teacher are

you

?

The way that children view the world - from vantage points formed by power and lack of it -

fundamentally influences their learning abilities

Teachers participate in the reinforcement or challenging of how students see the world as a central aspect of their

praxis... generally this happens intuitively

it should be a conscious and critical process

when a student can see themselves as an agent of change,they have opened a magical door to knowledge

when a teacher provides students opportunities to understand and reconstruct the world that shapes them

they have become educational leaders

AGENCY

HOW?

Contextual approachnever get lost in the classroom

keep coming back to the bigger picture & encouraging your students to do the same

1

Value student knowledgeexplore their lives, encourage their questions,

support their rebellion

2

Make your classroom democraticlet students teach you, like you can teach them, &

put respect at the heart of your rules

3

Privilege a collective approachpromote dialogue and debate,

encourage empathy and solidarity

4

Society and its operation:How does society operate as a system?How can we understand and account for

stratification, difference, failure and success?

Questions you need to ask yourself (Gates

2006)

Education and society:What is the purpose of education?

What is the effect of the education system?How do social factors influence educational

outcomes?

Myself and others:What is my position in relation to others with

whom I come into contact?How do I contrast individualism with collectivism?

Management with community?Hierarchy with democracy?

Curriculum and power:What and how should we teach?

Is there a hidden curriculum?What is the purpose of literacy, numeracy, etc?

How ought we to organise groups of pupils?Who has a right to determine and manage the

curriculum?

Teaching and learning:What teaching methods are most

appropriate?What is the appropriate role of the teacher?

Where do students fit in?Where does the family & broader

community fit in?

EXAMPLELiteracy is usually taught as a motor skill or mechanically,

rather than as a "complex cultural activity" (Vygostky)

What category of teacher do you fit in to,do you promote (Gates):

surveillance, hierarchy and conformity

empowerment, empathy, community, relationships, importance of

individuals

12

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Anne Frank