What is Social Justice? Why is it Important in our Classrooms

         The most accurate definition of “Social Justice” I found this week, that I like is “a system that promotes equity.” The term Social Justice can have highly charged political connotations.  In one article I found it referred to the “leftist tenets of ‘social justice’ founded on the notion that capitalism and economic inequality are evils that must be replaced by a socialist system. . .” The article is Teaching Social Justice, Anti-Americanism, and Leftism in the K-12 Classroom. While looking on JSTOR I found an article on Teacher Education that attempted to separate the heavy politics from the concept.  I feel very fortunate to have found Merging Social Justice and Accountability: Educating Qualified and Effective Teachers, by Mary Poplin and John Rivera.  This program instructs teacher candidates to focus on equity, excellence, and integrity.”

            The primary focus of Poplin and Rivera was the achievement gap between students by race, ethnicity, and class beginning in 1970.  They implemented this program in the mid-1990s and, after a few years saw that the achievement gap persisted in spite of their efforts.  The two educators sought to bring some balance to the teacher candidate learning so they could share it with their students.  A major flaw in the program was that university educators were favoring critical multiculturalism over the accountability movement.  Critical multiculturalism had entered into the political realm, deferring to leftists ideologies of Marxism, postmodernism, critical feminist theory, ideologies that the poor and even immigrant communities were rejecting. This was being taught without any time spent on competing ideologies or accountability in achievement.  Teacher candidates were encouraged to teach all types of pedagogies, as well as being skillful in English language instruction and strongly urged to work with families and communities. 

            With emphasis on testing, teachers here are required to maintain a balance between being accountable and using their own individual gifts as teachers.  The program also sought to address many paradoxes, including freedom and responsibility, diversity and unity, rigor and joy.  The program sought to place teacher candidates in high achieving, poor, minority communities even though the trend has been to test the failure rate of such communities. 

Links to articles:

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=715

http://www.jstor.org/stable/view/10.2307/3496988?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=merging&searchText=social&searchText=justice&searchText=and&searchText=accountability&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dmerging%2Bsocial%2Bjustice%2Band%2Baccountability%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff