Socail Justice

DO YOU WANT TO TEACH FOR SOCAIL JUSTICE?

After reading the article written by Herbert Kohl, I was able to decide this. He got the point accross without any sugar coating, which made it easier to understand and made it a more serious thing to consider. He believes that teachers who teach for social justice are "those who care about nurturing all children and who are enraged at the prospect of students dying young, going hungry, or living meaningless and despairing lives - to do? How can they go against the grain and use their classrooms to work in the service of their students?"
His five suggestions on how to teach for social justice are as follows . . .

• First, don't teach against your conscience. Don't align yourself with texts, people, or rules that hurt children; resist them as creatively and effectively as you can, whether through humor or by developing alternative curricula. Try to survive, but don't make your survival in a particular job the overriding determinant of what you will or won't do. Don't become isolated or alone in your efforts; reach out to other teachers, community leaders, church people, and parents who feel as you do. Find a school where you can do your work and then stand up for the quality of your work. Don't quit in the face of opposition; make people work hard if they intend to fire or reprimand you for teaching equity and justice.




• Second, hone your craft as a teacher. When I first began teaching, I jumped into struggles for social justice. During one of my efforts a community person asked: "So, what's going on in your classroom that's different than what you're fighting against? Can your students read and do math?" I had to examine my work, which was full of passion and effort but deficient in craft. I realized that I needed to take the time to learn how to teach well before I extended myself with authority and confidence in organizing efforts. This is essential for caring teachers. We have to get it right for our own students before presuming to take on larger systems, no matter how terrible those larger systems are. As educators, we need to root our struggles for social justice in the work we do every day, in a particular community, with a particular group of students.




• Third, look around at the many effective ways of teaching children. I don't believe there is a single technique or curriculum that leads to success. Consequently, pick and choose, retool and restructure the best of what you find and make it your own. Most of all, watch your students and see what works. Listen to them, observe how they learn, and then, based on your experience and their responses, figure out how to practice social justice in your classroom.




• Fourth, it is not enough to teach well and create a social justice classroom separate from the larger community. You have to be a community activist, a good parent, a decent citizen, and an active community member as well




• Protect and nurture yourself. Have some fun in your life; learn new things that only obliquely relate to issues of social justice. Walk, play ball or chess, swim, fall in love. Don't forget how to laugh or feel good about the world. Have fun so that you can work hard; and work hard so that you and your students and their parents can have fun without looking over their shoulders. This is not a question of selfishness but one of survival. Don't turn teaching for social justice into a grim responsibility, but take it for the moral and social necessity that it is.

These five suggestions are clear and make a lot of sense to me for why social justice is important and why it should be taught. They help direct the teaching but also make it clear of why this type of teaching should be followed.

Some questions that I do have about Social Justice are . . .

• What are the responsibilities of the individual in regard to social justice?


• What does power have to do with fairness and justice?


• Do we have choices concerning fairness and justice?

After researching these questions I found some answers.

The responsibilite of the individual in regards to social justice is to treat people fairly as you would want to be treated. Everyone wants and equal chance at everything, and everyone want to believe they are equal. What i go from this question was that social justice is the finding for equal rights for all and that relates directally to equality among everyone.

Adding power into a situation causes inequality amongs people, which inturn destroys justice and fairness. People get power hungry and want complete control. People will listen to the ones in power instead of coming up with their own thought or ideas. If they do have their own ideas they will not share them or use them, if those in power do not approve.

Justice and fairness are often used interchangably. We do have a choices when it comes to justice. It is just if we decided to use the choice to our advantage and not let overpowering people take those choices away. It is about standing up for what you believe in and being strong with that belief.

Socail justice seems to have the idea of what people have been fighting for for hundreds of years- equality. Everyone wants equal rights and it is time to get them, nothing, including power should stop that. It is important to teach social justice to students so they are able to learn the importance of socail justice as well.

https://learning.umassonline.net/webct/urw/lc2228634.tp0/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/justice.html