Social Justice and Power, Teaching About

Social justice education reveals the power dynamics at work in the world that are often undisclosed in traditional education. A social justice teacher encourages students to question, for example, the ethics of particular scientific studies, the stories behind crime statistics, the impact of gentrification, the role of corporations in determining the food choices in their cafeteria, and the testing and tracking practices of their school. Amy Goodman, of the news program Democracy Now!, has asserted that the role of the journalist is to “go where the silence is.” Social justice teachers seek to explore curricular silences that mask both historical and contemporary power.

Instead of asking students to memorize facts, a social justice education teaches students to pose critical questions that examine how power structures work and what the consequences of those structures are, based on an individual's or group's position and identity, including social class, gender, race, sexual orientation, country of origin, and home language. Students become sensitive to whose voices are heard in the history they study and the novels they read and whose voices are silenced or marginalized; they learn to ask who benefits from certain programs or structures and who does not.

Everything studied in school is magnified when students begin to ask questions instead of memorize. This change of perspective means that classroom learning continues when students encounter similar situations in the world outside of school. [Page 1993]When teachers ask students to think critically about aspects of the curriculum, implicitly they are asking students to think critically about the broader society that shapes that curriculum.

A social justice education also alerts students to the power of social movements to create change. Traditional curriculum frequently does not reveal how these movements have been the engine for disrupting injustice and expanding social justice in the United States and the rest of the world. Social justice teachers pierce this silence as an antidote to despair after students have critically examined the unequal power structures that give money, control, and power to a few. Social justice teachers instill hope about the possibility of what people can do together. From the abolitionist movement to the women's movement to the civil rights movement to the contemporary struggles for democracy in the Middle East and economic justice at home, students can learn that positive change is never simply bestowed from above—it is demanded from below.

In addition, students are given opportunities to enact change themselves. It is not enough to study the power of solidarity in the abstract; social justice teachers construct spaces in the curriculum for students to act on their knowledge. Sometimes this action might be in writing; other times, students may create projects that educate others about the silences they have discovered. Sometimes their studies will inspire students to join social justice activities outside of school.