Taking Issue: Commitment to Social Justice in Education?

Taking issue

Read the following brief introduction, as well as the Question and the pros and cons list that follows. Then, answer the question using your own words and position.

CommiTmEnT To soCiAL JusTiCE in EduCATion?

You have just read about Paulo Freire who said that teachers cannot remain neutral on issues of social justice. Freire argued that teachers should be committed to empowering dispossessed and marginalized individuals and groups. Return to the earlier section on Herbert Spencer in this chapter. Spencer, a social Darwinist, argued that teachers who tried to promote social equality were making a serious mistake that attempted to interfere with the natural law of competition.

Question

Should teachers be committed to social justice education that seeks to empower marginalized groups? (Think about this question as you read the PRO and COn arguments listed here. What is your response to this issue?)

Question Reprise: What Is Your Stand?

Reflect again on the following question by explaining your stand about this issue. Should teachers be committed to social justice education that seeks to empower marginalized groups?

Arguments PRo

1. If teachers do not take a stand on social issues, they are merely reinforcing the discriminatory status quo.

2. Education can be a positive agency of social change that promotes equality among individuals and groups. 3. Teachers need to raise students’ consciousness about the agents and conditions that exploit them. 4. Teachers should join forces with progressive groups and organizations that are working for social justice.

Arguments CoN

1. The teacher’s function is to educate students in the skills and subjects needed to earn a living, not to indoctrinate them in a political ideology. 2. Trying to change society is a utopian dream that interferes with economic progress. 3. Teachers should encourage competition that brings out the best in people. 4. Society is improved through individual efforts and hard work, not by “raising consciousness.”

relationships in the schools and the conditions that affect their students. For example, teachers in schools in economically depressed ghettos need to know that their students’ lives are being blighted by poverty, poor access to health care and recreational services, drug abuse, and gang violence. When they understand the true reality of their school situations, teachers can resist these oppressive conditions and work to empower their students.

For Freire, real learning takes place as teachers and students engage in open and ongoing dialogue. He attacks instruction, presented as transmitting information that creates false, rather than critical, consciousness in students’ minds. An example is “teacher talk,” which implies that teachers can transmit knowledge to students by telling them what is true: students memorize what the American teacher says and passively deposit it in their minds for later recall on tests. Freire calls the teacher-talking–student-listening method educational “banking,” in which each bit of information is deposited to be cashed in the future, usually for an examination.66

For educators inspired by Freire, the standardized tests used in the contemporary standards movement, such as NCLB or RTTT, are examples of the banking model. The tests, constructed by bureaucratic experts, assess students’ recall of officially