Thursday
May 01, 2008
An interesting debate on the role of social justice in teaching pits Bill Ayers against Sol Stern on Eduwonkette.
Bill:
So a brief word on schools and social justice: all schools serve the societies in which they’re embedded—authoritarian schools serve authoritarian systems, apartheid schools serve an apartheid society, and so on. Practically all schools want their students to study hard, stay away from drugs, do their homework, and so on. In fact none of these features distinguishes schools in the old Soviet Union or fascist Germany from schools in a democracy. But in a democracy one would expect something more—a commitment to free inquiry, questioning, and participation; a push for access and equity; a curriculum that encouraged free thought and independent judgment; a standard of full recognition of the humanity of each individual. In other words, social justice.
Sol:
We need a professional code of ethics for teachers, a Hippocratic Oath if you will, that makes clear that our public school classrooms are not laboratories for social and political change, with the kids serving as guinea pigs. Perhaps Stanley Fish put it best: “Teachers should teach their subjects. They should not teach peace or war or freedom or obedience or diversity or uniformity or nationalism or antinationalism or any other agenda that might properly be taught by a political leader or a talk show host.”
I recently posted a call for teachers to make a greater commitment to working for social justice. Slightly different from teaching for social justice, but still related. As a teacher, how do you make your decisions about doing both/either/neither?
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In a democratic society, to educate means to bring forth the ideals of an democracy. Jefferson set forth the ideal of public education for this very reason.
Democracy is messy - the idea that all freedoms can exist together is an idea that should not work - yet it is the very idea that our nation is built upon. Social justice is the very tennant of this - not to teach what to think, but only to teach...to think. John F. Kennedy once said, “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.” To think - and to learn to think - is essential to any education AND makes us a strong nation.
What is a teacher’s job - to disseminate information? To teach a subject? Subjects are never in isolation, and I fear the kind of teaching that keeps them there. Too, I fear that students today have less and less opportunities to think, to apply, to challenge, to question… Isn’t this the mark of a democratic education?
To in any way influence a student’s ideas towards their own - or toward any set idea - is not the goal of a teacher. However, to bring students to his or her own thought is. If good and evil do exist (and I think strong argument can be made that they do), perhaps letting students find these within the accord of their own (strong-minded) thinking may be the way to go. Social justice is an important tennant of American education because it asks our citizens to question, to refute, and most importantly to work to make change. Isn’t this the truest application of education?
