“We must be willing to let go of the life we have
planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” - Joseph Campbell
“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.” -
Albert Einstein“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” –Winston Churchill
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” –Winston Churchill
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”-Winston Churchill
I’ve
never given much thought to how social justice principles and beliefs could be
incorporated in my classroom studies. Now
that I look back on my own studies, my own personal life, and the ambitious
goals I have set for my prospective students, social justice, advocacy, and
awareness seem to be significant factors in the future of education and the
future of the world. Unfortunately, as
educators and as human beings, we have an arduous task ahead of us if we are to
enact change in our students, in ourselves, and in the world.
One of
the major problems that education faces today is that we fail to genuinely recognize and appreciate the differences and the strengths of each individual
student. In a culture that is obsessed
with “teaching to the test” and with achieving high academic performance, it
has become fairly easy for the student
to become lost in the hierarchy and politics of education. As a rule of thumb, education is a reciprocal
process in which everyone – students, teachers, administrators, parents, and
the community – has the potential to be both the learner and the teacher. Rather than continuing to create models which
‘fit’ the traditional system, why not create change that challenges how we
learn and how we view the individual and the world? Why not let the students become active
participants in their own education, connecting what they are learning in the
classroom with what is occurring in their own lives, in their communities, in the
world? Every student regardless of race,
ethnicity, language, gender, gender expression, age, appearance, ability,
nationality, spiritual belief, sexual orientation, social class, economic
circumstance, environment, or culture is entitled to an equal opportunity in
academics as well as in life. By developing
a larger acceptance of the world around us, then, and only then, can we begin
to change our education system to a focus on individual achievement.
To begin
to teach towards social justice, particularly from a literary perspective, it
is essential that we read and write to transform lives. As critical thinkers, we must enhance our
skills of approaching life’s challenges from various perspectives, of recognizing
that a right and wrong answer does not always exist, and of discovering that
the potential for change is present in every small opportunity. By invoking critical literacy into our
curriculum, we begin to challenge the status quo, we begin to appreciate and
build upon a student’s individual
talents, we begin to disrupt socially constructed and accepted concepts (or
what I like to refer to as social limitations and blind spots), and above all,
we begin our journey as advocates for change.
It is not just how we read as
much as it is what we read and what
we do with our new knowledge. By allowing a “safe” environment for our
students to question preconceived notions and controversial issues, we allow
for the opportunity of growth to occur and for students to work towards making
change matter. Teaching with social
justice in mind means opening the door for the literary ‘word’ and the realistic
‘world’ to meet and become one. (JS)
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