Social Justice Blog Post

In the past, I’ve heard plenty about the upper echelon making most of the money in the nation, and the bottom portion making next to nothing.  The constant references to the haves and the have nots, or keeping up with the Jones, I’ve got those. However, I had not heard it put into terms of an “hourglass economy” (xiv) model, but I guess that is the perfect way to physically demonstrate the idea of the diminishing middle class in America.

The discussion on the hourglass economy was how the President of University of North Carolina introduced this compilation Social Justice, Competition and Quality:21^st Century Leadership Challenges. In the chapter I focused on, “Preparing Educational Leaders in the Pursuit of Social Justice: Practices and Processes for Culturally Proficient Leadership Development” (129), the authors provided their definition of social justice as: “schooling which recognizes and respects fundamental differences in cultural identity and social experiences that place some children and their families at the margins of American culture and society, and which is aimed at removing such barriers which keep them there-not by assimilation (which is social silencing and erasure), but by working to remove the barriers, techniques, beliefs, and practices which put them there in the first place” (129). Holy cow…Dr. Agriss is right…that is a head-nod word. But, I thought they did a pretty good job trying to define that head-nod word.

The article does a good job outline this issues that we have within education regarding social justice. A common phrase of the article is “little is known…” This probably wasn’t the most helpful article for someone trying to get a basic grasp on social justice; it is more of a study and report on studies of social justice, or social injustice rather. Realistically they just repeat over and over that educators need to pay attention to different kinds of students, not ignore their surrounding and how that may affect their education. Educators need to be able to adapt and recognize when certain students have privileges others students don’t.

Interestingly, when they were reporting the results of the graduate students they reported that the most frequently “cited book that influenced students’ critically and cultural proficiency was Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed” (133)…go figure. But in all seriousness, the finding from the students and the information they reported was worth a read. Here is the link to the actual article or “yearbook” rather if anyone is interested.