What is Social Justice? Why is it important for our classrooms?

According to BusinessDictionary.com social justice is defined as, “ The fair and proper administration of laws conforming to the natural law that all persons, irrespective of ethnic origin, gender, possessions, race, religion, etc., are to be treated equality and without prejudice.”  With this definition in mind, which was quite a lot to digest, it helped me to better select an article to bring to class to discuss.  Most of the articles that I found seemed to have mixed feelings on the teaching of social justice within the classroom, but most seemed to favor the philosophy.

Since I am a Social Studies Major, I was very intrigued when I came across an article published in the Journal of Social Studies Research entitled “Social Justice in Social Studies Teacher Education: What is our message?” from the JSTOR Database. The authors of this article feel that teachers have a major impact of the success of their academic and their impact on society, and that teachers in the past have not done all that they could to prepare their students for the cultural diversity that they will encounter.

As I interpret this article, the authors feel that teaching our students social justice will only improve their learning and their lives outside of school as citizens in society.  The article then posed two questions that educators should be asking themselves when it comes to teaching social justice in the classroom: “How do teachers come to teach in this way?” and “What should we do in teacher education to support teacher candidates to these ends within current educational structures?”  There are multiple ways to answers these questions, but the authors felt that it all goes back to the training of current and future teachers.

As teachers we need to break out of the oppression of the dominate culture and teach our students the importance of being a cultural diverse society.  All students have the right to an equal education regardless of their cultural background, whether they are in the minority or the dominate culture.  The sooner that we begin to instill these values in our students the better our society and children will become.