Critical Educators for Social Justice (CESJ), a SIG of the American Educational Research Association

Definitions

Revolutionary Love

I once fell in love with a voice over the radio that woke me up each morning with words of love for his people. I once loved a man because he could sing 101 songs in the fields as he worked as a farmworker. I loved another because he had a laugh that embraced all those around him, though he had been tortured. These men, I loved for their acts. I loved them, as I have loved others, for the stories they gave me. They were not meant nor destined for romantic love. I shared with them "revolutionary love."

[Adapted from Patrísia Gonzales's "Amor Revolucionario (Revolutionary Love)," published in the Column of the Americas.]

To truly love another person requires a readiness to face down anti-human reactionaries who view love primarily as a commodity from which to extract profit and also requires that we face our own weaknesses and turn them into strengths. In short, if we do not share struggle, we can not share love. Love is a function of life and these anti-humans are constantly and consciously committed to oppressing, exploiting and killing us. During times of war and oppression, such as these are, there is no other love possible but serious and shared struggle. Every battle we "consciously" wage together will bring us closer and bind us more firmly, will increase our understanding of each other and the world. Revolutionary struggle brings with it revolutionary love.

[Adapted from Kalamu ya Salaam's "Revolutionary Struggle/Revolutionary Love" published in Chicken Bones: A Journal for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes.]

Social Justice

Social justice is a term often used but rarely defined. Much more has been written about the nature of injustice than the concept of social justice. Yet, throughout history, philosophers and scholars have attempted to define this elusive idea. Aristotle envisioned social justice as a society whose benefits and burdens would be distributed fairly to achieve a basic level of goodness for all. More recently, Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, and Pat Griffin (1997), professors in the Social Justice Education Program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, defined a socially just society as one in which all members have their basic needs met and all individuals are physically and psychologically safe and secure, able to develop to their full capabilities and to participate as effective citizens of their communities and nation. To be authentic and relevant for students, social justice education needs to begin with children's lived experiences-their concerns, hopes, and dreams-and then move toward multiple perspectives and action directed toward social change (Bigelow, Christensen, Karp, Miner, and Peterson 1994).

[Adapted from Rahima Wade's, "Citizenship for Social Justice," published in the Winter 2004 Issue of the Kappa Delta Phi Record.]

According to Young (1991) an enabling definition of social justice implies a clear vision of what this concept is intending to address: oppression. In order to maximize the understanding of of social justice Young (1990) deconstructs the large category of oppression into a set a conditions that are shared by people who “suffer some inhibition of their ability to develop and exercise their capacities and express their needs, thoughts, and feelings” (p.40). She describes what she calls the five faces of oppression. They are 1) exploitation; 2) marginalization; 3) powerlessness, 4) cultural imperialism; and 5) violence. Young’s views on oppression have clear implications for the advocacy of social justice as they primarily focus on the nature of the economic system. We live and benefit from an advanced economic order that in order to succeed needs to make profit and to exploit; and that in order to expand and grow needs to create a hegemonic process that naturalizes slavery, colonization, conquest, linguistic genocide, and military intervention. It is in this context that critical educators for social justice need to frame their work.

Education is one of the most powerful institutions implicated in the process of reproduction of social inequalities, and as such, critical educators need to deal and engage with the totalizing nature of late capitalist societies manifested in the explosion of the global market, the creation of neo-liberal economic policies, and imperialism in all its form: cultural, economic, political, diplomatic, and military. Therefore, any standards, guidelines or framework for the protection of social and environmental justice must deal with an understanding of the geo-political forces that shape the current globalized economic order.

[Adapted from Marta P. Baltodano's, "Transformative Principles for Social Justice" paper presented by the AERA CESJ SIG, and portions of which will published in the Journal of Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies' Special Issue on Critical Pedagogy.]

Critical Educators

Teachers have a significant role to play in developing citizens committed to social justice. They can best fulfill this role by guiding students to examine injustice, seek out multiple perspectives on social problems, and develop concrete strategies for improving their communities and nation. This work is best supported by the development of a socially just and empowering classroom community. Thus, critical educators need to teach not only about but also for social justice, in their personal relationships with students as well as in society as a whole.

[Adapted from Rahima Wade's, "Citizenship for Social Justice," published in the Winter 2004 Issue of the Kappa Delta Phi Record.]

Critical educators must recognize how schools function within an untenable contradiction. On one hand, schools are expected to respond to the needs of hierarchies associated with the capitalist labor force and the marketplace. And, on the other hand, schools are suppose to create equality of access to rights and opportunities for the nation’s citizens’ as promised within an ostensibly democratic republic. Critical educators who are concerned with social justice, then, work toward establishing a culture that cultivates human connection, intimacy, trust and honesty, within the complex sociopolitical context in which educational institutions are located.

[Adapted from Antonia Darder's, "A Reflection on Educators for Social Justice" speech, given at the 2004 Annual Business Meeting of the AERA CESJ SIG in San Diego, CA]