Social Justice Pedagogy Across the Curriculum

The Practice of Freedom

Thandeka K. Chapman, Nikola Hobbel, Thandeka K. Chapman, Nikola Hobbel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780367370305
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000556759
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

How can we continue to support educators who wish to design and facilitate social justice classrooms? What knowledge and tools do pre- and in-service educators need to teach about (in)equity, (in)justice, resilience, and agency across the curriculum in K–12 classrooms?

The new edition of this compelling text synthesizes in one volume historical foundations, philosophic/theoretical conceptualizations, and applications of social justice education in public school classrooms.

? Part I details the history of the multicultural movement and the instantiation of public schooling as a social justice project.

? Part II connects theoretical frameworks to social justice curricula. Parts I and II are general to all K–12 classrooms.

? Part III provides powerful specific subject-area examples of good practice, including Multilingualism and Ethnic Studies.

Social Justice Pedagogy Across the Curriculum, Second Edition includes highlighted Points of Inquiry and Points of Praxis sections that offer recommendations to teachers and researchers, and activities, resources, and suggested readings. These features invite teachers at all stages of their careers to reflect on the role of social justice in education, particularly as it relates to their particular classrooms, schools, and communities.

Relevant for any course that addresses history, theory, or practice of multicultural/social justice education and teaching diverse groups of students, this text is essential reading for future and practicing teachers to understand and create resources for transformative, rigorous, and inclusive learning environments that support students from a range of backgrounds.

Part I

Historical Perspectives

DOI: 10.4324/9780429352409-2

1

These Are Still Revolutionary Times

Human Rights, Social Movements, and Social Justice Education

Melissa Gibson, Carl A. Grant and Verónica Mancheno

DOI: 10.4324/9780429352409-3

So often today, it feels like the world is on fire. Literally as we face the consequences of climate change (Cavicchioli et al., 2019; Schiermeier, 2018), but also figuratively as we face the consequences of global White supremacy and unchecked capitalism—a rise in xenophobic populism (Burnett, 2017; Huber, 2016; Kurmanaev & Krauss, 2019); an ever-growing list of Black Americans killed by police officers (Gates, 2019; McManus et al., 2019); a widening income inequality gap in the USA (Chetty et al., 2016; Chetty et al., 2018); an epidemic of violence against and murder of transgender individuals, particularly transgendered women of color (“A National Epidemic: Fatal Anti-Transgender Violence in America,” 2020); the continued violation of the rights and territories of indigenous peoples (Estes, 2019; Holton, 2019; Martichenko, 2019; Mello Neiva, 2019); and ever more vitriol and cruelty directed at Latin American migrants (Bacon, 2018).

Although it often feels like the world is on fire, there is also continued evidence that through social movements and collective action, we can fight those fires. We have seen a rise in popular protest and social movements in pursuit of justice-oriented social change (Tufecki, 2017): Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, #SayHerName, Water Protectors, The Women’s March, United We Dream, March for Our Lives, #Fightfor15, Occupy Wall Street. There have been movements against neoliberal reform, climate change, and elite corruption in Ecuador, Hong Kong, Peru, Chile, Lebanon, Syria, Nicaragua, and the USA. Over the past decade, the aphorism popularized by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has often been invoked to inspire patience and hope in the face of mounting global crises: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” What the simultaneous challenges and activism of this moment make clear is that the arc of the moral universe does not bend on its own toward justice; rather, it is the power of people, joined together in collective movement, that make it do so.

When we wrote the first version of this chapter a decade ago, we argued that social justice education was rooted in the history of universal human rights, and that to root it only in the history of the Civil Rights Movement in the USA, as was so often done at that time, neglected the full aims of social justice education. We did this to ground our field in a concrete vision of justice in education, which was often critiqued as vague ideology (Novak, 2000, p. 11). Today, it would be harder to levy that argument against educators committed to social justice. Teachers’ unions, activists, and curricular planning resources are all explicit that social justice education—both as a pedagogy and as a broader movement toward educational justice—demands attention to and respect for human dignity. This means that social justice education must tend to racial, ethnic, and economic justice; political empowerment; respect for gender fluidity and queer rights; inclusion of neurodiversity; and the workings of power in society. Given the intersectional and inclusive approach of social justice advocates in education, the move to historicize our work in terms of human rights seems ever more salient.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a Social Justice Manifesto: Confronting Injustice and Promoting Human Rights in the United Nations

In the first half of the 20th century, the world was confronted with injustice, aggression, and economic collapse on a massive scale. In the wake of social cataclysm—including two world wars; the Great Depression; and uprisings against colonial empires in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—there was unprecedented international attention to the cause of justice and the codification of a universal moral code (Glendon, 2001; Ishay, 2004; Morsink, 1999). After the tragedies of World War II—including the Jewish Holocaust—51 nations signed the United Nations Charter as a move towards cementing an international mandate for justice (Glendon, 2001; Morsink, 1999).

Explicit in the UN’s Charter were four goals: to prevent future wars; to establish international justice; to promote social progress and improved standards of living; and “to affirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small” (UN, 1945, Preamble). This affirmation of human rights is a pragmatic outline of the minimum standards of human dignity, a tool whose use could move the world towards greater justice socially, economically, and politically (Appiah, 2003; Ignatieff, 2003; Koenig, 1997; Mower, 1979). While human rights themselves are certainly not guarantees of justice (Gutmann, 2003), they are essential tools for working towards it (Carolan, 2000).

Indeed, the early years of the UN’s existence were marked by a near-singular attention to codifying a human rights—and, by extension, social justice—agenda (Morsink, 1999). Three months after its founding, the UN articulated the Nuremburg Principles, which would be the guiding principles in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals during the Nuremburg Trials. The Nuremburg Principles—and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide that grew out of them—were the UN’s first human rights treaties, written in direct response to what was seen at the time as an ultimate act of social injustice, the Holocaust (Ishay, 2004; Morsink, 1999).

The next human rights initiative was undertaken during the UN’s first General Assembly meeting in January 1946, when it established a Human Rights Commission whose primary task would be to author an international bill of rights. The USA—particularly Franklin Delano Roosevelt—heavily influenced the direction of this work (Glendon, 2001; Hareven, 1968; Mower, 1979). FDR had declared peace to be founded on four freedoms, which proved foundational for the framing of human rights:

The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world

(Roosevelt, 1941).

Protecting these “four freedoms” was the explicit justification offered in the Atlantic Charter for US involvement in WWII (Anderson, 2003). Roosevelt’s “four freedoms” importantly hit on two central points in the consideration of human rights: one, that the rights to be protected were both civil/political and economic/social; and two, that international peace was itself a human right (Mower, 1979). What’s more, these “four freedoms” reflect FDR’s domestic vision of an economic and political system more just than unbridled capitalism (Ishay, 2004), with FDR advocating for government guarantees of certain economic rights, including job protection and economic security (Roosevelt, 1944). FDR explicitly named this as “choosing the path of social justice,” as commemorated at his own memorial in Washington, DC.

It was, however, Eleanor Roosevelt, as chair of the Human Rights Commission, who was tasked with overseeing the UN’s realization of this vision (Glendon, 2001; Johnson, 1987; Mower, 1979). At the time, Eleanor Roosevelt was considered by many Americans as an outspoken advocate for social justice and civil rights (Anderson, 2003). She, like President Roosevelt, saw social responsibility and social justice as fundamental to world peace:

[T]he basis of world peace is the teaching which runs through almost all the great world religions: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’…[W]hen we center on our own home, family, or business, we neglect this fundamental obligation of every human being, and until it is acknowledged and fulfilled, we cannot have world peace.

(in Mower, 1979, p. 20)

As the founder of Human Rights Day, leader of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) drafting, and international advocate for human rights, Eleanor Roosevelt deeply influenced the codification of human rights and social justice (Glendon, 2001; Johnson, 1987; Morsink, 1999; Mower, 1979).

Codifying Human Rights and Social Justice in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Human Rights Commission initially pushed to define human rights primarily in terms of racial anti-discrimination in response to the Jewish Holocaust—a genocide fueled by overt racial and ethnic hatred (Morsink, 1999). This focus was supported by delegates from the Philippines, Egypt, India, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, France, the Soviet Republics, Latin America, and even Eleanor Roosevelt herself (Glendon, 2001; Hareven, 1968). In fact, in its survey of global philosophers and political leaders, UNESCO (1949)¹ found anti-discrimination and the acceptance of difference to be a common refrain.

This emphasis on anti-discrimination reflects the UDHR’s grounding in empathy and morality. In fact, an early draft written by French delegate and Nobel Peace Prize-winner René Cassin was written not to take political sides in the burgeoning Cold War, but rather to articulate what were perceived to be common international moral standards. This moral stance was clarified by Chinese philosopher and delegate P.C. Chang, who proposed the Chinese symbol ren—which roughly translates to “two-man mindedness” and evokes empathy and compassion—as the over-arching human rights principle (Glendon, 2001). Indeed, the very will to declare human rights was, according to Lebanese delegate Charles Malik, “about an international moral will” (Glendon, 2001, p. 86).

One of the UN’s moral stands was advocating for and working toward the ultimate goal of social justice (Ishay, 2004). Parties as diverse as Syria, who called for the inclusion of social justice in the UDHR (Glendon, 2001), and Eleanor Roosevelt, who saw the UN’s mission as furthering social justice (Hareven, 1968), advocated for this vision. This is certainly not to say that all nations were equal advocates for social justice. To the contrary, the most powerful governments—the UK, the USSR, the USA—strongly resisted human rights, particularly when they challenged domestic policies. In the end, however, other nations—China, Syria, India, Argentina—banded together to ensure its centrality in the UN’s mission (Anderson, 2003; Glendon, 2001; Johnson, 1987; Morsink, 1999; Mower, 1997). Ultimately, as understood by the UN delegates, human rights led to social justice by challenging the root causes of conflict (Glendon, 2001; Ishay, 2004; UNESCO, 1949). Over 40 years later, Secretary General of the UN Boutros Boutros-Ghali described the UN’s primary aim as “address[ing] the deepest causes of conflict: economic despair, social injustice and political oppression” (in Andreopoulos, 1997, p. 11). This attention to economic inequality, unequal power hierarchies, and political oppression remain the focus of 21st-century social justice and human rights work.

What, then, are the specific rights guaranteed by the UDHR that move the world toward greater social justice? Roughly, the UDHR included two categories of rights—political/civil and social/economic. Furthermore, the UDHR declared the equality of all humans by guaranteeing the right to self-determination and freedom from tyranny, oppression, and exploitation. Human rights scholar Michael Ignatieff (2003) argues that these freedoms—to self-determination and from oppression—are deeply linked: “We know from historical experience that when human beings have defensible rights—when their agency as individuals is protected and enhanced—they are less likely be abused and oppressed” (Ignatieff, 2003, p. 4).

In its 30 articles, the UDHR outlaws slavery, servitude, torture, arbitrary arrest, detention, and interference in priva...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Conversations, Problems, and Action
• PART I: Historical Perspectives
• PART II: Theoretical Intersections
• PART III: Social Justice Pedagogy and Praxis
• Index