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Since taking office on July 1, , this new union leadership — inspired by the successful strikes in West Virgina, Arizona and Los Angeles — have been preparing for a strike. The conditions that led to the Oakland strike are similar to those that led to strikes in other cities earlier this year, such as Los Angeles.
For instance, public education in Oakland has been defunded and the city, much like Los Angeles, is experiencing charter school expansion that teachers say is taking money away from public schools. Teacher union actions in Oakland also mirror tactics and strategies that unions have used in other cities. For instance, Oakland teacher union leaders have enlisted the help of student and community groups and focused on racial justice. Much of the media attention on teacher strikes has focused on the economic reasons for the strikes, such as low teacher salaries , rising health care costs and aging textbooks.
But there are important historical factors at play. But there are some exceptions. However, it is also important to note that during the s, many teachers in the United States also found themselves at odds with communities of color. Perhaps this is best exemplified by the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Strike , when the United Federation of Teachers rallied against black community control of schools. CORE also supported parents and students occupying an elementary school to prevent its closure.
They worked in alliance with dozens of community organizations. The Black Lives Matter movement fueled energy into a new student movement, called Students Deserve , directly supported by the union leadership.
The six-day LA strike in early represented, more than anything else, an explicit racial justice struggle. The LA strike also called into question claims by the charter and voucher movements that school choice policies represent the best path to social mobility for children from poor communities of color.
Teacher unions are not always — and not often — the leaders of broader social justice movements. Screen music and the question of originality - Miguel Mera — London, Islington.
UEA Inaugural lecture: Alternative performance measures: do managers disclose them to inform us, or to mislead us? Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. Educators for Social Justice talk a lot about diversity, but do they promote the most important type of diversity—diversity of ideas?
Together, global educators and social justice educators can forge pedagogical content knowledge that bridges the gap between affirming one's own identity and maintaining unity with the whole, thus exemplifying a robust notion of social justice. The Sunday Express , p. And that it was me, Who won that big trophy That sat in your office when you Used to detain me for hours And tell me I was no Good. Ultimately, students presented their plan to the San Leandro School Board. Grumet, M. She has been a school social worker for 26 years. Jal Mehta.
Educators for Social Justice are disingenuous in posing as facilitators of student-centered learning, when as teachers they have largely foreclosed the discussion or at least steered it toward a preferred outcome. They also risk grossly distorting reality. It is fine to have students view events through the eyes of marginalized people, but how about also familiarizing students with the empirical, scientific research reported by both liberal and conservative think tanks, such as the Brookings Institution and Heritage Foundation , that if a young person would do four relatively simple things in sequence—get a high school diploma, get a job, get married, and only then have kids—he or she has a more than 90 percent chance of escaping poverty?
Clear, articulate, and cogent.[Zeichner] exhibits a commitment to a vision of social justice that rightly demands the very best both from society and from those of. Read Teacher Education and the Struggle for Social Justice book reviews & author details and more at giuliettasprint.konfer.eu Free delivery on qualified orders.
I would argue that, if you want to teach social justice, it should be taught not only through reading about poverty in America but also by modeling it first-hand—say, penalizing students who do not complete their homework. Aside from teaching individual responsibility, this gets classmates to understand the concept of fairness, treating all students with the same expectations rather than privileging some by cutting them slack.
Martin Rochester is a professor of political science at the University of Missouri-St.
A slightly different version of this article was first published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The views expressed herein represent the opinions of the author and not necessarily the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Search Search.