The title of a recent online article in Education Week (free registration required) gave me pause: “Election renews controversy over social-justice teaching.” Social justice education is often perceived as “left wing” and biased, as if the content of our public school humanities curriculum has no bias. As if the United States wasn’t built upon the Constitution, a document detailing within its pages … social justice. As if each amendment to that Constitution over the years wasn’t an effort to better fulfill the vision of equality and freedom that lie at its core.

Humane education encompasses social justice (along with environmental ethics, animal protection and analysis of cultural issues), and like social justice, occasionally raises controversy. But I believe that this controversy is false, and that we must clearly and forcefully reject it. This does not mean that the issues that humane education addresses aren’t controversial; many of them are. But, humane education as a field of study and approach to learning ought to be embraced by all as education at its best. Humane education asks students to identify and embody their deepest values in order to address the realities of persistent injustices, oppressions, and destruction in the world. Ultimately, this enables them to help create not only a more perfect union, but also a more perfect world. There should be nothing controversial in this.

But humane educators, like all educators, need to take care to make sure that their particular biases on specific issues do not subtly deter their students from questioning and thinking independently. Such influence is neither good education, nor humane education. We should be delighted when our students disagree with us and articulate their own perspectives. Perhaps to some, this is controversial. If so, let’s debate that, not the importance of discussing the most pressing challenges of our time.

~ Zoe

Image courtesy of jackietam.

Filed under: humane education Tagged: | bias, Constitution, controversial issues, curriculum, education policy, educational policy, humane education, social justice