Western Cape Education Department

Social Justice and Education

Education departments across the world are placed under enormous pressure to deliver results in a performance culture which has emerged through a range of tests that are being administered internationally such as the PISA and TIMMS. There is enormous political pressure to perform and compete internationally.    There is a resounding silence on the pedagogic, psychological and social  challenges and solutions as the bureaucracy continuously reinvents itself amidst much political and social pressure.  It is against this background that there is little or no change as poor communities and poor children are reproduced.  Bowls and Gintis emphasized in the book Schooling in Capitalist America that schools reproduce the status quo.  That poor children in poor communities are reproduced at the expensive of a performance culture that favors rich children.

The
contention of this project is that education departments reproduce the
status quo as well.  Ultimately bureaucrats believe the inauthentic narrative
they create, they lack a sociological imagination at the expense of future
generations and millions of vulnerable children who become slaves to the labor
market or part of the massive prison population.  I want to conduct research and provide guidelines for education departments worldwide to alleviate poverty

I work for an education department but this is my personal project.  I think education needs to be revolutionized internationally.  It is a project that attempts to reduce inequality

It has been well documented that education presents a unique opportunity to address the challenge of inequality Most systems of education have not made a serious attempt to address the challenge.    Reports out of the most powerful nations in the world suggests that some communities have been reproduced for over a hundred years.  The Black Lives Matters movement in the USA bears testimony to this point

It could prove useful to assess the realities that confront poor learners in poor schools in the US and other countries.  Most countries look up to first world countries with that have major economies to resolve education challenges.   The contention of this project is that organograms of education departments should change and be aligned to a social justice model that asks the question in all decision making, would our decisions reduce inequality?  Whilst this is the ideal and challenging ideal, it must be noted that that should be the objective in a world that is plagued with such great inequality. 

Education departments of the world treat poor and vulnerable children unfairly. Two-thirds of minority students still attend schools that are predominantly minority most of them located in central cities and funded below those in neighboring districts.  Recent analyses of data prepared for school finance cases in Alabama, New Jersey, New York, Louisiana, and Texas have found that on every tangible measure – from qualified teachers to curriculum offerings-schools serving greater numbers of color had significantly few resources than schools servining mainly white students.  Even within urban school districts, schools with high concentrations of low-income and minority students receive fewer instructional resources than others.  She emphasizes that over the last 30 years, a large body of research has shown that four factors consistently influence student achievement:  all else equal, students perform better if they are educated in smaller schools where they are well known, have small class sizes, receive a challenging curriculum, and have more highly qualified teachers.  Minority students are much less likely than while children to have any of these resources.  I want to bring to the centre the challenge of inequality in the first and third world by writing a book for education departments across the world.

This projects contends that the only way to implement policy that attempts to reduce inequality is to use a social justice model.  Once the practical implications of a social justice model have been grasped, it is important to align the organogram of education departments to address the injustice of inequality.   This project will provide guidance on changing organograms and the narrative.

International data suggests that this is indeed a serious problem and it is growing.  The crime and violence that confronts begins in the classrooms of schools.  Children who are not well education pose a serious threat to the stability of society.  Inequality is growing for more than 70 per cent of the global population, exacerbating the risks of divisions and hampering economic and social development. But the rise is far from inevitable and can be tackled at a national and international level, says a flagship study released by the UN on Tuesday (UN News, 2021).The main task of this project is to develop a social justice model as a planning tool for education across the globe.  It will equip bureaucrats and planners with the intellectual and planning tools to ask the question, how can I reduce inequality.

My book will attempt to do the following:

 It is important that a social justice theory be applied to education.  This chapter suggests that vulnerable children be brought to the centre of education planning particularly at the level of education departments that implement policy.  There is a need to restructure education departments and generate a narrative that forces them to ask the question how do we reduce inequality?

Rawls (1993) argued the following principles of justice:

1. Each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties which is compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for all.

2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions.  First, they must be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they must be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.

This project will explains the contemporary problems facing society in terms of inequality and suggest structural change within education department as well as a comprehensive narrative that forces education authorities to ask the question how can fairness be applied to education policy and practice?