SOCIAL JUSTICE EDUCATION PHILOSOPHY
The goals of social justice education are fourfold, including gaining critical consciousness, regaining empowerment, developing an attitude towards allyship, and understanding a healthy process for dialogue. Social justice education's foundational goal is to nurture critical consciousness, the participants ability to critically examine both themselves and society at large. Participants must be encouraged to understand and assess systems of privilege and oppression in micro and macro levels of society. Further, participants must be encouraged to examine their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. By examining both their privileged and oppressed identities, participants begin to develop a more authentic sense of self rooted in cultural humility.
Social justice education must work towards cultural empowerment. Cultural empowerment is a journey that requires participants to engage sociocultural diversity and develop ownership, both of their cultural selves and how they interact within diverse communities. Individuals that are culturally empowered do not fear diversity, rather they embrace diversity.
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Social justice education nurtures a disposition towards allyship. Only after participants develop critical consciousness and cultural empowerment do they have the energy to begin to challenge themselves to act as agents for a socially just world. Allyship is a commitment to others of differing social identities and a commitment to being true to oneself and ones beliefs. Allyship encourages ourselves to remain in cognitive dissonance while simultaneously challenging external and internal systems of oppression. Allyship is the beginning of working towards social justice.
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Social justice education is not complete without participating in a parallel process that teaches participants to engage in their own self-guided education and the education of others. Participants need to learn basic interpersonal skills and techniques for dialogue to ensure their diversity education is dynamic and never stagnates. Experiential learning coupled with structured reflection and dialogue are powerful mechanisms through which participants can safely risk standing at their learning edge while challenging themselves through one another. Through well-facilitated dialogue experiences, participants experience interactive activities and simulations designed to promote introspection and conversation.
Participants should be the primary teachers and learners in diversity education. Social justice educators should be culturally aware and humble facilitators that are skilled at strategically using themselves as a learning tool and catalyst for introspection. Social justice educators are never removed from the process and experience because they recognize that they have an obligation to model the ownership of their privilege, the negotiation of their oppression, and serve as an authentic ally for cultural communities.