Critical Educators

Teachers have a significant role to play in developing citizens committed to social justice. They can best fulfill this role by guiding students to examine injustice, seek out multiple perspectives on social problems, and develop concrete strategies for improving their communities and nation. This work is best supported by the development of a socially just and empowering classroom community. Thus, critical educators need to teach not only about but also for social justice, in their personal relationships with students as well as in society as a whole.

[Adapted from Rahima Wade's, "Citizenship for Social Justice," published in the Winter 2004 Issue of the Kappa Delta Phi Record.]

Critical educators must recognize how schools function within an untenable contradiction. On one hand, schools are expected to respond to the needs of hierarchies associated with the capitalist labor force and the marketplace. And, on the other hand, schools are suppose to create equality of access to rights and opportunities for the nation’s citizens’ as promised within an ostensibly democratic republic. Critical educators who are concerned with social justice, then, work toward establishing a culture that cultivates human connection, intimacy, trust and honesty, within the complex sociopolitical context in which educational institutions are located.

[Adapted from Antonia Darder's, "A Reflection on Educators for Social Justice" speech, given at the 2004 Annual Business Meeting of the AERA CESJ SIG in San Diego, CA]

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