What is Justice in action?

Learning takes place on-site in the school yard, and in the local community and environment.

In reading the journal article, Place-Based Pedagogy for the Arts and Humanities by Eric L. Ball and Alice Lai, I was struck by the insight of making location the starting point for learning and by extension, creating social justice by seeing what is needed or lacking in that environment, appreciating the immediacy of our location as a learning playground (or not) as well as understanding from our students perspective but giving them guidance and strategies for life. This article has incredibly rich insights for the teacher and seeing the student as a whole person instead of merely a cog to fill out standardized tests and meet certain criteria's.

When I read, calls for educators to live up to their responsibility to cultivate in students the desire and ability to be “good caretakers” of their local natural and human community (52), I thought of the above video. Here is a kid who saw a need and learned from his mom (teacher) on ways to help kids reduce their stress by making them stuffed toys. He became passionate about this and his parents supported him with helping set up a space as well as Campbell receiving donations to make his project a reality.

As I was reading the article, the authors wrote about Wendell Berry and how "he emphasizes that the fruits of an education never exist in a vacuum, and that if an “education is to be used well, it is obvious that it must be used some where; it must be used where one lives, where one intends to continue to live; it must be brought home." For me, this means we need to think of our students, not merely as students but as our community. It seems obvious on one hand but on another, when we rush through the day and try to hurry on with our own lives, it makes sense to take this approach...if only to slow down a little and not get carried away by that beating drum. But it also makes that beating drum something to be challenged and hopefully, taken apart and made into something fresh and more reflective of individual needs instead of mass production.

This sense of mass production is what, I feel, has caused a lot of the issues we are currently facing today. When I think of the current election and the horrible corruption entangling nearly all of our officials, it is mind boggling and depressing. How did this corruption come to be? This push to accumulate and not share this wealth, not even to raise the minimum wage to something like $15 is an abomination of justice. That anyone would let mass amounts of people suffer at wages so low that they could not even afford their apartments (the price of apartments way surpasses the 30% of income for most people), let alone to live on their own is equal to 2-3 jobs and/or roommates. That there are people who would charge 100% more for medication (which they did not invent but merely bought the rights to) so that people will die of allergies, aids and cancers, is astounding. How did this unbridled greed come to be? Oh, and I'm grossly underestimating that 100%. I believe it is an illness, much like hoarding, that has never been treated but in fact, has been polished and glistened to look attractive while repeating over and over again on television that this is the ideal, that this is what you want and so on. The stepping on the backs of the small, weak and poor is exactly what you are supposed to do to raise your self up. This is what Ball and Lai are talking about when they wrote: "...colleges and universities will continue failing to cultivate care for places among students in terms of what is taught and learned, while simultaneously providing students with a credential that enables pursuit of careers that do actual damage to local communities." We need a moral compass and we need to change direction so that our students will not fall into the traps of self indulgence and mindlessness of corrupted media.

The way to change this is definitely through education, and awakening people to see each other as part of themselves. In other words, it goes back to that golden rule. Treating people how we would like to be treated. But how do you change these things in the bigger picture? I still believe in voting and democracy even if it is tainted by ignorance (greed). I think this is what we need to be keenly aware of as educators...watching for signs of apathy and finding out what our students are interested in and letting them run with it. "Theobald grounds his project in the conviction that education provides the most effective foundation or point of leverage for achieving place and community restoration (1997: 2, 119).

And this is key right here:

"History tells us, fairly unequivocally, that economic justice rests on widely distributed intellectual and deliberative power. Educational theory, therefore, ought not to trail behind prevailing economic wisdom; it should be the other way around."

Educational theory should be leading us not economic wisdom. This might explain why so many youth and students are pushed into subjects as young children who have no desire to go into that field. I took a class last semester and there was two groups of kids from different fraternities. Nearly all were going into banking or some sort of money related field. It was the strangest experience I had ever had. Only one or two kids talked about having jobs. One job was at a club for members only. The student admitted to feeling humiliated because of the treatment he got from those who considered themselves "higher up" then them. And yet, they continued to work there. Nearly all the kids saw what they were doing, being in a fraternity as a stepping stone for their place in the world by being associated with this group. What it came down to was this archaic idea of separating students based on income (wealth or name connections) and funneling them into jobs that are considered high paying and worthy by the parents. It takes an almost rebellion for a student to get out of that situation. I see why some might be tempted to medicate themselves to ignore what they are doing because they were never given the opportunity to say which direction they wanted. I started to think about how this over planning and routes are planned by well meaning parents can and should be something challenged.

I thought of the poet Kahlil Gibran

On Children Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

What struck me was how, no matter how hard we try, we cannot control our children and form them into what we would think best. In other words, we need to find out what our children want and help them succeed based on their dreams. How much more meaningful would life be if people were happy to make that choice of career or profession based on their own likes, rather than what it is their parents wanted for them? How many more doctors and nurses and artists, and teachers, etc, etc would there be if children were given a strong foundation (and in connection, parents and cultures) with schooling and living wages?

On one hand, I can see how the statement that educational institutions would really be held accountable for their graduates success and placement:

"Educational institutions would be held accountable to the places they operate and to the places their graduates wind up. Schools would not be denied a voice in the broader discourse of education simply because they are located in a rural or other marginalized location. Educational credentials, policies, and procedures would cease offering disincentives to faculty, administrators, and students for valuing rootedness in the community and landscape."

I think this is a noble attempt at seeing everyone has a place and I would hope this is the aim of every school. However, the reality is that people move and life happens. However, maybe that is an old way of thinking of things. Communication has changed so much now that a quick email/social media post and you can reach at least 1-100 people depending on who you are reaching out to. So, maybe it's time there was more accountability for, if not the success of students, at least to make sure people aren't falling into the wayside and know they have a support system.

Further, I also believe this means we should not just observe passively, rather, we need to stand with and/or protest against those things that are unequal. It might mean something as simple as voting for a politician based, not on fear or anger, but vote for what we value and hold dear to our hearts. It might mean standing up with our teachers for fair wages. What is it we value most and want for our future and all children's future? Do we want the "same old stuff" happening and getting worse or do we put global in our mindset and vote/stand for change?

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Ball and Lai state:

Educators would encourage students to learn critical tools for understanding and participating in not only local social and ecological issues per se, but also in those larger-than-local processes that play a substantial role in constituting such local issues. All of this would be practiced in ways that are sensitive to cultural differences among individuals and groups who reside there, and to the inequitable distributions of power and authority associated with those differences. It is no wonder that Gruenewald (2003) argues that a convergence of (ecohumanist) place-based education and critical pedagogy offers “the best of both worlds.”

This perspective made me think of my own experiences in California with working at an after school program at a library in Alhambra. The population was incredibly rich with multiple cultures from Latino to African American to multiple Asian ethnicity's. At the time, there was a planning committee working on gathering local opinion for the upcoming library they were planning on building. One little boy, around 9 years old, wanted desperately to talk with the community planners. I talked to his mom who was pleased that he would be given a chance to voice his opinion and he was brought forward to share his view. The committee listened to his suggestions (which we had worked on during the homework session) and congratulated him for being articulate and well informed. He looked like he could have floated across the room. I feel like this is an example of giving students the tools to see that they are valued, give them a chance to be heard and to really listen and take the perspectives to heart. By offering them space in a bigger part of the society (such as contributing to a project that could benefit many people. In our case we were lucky to have a library being made. But in other cultures, it could be getting a mural made (such as at my daughter's jr high, or creating projects with local businesses that would benefit a growing neighborhood shopping district, or making toys for kids who are sick, reaching out to community leaders and starting a garden in an abandoned lot, or protesting against mistreatment of the poor, standing up for fair wages, and so on). There are many chances to help one another and be an "ecohumanist".

In conclusion, as a future teacher and a current parent, I couldn't agree more that we need to see our immediate location as a place to grow and guide others. It's startling, for me, to write this as I didn't want to move to PA in the first place and saw it more of a necessity. On a personal note, I would say that as I've grown older and have lived in several places now, that it is comforting to have a place to really want to work with and feel we can contribute to. If I have fallen into complacency it is because I have forgotten to shake things up a bit and we do need to shake things up or risk becoming stagnant. This, I feel, is why there is such corruption...the current system does not want to change and we need to change to give our generation and generations a chance based on justice.

"And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.” Martin Luther King