Social justice is a driving factor in
schools that affects many students. Social justice from an educational
perspective can be concerned with fairness and impartial treatment of all
groups to ensure that their members have equal access to education (Gregory et
al., 2009). Social justice issues can arise due to inequality regarding gender,
disability and socio-economic status. There has been debating view weather
social justice is really needed. Three reasons to ignore social justice
include: (Gewirtz 1998)
1.
“Each to their own”
2.
“Fixing this is just plain
common sense”
3.
“I am above this talk of
values”.
However Gewirtz (1998) has agreed to the
idea of social justice, as there is a need to “map the territory of social
justice in new ways because previous notions of social justice may be no longer
adequate today”. This reason that Gewirtz gives needs to be implemented today,
as this will reduce the inequalities in schools. There are two dimensions to
justice, which include distributive justice and relational justice.
Distributive justice is whereby justice is the basic structure of society.
Relational justice refers to the political/relational system within which the
social and economic goods, rights and responsibilities take place. As a teacher having awareness of the
discourse of social justice can assist in responding to conflicting politics
that may come into play in a teacher’s life.
As there have been raising issues of social
justice many parents are having greater concern. Many parents prefer to put
their children in religious schools. For instance in the article “ School
choice is not just keeping the faith” (Tovey & Mitchell) state that the
popularity of religious schools is increasing. The identity of a person
determines whether their access for education is culturally and socially valid. Many students have been discriminated due to
their cultural background and social economic status. Children from low social
economic status develop academic skills more slowly. Low social economic status
communities often lack resource, negatively affecting students’ academic
progress.
Thus it can be seen that social justice can
have great affects on a students education as the issues concerning social
justice are increasing, concerning parents.
References:
· Gewirtz, S. (1998). Conceptualizing social justice in education:
Mapping the territory. Journal of Education Policy, 13(4),
469-484.
·
Tovery, J. Mitchell, G. (2013).
School choice is not justice keeping faith. Retrieved on 6/10/13
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