Peace and Struggle in the Classroom: The New Intellectual Foundation?

Your kids are getting the straight dope at school right?

Good teachers laying it out, right down the middle, eh? Passionate, rigorous training, professionally delivered?

Maybe not.

The Nation's got a new piece discussing an old problem: left-wing multcultural indoctrination (via Maggie's Farm):

Positioned among smoky factories and aging row houses on Chicago's West Side, the immaculate Little Village Lawndale High School (LVLHS) serves as a constant reminder to community residents of what collective action can produce. Concerned that 70 percent of neighborhood students traveled to different parts of the city for high school, parents organized vigorously for the construction of a new facility in their backyard. After initially approving the plans, city officials stalled construction, claiming that funds had to be diverted to other projects. In response, the community redoubled its efforts, culminating in a nineteen-day hunger strike at the site of the proposed building, referred to by supporters as Camp Cesar Chavez. "Construyan la escuela ahora!" was the protesters' battle cry, and after six long years, the school was opened as promised in 2005.

Aside from the beautiful building, the struggle birthed a new educational environment for Little Village's youth. "The parents kept saying they really wanted our school to teach the values of peace and struggle," says Rito Martinez, the principal of Social Justice High School at LVLHS, "and what the community had to do to fight for the school." One of four small schools housed on the campus, Martinez's social justice school was specifically created to foster basic skills and literacy--as well as critical inquiry--through projects and problems centered on race, gender and economic equity. "There's a combination of self-awareness and the opportunity to become socially conscious," he says. "We're not dogmatic about it...but we give them the opportunity for self-discovery."

On a fall morning a week into the school year, it's clear that the school's methodology excites the students of LVLHS, 98 percent of whom qualify as low-income. It's Wednesday, which means the kids participate in extended teacher-generated colloquiums focusing on topics that allow students to explore their identity in an academic setting. In a section on student organizing, thirteen high schoolers attempt to define the word "community," brainstorming about their city's assets and problems and how the students can tackle an issue of importance to them. Down the hall, an enthusiastic teacher focusing on ethnography leads a lively discussion about racial stereotypes in the media as an entree into the idea of hegemony. Hands pop up across the packed classroom as students argue about how advertisements influence the way society views larger populations. As Martinez notes, providing students the flexibility to "explore learning" is something that's generally offered only to kids in affluent districts, yet the practice can be transformational.

While the history of LVLHS's genesis is unique, its approach is not; the movement to link education, social justice and activism is appealing to a growing number of educators and community organizations around the country. Updating successful principles from liberatory education programs of the past, teachers and community members are finding exciting ways to engage a new generation of urban students alienated by mainstream methodologies, something countless reform efforts have thus far failed to accomplish. And as Congress moves to reform or scrap the No Child Left Behind Act, legislators could benefit from studying these new techniques, which have been largely ignored on a national scale.

Hmm...

Students can explore identity? I wonder what that might be?

Indigenous education? Hueheutlamachilistle — "the way of our ancestors"? Learning communities on "the Europeans' slaughter of this continent's original inhabitants"? How about high school lectures on "the anthropology of race, gender, and power"?

I'm sure there are many more possibilities when teaching social justice eduction.

Here's more from the article:

Conservatives, with the New York Sun and City Journal leading the charge, have denounced the movement for indoctrinating public school students with leftist politics at the expense of general education. But successful social justice education ensures that teachers strike a balance between debating sociopolitical problems that affect children's lives and teaching them academic basics on which they will be tested. A science teacher can plant an urban garden, allowing students to learn about plant biology, the imbalance in how fresh produce is distributed and how that affects the health of community residents. An English teacher can explore misogyny or materialism in American culture through the lens of hip-hop lyrics. Or as Rico Gutstein, a professor of mathematics education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, suggests, a math teacher can run probability simulations using real data to understand the dynamics behind income inequality or racial profiling. These are "examples of lessons where you can really learn the math basics," he says, "but the purpose of learning the math actually becomes an entree into, and a deeper understanding of, the political ramifications of the issue."

Such practical exercises, advocates argue, improve upon the standard approach to youth development, which aims to promote individual success but fails to examine the inequities that inhibit it. "At least to expose people to a structural analysis of inequality and the distribution of goodies in society," says Charles Payne, the Frank P. Hixon Professor at the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration, "seems to be one of the more obvious ways that we can do better than we have done." If executed properly, social justice education also lays the intellectual foundation so essential for independent analytical thought while providing students the opportunity to realize their own human agency. In this way, urban students are treated not as burdens to their community but as partners in solving the complex problems that plague their neighborhoods.

I'm a bit skeptical that this pedagogy's really "the intellectual foundation so essential for independent analytical thought."

A couple of semesters of Western political philosophy would be my recommendation for some intellectual foundations. You know, those dead white males...