Edu 430/530 – Professionalism and Social Justice
Distant Cousins: Teaching for Social Justice and Character Education
Developed by Pat Russo
Your assignments for this course center on your ability to understand Teaching for Social Justice
(TSJ), apply TSJ in your teaching, and articulate this understanding and application via a
presentation at the TSJ conference in October. We have noticed a tendency in student teachers
(and their host teachers) to turn to Character Education (CE) materials and lessons to satisfy this
assignment. Since TSJ is relatively new to student teachers and could be unfamiliar to host
teachers, this tendency to move toward something more familiar is understandable. However,
submitting a presentation that reflects CE in place of one that reflects TSJ is not acceptable. This
discussion is geared at introducing you to the relationship between CE and TSJ.
Imagine.
Imagine that your friend has invited you to a dinner where Angelina Jolie* will be present.
Trying to control your excitement, you arrive for the dinner to find that Angelina isn’t there.
Instead you have been seated next to a stranger. When you find a chance to speak to the host and
ask about what happened to the plans for you to meet Angelina Jolie, your host informs you that
while she (Angie) couldn’t make the dinner, she did send a second cousin in her place. You
spend the rest of the meal getting to know Angelina’s second cousin.
Presenting a CE lesson (or unit) in the place of describing the TSJ efforts you made in this
student teaching placement is like introducing us to your second cousin, when we are interested
in meeting you. These two approaches are related to each other (like distant cousins), but they
are also quite distinct from each other. The discussion below describes our thinking about this
relationship. See the attached diagram, “Teaching for Social Justice—Character Education,” for
a summary of this relationship
Common Characteristics of Character Education (CE) and Teaching for Social Justice
(TSJ). Like distant cousins, CE and TSJ have some things in common. They both draw upon a
history of efforts (think of ancestors) in teaching to help children with moral and ethical
development (though each approach tends to draw upon a slightly different, but overlapping, set
of efforts). Both approaches value principles of honesty and caring. Both approaches make use
of cooperative learning strategies, and strive to support academically rigorous learning. Both
approaches could be considered to have a hopeful, joyful, kind, and visionary approach that
seeks to improve society. However, the distinctions between these two approaches are quite
clear.
Distinct Goals of TSJ and CE. Character Education materials and/or programs seek to develop
good character in students by building respect and responsibility of self, others, and property.
The focus of this approach is on general values and attributes of individual behavior. CE
proponents believe that if we can get each child to be more respectful and responsible, then all of
society will improve. In contrast, the goal of teachers who are working for social justice is to
develop a just society by helping children learn to value difference, identify injustice, and take
action against injustice. The focus in TSJ is on sociopolitical issues specific to cultural diversity
*
Pick any well known person who you would love to meet
at the local (classroom) level or in the wider society. TSJ proponents believe that social and
collective action is the key to improving society. In short CE focuses on changing the
individual; TSJ focuses on changing society. While CE teachers seek to create a caring
classroom community, TSJ seeks a just classroom community. Still, skeptics could argue that
these two approaches seem very much alike.
The Different Focus and History of CE and TSJ in Schools. Of course in both cases,
teachers’ work is on helping individual students and classes to learn and grow. In CE
classrooms, teachers address virtues and good habits (or manners) like: diligence, obedience,
loyalty, kindness, honesty, compassion, self-control and discipline, dependability, accountability,
integrity and fairness, perseverance, cooperation, empathy, forgiveness, patriotism and
citizenship, tolerance, courtesy, politeness, generosity and charity, and others. No one can argue
that these things aren’t important. In fact teachers, in one way or another, have been teaching
commonly accepted “virtues,” since the colonies were formed. In fact, over the course of this
nation’s history, the importance of directly teaching about the basic ideas of CE has ebbed and
flowed in response to current political, economic, and cultural conditions. Most recently, as a
result of Project SAVE legislation, CE has become a curriculum strand—that is, a certain amount
of instructional time is dedicated to CE lessons. Today, the New York State Education
Department has called for every district to have a Character Education plan in place.
This brings up a key distinction between CE and TSJ. While we often think of CE as a
curriculum unit (activities that lead to lessons that lead to units), we think of TSJ as a way of
approaching any curriculum. TSJ tends to be viewed more as a pedagogical approach. Teachers
who are teaching for social justice find ways to discuss power differentials in human relations
regardless of the curriculum content; they make use of multiple ethnic and cultural perspectives
(something that CE teachers can avoid and still succeed with CE). TSJ also directly addresses
anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-classist thinking and action.
Like CE, TSJ also draws on a history in American society—the history of working for social
justice, a principle in this country as old as (or even older than) our Declaration of Independence,
US Constitution, and Bill of Rights. While TSJ hasn’t been sanctioned by the NYSED in the
same way that CE has been, there is an expectation that teachers will teach civics (citizenship).
Also, of course, children recite the Pledge of Allegiance each day, ending with the phrase, “with
freedom and justice for all.”
To summarize thus far, both approaches seek to help students to learn and grow in ways that
promise to ultimately improve society. Both approaches can claim a history in US schooling.
One approach, CE, focuses on developing individual attitudes and behavior; the other approach,
TSJ, focuses on developing social justice. CE talks about respect, responsibility and particular
virtues. TSJ talks about discrimination, injustice and what can be done to make the world more
just. Hopefully the distinctions between these two approaches are becoming clearer. Perhaps
considering specific classroom examples that reflect TSJ and CE can shed additional light on the
distinctions we have described here.
Classroom Examples of TSJ and CE. The examples we provide here all tend to describe
lessons that stand to the side of the regular curriculum. This is probably done in an effort to save
time and space, by not providing a full class and curriculum description. However, readers of
this summary should be able to see how easy it would be to include these examples within the
larger curriculum. In order to point out the distinction between CE and TSJ, we have
summarized a few of the articles from the Spring 2004 issue of Teaching Tolerance (included in
this course packet).
We have recommended that all student teachers purchase one (or more) of the books published
by Rethinking Schools, Ltd. (www.rethinkingschools.org) In addition student teachers will find
two copies of recent issues of Teaching Tolerance in their packets (www.teachingtolerance.org).
These resources (and web sites) are full of lesson plans, most of which reflect a TSJ approach.
The article, “Lessons from Goldilocks” (page 9), describes some lessons in a kindergarten
classroom that reflect a CE approach. The teacher introduces “social expectations,” to her
students. She talks with the students about “what it sounds like to be respectful,” “what caring
looks like,” The teacher reads stories (like Goldilocks and the Three Bears) and the students
decide whether the characters are “not yet within expectations,” or have “met expectations,” and
why. Like most CE approaches, this teacher is interested in helping her students learn about
proper (acceptable) behavior. We see terms like caring, respect, and social responsibility within
the description.
In contrast to this example, the article, “Of Science and Heroes” (p. 8) describes a set of lessons
for K-2 classrooms, that reflect a TSJ approach. The teacher begins with a goal of combating
stereotypes. She talks about what a stereotype is, reads stories to the children and discusses
stereotyping in terms of “what boys/girls ‘can’ do; and invites the children to point out social
stereotypes when they see them. Then the teacher diverges into (science) lessons about the body,
and eventually brought the unit full circle with a conversation about how different people are on
the outside, but the same on the inside of our bodies. In this example, the teacher is giving
students language to name and understanding stereotyping, an injustice.
Several other articles in this issue of Teaching Tolerance provide examples of TSJ middle school
and high school levels (“My Rights: Their Rights,” page 11; American Tapestry page 12; and
The Poverty Project, page 13, and “’They’re Playing Indians, page 16-17). In each of these
examples, teachers’ goals included: getting middle school students to think about the rights of
others; close the gap between the majority students population and the Second Language
Learners in the school; or remove prejudices and dispel myths about poor people. In each
example, the lesson begins with a goal of addressing injustice.
In contract to this, in the article, “True Blue” (pages 20-21) that describes an anti-bullying
approach, the teacher describes her purpose, “to help children process decisions about their
behaviors in school,” and think about “the decisions they make about what they say or do.”
Unlike the TSJ approaches that build lessons in an effort to address some larger social injustice
that is playing out in the school too, the CE approaches begin with the goal of modifying
children’s behavior in the school, perhaps with an expectation that this change will influence
how the children act outside of the school too. Also see the attached page, “Teaching for Social
Justice Sampler, Valentine’s Day in a Third Grade, Rural/Suburban Classroom,” for a table that
compares CE and TSJ approaches.
Stand-alone (independent) Curriculum or Curriculum Infusion of TSJ and CE. It is
possible in CE classrooms to see CE lessons that are integrated into regular classroom content.
When CE lessons are taught in addition to the regular content (math, science, language
arts/literacy, social studies) at least we see NYS Learning Standards linked to the CE lessons.
Most often in our experiences in Edu 430/530, the CE curriculum is delivered in lessons separate
from other regular classroom content—an add-on to the curriculum. We have heard teachers
complain about how they are being expected to fit in yet another piece to an already full
curriculum. It may be that some proponents would claim that teachers can maintain a CE stance
in all that they do, but our experiences (and the information we hear from our students), this
seems to happen very little. Usually CE is a separate, mostly stand-alone curriculum.
TSJ lessons also can be stand-alone curriculum (added on), and/or linked to NYS Learning
Standards content lessons. However, it’s not uncommon to see teachers employ what we call a
TSJ stance in all of their teaching. Rather than being added on to the curriculum, TSJ is an
approach teachers use to enhance the regular curriculum.
For the assignments in this course, we are expecting to see student teachers find ways to infuse
TSJ efforts into the regular curriculum. We will not accept proposals/presentations that represent
a CE approach. While we acknowledge that CE lessons have value in the classroom, and we
expect that the student teachers will learn more about CE in this placement, we are interested in
having our students demonstrate their understanding of another valuable approach, TSJ.