Social Justice and Education

Culture is one of the most complex words. People come from different places have different culture, and different culture shapes different identities.  Culture has great impact on social justice.

Social justice is to keep a balance on a group of people and society and work on equality and fairness, helping people understand what is right and wrong in human beings.

The rich and poor is a huge part of this topic. People from different families are standing on different situation. The ‘rich and poor’ has impacted on all students.

Basically there are two main parts – the health care and home-based cognitive stimulation.

Ø  Health care

Poorer people may get poorer health care. Poor children’s mother may get less health care during their pregnancy; children may also prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol. Due to these situation children may be endogenous physical disabled. Because of their financial problem they may exposure to toxins as their living environment is polluted; children may grow up in a unsafe environment. Violence and crowded housing can influence on children’s mind and actions and cause problems.

Ø  Home-based cognitive stimulation

Compare to rich families poorer children get less academic and language stimulations as they have less parental occupation. All of these can make children do not have an idea of how to behave, also may be self-abased. Poorer children get fewer educational experiences and equipment. For example, they do not have chance get on computers; they have less toys and books. So when other kids are talking about computer game, YouTube videos they might have no idea of what that is. Therefore they felt they were left out. Disadvantaged children’s academic growth can stall over summer when school closed, relative to middle-SES children.

We all understand that most of the time kids are just copying what other people do, especially from their friends and parents. So when children go to school they influence teachers and classmates. Teachers may change the way of teaching; “When you touch black, you become black, when you touch red, you become red.” Their classmates may influenced by them. School thus affects other young people.

Reference

Bourdieu, P. (1973). Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In R. Browen (Ed.), Papers in the Sociology of Education (pp. 71-112). London: Tavistock.

Coleman,J. S. (1987). Families and schools. Educational Researcher, 32-38.

Connell, R. W. (1977). Ruling Class Ruling Culture: Studies of Conflict, Power and Hegemony in Australian Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Côté, S. (2011). How social class shapes thoughts and actions in organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 31, pp. 43-71.

Lareau, A. (2003). Unequal childhoods: Class, Race and family life. University of California Press, Berkley, CA.