Addressing Community Social Problems Through Social Justice Education: Social Justice Curriculum for Elementary School Children

• In Event: 72.015 - Teaching to Resist and Liberate in the Contested Era of Neoliberalism

Abstract

Social justice education aims to empower children through fostering critical awareness of power and inequalities that impact children’s lives and experiences, and through teaching social problem solving and advocacy skills so that students may learn to become agents of social change within their own communities. This paper describes a social justice curriculum that has been developed and implemented in a small private elementary school located in a socioeconomically and socioculturally diverse urban area. The curriculum focuses on promoting a global and multicultural critical perspective that is integrated throughout the academic curriculum and also focuses on teaching students social advocacy and social problem-solving skills. The curriculum is unique in that it focuses on children of elementary school age.

Authors

• Torres-Harding Susan, Roosevelt University

• Nakisha Hobbs, Village Leadership Academy

• K. Milam Brooks, University of Illinois at Chicago