Another Social Studies Is Possible: Challenging the Violence of Organized Forgetting

• In Event: Challenging Curricular Expectations in Social Studies Education

Abstract

This paper examines how one teacher educator addressed what Giroux calls the “violence of organized forgetting” by helping pre-service teachers question the normalization of oppression and to take seriously the idea that another knowledge is possible (Santos, 2009). Using a Testimonio research methodology, this paper shows how strategically introducing the concept of epistemic disobedience ( Mignolo, 2011) in one social studies methods course created a space for pre-service teachers to interrogate their personal beliefs about the common good, race, knowledge hierarchies, and the violence of organized forgetting.

Author

• Ramon Vasquez, SUNY - College at New Paltz