Insisting that Social Justice be Critical, Accurate, and Authentic: Time to Call Ourselves Out

• In Event: Reckoning with Ignorance: Mapping Authentic Arenas of Resistance

Abstract

Critical educators note that “socially-just” environments, governments, and curriculum can be found as smoke & mirrors. Creating a catch phrase does not mean that change will come to fruition. By using critical pedagogical ways to interrogate what Donaldo Macedo so succinctly called stupidification, we are able to reveal what is missing in popular educational discourse and the power behind creations of diversion. How do we create and support a language, curriculum, and an authentic, implemented practice of Social Justice? How do we name and uncover diversions? How do we understand it takes more than new texts to introduce new, progressive social theories and actions that make significant differences. How do we work to engage authentic and socially-just ways? This presentation will discuss ways in which we can work to challenge the smoke & mirrors of replicated educational implementations; and to instead, examine alternatives which can advance pedagogical knowing and being.

Author

• Shirley Steinberg, University of Calgary