Forgotten Memories of Social Justice Education: Difficult Knowledge and the Impossibilities of School and Research

• In Event: 56.020 - "Equal Education Opportunity": Seeking Clarity to an Unclear Promise

Abstract

This paper is about a researcher and participant who after five years reunited to remember a high school curriculum of social justice. Grounded in Britzman’s work on difficult knowledge, this paper asks: What do tenth grade students who attended a school committed to political engagement remember about their experience? Past and recent interviews are interwoven to surface three lines: the failure to secure knowledge as unitary and in agreement; education as deferred in time; and research as relational dilemmas and unconscious desire. The aim is to complicate teaching and learning by illuminating difficulties, to unseat our reliance on evidence and outcome. Throughout, the positionality of the researcher is discussed, particularly her desire for justice as lovely knowledge to be proven.

Author

• Debbie Sonu, City University of New York (CUNY)