Jonathan
Fisher
March
19, 2020
Micro
Review: Joy Ann Williamson, Lori Rhodes, and Michael Dunson, “A
Selected History of Social Justice in Education,” Review of
Research in Education 31 (2007): 195-224.
I
came down with a fever two days ago, which I was afraid might be the
COVID-19 bug, but turns out to be just a regular cold. Anyway, on
the advice of my family and coworkers I have stayed home these past
two days, which has given me a good chunk of extra reading time in a
quiet house. So, I’ve been able to dig into some of the pieces I
downloaded connected to my matriculation at UW in the fall, my future
advisers there, and the topics which I will pursue leading up to the
research for my dissertation.
This
piece, I am proud to say, was co-authored by one of my future
advisors, Joy Ann Williamson-Lott (I am guessing she has gotten
married since the publication of this piece 13 years ago, since her
last name is hyphenated now). It appeared in the AERA Review of
Research in Education while Dr. Williamson-Lott was still at Stanford
University. And it is important to me both because of its scope, and
the force of its concluding argument for the necessity of historical
research to projects of social justice in education.
That
this is a “selected” history of social justice in education, I
suppose is meant to be a nod to other groups such as LGBT people or
to other religious or cultural minorities such as Jews or Muslims
whose stories are somewhat conspicuously absent from this narrative,
which is inclusive of Asian, Native American, Latinx and Black as
well as White ethnic groups in its discussion. But from the
beginning, this piece, importantly sets the stakes as more than just
an enumeration of identifiable sub-groups within educational
jurisdictions of the United States, but as the struggle of what
constitutes education for social justice in the first place, broadly
education that promotes assimilation, or education for cultural
maintenance (“or something in between”). Will it “give
students skills to alter the social order,” or “enable students
to fit themselves into a higher station in that social order?”
(195). Also, citing Donato and Lazerson’s earlier essay on
contemporary problems in educational history, the authors consider
the ends to which history of education is deployed, and caution
against flat historical arguments that employ unbroken chains of
causality through time.
I
suppose this last caveat is aimed at a Marxist critical historical
view, although I need to dig more deeply into the pieces cited by
Donato & Lazerson, as well as Franke, (2000), to be sure. And
yet, the conspicuous absence of a specifically materialist critique
in this selected history is perhaps its most intriguing fault. It is
an especially glaring absence in light of the inclusion of W.E.B. Du
Bois quote, resonant not only among Black people, but, as the authors
acknowledge, across a range of ethnic minority communities in the
U.S.: “The Negro needs neither segregated schools nor mixed
schools. What he needs is Education.” I read Du Bois here as
making the materialist (not identitarian) argument. For, as the
authors of this paper show, in the case of the Chinese American
community in San Francisco who revolted against a 1971 desegregation
order issued on behalf of students in predominantly Black schools.
Assimilationist arguments are not the be-all, end-all of social
justice education. Indeed, assimilationist
calls for social justice may be wielded
just as easily as segregationist racism as a tool of capitalists to
exploit minority groups.
Despite
a possible blind spot in the area of class analysis, the authors
rightfully see the duty of historians of education as one of making
sure previously untold stories make their way into policy discourses.
They rightfully characterize this discourse as a “battle over our
national collective memory.” They
also note the power of historical scholarship to bring out narratives
of how racial and ethnic groups and individual members of these
groups have thought about their own struggles, and “defined social
justice for themselves” (215). This mode of intellectual history
is particularly attractive to me, and one which I want to pursue in
the future.
For
instance, I am interested in the question of how teachers or
activists in various educational movements/ struggles through history
of held up or looked to figures from other movements for inspiration
or guidance, despite their goals or particular ideological stances
differing. The contemporary case I’m thinking of is Tsuru for
Solidarity, survivors of Japanese incarceration, and others recalling
the voices of members of those activist movements to fight against
the incarceration of children at the US/ Mexico border. Or else,
Black Lives Matter’s use of Palestinian Liberation movement, but in
a more specific educational context. I need to go back and read that
Angela Davis essay about Palestine and Black Power… But also, I
imagine somewhere amongst imprisoned Japanese Americans during WWII
there were those who saw their plight as of a piece with earlier
oppressed groups– students
at Indian
Boarding Schools perhaps.
I’m
rambling on a bit here, but this is illustrative, again, of the power
that history of education has, as a mode of research to inform policy
decision shape the narratives that define curriculum at a variety of
levels– personal, community, regional, state, and international.
