Social Justice Education

By Karma Chukdong B.Ed. M.A. M.Ed.

In this latest dynamic text the author outlines the foundations of Academic Administration today. What is unique about this text is that it proceeds one step further by not just dwelling on the theory but focuses the majority of the text on the practical aspects of efficient academic administration for today. Social Justice Education is: academic administration in action, change management in practice, a powerful method to unite academic teams, and school campuses. This text presents studies in: anti-colonial and Indigenous studies, gender studies, class and poverty studies, diaspora, and transnational studies, the role of media, and communication ,feminist, LGBTQ and disability studies, ethics in administration, and anti- racist and social class studies. But how does an academic administration team implement Social Justice Education? This is the purpose of this timely text.

This latest research looks at the origin and purpose of education. This text looks at the constant rise in anxiety, mental health issues, and depression in our students today. This extreme competition and labeling of students is highly unhealthy for our students. The label we give our students will follow them into their adulthood. Our current system is broken and has been broken for many generations of students. Education was supposed to be medicine for the human spirit, mind, and body. Real education takes care of the human spirit like medicineit nurtures the spirit and emotions. Currently, if a student shows emotion or has a behavioural issue, the student will be put into the hall or sent to the office. Worst case scenario, the student is labeled and put into a different learning stream, and the issue of the student is never looked after, but neglected, and they never reach their true potential. This text looks at education as medicine, and furthermore it looks into the important pedagogy of seeing the importance of peace educationpeace and justice studies as the foundation of peace in our schools, communities, and nations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546211358

Karma Chukdong B.Ed. M.A. M.Ed.

Professor Karma Chukdong holds a master’s in arts and science and a bachelor of education and honors BA. After working in school systems for a few years, he wanted to earn some further qualifications to make more concrete positive change in school systems in terms of management. He has taken many courses at the doctor of education level and eventually acquired a second master’s degree from the University of Toronto in education. This master of education degree focused on curriculum, policy, teaching, leadership, and education management. Karma Chukdong prepared these practical solutions found in this book. These are the most immediate concerns in education management that can be implemented by any administrator or educator who holds compassionate leadership as her or his philosophical pedagogy. This text is presented in a way that is accessible and connected to the practicing education specialist and the passionate parent preparing for the academic life of their child. Presently, Professor Chukdong is Director, Teaching Excellence and Learning at First Nations Technical Institute. Other titles by this author are The Human Family, Educational Leadership: A Student-Centered Approach, Education Management: Building Student Success and Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Today.

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© 2017 Karma Chukdong B.Ed., M.A., M.Ed. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/05/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1136-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1135-8 (e)

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Social Justice Education

This latest research looks at the origin and purpose of education. This text looks at the constant rise in anxiety, mental health issues, and depression in our students today. This extreme competition and labelling of students is highly unhealthy for our students. The label we give our students will follow them into their adulthood. Our current system is broken and has been broken for many generations of students. Education was supposed to be Medicine for the human spirit, mind and body. Real education takes care of the human spirit like Medicine it nurtures the spirit and emotions. Currently, if a student shows emotion or has a behavioural issue the student will be put into the hall, or sent to the office. Worst case scenario the student is labelled and put into a different learning stream, and the issue of the student is never looked after, but neglected and they never reach their true potential. This text looks at Education as Medicine, and furthermore it looks into the important pedagogy of seeing the importance of Peace Education. Peace and Justice studies as the foundation of peace in our schools, communities and nations.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Chapter 1—The Human Family One World

Chapter 2—Education As Medicine

Chapter 3—Studies In Social Justice

Chapter 4—Policy Studies Today

Chapter 5—Importance Of Art Education

Chapter 6—Inclusive Education

Chapter 7—Ethical Administration Today

Chapter 8—Academic Administration Today

Chapter 9—Academic Administration

Chapter 10—A Discourse Academic Administration Today

Chapter 11—Indigenous Pedagogy Resurgence

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

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I would like to thank Authorhouse publications who believed in this Peace Education: Peace and Justice Studies text from the very beginning. I want to thank my parents, sister and my mentors: Dr. Narendra Wagle, Dr. Leonard Priestley, Dr. Sarkar, Dr. Grace Feuerverger, Dr. Reva Joshee, Lama Tashi Rinpoche, Khenpo Pema, Katsitsiase, Suzanne Brant and Choje Lama Namse Rinpoche for his compassionate guidance in my formative years.

I am certain that this text will be an invaluable resource for Policy- Makers, Deans, Directors, curriculum developers, professors and teachers helping them with their sacred mission of educating the next generation of our children. Lastly, this text is dedicated to the Right Honourable Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who has already made tremendous positive steps in improving education and life chances of our youth in Canada.

DEDICATION:

This latest text is dedicated to the Right Honourable Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau who has already created and implemented many policies that will help our Indigenous and marginalized students in Canada.

CHAPTER ONE:

The Human Family: One World

Revisions to this First Published article for: The Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness the Dalai Lama; Voices in Exile (2013)

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I think we can all agree that world peace is very desirable. However, we live in a world where war is considered just by many. When war breaks out, both sides claim they are acting only to protect their own interests, or in self-defense. Killing, hurting and ravaging our fellow human beings is defended on the grounds that we have the supreme right to protect ourselves, our property and our perceived national interests. Is this justified?

Since this initial article was published, there has been major developments; in what this Educational Framework encompasses. This Framework encompasses the post-colonial frameworks, peace education and social justice education combined. Professors of this first world University of Nalanda described what education meant to their faculty, staff and students.

Nalanda University’s renown as a center for higher learning was globally known. It attracted students from as far away as Greece, Persia, China and Tibet. Although culture and ancient Buddhist academic programs was naturally the central focus of study, other programs in astronomy, medicine (Ayurveda), grammar, metaphysics, logic, philosophy of language, classical Hindu philosophy, non-Indian philosophy and so forth were all heavily populated with students. Chinese pilgrims who visited Nalanda University in the 7th century C.E. gave detailed accounts of the physical premises and activities in their travelogues. Chinese students describe three nine-story buildings comprising the library that housed millions of titles in hundreds of thousands of volumes of texts for each of the Universities programs.

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This ancient treatise of Arya Nagarjuna the main Professor of Nalanda University describes his Peace Education Framework below. The Examination of Views:

~ You assert that there are no real fruits

And no truth

The truth itself

And the conventional truth

Will be contradicted

There are two beliefs:

A belief of the worldly convention

And an ultimate belief

Those who do not understand

The distinction drawn between these

Two beliefs

Do not understand the purpose.

Without a foundation in the

Conventional belief

The significance of the Ultimate

Can’t be taught

Without understanding the significance

Of the Ultimate

The purpose is not achieved.

In this way out of compassion

Siddhartha Gautama

Described the method

To truly eliminate all conflict. ~

-Arya Nagarjuna, Examination of Views (Mulamadhyamika-karika) Professor of Nalanda University, first World University in Human History-

This paraphrased treatise that was originally written in the Sanskrit language holds many significant answers for us today. These ancient treatises are frameworks that actually help reduce conflict; in fact if one looks closely they are ancient conflict resolution frameworks. With the constant overwhelming news media of Republicans versus Democrats, or Conservatives versus Liberals these views cannot exist without dependence of the other. The two extreme viewpoints ultimately depend on each other for their very existence. With this understanding how can there not be peace, at the very least a respect for your opponents view.

In order for a view to exist or come to fruition it depends on another viewpoint to manifest itself. One view is a reflection of another. In ancient thought these Professors would debate both sides to illustrate their non-attachment to views. They would take the opposite side or opponents side to prove their lack of attachment to views altogether. Views were empty (Sanskrit: Shunyata) so in this way non-violence was practiced not only physically, verbally, but also intellectually. What was the purpose that Arya Nagarjuna the Professor from Nalanda University was espousing? The mind, body and speech of all attendees attained complete peace. The purpose of the chapters below is to emphasize the need to view each other as brothers and sisters, so that as members of the human family, we can work together to solve our issues. Racism, injustice, slavery, oppression, inequality, bigotry and discrimination are all human-made evils. But, with education and the right perspective, we can work towards a beautiful future.

CHAPTER TWO:

Education as Medicine

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This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed-

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Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation

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The way of life of my native Tibet was very similar to the Indigenous peoples here in Canada. The Indigenous way of life was very conducive to meditation practice. A natural state of meditational bliss was contained in their simple way of life. We were happy, we were stable, and content.

- Gyalwa Karmapa- (Lecture in Toronto, Canada, 2017)

This latest research looks at the origin and purpose of education. The constant rise of anxiety, mental health issues, depression and even suicide in our school systems will be addressed. The growing rates of student suicide in Japan for instance for just receiving a B grade is something was as educators and citizens should be concerned about. This extreme competition and labelling of students is highly unhealthy for our students. The label that we give our students will follow them into adulthood.

Real education takes care of the human spirit; like medicine it nurtures the spirit and emotions. Currently if a student displays emotion or has a behavioral issue that student would be put into the hall or sent to the office. In Indigenous societies the educational setting would begin a circle. Sacred Medicines would be passed around by an Elder where students could discuss their feelings, and emotions before the class begins. In Western Education systems the student is viewed as an empty vessel where knowledge must be bestowed. In Indigenous Education systems the learner already possesses knowledge that she or he can share with the circle of learners. This leads to confidence, empowerment, and reassurance that the spirit is pure, and complete. This was the basis of holistic education learning styles found in Indigenous Education systems, human nature is good, not defiled in some way. Indigenous education was also Medicine for the body since the school day would start with Traditional songs and dances for which scientists are now discovering that singing and dancing are recognized as Medicine as this practice leads to lowered stress levels, lower blood pressure, and lowers anxiety levels in all who participate.

This research looks at the origin of the modern education system as rooted in the Industrial Age. There is a reason why our current education system is Robotic in nature. For what is better in a factory than an employee that acts like a robot? A human being who acts like a robot who does not require washroom breaks, no breaks, no sick days, no emotion, no conflicts, striving to conform to the system. She or he becomes the perfect employee; but not the perfect Human Being.

Real education looks at educating the whole Human Being. How can we be a happy Human Being? Indigenous Educational Systems has this as their fundamental pedagogy. What was unique and healing is that the Human Being is not the center of their Educational Systems. The Natural Law was the teacher. The Elders of Indigenous systems utilized analogies found in Natural Law. They observed the animal kingdom, and as scientists tested and experimented on what was wholesome and unwholesome.

Through their observations as scientists they discovered that everything is interconnected, not disconnected. Modern education divides all disciplines into separate fields or sectors. If one had the good fortune of listening to an Indigenous Elder one would begin to see that: psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology, medicine, and epistemology are all discussed in scientific precision in one oral teaching.

This is the hope of this latest research. We must heal our relationship with Indigenous Peoples in Canada and the world. Our world needs healing, and Indigenous Education is Medicine that can help alleviate many of our self-created human sufferings we experience today.

CHAPTER THREE:

Studies in Social Justice

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Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.

— Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed-

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In the mainstream studies of Paul Willis he argued that our school system really reinforce, the histories, and backgrounds of the student in school. The student will have a difficult chance if any to move beyond her or his current station in life in our school systems. In his highly influential research paper entitled: Learning To Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs (1977) he adds weight to our assertion that the sociology of education needs to be taken more seriously in academia today. The social background of the student will greatly determine their future in the school systems they enter. The social economic background of the student will be in fact be largely predetermined to where they will land in the ‘assembly line’ of the school system. The school system regulates how they will perform in their school experience. This is why we argue we must foster and cultivate a spirit of love of learning and create welcoming spaces for our low-socio economic, marginalized, and Indigenous students. Our school systems for generations have failed these families in their long histories. This is why we truly celebrate a student who is the first one to enter college or university from their family; this is because they survived incredible odds. What if this marginalized student decides now to enter the teaching profession? These marginalized students who decide to enter the educational profession and become teachers will naturally help remedy many of the ‘broken’ school practices we have today.

From the Structural Functionalist Perspective: Teachers are the problem. As teachers we have made it through the system by being the most compliant to the system and by being such good students we have now actually became teachers. Teachers, who can now mold and colonize the future generations as well. We are colonized and we are assimilated. Now, people like the First Nations and other marginalized peoples who are not as easily integrated, how can we help them?

In my classes I had an important theme to share: we are all immigrants. We all have origins in other countries, the true Canadian or first people are the First Nations of this land. From this starting point it is amazing how much we can cover, discover and learn with our students.

The teaching profession is portrayed as one which seeks to help children learn what they will need to know when they reach maturity. But its role in perpetuating the social relations of educational and economic production are seldom discussed or recognized by teachers or students. Rothstein(1991), pg.6¹⁷

Capitalism is inherently linked with our school systems and the hierarchical structure of our system creates many issues we have in education. If we are aware of the inherent conflict of power and control dynamics we can better prepare ourselves for a long and rewarding career in teaching.

Individuals interact with one another, but they are unable to see the hidden force that structures their encounters. They are unable to see the power that supports the legitimate authority in educational systems and the labor market. Rothstein (1991) p.56 ¹⁸

If we are aware of the structures and forces that are arrayed against us we can not only teach our children but teach our peers, colleagues and supervisors.

Children and teachers are unconscious robots who cannot understand what they are doing in their classrooms. Rothstein(1991) p.56 ¹⁹

Unfortunately, this accounts for the conflict of Department Heads, Vice-Principals and Principals with teachers. Each one of us can only see from our own limited perspective.

Still the primary fault in this elaborate theory of schooling is their denial of the human factor in schooling’s practice and history. This causes them to embrace a functionalist and deterministic approach to educational systems. Schooling is seen as an ongoing set of interactions and structures. Rothstein (1991) pg. 56 ²⁰

The more I am involved in teaching there are similar pattern we see. In order to create positive change in the school system we must see the urgency of unity. However, the powers of division and competition are we see and experience. The teacher’s professional life is an isolated and lonely one. From this perspective it is not odd to see from the perspective of the principal that she or he would want her or his staff divided. Are principals of schools not innately threatened by teacher unions who are united together? These patterns of divide and rule of staff in schools and in our larger society of dividing our society into classes could be the aim of our governments and political policies.

From the student perspective their future was predetermined to a great extent by his or her class position in society. Accordingly conscious human free will or freedom were denied to our youth. From this Structural Perspective position of teachers, students, and parents are trapped into a caste like status and our school systems reproduce their status in our schools. What is most important according to this perspective was cultural capital. Depending on one’s cultural capital will have the greatest influence on the success of the student in his or her future life.

Streaming, grading, selecting, stigmatizing slow learners, and the rest are not pedagogically sound practices. They can only be understood when linked to the kind of social relations that exist in the workplace and social world of adults, when they assume their places in the social system’s efforts to reproduce its economic and social relations.

Rothstein (1991), pg.149 ²¹

In curriculum studies we investigate the statement: Whose knowledge counts? or what is the hidden curriculum? Is the hidden curriculum set out to silence the voice of the other? Rothstein arrives at this conclusion when he stated:

Curriculum is presented to students as valid knowledge that has been legitimated by the best people in the state and society. These ideological presentation are presented as science, even though they have little to do with the scientific method and rest primarily on the traditions and mores of the more dominant classes in society.14 Rothstein, (1991), p.143 ²²

Emile Durkheim and Pierre Bourdieu both agreed that those individuals who were from the dominant group who shared the same language and culture of the educational system had the best prospects of doing well in our schools. They agreed that this was a structure where the school system sustained its structures and culture that it was meant to re-create.

The notions of powerless individuals living in depersonalized, bureaucratic societies seem accurate enough. But they reduce people to the role of players who are being moved by powerful unseen forces. Rothstein, (1991), pg.65 ²³

This is why the quote below is so profound. If a teacher or administrator is not aware or has limited knowledge they can create much symbolic violence in our classrooms and schools. Niyozov (2009), Zine (2001).

Globalization: Education, Economy, Politics and Power

The so-called ‘global culture’ has largely reproduced the colonial structures of inequalities, with the postcolonial elite playing a major role in their reproduction.

The focus in on the cultural identity after colonization has taken place. The process of nations trying to create a national identity and the complex issues of trying to severe their history with the colonizer and the colonization that has taken place. The example of British India when the British left and India had to recreate its identity. Before British invasion India was able to exist with many diverse identities, world-views and religions. This diversity and rich cultural pluralism was the identity of India before colonization, however after the British Empire the divisions were magnified, by a divide and rule strategy that left India divided which lead to the partition on India.

The main aim of post-colonialism for educators is for us to see the side-effects of imperialism on people, countries and cultures. We are not only concerned with history, but how we can reconcile what has happened and create a world of mutual respect. The marginalized world-view, voice or people that have been invisible, need to be made visible and not only seen but understood. This is what it means to be an educator, the ability to really understand our students, our society and our world.

Imperialism is a method by which a people can use the words like ‘liberating’ people from a ‘tyrannical’ rule or by introducing the policies of a new ‘superior’ way of life. The foundation of imperialism is: greed, power and control.

Once we recognize these intricacies the Post-Colonial Perspective in education specifically it becomes a positive view-point. But only if teachers, policy makers, principals, directors of education, school board officials all work together. If we take this literally post means it is over or we have learnt something from the past era. We must move forward but also we must continue to educate so we are all aware of what has happened and to make sure this oppression is rectified. It recognizes a truth based in science and in our common understanding; we are one race: the human race. There is only one human family. Post-colonialism fights to decolonize our future and to recognize that we are all members of the human family and all problems are workable because we are the creator of these problems.

Change Management in Education:

The intent