Vernon Wall: One Better World

Yesterday, I was reminded about an opportunity to view Vernon Wall speak about diversity and social justice. His presentation was about an hour and a half long and it had some really good insight that helped stimulate my understanding of social justice.

Something that really affected me as I was listening to his speech was his short emphasis on the difference between “equal” and “equitable”. I think a lot of people do not understand, me included to some extent, that equal is not equitable. In my opinion a lot of privileged groups claim that want equality for all but do not think about what that actually means. Vernon used the example of shoes. “Every child deserves a pair of shoes” that is equal. Equitable is the saying “Every child deserves a pair of shoes that fit”. That sentence opened my eyes. Social Justice is the fight for an equitable America. There are so many underprivileged groups in America that people claim that want equality for but do not fully understand that equality is not the same thing as equitability. It’s important to recognize underprivileged groups and to come together as a community or a society to make changes so that everyone’s experience is equitable.  When you look into someone’s bowl of food you shouldn’t be looking if they have more food than you, you should be looking to see if they have enough.

I think it is absolutely necessary to be teaching students about social justice in the classroom. We need to teach kids that in the real world there are systems of oppression. To help students see the experience of other groups of people will help them become aware of the systems of oppression in our society and hopefully inspire action in order to create a better tomorrow. We would be doing a disservice to students to not teach them about the perspectives of others. We have to expose inequality and oppression in order for it to change.

Reading different articles and websites I stumbled upon this quote that I think is important in regards to social justice and education.

What does it mean to teach for social justice? It means recognizing oppression in its multiple forms, and then taking action in the classroom to interrupt the cycles of oppression. When teachers teach for social justice they are working to end the cycle of oppression.