SOCIAL JUSTICE

Social Justice



Social Justice

Leadership and Social Justice

School leadership rooted in social justice has ? at its center ? tension. Out of these tensions grow reform movements ? initiated and instituted by those who live in this intersection of tension ? (Adams 2000) who are able to embrace the disjunction between ideal and reality ?privilege and oppression ?surface change and the dismantling of structural barriers. (Adams 2000) I contend that school leaders who hold a social justice agenda embody the compassion that allows them to be both touched and moved and the capacity to touch and move others. (Pollock 2003)

Touched ? but not moved ?is how Toni Morrison summed the long-term result of The Bluest Eye. Although the Academy praised her novels ?"characterized by visionary form and poetic import ? giving life to an essential aspect of American reality ?" (Pollock 2003 ? 112-150) and awarded her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 ? Morrison discloses a disconcerting reality. As much as she wanted to 'peck away at the gaze that condemns' black women ?the fact is ?she states ?it didn't work. (Pollock 2003) Many readers ?she notes ?were touched ?but not moved. Her story leads readers to the 'comfort of pitying rather than into an interrogation of themselves.'(Goodlad 1994 ? p. 45)

The achievement gap in schools in the United States begs the same question. (Terry 2000) Are we touched ?or are we moved? To be touched is to be a sympathetic observer ?to feel pity ? to be a kind supporter ?to be someone who has learned about and appreciated difference ?and be grateful ?of course ?that they don't share experiences. To be encouraged is something else. Being moved requires taking a critical ?systemic ?and action oriented approach that not only interrogates social hierarchies but shows "how we might ...