I often argue against my Americanist colleagues who demand that US history courses should teach students to be “good citizens.” By good citizens, they essentially mean “aware of and concerned about historical injustice and they ways in which it informs social injustice today.”

Next time I have that argument, I’ll enlist your list of “no” answers. Thanks!

But I hadn’t thought about social justice and orientation in any kind of generality.

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0423ss.html

…As Ayers puts it in one of his course descriptions, prospective K–12 teachers need to “be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, a teacher teaching for social justice and liberation.” …

I’m passing this on but haven’t really examined Sol Stern’s agenda, etc. Other than the over-the-top “left-wing indoctrination” remark. Anyway, it was interesting in light of your remarks, with which I agree.

I do think that if you’re going to say to college students, “This institution assumes you have an obligation to pursue social justice”, you have to be careful about not saying (as Doug suggests), “This means you are in favor of S-CHIP, against the death penalty, for abortion rights, favor raising the capital gains tax”, etcetera. However, it’s entirely possible that a given course might put issues with that specificity on the table and ask students how or whether particular policies or actions are relevant to particular kinds of injustice. I’ve spent a lot of time in my Central Africa class this semester talking with the students about humanitarian intervention as a concept. When we get down to specifics, that’s where students learn about social justice: in their courses. Or in their own activism. Or from their peers. Or from what faculty and staff say within the public culture of a given university or college.

But even if you avoid that level of specificity in a general exercise, I think you have to leave room for a student to respond to a call to social justice in any of the basic ways I described. I think it’s right to say to students, “We expect you to put your education to good use”, and to suggest that “good use” includes trying to act to make the world better than you found it, to develop what our college’s president calls “ethical intelligence”. I’m perfectly comfortable saying in an orientation, “Knowledge isn’t just abstract, it’s about acting and living in the world” and saying “Thinking about the ethical and moral implications of knowledge should be a constant obligation for you”. But there are a lot of replies a student might make to that call which I think are valid–I wouldn’t want to grind a budding Nietzsche under heel, for example. I think leaving room for those “No” answers is how you indicate that you’re actually serious about ethical intelligence. If you take a commitment to social justice as being as matter-of-fact an issue as “Always use your keycard and don’t prop dormitory doors”, then you’re in danger of being like a perky camp counselor telling the kids what a fun, fun summer they’re going to have.

Your question, “What is to be done?” rang a bell for me. In the summer of 1786, John Jay wrote George Washington about the condition of the nation, especially about the ineffectiveness of the national government. He said that even though the war was difficult, he felt that they would be successful because they “had a fixed object,” and “justice was with us.” But, “The case is now altered; we are going and doing wrong, and therefore I look forward to evils and calamities, but without being able to guess at the instrument, nature, or measure of them.”

Washington replied, “Your sentiments, that our affairs are drawing rapidly to a crisis, accord with my own. What the event will be is also beyond the reach of my foresight. We have errors to correct. We have probably had too good an opinion of human nature in forming our confederation. Experience has taught us that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their own good without the intervention of a coercive power. … What then is to be done?” He also said, “I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror. From thinking proceeds speaking; thence to acting is often but a single step.”

In no time at all, Washington was President of the Constitutional Convention which produced the Preamble, “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, …” Justice was now a national goal, and the Preamble did not originate that goal. Throughout our history, starting at least with the Mayflower Compact the word “justice,” or words meaning “justice,” can be seen in other governing documents, including state constitutions.

You know all this better than I ever will.

And the education that I received on the way to college was delivered in a community that actually did not practice social justice. Religious fundamentalism, exclusion of people of color from an area of 20,000 square miles, and an active KKK were prominent elements of my world. Yet in the public schools I was taught about the Constitution as if the United States was uniformly the most liberal of nations. Social justice was pure. I was so stupid, of course, that I failed to see that it applied only to the people who were “like us.” I took my teachers at their word and happily believed that social justice was justice for all.

My first contact with the actual facts happened at Baylor when the opposition to Catholic JFK burst forth. I actually had never seen organized anger and hatred. And it was during that time that conversations with my friends made me realize that people from other areas were taught something different. I was aghast at their certainty that Catholics should not be allowed to hold any office, not just president. They were aghast at my naïve insistence that there should be no religious test. When I quoted the Constitution as my proof, they responded that the Constitution did not apply because it was not “ordained by God.”

Then I spent a summer in Carrollton, GA, and saw that “social justice” meant “white social justice.”

So where do children, even college students, learn about social justice?

By “political indoctrination” do you mean that social justice is just one political philosophy and there are others, even those favoring some form of social injustice, that should be given equal consideration?

And shouldn’t educational institutions at all levels talk about the means by which social justice can be achieved?

I hesitate to post this comment because you wrote about becoming a punching bag. I do not mean to punch. I just don’t understand. But if you want to ban me, I will understand.