The first thing that I did when I started this assignment was question myself about what social justice really meant. I tried to think of a definition and all I could think of was that it was an arbitrary word. That made me think. So of course, I went to the holiest of holy online sources, Wikipedia, to look it up. They had a pretty solid definition that i agreed with. It said, "social justice is generally used to refer to a set of institutions which will enable people to lead a fulfilling life and be active and contributors to their community". This made me further think about how arbitrary the term really is. When I say that I think the term is arbitrary, I mean that it is an idea that exist, but will not realistically ever happen. There are so many other factors that must be set in place from racism to socioeconomic status to make a truly equal school and education system. While I do think that social just ice a good thing and something that every aspect of education should strive for, I think that it is a goal that can never be reached. While most know that this goal is unattainable, they still strive for it, which shows admiration to the cause and determination to make it a reality. The reality is that it isn't fully possible and people should know that. With factors not in place to create a perfectly social juscticed system, people will still be shafted, much like urban schools are being shafted now.
I may have rambled there for a bit. My main idea is that the system isn't perfect, and striving for a perfect system is in itself impossible with out solid ground to start on. Somebody is always going to disagree, that is the reality. My opinion of course. I want social justice, but i want to be able to achieve a goal. maybe social justice is something that should be thought of after other issues have been resolved.
Now to the article that I decided to read. I found an article that has to do with teacher evaluations. It talks about how new teacher evaluations are going to ruin education by placing emphasis on teachers performance whether it be through test scores or a evaluation report. While evaluating someone in itself can be a hard task, I agree that the methods created to evaluate teachers are ways to keep accountability, but what kind of accountability. With these type of evaluations, teachers will learn which hoops they must jump through in order to survive and stay employed. I say this because I have a strong belief that when faced with unemployment, people will look out for themselves rather than the greater good. The greater good is the students. We are currently changing curriculum to make students more knowledgeable, yet we give teachers little option on how to teach as they are evaluated based on a 5 point scale.
I'm going to side track for a little bit. Being in the military, I have seen this 5 point scale as it was used to evaluate everyone once a year in the armed forces. The scale was 1--poor to 5--outstanding. 3 was average. Average is supposed to mean that you aren't bad, you do your job, your good. But with inflation and people wanting to look good, over time everyone is handing out 5s like they are candy. 5s were supposed to be reserved for the elite, the best of the best. When we look at a bell curve, it would only be 3-5% that would receive a 5. Now everyone gets 5s. I received 4s for my first 2 years, and i was reprimanded for not getting a 5. 4 was above average. I can understand how they want everyone to strive for the best, but not everyone will. So i began to play the game. I tweaked my yearly bullets to receive a 5. I played the game, got 5s. I was most certainly not excellent. I did my job, went home and didn't shine my boots. This creates a society where people don't want to be outstanding, but they will be outstanding on paper.
Teachers will learn to play the game. If their evaluations are based on students grades, you can be sure that most will teach to the test, and I don't blame them. It is their job on the line. If they grade teachers based on a certain evaluation criteria, you can be absolutely sure that teachers will focus on the aspects that they are being graded on. This is going to alienate some teachers. I don't think this moves towards a education system that wants social justice. IF they give teachers criteria that determines if they keep their job, then they should understand that those criteria became the only thing that matters to them in regards to their job.
This whole rant has left out the students. I think that says alot about what is happening to students because we focus so much on the teachers, passing/failing rates, and accountability that it becomes less and less about the students. I don't have an answer about how to make it more about the students and that depresses me. Once students learn the fact that life is a game with hoops everywhere, they will learn to jump through them just as adults to to survive in a competitive market.
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