Social Justice in the Classroom: Understanding the Implications of Interlocking Oppressions - Becky Ropers-Huilman

Despite this article being written by a teacher working with higher education students (many of whom were already educators, administrators, and the like), Beck Ropers-Huilman's "Social Justice in the Classroom: Understanding the Implications of Interlocking Oppressions" hit several of the struggles all teachers at all levels will struggle with in teaching social justice issues. In her article, she uses Martin Frye's definition of oppression as being "caught between or among forces and barriers which are so related to each other that jointly they restrain, restrict, or prevent the thing's motion or mobility", and uses this to build the analogy for interlocking oppressions as being similar to a birdcage, in which those who are inside the birdcage are locked in by a "layering of disappointments, hurts, and barriers that impede the attainment of our ambitions" (Ropers-Huilman 91). On the outside of this birdcage are those who are restricted in their knowledge of what the inside of the birdcage is like, and cannot know intimately what life is like within that birdcage.

What this birdcage analogy ultimately means is, educators will always struggle to connect to students because of our fears and prejudices, which will effect our teaching methodology and thereby impact the teacher-student-subject relationship. While social justice is an important facet of the educational process, Ropers Huilman suggests that attempting to teach social justice directly can be disruptive and difficult. In order to understand how best to address social justice, Ropers-Huilman describes the set of five principles of social justice that she uses to develop a method of teaching these issues:

1. Balance the emotional and cognitive components of the learning process; 
2. Acknowledge and support the personal (the individual student's experience) while illuminating the systemic (the inter actions among social groups); 
3. Attend to social relations within the classroom; 
4. Utilize reflection and experience as tools for student-centered learning; 
5. Value awareness, personal growth, and change as outcomes of the learning process.

With these principles outlined, Ropers-Huilman describes how best to teach social justice by integrating a variety of texts providing a multifaceted view of the issue, rather than devoting a class period or multiple class periods specifically to the topic. In this implicit method of teaching social justice, the critical thinking processes encourages students to overcome their binary understanding of oppression of oppressor/oppressed. Instead, it asks students to questions ways in which they might not only by oppressed, but also how they might be the oppressor. Ultimately, this seems like a much more nuanced and effective method of teaching social justice issues to students, as it makes it seem less forced and contrived compared to trying to devote lessons explicitly to the topic.