Education and Social Justice

The idea of social justice is a powerful call to collective action. While there will be some who are indifferent to the pursuit of social justice, there can be few who are against it. Education, in its tum, is a powerful instrument of collective action. It is squarely in the public domain, with the public long ago having given the government the right to compel them to attend schools, to tax them to finance education at school level and beyond, and to a large extent determine what is taught. Education is also directed at the next generation, which makes it a continuing source of hope that the future can be an improvement on the past. There is thus an obvious link between education and the pursuit of social justice--the topic of this paper.