I appreciate the posting of the Furman article and appreciated that although it touched on ecological and scientific themes, I was able to access the reading, not having a science background. The points of the article that engaged me the most were the discussions around the growing sense of urgency, among many people committed to educational equity and social justice, to “close” an “achievement gap”. This discourse often makes me uncomfortable and I appreciated the balanced discussion within the article around social justice themes and the importance for all scholars to embody a social justice perspective. I feel the authors were able to remain balanced due to their commitment to “surface the assumptions and narratives in which social justice is currently embedded” (page 50).

As a constructivist, I was excited to learn through the reading of the theory ‘critical humanism’ which reminded me of Critical Race Theory. Critical Race Theory asserts that racism in American society is normative and should not be questioned. Similar, to the way the authors described critical humanism as a theoretical framework, which views social constructions as inherently value-laden. This in is itself problematic because we include the values of one we inherently exclude the values of others. What I did find discomforting within the theory is its call for radical changes. While needed, I find to be problematic thinking when discussing systematic changes, especially in the field of leadership. The question that troubles most stakeholders in education, especially when considering inequities in education is the question of change. I believe change is at its core a complex and difficult and cannot be devoid without a discussion of how change can be sustainable in the face of widespread disproportionate inequities.

I also found “the focus on school underachievement as an indicator of social justice” to be problematic and too close to an subtle discussion that is often found within the deficit perspective, which places too great an emphasis on the what is wrong and has to be fixed within a community and not enough of a discussion on the wealth found within the community.  This brings me the article’s discussion of critical pedagogy of place, quoting hooks who defines “decolonization as a process of cultural and historical liberation; an act of confrontation with a dominant system of thought” (page 58). This is why my work is centered on identifying and debunking the subtle occurrences of the deficient perspective because it becomes a dangerous and systematic “system of thought” which believes that a cultural deficit perspective is comprised of two parts: (a) the attribution of an individual’s achievement to cultural factors alone, without regard to individual characteristics; and, (b) the attribution of failure to a cultural group. In other words, a cultural deficit perspective is a view that individuals from some cultural groups lack the ability to achieve just because of their cultural background.

The danger of the deficit ideology is that it represents a repressive disposition and is a symptom of larger sociopolitical conditions and ideologies born out of complex socialization processes. The perspective cannot be combated without acknowledging and examining the processes that can eliminate racism and white supremacist ideology, which I feel the article began to acknowledge.

Overall, this article was thought-provoking and I learned about critical frameworks that I was not aware of prior to reading the article and I always appreciate scholarly works that call for a reimaging education, learning ad justice.

I chose this article because for me it introduces a socioecological justice framework that speaks to me and my research, it introduces the concepts of a critical pedagogy of place which speaks to my curriculum implementation, and it highlights many of the challenges and tensions that I have experienced working within the current education system. Below are my thoughts and some of the questions this article generated for me. I would love to hear from others about ways they see this article being relevant to their own work and how I might utilize it in mine.

Socioecological Justice Framework: Furman and Gruenewald identify the links between social justice and environmental justice and how modern developed economies have created environmental problems that impact both humans and nonhumans, these are inseparable. Environmental problems are experienced as social injustices and are disproportionately felt depending on race, class, and other social groups. How are the issues that my student experience felt differently by differing social groups-what social groups do they identify as? Youth, gender, urban, minority, class???

Critical Pedagogy of Place:I have been thinking a lot about how to develop my own critical pedagogy of place and about how I can infuse the values of critical pedagogy and the environmental situation that we find ourselves in today into a curriculum that speaks to young people in the city. As I shared with you all at the USER-S, the research that my students and I have been conducting tries to address and “problematize the taken-for-granted assumptions, and unjust outcomes of conventional educational and cultural practices” (p.58) as well as incorporate a local experience that is present in the lives of my students.

Through implementation of my own critical pedagogy of place I have seen in my students how their ways of viewing the world are so strongly influenced by the capitalist, globalized city/country/world that we live in. A larger question I have for myself is how do we help people/my students realize that they are interconnected and mutually implicated in one another’s lives…I find this very difficult – that it matters to care about all kinds of people. A question my students have raised and struggle with is whether people are inherently good or bad??

Current Education System: Much of this article really spoke to my own critiques/limitations/assumptions of the current education system and continue to challenge me on how I view the the purposes of education. I feel this is the larger picture and implications of my own work, especially thinking about how might we reform education to embrace a socioecological ethic, why this is not part of the larger discussion on education and if it is even possible to imagine an alternative educational system? Where do we fit the economic, social, and moral purposes of schooling into our current system and how do we prioritize (or not prioritize) these?

I mentioned at the USER-S some of the tensions that I have experienced working within the traditional education paradigm with an emphasis on western values of progress and achievement for economic advancement. I have the privilege of not having to teach my course with any high stakes tests and have the luxury of developing more alternative assessments however, this has created confusion for students who have one experience in my class where they are receiving a message from me about schooling and then their other classes that value competition, individualism, and achievement. This has also raised questions for me about what are my own assumptions in my classroom? What are the implicit messages I am sending to my students and what are the ideology and values that I am conveying? Are these better? If so Why?

I have some larger questions that this article helped me to frame for myself and my course…What are the cultural and ecological conflicts that come from a preparation of young people to participate in the global economy? How does the dominant culture impact/affect people and places, humans and habitat? What are the purposes of education/schooling in the larger arena of cultural and ecological conflict? How do we prepare our students within our modern capitalist world to engage politically and ecologically with a knowledge and understanding of how social, economic, political, environmental systems are interrelated and value outcomes of care for humans and the earth?