Society, Social Justice, and Social/Political Education

Abstract

This article examines critically the work of the three major reform movements in English social studies education since World War II. These were the Social Studies movement of the late 1940s and early 1950s, the New Social Studies movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the Political Education movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The article suggests that, although the balance of political forces within these movements varied, all three of them contained a significant proportion of people who were critical of the status quo in school and society and who regarded their curricular prescriptions as contributing to the enhancement of social justice in and through education. It argues, however, that their effective contributions to this task have, in practice, been extremely limited and suggests that a major reason for this lies in their inadequate understanding of the relationship between schooling and society and of the nature of the broader societal context in which they have been working. The article concludes with some discussion of the political conjuncture within which English social studies educators must now operate and points to some possible ways in which the experience of past failures might be put to constructive use in the current context.