Education and Social Transformation
Michael Apple (2013) revisits this classic question: Can education do this to society?
What is change or transform it?
Michael Dumas begins his essay with this recurring theme in Black life and education.
What is suffering or anti-Blackness?
Crystal Laura critiques this metaphor describing how schools feed youth into incarceration.
What is the school-to-prison pipeline?
Omar Dávila Jr. challenges us to imagine schools that move beyond this kind of “practical” structural thinking.
What is reformist or status quo thinking?
Like a haunted house, schools can sometimes hide these invisible forces shaping inequality.
What are structures of power or oppression?
W.E.B. Du Bois believed education could be a tool for liberation when paired with this key concept.
What is critical consciousness or political struggle?
Dumas argues that racial justice movements often seek inclusion without confronting this underlying structure.
What is anti-Blackness or structural racism?
Laura argues that punitive school policies mirror this broader social institution.
What are prisons or carceral systems?
The phrase “imagining otherwise” refers to creating educational spaces centered on these values.
What are justice, care, and collective well-being?
When teachers “mask” bias behind neutrality, they’re doing this spooky act.
What is colorblindness or false objectivity?
Woodson’s critique in The Mis-Education of the Negro argues that education often teaches this instead of empowerment.
What is internalized inferiority or compliance with the dominant order?
The author says we must go “against” racial justice that ignores this historical and emotional reality.
What is Black pain or grief?
The author says educators must practice this kind of teaching to resist criminalizing youth.
What is humanizing or restorative pedagogy?
Dávila shows that Latino boys’ experiences are shaped by these overlapping systems.
What are racism, classism, and patriarchy?
The “zombie” metaphor could describe this persistent myth about education’s power to fix everything.
What is meritocracy or education as the great equalizer?
Apple argues that education is not neutral but shaped by these competing forces.
What are politics, ideology, and power?
For Dumas, real justice requires recognizing that schooling often re-enacts this social process.
What is the reproduction of anti-Blackness?
Laura’s call to “teach against prisons” means understanding education as part of this larger struggle.
What is abolition or liberation work?
DAILY DOUBLE!
According to Dávila, real social change requires combining imagination with this critical practice.
What is structural or systemic transformation?
“Ghosting” marginalized students in curriculum reflects this social phenomenon.
What is erasure or invisibility?
Du Bois saw the “Talented Tenth” as a group who could lead through this type of education.
What is socially conscious or humanizing education?
Dumas calls for this kind of engagement rather than shallow multiculturalism.
What is a radical, abolitionist, or affective engagement with Black suffering?
Crystal Laura centers this population as both the most punished and the most resilient in the system.
Who are Black and Brown youth (or boys)?
To “imagine otherwise” in education means rejecting this deficit-based way of viewing youth.
What is pathologizing or criminalizing them?
The real Halloween trick: thinking justice can come without this — the hard work of transformation.
What is critical reflection and structural change?