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What Does Injustice Have to Do with Me?:
A Pedagogy of the Privileged
In this article, David Nurenberg relates his experiences as a suburban high school humanities teacher struggling to engage students with issues of social justice. His story reveals what happens when a teacher works against the resistance of his primarily white and privileged students to reading “literature of the oppressed” on the grounds that it is irrelevant to their lives. Nurenberg draws on Freirean pedagogy, which encourages socially conscious educators to help make learning authentic and relevant by engaging students with curricula focused on issues of social injustice, and asks us to consider what a pedagogy of the oppressed is for students who do not see their lives as such. He reflects on the dynamics of his classroom using applicable theory and speculates about what is possible in teaching social justice in a place of privilege.
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David Nurenberg is a teacher of English, American, and world literatures at Concord Carlisle High School in Concord, Massachusetts, where he also coordinates the school’s international exchange programs with its sister schools in Japan and Turkmenistan. He has taught as an adjunct professor at Lesley University, and his work has been published in journals such as the Peace Chronicle and Multicultural Review. He presently sits on the board of the Massachusetts-Hokkaido Society and is a former board member of the New England Peace Studies Association. Nurenberg has received several State Department grants for work in international teacher and student exchanges.
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Spring 2011 Issue
Abstracts
“It’s Going to Stop in This Generation”:
Women with a History of Child Abuse Resolving to Raise Their Children Without AbuseBeyond Delinquent Citizenships:
Immigrant Youth’s (Re)Visions of Citizenship and Belonging in a Globalized WorldBook Notes
