Social Educational Justice: How to Achieve Inclusiveness for Marginalized Communities Worldwide

Before any kind of justice, there is a need for social educational justice because contemporary system of education has been creating a new kind of hierarchy; unfortunately, again, marginalized sections are at the bottom. However, education makes human an asset around the globe, which shows that education is not only a need of individuals; besides that, it is a need of the globe. But the higher education is more important than the decline of illiteracy. Illiteracy is itself one of the biggest problem for marginalized sections of the world.

Now there is a need to take action against inequality and the hierarchy of education. because hierarchy in education creates partiality in the distribution of opportunities, resources, and individual drive in determining one's level of achievement. For example, someone with access to quality education, financial resources, and strong social capital may have a higher chance of success compared to someone with only an education. In the context of marginalized sections, higher education has been a dream. However,Oppressors develop  different kind of barriers against the education of marginalized, because Oppressors  know that education can develop a feeling of dignity among the broken individuals. 

For example, a structural oppression of Dalits' education was done by Kurukshetra University, which is the oldest public university of Haryana in India. The university tried to humiliate the students below the poverty line (BPL) because the prospectus of the university in 2023 mentioned some concessions for the BPL's students’ hostel fee compared to others. However, the prospectus for 2024 did not mention any special provisions for BPL.

However, it was noticed by the Dr. Ambedkar Students Front of India (DASFI) wing of Kurukshetra University, and under the leadership of Sahil Bidsikri, President of DASFI, a delegation met with the Vice-Chancellor of the University and requested the implementation of earlier praxis for fee concessions for students who belong to BPL families to avail hostel facilities in  the university campus. 

 However, earlier, DASFI's voice was not recognized by the university; after that, on July 17, 2024, DASFI went to an agitation in the university for their demands. Their agitation was not just for education; rather, it was for social educational justice and against structural oppression. And later on, the Vice Chancellor of the university issued a notice of the 50 percent fee concession in the hostel fee for the session of 2024–25 to the BPL category students. To seek this concession, students must submit their latest income certificate, Famaily ID, certificate issued by the district food and supply officer, and BPL ration card.  This is the  micro example of the victory of  social educational justice.

Social educational justice refers to the principle of ensuring that all individuals have equal access to high-quality education, regardless of their background, caste, religion, region, race, gender, or socioeconomic status. It involves addressing the systemic inequalities and biases that perpetuate educational disparities and marginalization. Social Educational justice is the duty of states and individuals. First, educational justice means providing adequate funding to institutions, well-rounded experts of technologists of diverse backgrounds, inclusive and representative curricula with the motive to develop a diversified society and a safe and dignified environment for institutions, and identifying and dismantling policies and practices that perpetuate inequality.

As education plays a crucial role in determining life possibilities, economic mobility, and political involvement, fostering social educational justice is vital for advancing social justice. We can strive toward a more fair and equitable society where everyone may prosper and realize their full potential by supporting social educational Justice

 Justice requires the resources needed for all people to lead secure and fulfilling lives, along with respect for the histories, cultures and experiences of diverse groups, especially those who have been historically marginalized and oppressed. We (Authors) offer our goals for social educational justice: creating a society where everyone has fair access to the resources, education and opportunities to develop their full capacities, and everyone is welcome to participate democratically with others to mutually shape social policies and institutions that govern civic life.  The process for attaining social educational justice we view as necessarily inclusive, respectful of human diversity and affirming of the capacity of all people to join with others to create change for our collective well-being. Social educational justice requires engaging everyone in democratic and collaborative processes grounded on the premise that there is enough to meet the education of all.

 Social educational justice, then, works against greed, selfishness and hatred and toward generosity, mutuality and love.  Appreciation for diversity in educational institutions—differences such as race, ethnic heritage, class, age, gender, sexuality, ability, religion, caste and nationality—is a central feature of social educational justice. Without recognizing and valuing diversity, we cannot effectively address issues of educational injustice.  Concrete knowledge of different groups’ histories, experiences, ways of making meaning and values is important to the social educational justice goal of recognition and respect.  

Understanding and eliminating oppression is an equal feature of social educational justice. As Dr.B.R.Ambedkar, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela challenged structural oppression and injustice, because without addressing injustice in all its forms, we cannot truly value diversity. Oppression is created and kept alive through hierarchies that rank groups in ways that give power, social and economic advantages, and institutional and cultural validity to some groups over others.  Challenging hierarchy requires confronting the ideological frameworks, historical legacies, and institutional patterns and practices that unequally structure social relations.

Social educational justice, therefore, provides tools to examine the structural features of oppression and our own socialization within unjust systems. It helps us develop awareness of injustice in our personal lives, communities, institutions and the broader society. Such an education enables us to develop empathy and commitment, as well as skills and tools for acting with others to interrupt and change oppressive patterns and behaviours in ourselves and the institutions and communities of which we are a part.

 Understanding the dynamics of oppression is important for developing effective strategies to counteract it. As noted above, one of the central features of oppression is sorting social groups into hierarchies by race, class, gender, sexuality, age, religion,caste, education and other markers. A group’s position in the hierarchy regulates access to resources, participation, social respect and self-actualization.

 Like a computer operating system, categorization and hierarchy run invisibly in the background to make oppressive outcomes seem logical and inevitable.  Furthermore, the effects of oppression accumulate to lock in advantage for some and disadvantage for others across time and institutions. For example, sorting people into racial categories with those labelled white as dominant initially justified both taking land from Indigenous people and coercing labour from enslaved Africans at the nation’s founding.  Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants who at first were not considered white were gradually incorporated into this racial hierarchy that positioned white people above other racial groups.

Advantage and disadvantage compound and become baked into social institutions. This can be seen in the compounding effects of segregating people by race,caste and class. Persons who live in poor, rural or predominantly Black and Brown neighbourhoods today will likely attend under-resourced schools; have less access to opportunities for advancement, reliable transportation, good food and health care; and be exposed to more environmental toxins. In corollary fashion, persons who live in middle or upper-middle class neighbourhoods will likely have access to well-resourced schools, universities and opportunities along with a cleaner environment.

 Accumulated advantage and disadvantage consolidate in institutional policies and practices to entrench privilege and disadvantage. Oppressive conditions become normalized through the actions of people going about their daily lives and often can’t be isolated to individual or institutional agents. For example, marginalization and exclusion of people with disabilities does not require overt discrimination against them—although this also happens. Business as usual that does not consider ways to include people with disabilities is sufficient to prevent change.  Barriers to access go unnoticed by those who can climb stairs, reach elevator buttons and telephones, use furniture and tools that fit their bodies and functional needs, are able to speak and use all their senses, and generally move in a world that is designed to facilitate their passage. Without challenge to this status quo, it seems perfectly natural to those whose access is unaffected. That is until they discover these privileges are fleeting once they experience pregnancy, accident, illness, aging or future disability.

 Dehumanization is another feature of oppression. Language and images that deny the full humanness of people from different groups play a critical role in justifying mistreatment, brutality and violence that would otherwise not be tolerated.  This is one reason why words, beliefs and symbols matter, not merely for the purpose of civility, but because of the potential they hold for leading down the path to atrocity.  For example, referring to Mexican and Central American people as “animals” or an “infestation” led to policies that separated children from their parents and put them in cages. And even though police brutality is excused through more “benign” terms as well, describing Black men as “super predators” rationalized police brutality against them.  

Remaining silent in the face of mistreatment and violence toward others is also dehumanizing and ultimately leads to the degradation of society as a whole. The dehumanization of systemic police violence and brutality against Black people was largely accepted by white society until shockingly confronted by the murder by police of George Floyd on video. By demanding accountability and change, Black Lives Matter, Dalit Lives Matter as well as #Say Her Name and #MeToo, are humanizing movements that demand recognition of and accountability to the humanity of victims who are otherwise faceless in mainstream society.

Oppression is not inevitable or natural. It is learned through socialization. We internalize social norms to make meaning of our experiences, as well as to fit in and survive. Through socialization, an unjust status quo comes to be generally accepted and replicated both by those who benefit and those who suffer from oppressive systems.  To varying degrees, for example, poor people and affluent people alike internalize the stereotype that people who are poor are responsible for their poverty, and that those who accumulate riches deserve their wealth. Assumptions that youth are irresponsible and incapable of serious commitments, or that elders are slow and less vital than middle-aged people in their “prime,” are taken as true by people of all ages.

 Pressure against rocking the boat keeps most people from challenging inequality and discrimination so that by simply going along with business as usual, we help to perpetuate injustice. Oppression persists and sometimes shifts into new forms to endure and override challenges against it. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 aimed to overcome legal barriers at state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Section II was the enforcement mechanism to ensure the protection of this right. In 2021, the Supreme Court weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act by eliminating Section II, and state laws are now making it much more difficult for Black and Brown people to vote (and many people of all races who are young, disabled or elderly) through restrictive voter ID requirements, purging registered voters from voting rolls, shutting early voting sites in Black and Indigenous communities, and removing drop off boxes for mail-in ballots, to name a few.  Social justice will always require equally persistent effort to maintain fair and just laws and practices. Though the consequences of oppression fall unevenly on Black and Brown communities, there are consequences for everyone. Heather McGhee in her book The Sum of Us traces the legacies of racism and white supremacy through zero-sum policies that ultimately harmed white people themselves.

Physician Jonathan Metzl in his book Dying of Whiteness shows how the racial resentment that fueled white support of pro-gun laws, resistance to the Affordable Care Act, and cuts to schools and social services has resulted in increasing deaths by gun suicide, falling life expectancies, and rising school dropout rates for white people as well.  A goal of social educational justice is to help us recognize the terrible social, political and moral costs of maintaining systems of oppression.

When millions peoples are homeless and hungry, we all pay a social and moral price. The cost of enjoying plenty while others starve makes it ever more difficult to claim that our society is fair and that we are decent people.  Just as important, it also prevents us from developing a clear view of underlying structural problems in political and economic systems that ultimately make all of us vulnerable to a changing international economy that disregards national boundaries or allegiances.  The productive and creative contributions of people who are shut out of the system are lost to everyone. Rising violence and division make it increasingly difficult for anyone to feel safe. Reduced social supports, limited affordable housing, and scarcities of food and potable water loom as a possible future for all who are not independently wealthy, particularly as we reach old age.

The current global pandemic and climate crisis highlight the inequalities and injustices in systems of health care, housing, labour and other areas, and reveal our linked fates in the face of challenges that cannot be overcome without addressing inequality. Social educational justice requires a commitment toward equality and possibility, and a belief in the capacity of people to transform the world. Oppression is never complete; it is always open to challenge, as is evident in past and ongoing movements for justice that have made inroads against it. Just as people are socialized into oppression, they can consciously unlearn its habits and proactively work with others to imagine, practice and enact more just and equitable possibilities for living together on this planet.  Since social educational injustice is based on historical, institutional and systemic patterns—and not simply a matter of individual bias or misunderstanding—education alone cannot dismantle it.  However, the consciousness, knowledge, skills and commitments developed through social  educational justice can lay a foundation for working effectively, even joyfully, with others in democratic, organized action directed at institutional and societal change aimed at creating a world better for all.

 Authors - Mostafa Ewees, PhD, Stanford Psychoanalysis & Educational Psychology Professor at Stanford University in California & Pathfinder Training chairman

Dr. Krishan Kumar is a scholar based in Haryana specializing in Dalits and Marginalized Studies and founder of International Ambedkarites’ Network.