EDUCATION FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE: PROVOCATIONS AND CHALLENGES Kathy Hytten Department of Educational Administration and Higher Education Southern Illinois University ABSTRACT. In this essay review of three recent edited books (Greg Dimitriadis and Dennis Carlson’s Prom- ises to Keep: Cultural Studies, Democratic Education, and Public Life; Nadine Dolby and Greg Dimi- triadis’s Learning to Labor in New Times; and Francisco Iba ´n ˜ ez-Carrasco and Erica Meiner’s Disruptive Readings on Making Curriculum Public), Kathy Hytten reflects on the relation among education, democ- racy, and social justice. She argues that in our current climate, progressive educators need a more power- ful and compelling educational discourse that foregrounds issues of social justice. The three books under review in this essay provide a number of resources for this discourse. Hytten explores these contributions in relation to the theories that animate education for social justice, in particular, critical pedagogy, glob- alization theory, and cultural studies. In the end, she revisits the vision and promise of education for so- cial justice, considering what these edited collections offer, reflecting on their gaps and weaknesses, and providing some direction for what kind of work we still need to make social justice a reality. Arguably one of the central purposes, if not the central purpose, of education in the United States is to help students develop the knowledge, habits, skills, and dispositions necessary for democratic citizenship. These include learning to think critically, to participate in public dialogue, to consider the rights and needs of others, to live in harmony with diverse groups of people, to act on important social issues, to be accountable for one’s choices and decisions, and to work to bring about the conditions in which all individuals can develop to their fullest capacities and potential. According to Michael Apple and James Beane, democratic societies depend on a variety of important foundations: we create the conditions for a free exchange of ideas, even when these ideas are unpopular, thus allowing us to make fully informed decisions; we have faith in our fellow citizens and in our ability to work collaboratively with them to solve problems and to imagine more enriching possibilities for living together; we employ habits of critical thinking, reflection, and analysis to assess ideas and options, instead of relying on narrow prejudices, uninformed opinions, and personal biases; and we are all concerned with the rights of individuals, the treatment of minorities, the welfare of both intimate and dis- tant others, and, ultimately, the advancement of the common good. 1 Social justice is an integral feature of democratic life, as democratic societies are, at least in the ideal, just societies. They strive for equity, self-determination, and freedom. They educate students to become just citizens, who are, as Walter Parker notes, ‘‘prin- cipled and compassionate, who refrain from harming or exploiting others, and who 1. James A. Beane and Michael W. Apple, ‘‘The Case for Democratic Schools,’’ in Democratic Schools, eds. Michael W. Apple and James A. Beane (Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curric- ulum Development, 1995), 6–7. EDUCATIONAL THEORY j Volume 56 j Number 2 j 2006 Ó 2006 Board of Trustees j University of Illinois 221