In a 1982 speech at the American Education Research Conference, Maxine Greene—an educator, philosopher, and artist—told the crowd: “To rear a generation of spectators is not to educate at all.” This provocation urges educators to ask ourselves: Are we offering young people the tools, skills, and opportunities they need to disrupt and intervene in the injustices they see? Or are we merely providing them the means to passively observe and critique from the sidelines? In today’s politically and socially charged environment, school leaders, educators, and students are navigating real and ever-increasing tensions between a sense of urgency to disrupt and dismantle injustice and feelings of fear and anxiety about diverging from the status quo.
And yet, there is no path to a more just society without the active engagement and action of its citizens. As teachers and school leaders, we have a unique opportunity to prepare young people for this active participation. Philosopher Paulo Freire contended that part of this preparation involves (1) fostering students’ ability to critically analyze the ways systems, institutions, and individuals maintain structural inequality and (2) developing students' skills and will to intervene in injustice on behalf of themselves and others. Freire argued that these two pieces must be interlocked. Social analysis skills alone are insufficient to advance social justice. These skills must be paired with social action to effect meaningful change.
Social analysis skills must be paired with social action to effect meaningful change.
In our research and our own experience as educators, we have encountered educators who feel limited or concerned about their ability to offer students space to engage in social action. In general, schools as we have currently constructed them are better set up to engage students in learning about a topic than meaningful action to address that topic. Educators also express concern that the time necessary to engage students in social action will come at the expense of students' academic learning. These concerns are common, and yet we have seen firsthand that balancing social analysis, social action, and academic skill-building can be done in everyday schools and classrooms, even in states where there might be political resistance.
Educators can:
- Integrate opportunities for action into curricular units across all subject areas in standards-aligned and academically enriching ways.
- Create opportunities for students to learn from community leaders and activists already engaging in social change.
- Partner with families and community organizations to showcase opportunities for young people to get involved in supporting and acting for issues they care about that affect them, their families, their peers, and their schools.
- Create opportunities for students to practice articulating what action could look like (e.g., prompts that invite students to analyze a social issue and outline what strategic change might entail).
In our new book, Educating for Justice (ASCD, 2025), we offer specific standards-aligned practices that can help K-12 schools and educators build opportunities for social action into their curriculum. We illustrate these practices with examples from elementary, middle, and high schools, where we have taught, led, and conducted research. Our study guide additionally offers activities to help teachers and school leaders get started.
Here are two examples of this work, one from a high school and one from an elementary school.
Partner with Students for School-Based Social Action
School is an important community for our students, as real as any other community that they belong to. Students are knowledgeable about the injustices and inequities in their school community, and they are often highly motivated to address and challenge these injustices.
At Espiritu High School (a pseudonym), all 11th grade civics classes participate in an action research project that begins with their teachers inviting them to identify a policy in the school handbook that they believe is unjust or unfair. Students in each civics course examine their school handbook and then discuss, debate, and ultimately arrive at a consensus about a policy worthy of their attention.
Students are knowledgeable about the injustices and inequities in their school community.
One year, a group of students focused on the school’s technology policy, which prohibited using smartphones and headphones during the school day. The students felt this policy was too draconian and tasked several group members with identifying research that could demonstrate the positive role of technology in the learning process. Other group members worked together to craft a new technology policy that involved a “media pass” issued to each student. The “media pass” allowed the use of smartphones and headphones during designated portions of the school day and could be revoked if students allowed these devices to become a distraction. The students worked together to fuse their research and policy recommendations into a presentation. They assigned roles, practiced, and made revisions.
The class presented their research and recommendations at a faculty meeting and took a number of challenging questions from their teachers. Had they done selective research about the benefits of these technologies? Is there a difference between listening to music with and without lyrics? Aren’t students doing their homework slowed down by music and social media? The students responded thoughtfully, and ultimately, the faculty voted to try out the students’ proposed technology policy on a trial basis for the remainder of the school year. The students were jubilant about this civic victory, and, importantly, they could articulate how the skills they had developed during this project could apply to effecting change in other circumstances. Through practicing action in their school community, students were more empowered to consider their ability to intervene in instances of injustice they might see in the world around them.
Because some might argue that promoting active engagement is easier in a civics course than in other content areas, in our book, we also provide examples of teachers across various grade levels and subject areas who intentionally offer students opportunities to move beyond passive observation to active engagement. For instance, in one high school math class, students analyzed the distribution of green spaces in their community. After calculating the average size of parks across different neighborhoods, students wrote letters to their local Parks and Recreation Department advocating for more equitable access to green spaces across socioeconomic and geographic boundaries.
Partner with Students in Community Activism
Issues facing students’ local communities offer additional opportunities for engaging students in challenging injustice, and researchers have found that young people can be highly motivated to address injustices that impact their family, friends, and neighbors.
Social action does not have to be a separate goal or distraction from students’ academic learning but, rather, a deepening and reinforcement of this learning.
Local social action can also be tied directly to students’ academic learning goals and curriculum. At Sarah Roberts Elementary School (pseudonym), for example, 3rd graders participated in a district-mandated language arts unit featuring J.M. Barrie’s 1904 play, Peter Pan. Because the play includes problematic stereotypes of Native Americans, the students and their teachers spent time identifying these stereotypes, discussing why they are problematic, and exploring how stereotypes of Native Americans persist today. In particular, the 3rd graders read about and discussed the fact that more than 20 high schools in their state still used Native American mascots for their sports teams. A few weeks later, during a curriculum unit on persuasive writing that aligned with state standards, the 3rd grade teaching team modified the culminating assignment. Students wrote persuasive letters to a neighboring school committee, urging them to change their high school's mascot, which used a derogatory term for Native Americans that was similar to the former name of Washington, D.C.'s NFL team.
This assignment gave the 3rd graders an opportunity to express their own opinion about this town’s team name and mascot, marshal evidence to support this perspective, and participate in authentic social action when they and their teachers mailed these letters to the chair of the school committee. The students’ sense of agency about the possibility that they could affect change only deepened a few months later when they learned that several legislators in their state’s House of Representatives had proposed a bill banning Native American mascots in public schools across the state.
These examples illustrate how engaging students in social action does not have to be a separate goal or distraction from students’ academic learning but, rather, a deepening and reinforcement of this learning. In doing so, we position our students as agents of change, bringing ourselves closer to the vision of living in a just society.
Educating for Justice
In a world marked by deep-seated injustices, schools can be powerful places for students to learn to recognize, analyze, and challenge these inequities.
