To honor educators this Teacher Appreciation Week, we offer a preview article—by the dedicated teachers and staff at Wilkins Elementary School in Jackson, Mississippi—from the upcoming Spring issue of Learning for Justice magazine. Educators often work under challenging circumstances yet maintain their commitment to ensure the education of our nation’s young people. These LFJ resources celebrate and uplift the efforts educators engage in to make our world a better place.
“Because we know that attacks on knowledge are fueling threats to freedom, and that repression in one place fuels its spread elsewhere, we call for global resistance to all efforts to destroy the vital tools that help us to imagine and create more equitable and inclusive futures for us all.” —African American Policy Forum
What does social justice education really mean? The current climate of censorship and disinformation along with attacks on inclusive education makes it crucial for us all to understand the role of education in building a just society that benefits us all.
For Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoa), education is important so that we never forget the horrors that hate manifests. But for truly meaningful commitment to learning from and preventing such atrocities, we must come together in the urgency of now—in combating censorship about our country's history, in teaching about racism and the systems of anti-Black oppression, and in countering the patterns of hate in our nation and world today. The Holocaust is not just a singular event of the past; every generation must make the commitment to "never again," and that begins with education.