Curriculum of Social Movements

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Ayers ◽  
Rick Ayers ◽  
Joel Westheimer
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
21St Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Freedom Schools ◽  
Black Neighborhoods ◽  
The World

Social movements change the world. Thus, they shape curriculum. Participation in movements educates the public by altering viewpoints and actions. Likewise, participants learn through participation in social movements; therefore, social movements can be considered curricula. The experiences of social movements are curricula that exist in and out of schools. Examples of the myriad connections among school curriculum, nonschool curriculum, and social movements interact in dynamic fluidity. Curriculum is much more than a course syllabus, set of plans, or the indoctrinations or liberations intended by schools. Curriculum includes all experiences of schooling and contexts that influence schooling: intended, taught, tested, hidden, excluded, outside, peer-driven, and more. It encompasses knowledge, relationships, and interpretations that students bring to school or anywhere else. These multiple dimensions of curriculum also exist in the diverse experiences, institutions, and gatherings of everyday life. Alternative forms of curriculum have been envisioned and enacted over the centuries to overcome the dominance of autocratic forms of education. Social movements educate and are therefore curricular. A noteworthy example of curricula of social movements is the Civil Rights Movement, particularly the Mississippi Freedom Schools in the United States. Another example is the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, founded by Myles Horton and based on the Danish model of folk schools, which was a center of inspiration and praxis for participants in the Civil Rights Movement. Emancipatory educational movements are exemplified in the problem-posing work of Paulo Freire, initially in Brazil, evolving to counter the oppressiveness of “banking” forms of education in many parts of the world. Freire has shown how oppressed persons could be major creators of their own education, by learning to name, write, and read the world to compose a more just world. In the second decade of the 21st century, young climate activists, such as Xiye Bastida and Greta Thunberg, have advocated ecological renewal; this has grown into a worldwide movement, captured in the title “Fridays for Future.” Local examples include the insightful stories in The Journal of Ordinary Thought, inspired and evoked by Hal Adams and authored by the parents of students in some of Chicago’s most impoverished Black neighborhoods in the late 20th century. Global movements include Black Lives Matter, which has manifested itself as an act of solidarity in the second decade of the 21st century. Social movements, of which the contributions of Martin Luther King, Jr. are an emblematic example, teach the power of learning and the learning of power. They help raise the deepest and most worthwhile questions: What does it mean to be human? Who am I in relation to others? What kind of a society do we want to create? How can schools and other public spaces become generative sites of contention and authentic engagement? That is where a curriculum of social movements comes to life. What lessons might educators learn from the examples of a curriculum of social movements? How should we live? How will we live? What will you do about it?

Public Opinion and Religion: Gay Rights in the United States

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darren E. Sherkat
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Marriage And Family ◽  
Transgendered People ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The World

Religion plays an important role in structuring civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people (GLBT). Religious proscriptions against homosexuality were almost universally codified into law until the late 20th century, and laws against homosexuality and denying civil rights to homosexual remain in place in most nation states. The advent of the civil rights movement for GLBT persons has generated considerable backlash both in nations where civil rights have been secured, as well as in nations where many political leaders and movements view the extension of civil rights to GLBT persons as an external cultural threat. Religious opposition to the extension of rights has swiftly followed GLBT activism seeking: (a) an end to legal proscriptions; (b) alleviation of harassment and discrimination; (c) marriage and family recognition; (d) action related to the HIV/AIDS epidemic; and (e) recognition of transgendered identity and transgendered rights. GLBT movements quickly achieved considerable success and even garnered support from religious liberals. Data from the General Social Surveys (GSS) in the United States show that while support for same-sex marriage has increased in the U.S., significant differences remain across religious groups. Specifically, sectarian Protestants are significantly less supportive of civil rights for GLBT persons, while the non-religious are most supportive. While GLBT persons are making substantial political gains throughout the world, in many places backlash is eroding civil rights, and in much of the world the movement has lacked success. Several liberal religious groups have been crucial for the international success of human rights campaigns for GLBT persons, however conservative religious groups from several religious traditions have successfully promoted the continued repression of GLBT persons and movements.

“Say What you Really Believe”1: Freedom Schools, Youth Empowerment, and Black Power in 1960s Milwaukee

2020 ◽  
Vol 122 (7) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Katerina Suchor
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Power ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Youth Empowerment ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Freedom Schools ◽  
Core Components

Background The historical literature on the civil rights movement has tended to underemphasize the movement's educational activities, while literature on the civil rights and Black Power movements has overemphasized ideological and tactical differences between these chapters in the struggle for Black liberation. A few studies have examined Freedom Schools—educational projects established as part of larger civil rights campaigns—but these studies have focused almost exclusively on Freedom Schools in the Southern context. Purpose Focusing on Freedom Schools organized as part of a school desegregation campaign in Milwaukee during the mid-1960s, this article explores the pedagogical purpose and philosophy of the Freedom Schools, as distinct from other protest activities undertaken as part of the campaign, as well as the legacy of the Freedom Schools after the campaign's conclusion. Research Design This historical analysis examines materials such as lesson plans, flyers, and correspondence from the archives of the Milwaukee United School Integration Committee (MUSIC), the organization responsible for the school desegregation campaign. Findings This article shows that core components of the Freedom School curriculum, which sought to challenge deficit-oriented policies and empower youth to create social change, foreshadowed key tenets of Black Power ideology. Conclusions These findings suggest that the Freedom Schools, as important sites of ideological development, highlight continuity between the civil rights and Black Power movements and situate the Freedom Schools as part of a longer tradition of education for liberation and self-determination.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Azaransky
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The World ◽  
Martin Luther King ◽  
Independence Movements

The introduction describes a group of black Christian intellectuals and activists who looked abroad, even in other religious traditions, for ideas and practices that could fuel a racial justice movement in the United States. They envisioned an American racial justice movement akin to independence movements that were gaining ground around the world. The American civil rights movement would be, as Martin Luther King Jr., later described it, “part of this worldwide struggle.”

scholarly journals Music of the 1960s: The Praxis of Ideological Change

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Poe ◽  
Melody Fisher ◽  
Stephen Brandon ◽  
Darvelle Hutchins ◽  
Mark Goodman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Ideological Change

In this article, we consider music as the praxis of ideology in the 1960s within the framework of Burke’s rhetoric of transformation. The 1960s were a period of cultural change in the United States and around the world—the civil rights movement, protests against the Vietnam War, challenges to communism in Eastern Europe, liberation politics around the world. The role of music as a unifying element among those people advocating change is well established in scholarship. We take that consideration of the role of music into a discussion of how music became the praxis of ideology, providing a place where millions of people could advocate for change and be part of the change by interacting with the music.

scholarly journals African Canadian Anti-Discrimination Activism and the Transnational Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1965

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 386-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosanne Waters
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Canadian History ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Rights History ◽  
African Canadian

Several recent historical works have challenged interpretations of the civil rights movement in the United States as a strictly domestic story by considering its connections to anti-racist struggles around the world. Adding a Canadian dimension to this approach, this article considers linkages between African Canadian anti-discrimination activism in the 1950s and early 1960s and African American civil rights organizing. It argues that Canadian anti-discrimination activists were interested in and influenced by the American movement. They followed American civil rights campaigns, adapted relevant ideas, and leveraged the prominent American example when pressing for change in their own country. African Canadian activists and organizations also impacted the American movement through financial and moral support. This article contributes to the study of African Canadian history, Canadian human rights history, and the American civil rights movement by emphasizing the local origins of anti-discrimination activism in Canada, while also arguing that such efforts are best understood when contextualized within a broader period of intensive global anti-racist activism that transcended national borders.

Learning from the Social Movements of the 1960s

2019 ◽  
pp. 575-588
Author(s):  
Oliver Fein ◽  
Charlotte S. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Health Workers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
New Social Movements ◽  
Single Issue ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter describes how we can learn from the social movements of the 1960s in the United States and apply insights from those social movements to address social injustice today. Social movements have had, and will continue to have, a powerful impact on medicine and public health, motivating and energizing health workers to address social injustice. The authors, in part drawing from their personal experiences, describe the civil rights movement, the student movement, the anti-war movement, the women’s movement, the gay rights movement, and new social movements. The authors conclude that the experiences of the 1960s teach us that, as new social movements emerge, it is important for single-issue movements to unite with each other and collaborate for progressive change.

The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Women's Social Movement Activism

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Social Movement Activism

Women have long been involved in social movement activism in the United States, from the nation’s beginning up to the present, and in waves of feminist activism as well as in a variety of other social movements, including the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and conservative mobilizations. The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Women’s Social Movement Activism provides both a detailed and extensive examination of the wide range of U.S. women’s collective efforts, as well as a broad overview of the scholarship on women’s social movement struggles. The volume’s five sections consider various dimensions of women’s social movement activism: (1) women’s collective action over time exploring the long history of women’s social movement participation, (2) the variety of social issues that mobilize women to act collectively, (3) the myriad types of resistance strategies and tactics utilized by activists, (4) both the forums and targets of women’s mobilizations, and (5) women’s participation in a diversity of activist efforts beyond women’s movements. The five sections present a total of thirty-six chapters, each written by leading scholars of women’s social movement mobilizations. The chapters, in addition to describing women’s activism and reviewing the scholarly literature, also define important directions for future research on women and social movements, providing scholars with a guide to what we still do not know about women’s collective struggles.

Environmental Justice: Approaches, Dimensions, and Movements

Ecology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Temper
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
National Parks ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
The Early 21St Century

Environmental justice (EJ) is the struggle for access to a safe and healthy environment free from pollution and for access to the environmental resources needed for survival, well being, and social reproduction. The term environmental justice was originally born in the United States from the resistance of African American communities linked to the civil rights movement protesting toxic dumping and the siting of hazardous facilities in their communities. Scholars soon joined activists, concerned citizens, and religious leaders and communities to systematically document injustices and demonstrate that “pollution is not color blind” by demonstrating that disparities of environmental exposure exist among racial lines. EJ provided a powerful challenge to the mainstream current of the environmentalism definition of environment and nature, which focused on wilderness conservation and natural areas, such as national parks and endangered species. Environmental justice considers the inseparability of the environment from everyday life and redefines the environment as “the places where people live, work, and play.” Over time, the environmental justice framing has continually expanded to engage with multiple spatialities and forms of inequalities and has brought a far wider range of issues under the umbrella of what is the environment. In the early 21st century, environmental justice can best be understood as a shared frame and coalition of anti-toxics; labor, civil rights, indigenous, environmental, and feminist movements; and radical scholars, among others. Their common conviction is that environmental problems are largely structural and political issues that cannot be solved apart from social and economic justice and that these call for a transformative approach and the restructuring of dominant economic models, social relations, and institutional arrangements. From an initial focus on the socio-spatial distribution of “bads” (emissions, toxins) and then “goods,” (parks, green spaces, services, healthy food), environmental justice in the early 21st century encompasses a huge array of issues and has increasingly taken on transnational and transdisciplinary character and has become a meeting place for action-research among a growing network of activists, scholars, and nongovernmental organizations. EJ can be said to be a “theory in practice,” in constant coevolution and redefinition by many activist groups, international coalitions, and intellectuals.

An Erosion of Credibility

2018 ◽  
pp. 21-44
Author(s):  
Laurence R. Jurdem
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Society ◽  
National Review ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

In the opinion of these media outlets, America’s failure to achieve victory in Southeast Asia was due to an inherent weakness at the foundation of the nation’s foreign policy. Those who wrote for Human Events and National Review argued that the misdirection and uncertainty that plagued the war strategy of the Johnson and Nixon administrations were due to the divisiveness in the country over the ramifications of the civil rights movement and the Great Society. Conservative commentators believed that the disunity among the nation’s citizenry, combined with the failure of the two administrations to do whatever was necessary to win the war, caused the United States’ credibility as a combatant in the Cold War to be questioned around the world.

Black Lives Matter and the Civil Rights Movement: A Comparative Analysis of Two Social Movements in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 448-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dewey M. Clayton
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Issue Framing ◽  
Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter (BLM) has arisen as a social movement in response to the numerous killings of unarmed African Americans. It has been criticized by some as too confrontational and divisive. The purpose of this study is to undertake a comparative analysis of the BLM Movement and the civil rights movement (1954-1965). As social movements, both have evolved out of the need to continue the Black liberation struggle for freedom. I have conducted a content analysis of the New York Times newspaper during a 2-year period for both social movements to examine the issue framing of each. I argue that the civil rights movement framed its issues in a more inclusive manner than BLM. BLM should take a lesson from the civil rights movement by boldly taking on an issue like police brutality of African Americans and expanding the boundaries of something that is politically unacceptable to being acceptable.

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