If you would have asked me four years ago, coming into my freshman year, what social justice is, the reply I would have give to you is that social justice is the government or people that deal with politics. Over the course of my four years at Social Justice High School I have learned that social justice is much more. It is more than just my school name. I have been taught what social justice is through the curriculum at my school. I have been taught in my English, history, and science classes what social justice is. I have learned that social justice means more than just equality; it also means respect, struggle, and balance. In May of 2001, a group of fourteen parents and grandparents in the community of Little Village decided to take matters in their own hands and declare a hunger strike. This was due to the fact that they were promised a new high school almost four years, and had not received anything. After a long and difficult nineteen days the strike ended with the promise of a new high school on 31st and Kostner. Social justice is that struggle. In order to achieve what we want and what we deserve, we make sacrifices, and even after that we continue the struggle by making sure the changes that we have fought for do not erode. Social Justice is an extremely close subject to me not only because I go to a school that holds this name, but because my background: my family has fought and starved for me to even be able to attend the school I will soon graduate from. And for this I definitely feel a personal connection. Here we are thirteen years later able to sit down in a classroom environment with a very unique curriculum and amazing teachers. |
I have not only been prepped for college, but I have been prepped for the struggle. There are so many important global injustices, and so many struggles all around the world. I am going to share something that I have never talked about. After I had graduated from 8th grade, my friends and I from middle school went to the movie theaters, as we talked about how we were doing I mentioned that I was doing well and that I had mostly A’s and B’s, and then one of them said to me “Oh my god, so, what? You're in a neighborhood school? That means nothing.” I remember my heart dropping to my stomach. As I sat there in silence I felt ashamed and embarrassed. I could feel the emptiness in my stomach and I could feel the blood rushing to my face. I gulped down the big lump in my throat and brushed it off. It wasn't until being in my senior year of high school that I thought about it and realized, it shouldn't matter what school you attend or what neighborhood you live in, education is education. Even now that I am writing this my heart just fills with fire and it makes me extremely angry that I said nothing back that day, but more importantly that I felt embarrassed, I had nothing to be embarrassed about. I believe that education is the foundation to do great things. I do not believe that IQ, test scores or the neighborhood you live in defines who you are, or defines who you will become. I believe that education has no limits.
My role in the struggle is to continue to fight not only injustices in education, but much more. Growing up I have always been around people that are in tough situations, and I have always felt some sort of guilt that I was able to have the life I had, while my loved ones were not as fortunate. One day my brother talked about being a social worker, and as I asked what that was I immediately knew I wanted to do something like that, especially if it involved children that were in need. And although social work and education is something on different levels, I want to be able to combine them both. It is true, you are only able to take on so many struggles, but that doesn’t mean you should shy away from what you truly believe in even if that means you believing in ten things. I also desire to continue my struggle in my community because that is my foundation. It is not okay to fight someone else’s battles and leave the one where you came from stranded. My communities, Little Village and Pilsen, have a huge part in who I am and I will continue the struggle of fighting for quality education and resources within these areas. As I have mentioned my topic, education, has a lot to do with the struggle for justice because we as a society have a constitutional right for quality education. Our lives are consumed with textbooks, tests, grades, classrooms, and notebooks. Education should not be looked at as a way to define who we are, nor should it be a way to define our future through test scores or neighborhood we come from, it should merely just be education and learning without pressure of being the best or competing. About 1.2 million students in the U.S drop out of high school. This is an insanely amount of students and I hope to raise awareness of being able to question what is wrong the system and not what is wrong with the students. |