C ontemporary politicians, teachers, parents, and educational reformers are locked in a heated debate regarding the definition of social justice in education. Is it an education that will give students skills to alter the social order, or is it an education that will enable students to fit themselves into a higher station in that social order? Should the academic achievement of individuals or groups be the unit of analysis used to examine social justice? Can social justice be achieved through an education that promotes assimilation, or must it be an education for cultural maintenance (or something in between)? The debate can be loosely organized in two ideological camps. On one hand, social justice is the promise of equity and mobility through assimilation and the belief that such an agenda will return schools to a time in which they fostered togetherness under the banner of Americanization (Marshall & Parker, n.d.). On the other hand, social justice in education is reflected in a curriculum and school personnel who honor students' languages and cultures, foster appreciation of difference, and engage in a moral use of power that resists discrimination and inequity (American Educational Research Association, Leadership for Social Justice Special Interest Group, n.d.).This chapter uses the words of historical actors and historians to inform the current debate regarding how social justice should be defined and delivered. A history of social justice in education is useful for at least two reasons. First, these competing notions of social justice in education are not new. Tension between a belief in assimilation and the ability of individuals to climb the meritocratic ladder and the belief in a respect for cultural and linguistic differences and a flattening of the racial, ethnic, and linguistic hierarchy has existed since the start of the common school system (Tyack, 1993). Second, current educational reformers and others appropriate history and memory to justify certain avenues to social justice. As Hom and Yamamoto (2000) state, 195
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