Space, Place and Neighbourhood in the Pursuit of the ‘Socially Just School’

Abstract

Schools are institutions that are created and sustained in social space. This means that schools, whether they acknowledge it or not, actually do stand for something whether that be good or bad. This chapter explores what an alternative to the dominant neo-liberal exams-driven, standards-based, managerialist version of schooling might look like. At the centre of the alternative, which I have come to refer to as the socially just school, lies the imperative to have schools that pursue intellectual rigour but in ways that are humanizing in that they exist foremost for students, and they see this as their raison d'etre. What follows from this basic supposition, is that a number of dispositions have to be spoken into existence, namely: the political will to imagine an alternative; the courage to speak back to dominant views of the way schools ought to be; and above all, an acknowledgement of the importance of relationships, respect, trust, dignity, and genuine voice---qualities that are noticeably in short supply in the dominant model.