Youth Ideas & Questions

Writing an Article on Social Justice

Question

I'm a staff member on our school newspaper, and I'd like to see us do an article in each issue related to social justice. Do you have any suggestions about how to proceed?

Response

  1. Start with a topic of significant concern to the student body. It will then be easier to get them interested in subsequent issues in topics about which they have less concern. (In the school where I taught, when I polled students about issues of "high", "moderate", or "low" concern, two issues that consistently came up "high" were "domestic violence" and "sexual assault.")

    Along with this recommendation, I'd suggest that your first issue include some kind of poll that students could respond to -- i.e. a list of various social justice topics -- as a way of identifying topics for future issues of the paper.

    (Note: I would not go so far as to suggest that you let the results of such a poll dictate all of your topics. In fact, your poll may reveal that students lack sufficient concern about one or more topics about which you and other staff on the school paper believe they ought to have significantly greater concern. The need to cultivate that greater concern can be a rationale for choosing a topic in a future issue of the paper.)

  2. While I'd never encourage you to avoid controversy -- either at a student or adult (e.g. faculty/staff, administrative) level -- I'd encourage you to consider beginning with topics that aren't as controversial.

    By demonstrating the quality of your approach with "safer" topics, you prepare your readers -- and administrators -- to be supportive of your efforts to tackle more challenging ones.

  3. In addition to brainstorming a sequence of topics with other members of the school paper, I'd recommend that you and the other members of the paper's staff connect with some other key constituencies in the school, such as:

    • students involved in Student Council, National Honor Society, and any other student organization that is involved in some way in "service" during the school year (also, the faculty/staff advisors of these organizations)
    • faculty members who teach courses that touch upon one or more of the issues
    • faculty/staff and students who are significantly involved in addressing one or more issues outside of their roles within the school

    I make this suggestion because it seems to me that a school newspaper could become a vehicle for improving the visibility and quality of efforts within the school community to engage in such learning-and-action.

    Three examples of what I'm thinking about:

    • The school I used to teach in made a big deal about its annual Thanksgiving Food Drive (e.g. an all-school assembly to kick it off; daily reminder-announcements over the PA; lots of signs around the school), but the quality of learning that occurred and the failure of the drive to address underlying causes of poverty/hunger in our community were, I believed, ongoing problems. I suspect that a three-article segment in the school paper focused on the issue of poverty/hunger in the community could significantly strengthen the overall effort -- and the process of dialogue with the food drive planners would probably improve the quality of their work, as well.
    • In the school where I used to teach, there were a number of faculty who taught courses that touched on various social justice issues (e.g. an English teacher who had a "Multicultural Literature" class, a Social Studies teacher who did a significant unit on "War and Peace", a Health teacher who had a class that addressed issues of relationship violence). I noticed that it was difficult to get those teachers to move students from an "awareness" into an "action" mode. One strategy that could help this process would be if the school newspaper were to publish writings by students in such courses (e.g. articles, editorials, poems, etc). Another strategy would be for the school newspaper to report what any students in such courses (or maybe the class as a whole) did action-wise regarding a topic.
    • Once when working with a group of students who became concerned about US policy in El Salvador (it was during a time when the civil war there was escalating, and news of US government support for the oppressive national government was becoming more troubling), we learned that there were two well-respected faculty members who had significant background on the topic, but had some significant differences in their perspectives. So the students invited both faculty to have a forum on the topic. Not only did the students leave more informed about the issue; their understanding of -- and respect for -- both faculty members deepened. I think a school newspaper could provide such forums (e.g. by having different faculty/staff submit perspective pieces, or by having student writers interview them and provide written summaries), even host a "live forum" about which they could then report.

  4. I'd encourage you to have the following objectives in mind as you construct your article(s):

    • seek to "humanize" the topic -- give it a human voice, face and feel (e.g. evoke a sense of compassion [not pity] about what it might be like to be in the shoes of someone who knows the issue from firsthand experience, challenges myths and stereotypes about people who experience the issue firsthand); I would caution you about the use of any statistics if you have not yet first cultivated that sense of who the people are who experience the issue, and what it might feel like to experience it
    • educate readers about key facts related to the issue -- especially some of its key causes (remember to think about the role that systems play, and not just about individual attitudes and actions)
    • give clear examples of youth involved in responding to the issue, along with information about ways in which students in the school can be involved (e.g. contact info for organizations; websites for further info)