During our first workshop on the PGCert, we also spent some time reflecting on the phrase ‘Social Justice’ — defining it, and considering how it is contextualised within higher education, and specifically, the design school.
The most concise summary of social justice more widely is that it represents justice with regards to how wealth, opportunities and privileges are distributed within society.
In the context of the design school, this means that same equal distribution of wealth, opportunities and privilege, but specifically amongst university students and staff.
However, it is vital to note that it is impossible to look at the higher education context in isolation. To take a clear example — the university might actively implement all kinds of measures to more widely recruit from, for example, different socioeconomic and race backgrounds… But if the people they are looking to recruit are not being adequately supported throughout their entire educational lives (from early childhood and up), they will not be presenting themselves as potential applicants for the university’s consideration!
Of course there can and should be work done by universities to address the issues these groups face outside the academy (from visibility of pathways, to awareness raising, and other even more proactive measures like scholarships, university visits and so on), but there is also a lot that needs to be done that is out of reach of any given university, and needs to be reflected in social justice in wider society as a whole. (And potentially in universities more proactively working together to leverage their joint power).
In ‘Who can afford to be critical’, Alfonso Matos and others discuss the seeming lack of criticality that self-defined ‘critical design’ schools bring to the material circumstances of their students (the book particularly focusses on socioeconomic status):
“When encouraging students to become who they are, the school developed only a partial alertness and sensitivity: it is rarely concerned with class, census or wealth…”
“…All the dimensions of inequality are equally important. Not just important, they’re real and inextricably linked. A school that is explictly racist and non-patriarchal is also, by default, against precarity.”
Matos, A. (ed.) (2022) Who can afford to be critical?: An Inquiry Into What We Can’t Do Alone, as Designers, and Into What We Might Be Able to Do Together, as People. 1st edition. Eindhoven: Set Margins’ publications. P.22
We discussed social justice within the university in our groups, and we all bought our own areas of passion to the table. (The headings below do not even get close to representing the full scope of the subject, they are just what we particularly focussed on)
Neurodiversity and HE
My personal area of interest for the purposes of this discussion was how students’ neurodiversity can affect their experiences and outcomes in a HE context. Some students may have long known they have some form of neurodiversity, while for others it only becomes apparent in a HE context where a lot of the guard rails of routine, familial support and educational support are removed.
It is all too easy for these students to fall between the cracks in a large institutional context, and the work that universities have already begun to address this is vital. Someone close to me has been repeatedly, profoundly failed by HE institutions, and as an educator, I am passionate about trying to truly see my students — and recognise where additional support is needed. I am still learning how good I actually am at this, but I want it to sit firmly at the centre of my practice as an educator.
There is of course a balance to be struck between supporting students and overwhelming hand-holding which actually serves to oppress them, and I am keen to learn more about what the team in disability support do so that I can better understand how to support my students within my role.
Socioeconomic background and HE
A big area of passion for our group was how students socioeconomic background can affect their chances of commencing and succeeding at university.
We all had a lot of opinions on student fees, and having learned about how the Robbins report in the 1960s opened up university education to a wider audience, and then how the Dearing report in 1999 shook up the sector again by asking ‘who should pay?’, these were helpfully contextualised in ways they maybe weren’t before for me.
The shockingly high student fees we see today cut off access to many students, and this was of great concern to all of us. For those who do make it, the costs of materials, excursions and other expenses can end up being severely challenging, and lack of ability to access these things can affect both outcomes and morale (and morale can affect outcomes!)
Addressing the systematic inequality and barriers that lack of financial capital can cause to students should be a big part of any university’s work — and indeed, as student fees grow ever higher, students themselves are becoming more and more willing to critique where they feel they are not receiving ‘value for money’ on what they have invested in their education. Universities should be willing and able to address these concerns.
One personal passion point for me is the importance of offering part time courses. This widens access to those who must work while studying in order to sustain their education. When I completed my MA, I first sought out a part time option, but this had been discontinued just a couple of years prior. Teaching staff acknowledged to me that the diversity of the cohort (in terms of age and socioeconomic status) had drastically decreased since this decision. As a mature student returning to study after a decade in industry, the only reason I was able to undertake my MA was the combination of a small amount of savings, and the pandemic (which meant that learning moved online, so less of a campus presence was required, and my own paid work had diminished). This was very far from an ideal situation in which to undertake study, and had there been part time options, I could have considered an MA at a different, probably much more optimal time, and maybe reached even more of my potential.
And what now?
It may be that ‘Social Justice’ as an all encompassing issue can never be ‘solved’. It is a ‘wicked problem’, which is so widely distributed and has its tendrils in so many complex aspects of our society, that all we can ever hope to do is make movements towards it. Social Justice most likely cannot ever, even theoretically, be fully resolved.
What is important is that we make space for these conversations to be had. I particularly enjoyed reading the chapter “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces”, taken from The Art of Effective Facilitation: Reflections From Social Justice Educators.
They reflect on the notion of ‘safe’ spaces as often centring the experiences of the oppressor and their discomfort at being confronted, and instead suggest that participants in all social justice conversations need to instead bring ‘bravery’, and readiness to both speak, listen and learn.
“In this manner, we suggest that the language of safety contributes to the replication of dominance and subordination, rather than a dismantling thereof. This assertion does not mean we believe ‘anything goes’ is a better approach; rather, we suggest we do participants a disservice by reinforcing expectations shaped largely by the very forces of privilege and oppression that we seek to challenge through social justice education.”
‘From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces’ (2013) in The Art of Effective Facilitation: Reflections From Social Justice Educators. 1st edition. Sterling, Virginia : Washington, DC: Routledge.
For me, I will continue to reflect on my positionally. I have moved through a lot of spaces where these conversations are forefronted — at the studio I work for part time, Geeks For Social Change, our practice is centred around, as the name implies, social change and social justice. We are a team made up of queer, trans, neurodiverse, disabled, and often socioeconomically disadvantaged people (many of whom experience these issues intersectionally), and I recognise that as pretty much the only cis, neurotypical, non disabled person in our collective, a lot of the structural disadvantages that my colleagues experience are not experienced by me — and I ask how my work can serve to balance out these inequities.
I now need to take what I have learned, both at GFSC and from the wider anarchist/activist communities I have worked adjacent to for many years, and ask how I can transfer these conversations and ideas into my educational work. As was discussed in our session yesterday, while ‘social justice’ is not a solvable issue, we should constantly keep asking ‘how can I do things differently’, and ‘how can I keep moving in the right direction’.