Social Justice LibGuide: Home

Still I Rise

(retrieved from engagio.com)

Welcome to the Social Justice LibGuide!

As you begin your academic and intellectual journey at Adelphi University, or perhaps you have already begun and are continuing this odyssey, this LibGuide provides ideas, resources, and strategies to take charge of your education, both in the classroom and outside of it.

Perhaps you identify with a marginalized, oppressed community, or perhaps you identify with a cross section of minoritized statuses, or perhaps you simply want to become an ally or you are sympatico to social justice causes.  Use this LibGuide as a starting point to explore your heritage, ways to become involved in campaigns of interest to you, become acquainted with terminology and concepts, find courses at Adelphi that somehow address social justice issues, learn about important works written by others that you can explore in your extracurricular reading, and more.

Paolo Freire, the famed Brazilian educator, warned against the banking model of education.  By this he meant an understanding of education as a system where the teacher deposits knowledge to waiting and passive students. He redefined education as an arena where individuals think critically about reality and ways to transform it.  Education should be centered around the experiences, culture and context of the lives of students. Education should be an interaction or an exchange with others.  It is the basis for freedom and overcoming oppressive systems, behaviors and knowledge.  You already bring so much to the table simply by being who you are, by what you already know, so use this to engage with the world around you and the people who inhabit it.

Instead, approach this LibGuide with the berry-picking theory of information gathering in mind.  By this, we mean that you may not know initially what exactly you are looking for, but as you explore, pick bits of information here and there as you come across knowledge and scholarship and resources that stimulate your mind.  What you find may surprise and delight you.  Find your own way through this important and continuing voyage that we call your education.  Take control and refuse the banking model of education and the belief that there is only one standard,  defined and true path to being educated. 

Begin the dialogue and the conversation!  Find an idea, an organization, a book of poetry, or a legal decision, and use it to engage with your professors, your librarians, and your peers.  Use this LibGuide to jumpstart the discussion with others.  This is the basis for all education.

Please be sure to give me feedback and to start an intellectual discussion about anything in the LibGuide in the "Comments" section in the box below.