Online

Cane, Catherine McKenna

Education

2022

M. Ed.

Teaching is a profession. Education is a social responsibility. The idea that teachers should be solely responsible for educating an entire population places a heavy burden on those who have chosen to dedicate their lives to a single profession. To create a more stable, successful, and socially conscious society it is imperative that every individual sees themselves as an educator; for, a socially neglected education system leads to weak socio-cultural ties, which results in social upheaval and heavily fractured social systems. This is not to say that we are all teachers, but rather to argue that because our education system is so tightly bound to our society's choices that it becomes imperative that we all understand our responsibility to our communities and get comfortable holding the title: educator. It is when the general public removes itself from understanding, valuing, and holding space in education that systems of education, especially public education, begin to fail. The title "educator" is a social responsibility because education is tightly bound to a history embedded in socially constructed racial divisions. These racial divisions have created conditions within our society that have affected economics and steered political policy. By understanding that society as a whole is responsible for the conditions of education, it becomes clear that we, as a society, have placed unrealistic expectations on the teaching profession. The social, cultural, political, and economic systems within our society have directly shaped how education is administered and the varying types of educational instruction people receive. Especially based on race. Through race-based educational deprivation, which derives from socially constructed policies, our society has determined people's economic status and has perpetuated systemic racism. How are we, in today's world, able to argue that education is the sole responsibility of the teacher when the education system itself has been constructed on a foundation of socially supported discrimination?