Can Social Realism do Social Justice? Debating the Warrants for Curriculum Knowledge Selection

Abstract

Social realism (SR), as a movement that argues for ‘bringing knowledge back in’ to curriculum (Young 2008a), is significant globally, especially in South Africa. This article examines arguments from SR proponents that curriculum selection should privilege specialised disciplinary knowledge – as ‘powerful knowledge’ – over ‘everyday knowledge’, and how this is warranted through Durkheim's distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ social bases for knowledge. The article asks how adequately curriculum based on SR warrants can do social justice. This inquiry stages debates between SR and three alternative approaches. The first is standpoint theories that knowledge – including that of scientific disciplines – is always positional and ‘partially objective’. The next is Vygotskian arguments for curriculum that, dialectically, joins systematising powers of scientific knowledge with rich funds of knowledge from learners’ everyday life-worlds. Third, SR's philosophical framing is contrasted with Nancy Fraser's (2009) framework for robust social justice in globalising contexts. It is argued that SR's grounds for curriculum knowledge selection emphasise cognitive purposes for schooling in ways that marginalise ethical purposes. In consequence, SR conceptions of what constitutes social-educational ‘justice’ are too thin, we argue, to meet substantive needs and aspirations among power-marginalised South African groups seeking better lives through schooling.