Social Justice and Policies for Children Learning English Essay

Social Justice and Policies for Children Learning English - Essay Example Supporters of social justice like Nancy Fraser and John Rawls have formulated various approaches or theoretical perspectives of the core ideologies and processes of what comprises social justice. As regards to the relevance of social justice theories to education, Cribb and Gewirtz (2003) have developed one of the most valuable theoretical models, which explain three types of social justice - associational, cultural, and distributive. This paper focuses on the cultural aspect of social justice, particularly in relation to social inclusion policies for linguistic minority children learning English as an additional language in the UK. Cultural justice supports respect for or consideration of cultural diversity. Cribb and Gewirtz (2003) argue that this is an effective way to eliminate hindrances to social justice. Societies act in response to cultural differences in distinctive ways. Educational policies for the needs and demands of children belonging to cultural minority groups in the UK have changed since the immigration from earlier British colonial states in the 1950s. Language became the emphasis on educational policies for this progressing culturally diverse society in the UK with the Department of Education and Science’s (DES) (1963) English for Immigrants. This was the earliest key government programme into the English language instruction for children whose mother tongue was not English. The language requirements of the schools’ immigrant students were dealt with as regards the observed necessity to guarantee that their being there did not interrupt learning for the majority population who are white monolingual. The immigrant students’ cultural requirements were not tackled in official policy, a phenomenon that is experienced until now.