Future Forward. School Libraries and Social Justice—A Partnership of Necessity

During the first week of June 2019, I attended the Holocaust Institute for Teacher Educators at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The four-day conference brought together a small group of university education professors from across the country with the goal of providing us with the skills and resources necessary to equip the next generation of teachers to teach about the Holocaust. I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the museum, speak with museum curators, and work with other professionals in addressing this pivotal point in history. My time there was mentally and emotionally exhausting but also valuable beyond belief.

As I spent time in the museum, I journaled about images, displays, and writings that impacted me. One of those displays was a pile of books on the floor with a backdrop image of one of the book burnings conducted by Nazi party officials and members of Nazi student organizations. Works by Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Jack London, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, and Helen Keller were just some of those that were targeted for burning. The display states that "Keller reacted to the book burnings with defiant authority: 'Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas.'" The book burnings were an attempt to purify the German culture by removing the ideas of those not deemed appropriate. This was book banning in the extreme.

You're probably wondering why I'm writing about this in the Future Forward column. One of the key points (of which there were many) that I left with was centered around the issue of social justice. As a minority and an educator, social justice has always been an important concept to me. I believe that holds true for many in our profession. As a school librarian, a focus on social justice is a necessity in the development of school libraries that meet the needs of our diverse global community. Included in the National Education Association's (NEA) Diversity Toolkit is a section on social justice. The NEA states, "social justice refers to a concept in which equity or justice is achieved in every aspect of society rather than in only some aspects or for some people. A world organized around social justice principles affords individuals and groups fair treatment as well as an impartial share or distribution of the advantages and disadvantages within a society" (http://www.nea.org/tools/30414.htm). When the school library profession discusses issues of diversity in the field, on a larger level we are addressing issues of social justice in our world.

School libraries should be guardians of social justice and equitable opportunity. All voices need to be heard and represented—even those that we may not personally agree with. This may be difficult because of the geographical or political landscape where your school is, but our students need to have the knowledge to make informed decisions. If we as school librarians aren't cognizant of what our collections represent—or don't represent—it is possible that the needs of social justice aren't being met and that individuals or groups are not receiving fair representation or representation at all.

Although my time at the Holocaust Memorial Museum was focused around an historical time period, the lessons learned apply not only to today but also to the future of school libraries. Developing collections and offering programming that prioritizes issues of social justice and diversity are equally important to the future as they were in the past. This is a heavy responsibility that school librarians bear, but one that I fully believe we can be entrusted with.

For more information on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, please visit https://www.ushmm.org/.

For the NEA's Diversity Toolkit visit http://www.nea.org/tools/diversity-toolkit.html