Understanding how we understand girls’ voices on cultural and religious practices: toward a curriculum for justice

Abstract

It is imperative to take account of the many faces of justice when exploring the elements of a curriculum for justice. Justice is not only about equity, equality and fairness, but about creating spaces where people can learn to prioritise a significant Other and practise doing so. The curriculum needs to provide a space where the legal, restorative face of justice and its ethical face could coincide. Firstly, we argue that a sole focus on justice as reasonableness might reinforce the notion of “separate but equal”, and that through a leveling of difference, we might opaquely strengthen difference without an inclination to care deeply for those whose background might differ from ours. Secondly, we argue that the legal and ethical faces of justice are not mono-tonal, but that these faces constitute many complexions based on the body holding it (or the person who attempts to make sense of these faces). In this article we will attempt to understand how we make sense of girls’ voices on cultural and religious practices. We imagine that understanding how we understand Others might place us in a better position to provide guidelines to develop curriculum spaces for profound justice; i.e. justice that is based on reasonableness and, more importantly, on care.

Keywords: caring curriculum; critical discourse analysis; girls’ narratives; justice; null curriculum; unconscious curriculum