Education for Social Justice at Saint Mary’s College of California

The mission statement of Saint Mary’s College notes that “a distinctive mark of a Lasallian school is its awareness of the consequences of economic and social injustice and its commitment to the poor.”  SMC’s definition of social justice evolves from this Catholic Lasallian context, and we arrive at the following:

Social Justice is a set of principles and a process that govern humans’ behavior to one another and the natural world. Social justice is based on the premises that society is characterized by inequalities in resources and influence, and that individual and collective actions can and will transform society. Social justice promotes awareness of inequalities, action to redress inequalities, and ongoing habits of mind and actions that continue to redress inequalities. Social justice seeks transformation of self, campus, and local and global communities and the liberation of creation from every oppressive situation.

Social Justice and Service-Learning Courses
Two types of courses offered this Jan Term explore and promote social justice. Your participation in one of these courses will offer you the exciting opportunity to address real problems in our society and to understand the larger context of those problems through the lens of one or more academic disciplines. In the process, you will learn more about yourself and your deepest values. The following are descriptions of these types of courses:

• Social Justice (SJ) courses link social justice to their specific content and goals, invite students to understand the complexity of power and privilege, and propose individual and collective responsibility for the common good.
• Service-Learning (SL) is defined at SMC as a specific form of teaching and learning in which students engage in purposeful service that addresses community goals. Through critical reflection students integrate their service experiences with academic objectives to develop civic responsibility and social justice. Students enrolled in service-learning courses spend a significant amount of out-of-class time engaged in direct service in the community and/or indirect service meant to benefit a community partner (nonprofit organization, school, etc.).

View the Social Justice and Service-Learning Courses.