Social Justice

Dear Readers:

The article I chose to discuss Social Justice in schools is “The Coddling of the American Mind.” It originally appeared in The Atlantic in September 2015.

A professor from another class required that we read this and keep in in mind during our learning in that class as well as others while in college. Although the article is mainly purposed for college students, I think it can also be applied in a high school setting.

The main idea of this article is questioning if it is essential to keep potentially offensive or harmful material out of curriculum in order to keep students from feeling uncomfortable or is that a type of censorship that is doing a disservice to students. After reading this article I agree that keeping students from discussing difficult topics is not helping them in any way. Yes, it may be difficult to discuss things such as rape, racism, child abuse, genocide, but these things do unfortunately happen and sheltering students only causes them to be ignorant of them.

There is a fine line, when a difficult topic could affect a student emotionally or psychologically more so than the rest of the class because of previous experience with a trauma. This is where a trigger warning would be used. “Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response. For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald’sThe Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse, so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might “trigger” a recurrence of past trauma.” I agree that having these warnings to students would be helpful in maneuvering these difficult topics. It still allows that they be discussed but presents it in a way where students are prepared for something that is difficult making them feel safe in their environment.

The article also discusses the complexities of microaggressions in schools. Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. This is important because while students have the right to be offended by something they find offending not all acts of offense are meant as such. Yet we must teach students to think about how their actions, based on their own worldview built by the society they live in, may affect someone negatively. Such as asking someone who is not ethnically Caucasian where they are from. While a student may think they are making polite conversation they need to be aware it makes the point that the person is an outsider. They would probably never ask that same question to a white student and this makes white the “norm.” We need to bring equity and Social Justice to a level in our schools where all ethnicities, genders, sexual orientation etc. are normalized.  

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Halee