Tag Archives: gender

GUEST POST: Sofie Wolthers, the International Panel on Social Progress: Let Injustice Drive Your Passion

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Let Injustice Drive Your Passion

Whether you’re passionate about racial issues, gender equality, poverty, or working conditions, the fight for social justice always comes with moments of discouragement. Something as simple as watching the news after an already exhausting work day can make you feel empty, draining the motivation out of you  I have experienced this discouragement, and continue to regularly. This feeling remains part of the battle we fight as social activists. Not only are we fighting a battle for equality and justice within the world, but we are working to find inspiration around us and within ourselves that gives us the desire to pursue change.

Who am I? I am a young adult living in New York City. I was born in Brazil and am the youngest of four. When I was three, my parents moved my family to the United States with hopes to raise their children in a safer environment than our community in Brazil offered us. One afternoon, burglars broke into our home and robbed us of our valuables. I was too young to remember the incident but I know that the thieves stole more than just our things–they disrupted our peace of mind.

Brazil hasn’t changed much since we left. The gap between the rich and poor remains remarkably grand. Instead of changing public policies and creating programs to better life for the Brazilian people, the government, saturated with corruption, continues to enrich themselves.

Living in Plantation, Florida, I grew up going to school in a uniform. My parents no longer worried whether my siblings and I would get mugged on our way home from school. Sadly, in other area’s around the U.S., this fear is a reality.  

During holiday seasons, we would return to Brazil. My parents constantly reminded my older brothers to keep an eye on my sister and I when walking in the streets, and to never let us wander alone. The encounter I am about to describe has happened on multiple occasions and continues to happen every time I return to Brazil, but this particular instance remains with me.

I must have been about eight years old. At this point, I had been living in the U.S. for over half my life. I was with my aunt and little cousin in the car. I don’t remember where we were going, but I remember the heat and humidity that day was unbearable. The AC was blasting in the car. We came to a stop at a red light, and a group of three kids ran in front of our car. They were dressed in old, tattered circus costumes. I supposed they wanted to look like clowns, but the scene wasn’t comical at all.

One of the boys didn’t have shoes on. The eldest looked to be about 13, and the youngest was around five. In the minute and a half that my aunt, my cousin, and I waited for the light to change, these three children performed a perfectly choreographed routine. They were dancing and juggling pins with smiles on their faces. I was the same age as the boy in the middle. We made eye contact. I thought to myself, “My parents never let me play in the streets in Brazil.”

After the routine, they split up and walked around cars asking for some sort of donation. My aunt said she wished she had a spare sandwich or some crackers to give them (she often brings snacks around with her for situations like this). I asked her why she doesn’t give them some change, maybe just enough for the little boy without shoes to buy a cheap pair of flipflops. She explained that only a small portion of the money they collect is theirs to keep and that close by their “boss” is watching.

We were all around the same age, but the circumstances we were born into differentiated us. These little boys worked in order to survive. They wore clownish outfits and practiced under-appreciated routines instead of learning to read and write. They were exploited. This is the reality of children all over the world.

Every child deserves their innocence. Education, healthcare, clean drinking water–these are all human rights. Here are some facts provided by UNICEF: more than 85 million children are subjected to physical labor exploitation and trafficking, 57 million children are out of school worldwide, and the commercial sex trade exploits two million children worldwide.

So, why care about social justice? Why do we try to make a difference in the lives of others if we are not personally responsible for their fate? Because the responsibility is a moral obligation. By remaining ignorant to the realities of others, we sustain the problem.

I work for the International Panel on Social Progress, a recently-developed panel that seeks to solve societal issues using the research of sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and social activists from around the globe.

In a recent interview with an IPSP panel author, philosopher, and Columbia University Professor, Akeel Bilgrami, Bilgrami talks about how each one of us thinks in two individual frames of thought: our individual frame and our public frame. Psychologists call this “the frame problem.” It is a natural reaction for us to feel empathy towards an issue like child labor when faced with a direct encounter. In that moment, we may feel anger and a desire to change a societal reality.

Unfortunately, our individual frame of thought quickly disregards these feelings, accepting the situation as a fact of life. We go on with the rest of our day and the problem of child exploitation remains.

It doesn’t have to, though. How can you make an impact? Stay informed and aware of the societal problems around you, talk about them with friends and family. Get in contact with NGOs that aid the societal issues that you are passionate about. Take action. Are you taking part in societal progress, or are you complying with injustice?

Children are our future–get involved with UNICEF. Start a high school club or take initiative on campus: High School and College.

You can also check out some of the videos I shot and edited that feature the authors in the International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP). Learn how they are taking action towards social change within their fields of research. Like us on Facebook and follow us on twitter! 

Informative Videos:

Sofie Wolthers is a social activist and journalist specializing in photography and videography. She is currently working for the International Panel on Social Progress. She is a senior at Loyola University of Chicago, where she is Vice President of her school’s UNICEF chapter. She was born in Brazil, but has lived in the United States most of her life. Sofie believes in social change, social progress, and equality for all. Contact: sofiewolthers@gmail.com

Guest Post — Critical Theory: The Multiple Dimensions of Social Justice

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Critical Theory: The Multiple Dimensions of Social Justice

by Maha Bali

I came across Feminist Frequency and the great work of Anita Sarkeesian by coincidence when I found out about #gamergate, given my interest in educational games. Since then, I have been addicted to her work.

But, this post is not about her or about #gamergate, not really. It is about the multiple sides of social justice. We as critical pedagogues, and even educators who do not necessarily label ourselves as such, often refer to social justice—that we advocate for it, that we would like our students to fight for it—as if social justice were black and white. We know it is not. We just sometimes fall into a trap of talking about it as if it was non-controversial.

Let’s take Anita’s videos on LEGO. I agree completely with her assessment of the gender stereotypes in LEGO games and ads. However, I have noticed a few other things not included in the video.

Those games with ancient Egyptian themes—where they blow up things—they are blowing up my national heritage as an Egyptian! Can you even begin to imagine how that feels? What kind of messages are people portraying when they teach kids in school about ancient Egypt, and then play games where they destroy those monuments? And besides, my postcolonial self would like to remind Westerners that they often have stolen and destroyed our “stuff,” as simulated in these games.

Granted, Anita is against violence in boys’ games in general, and I know she would understand my specific complaint as an Egyptian, maybe even say it someday. But she wouldn’t feel it how I am feeling it now.

Additionally, I noticed almost all the people in the LEGO ads are White (I actually don’t remember any non-Whites, but I might have missed something). LEGO’s “Friends” theme for girls has a token Black girl and a token Latina. I’m not seeing girls like that in the ads. I am seeing just one of each in the midst of many White girls. And by the way, where is the token Muslim girl with a headscarf?

You see where I am going with this discussion, right? Critical theorists approach things with lenses, and our lenses are always incomplete. As an Egyptian, Muslim, headscarf-wearing woman, I see the world in a different way; I see injustice upon women, postcolonials, etc. more clearly from my personal experiences than I see injustice against, say, homosexuals or African Americans. I can try to understand it from their perspective, extrapolating from my own experiences of oppression, but it is not the same. I have never experienced poverty, and without firsthand grassroots experiences, I would have been ignorant of the extent of it in my own country. And yet I have not lived it; I cannot speak for them.

I once posted the hashtag #ineeddiversegames. I said I needed diverse games so I could find characters that represent me. Someone responded with a list of games centered around Muslim females. How does he know I meant me, as a Muslim woman, rather than me as a university professor? Or me as a mom? Oh, right. He looked at my twitter photo, and did not read my profile.

But, it was a fair guess. I actually partially meant it as he took it. I do feel uncomfortable with lack of avatars who cover their hair. Playing a Muslim-designed game does not solve this issue. However, regularly having such avatars in all games would—but I don’t think he got it.

I am reminded of a South Park episode about racism where Token (the implied “funny” name for the token black kid) tells Stan he just “doesn’t get it.” Near the end of the episode, Stan said, “Now I get it. I just don’t get it,” to which Token responds, “Now you get it, Stan.”

So here are two important situations where I just don’t get it. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict looks to me, as an Arab Muslim, to be a clear case of oppression of the Palestinian people. But, I am sure there is a moral ground upon which Israelis justify their existence. Not being one of them, I cannot possibly understand the Holocaust or other oppressions Jews have historically suffered. Knowing about them does not help me understand why the Palestinian people are suffering because of them.

I don’t know enough about the history and politics of this conflict, but I sense it is not a matter of knowledge, but of perspective. That justice there might be more complex than I can imagine. I get that the Israeli need to protect their citizens and allow them to live in peace. However, I don’t get how killing tens or hundreds of Palestinians for each one or two Israelis is going to help achieve that goal.

Another issue even closer to home is the ousting of Egyptian president Morsi in 2013. I get why many Egyptians wanted him out. But I also get that the way it has been done has created more instability and violence. What I don’t get is why people supporting either side can’t see the oppression and injustice that has occurred to the other.

In my two examples above, I am talking about individual citizens, not governments. Governments have different calculations, which I doubt have social justice factored into them. But I tend to assume that citizens strive towards social justice. And yet we have a long way to go, especially if we keep talking about social justice as if the goal was clear, and all the difficulty was in the battle.

Maha Bali is an Associate Professor of Practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching at American University in Cairo, Egypt (AUC). She teaches and researches a variety of things related to education and ed tech. She runs a blog: http://blog.mahabali.me; Twitter: @bali_maha), and is co-facilitator of www.edcontexts.org.

This post was inspired by:

Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 59(3), 297-324.

What is in a name?

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There is so much in a name. That’s why, when the prompt for my site tag and URL came up, I froze. I knew I wanted a site where I could document what I was teaching and where I could share my classroom reflections. I wanted a site that would store the lessons I found to be successful and analyses of possible reasons why others failed. But, I also wanted this site to encourage others to teach with their students in mind.

So much of teaching now is political. If money did not rule education before, it surely does now. After No Child Left Behind, it seems like, through standardizing education, we have left everyone behind. The people who run educational institutions are policy makers, Pearson, and McGraw-Hill — not necessarily teachers, administrators and each school’s community. I’m not saying that schools were perfect before NCLB, but I don’t think the current state of our educational system is working.

Therefore, I have chosen to fight for my kids. I’m not going to break laws. I’m not going to ignore policies or standards. However, I believe there is a way to make the standards apply to my classes (not the other way around). My kids come first and if I teach with them in mind, I am doing right by them. To me, this is every teacher’s duty — it’s a duty of social justice. Not only do most teachers perform acts of social justice every day, I believe they should be teaching it in their classes.

So. That’s where the site name came from. Teaching Social Justice is meant to inspire me, my students, and (hopefully) others to step up to the activism calling us. Sometimes it just involves a class, sometimes it is an action within one’s self, and sometimes social justice creeps into every aspect of our lives. That’s where I’m at right now. Education has become so political, I guess it’s my turn.

Best,

JJW

JoLLE — My First Conference Experience

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The Journal of Language and Literacy Education held their first annual conference last February, which also happened to be the first conference I had ever attended. The theme of the conference was “Activist Literacies.” This year, the conference theme is “Literacy for/and Social Justice: Inspire, Engage, Create, Transform,” and I am presenting. This website is actually a tool I plan to use at the conference, where I will discuss how I combined current events with standards-based historical texts to build a relevant curriculum for my classes. I was especially inspired by JoLLE’s special issue after their first conference, which featured articles on the same theme as the conference, many of which written by those who presented. Check it out!