Social Justice Belongs In Our Schools | Sydney Chaffee | TEDxBeaconStreet

For National Teacher of the Year Sydney Chaffee, teaching is a political act. She has been traveling the country urging all teachers to make social justice a central part of their mission. Talking to students about justice can't be a niche for certain kinds of teachers or certain schools. When students understand inequity and have the tools to work towards a more just world, they see why their education truly matters.

As Teacher of the Year, Sydney Chaffee is committed to taking risks for her students and, as National Teacher of the Year, will encourage all educators to take risks – on their students, on each other and on themselves.

As a humanities teacher at Codman Academy Charter Public School in Boston, Sydney takes risks every day to improve learning for all of her students. In the classroom, she strives to create lessons that demonstrate how education can be a transformative tool for social justice, and she encourages her students to see themselves as having the power to make change in the world based on lessons from the past.

“Education must be authentic. There is no use in studying history if we believe it to be static and irrelevant to the future,” she says. “Authentic learning enables students to see and create connections in the world around them.”

She tries to infuse the hard work of learning with joy, not only in her classroom but throughout the school. For example, she is the coordinator of a schoolwide Community Circle every Thursday where all students in the school come together to celebrate successes, share good news and dig into serious conversations together.

As the 2017 National Teacher of the Year, Sydney is looking forward to advocating for all teachers to take risks on behalf of their students and giving a voice to the issues that affect her students.

“When smart, driven teachers are given time and space to collaborate, we can help all of our students in all of our schools succeed. We have a lot of work to do, but we can achieve so much for kids when we commit-together-to being simultaneously optimistic and daring,” she says.

[MalevolentSpirit]

The purpose of a teacher is to teach the student to think and act independently, for him or herself, not to force their ideas on them. Knowledge is a crucial key in allowing a person to do that, to think for yourself.

I was born in Russia, so the start to my education was a little different, but even being as young as 9, when I immigrated to the US, I thought the American Education system was subpar. Now they are making it even worse.

[Nick-sdkm]

Cancer, absolutely Cancer, worst type of cancer too

[MegzeeR]

So exactly where does critical thinking come in?

[silasdietrich]

Critical thinking classes need to be taught across all majors, not just STEM subjects. Everyone can benefit from being able to break down a problem and being able to RATIONALLY evaluate and determine the solution

[twenty-twentyvision]

All students who are at the bottom of the class should start claiming victimhood status and therefore be ranked on par for social justice.

[EsotericHighway]

Justice is not social. It applies to individual persons...

[jayswifty]

I can’t believe THIS was my humanities teacher back in 9th grade

[dissmo]

Everyone in this comment section thinks that the political spectrum is just 2 points on a number line

[waltrautengels]

"The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Is the Hand That Rules the World"

~ William Ross Wallace ~

[malindemunich]

This would be received quite differently from this speaker and with this crowd if the assumption was not that the students would adopt a left-leaning model of "equality" but instead a model of "equity". What if the students are simply taught to rally for "justice", and the student concludes that justice is rectifying actions that seek to take from one to give to another in a gesture of "balance" or "fairness" and instead implementing one of mutual exchange? Would they applaud such actions? Would they champion the student when the student disagrees with them? I doubt it. They champion the student rebelling against "them", "the bad ones" that the institution has deemed to be bad.

And her apartheid example has something in common with all other successful social change movements: bloodshed. The reason it reached the world and changed minds is because we saw the government slamming down against a population with tyranny. We took note because of the violence enacted on those people. The march would have never been seen by most otherwise.

[sagemorrison]

I consider myself liberal, I'm in an education course required for my major, I was required to watch this video as homework, and even this is a bit much for me. Seriously.

[hank]

People do bring their identities with them into a classroom, but much more than this -- they bring their own individual life experience, which is unique to them. Regardless of their identity. Keep teaching the subject, and tailor to individuals, not identities.

[redus]

It sounds like she used exterior (to America) problems and projected them onto America. At least that's the impression she gave the students. That's why they didn't need to ask "why" protest.

[richcast]

Sounds like a form of indoctrination. Social constructs are biased and continue to push narrow minded thinking. If you want to make students better people as you educate them, then show them open mindedness. Show them respect and integrity, not things that only serve to facilitate divisiveness.

[andrewpowell]

“Respect, honesty, and integrity seem oppressive.” 🤣

[pricture]

_"Cosmic justice is not simply a higher degree of traditional justice, it is a fundamentally different concept. Traditionally, justice or injustice is characteristic of a _*_process._*_ A defendant in a criminal case would be said to have received justice if the trial were conducted as it should be, under fair rules and with the judge and jury being impartial. After such a trial, it could be said that "justice was done"—regardless of whether the outcome was an acquittal or an execution. Conversely, if the trial were conducted in violation of the rules and with a judge or jury showing prejudice against the defendant, this would be considered an unfair or unjust trial—even if the prosecutor failed in the end to get enough jurors to vote to convict an innocent person. In short, traditional justice is about impartial processes rather than either results or prospects._

_Similar conceptions of justice or fairness extend beyond the legal system. A "fair fight" is one in which both combatants observe the rules, regardless of whether that leads to a draw or to a one-sided beating. Applying the same rules of baseball to all meant that Mark McGwire hit seventy home runs while some other players hit less than ten. The "career open to talents" or "a level playing field" usually means that everyone plays by the same rules and is judged by the same standards. Again, if the process itself meets that standard, then no matter what the outcome, "you had your chance." But this is not what is meant by those people who speak of "social justice." In fact, rules and standards equally applicable to all are often deliberately set aside in pursuit of "social justice." Nor are such exceptions aberrations. The two concepts are mutually incompatible._

_What "social justice" seeks to do is to eliminate undeserved disadvantages for selected groups. ... This is often done in disregard of the costs of this to other individuals or groups—or even to the requirements of society as a whole. When one considers a society such as Sri Lanka, where group preferences initiated in the 1950s led to decades of internal strife, escalating into bitter civil war with many atrocities, it is not purely fanciful to consider that other societies may become more polarized and contentious—to everyone’s ultimate detriment—by similar schemes of preferential treatment for one segment of society."_

- The Quest For Cosmic Justice by Thomas Sowell

[nws]

Teach me how to think not what to think

[Chak]

"Racism is everywhere, Those fuckin WHIIITESSSS!!!!"

[prism]

The reason "social justice" is controversial is the same reason that the end of "1984" is terrifying: It's a form of mind control through a combination of distorted language and systematic abuse.

When you tell someone that you believe in fair, equitable treatment for all people, this sounds like you would be in favor of treating everyone fairly, but in practice this is not the case because the meaning of "fair" is distorted to refer not to rules but to outcomes regardless of individual choices. So, e.g. person A might be penalized and person B might be rewarded despite making identical choices because person B belongs to a "marginalized group", which in "social justice" parlance is equivalent to a group which will receive undue advantages.

Ironically the "social justice" system looks just like the most oppressive, draconian systems that it claims to oppose, just with different groups chosen to be artificially selected for success or failure.

Ultimately "social justice" is a perverse caricature of real justice, which is usually just called "justice".

[PremiumWater]

Social justice sounds like something Stalin or Mao would dream up.