|
Psychology and social justice are actually closely related although they do not seem as though they have anything in common. Although the definitions are extremely different it is what's in the development of psychology that connects back to social justice issues. Social justice also relates to psychology not only through the development but even the studies. For example when we take the study of society and social norms, deviance amongst other things, we actually see social injustices. The way that we see this is though things like prejudice and discrimination. The way that i meant we see social justice through the development of psychology is for example, ethics. Unethical research along with other things throughout the history and evolution of this form of study has been done. For example in 1965 there was a young boy brought in for a circumcision and during this procedure his genitals were allegedly burned off. The doctor however, convinced his parents to undergo a sex change for the child. They did not know the true intentions of the doctor, which was to prove that “nurture not nature determines gender identity.” Here we see a very unethical research done, that had a horrible outcome of suicide and very distressed family. After many years of unethical research and experimentation, in July of 1892, American Association Psychology was created an organization to set guidelines. According to http://www.apa.org/about/index.aspx, it was created to “ advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives.” So when you take a step back and look outside the box, you are able to see the distinct correlation between social justice and psychology.
|
Just like Psychology and social justice being something that you would usually think is not something that has a distinct connection between the two, so does psychology and education.The definition of psychology is “ the study of mind and behavior.” Even psychology itself is learning about how the mind works and how behavior works. One of my main root causes and something that i believe really holds us back from reforming our education system or even moving forward with trying to make things better, is standardized testing. The way we look at standardized testing is by social comparison and reference group. Social comparison is when you use other people as a basis of comparison for oneself. Test’s such as ACT, ISAT or any other test comes back with results. Once we see these results, we automatically look to our classmates and begin to compare ourselves to them, as well as beginning to have the idea that we need to compete against one another, and this is essentially something that these test’s teach us. Reference groups is categories of people to which people compare themselves with. We see this many times in the process of standardized testing. This is because they are basically taking our results as a school and referencing it to what they believe we should be scoring. However this is something that really holds us back, although we do need to measure in some way where our progress is going, and if there is any progress at all, but spending as much money and time as we do on standardized testing, is pointless and does not teach our students anything, they even take away from us. Another thing that plays a role in this, is deindividuation, which is a psychological state occurring in group members that results in loss of individuality and a tendency to do things not normally done when alone. A way that we see this is through our school systems when they do things like dividing us by age. Being divided us teaches us that at a certain age you should act a certain age, when sometimes this is not the case.
There can be many solutions to this problem, we honestly just have to work towards it. One of the things that needs to be eliminated to move forward is discrimination. Discrimination is differential treatment of individuals who belong to different groups; the behavioral component of prejudice. We see this alot with one of my main root causes, which is neighborhood and closing schools down in predominantly african-american neighborhoods and latino neighborhood. This is an example of discrimination because they are closing these schools down because of aspects such as low test scores, and low attendance, but these things causes discrimination. Just because they have low test scores or low attendance does not mean that they are not worth fighting for. Relative Deprivation is the belief that, in comparison to a reference group, one is getting less than is deserved. The faster that we realize this is happening the faster we can move on, and begin to try and reform these education systems that benefits all and not just the funding. Also things like discrimination and testing causes relative deprivation. Social Perception is the process through which people interpret information about others, draw inferences about them, and develop mental representations of them. By doing the things i suggested we can help people’s social perception on our education systems, specifically on our public education system. Psychology and the field is important to humanity because it helps us understand behavior and our thought processes as well as many other things. We can use this to move forward and really grow from it as a society so that we meet everyone’s needs. For example, we have grown from experiments that have been done as well as research. Going into AP psychology i was actually really excited, because this is something that i have always been interested in this field, although i knew little about it. I definitely dont regret taking class, i have learned a lot and it interested me even more to go into this field. I think understanding the reasoning for the behavior is something that is crucial to understanding to any situation. I also think that this is crucial to move forward or help someone really succeed. Something else that i really took away from this class is the social injustices in the field itself. For example, clinics that have anything to do with this field and having therapist are undersupplied. In neighborhoods like ours, with low-income, they do not have any help when it comes to this field. I think that this is really wrong because it’s like saying our mental health is not as important as it is for people who live in better neighborhoods. Other things have really contributed to these injustices and i think i was really fortunate to be in this class were they taught us the injustices instead of acting like they are not there. Overall this, along with sociology, has been my favorite class that i felt really involved in, and my critical thinking was really challenged which made me grow even more. |
|