The Critical Middle School Reader’s introduction is preparation for articles or excerpts that address the questions of whose knowledge is this and whose interests does this serve? Quoting Brown, “In a search for a quick fix and maintenance of the status quo, traditional approaches avoid, ignore, or explain away the role of society and its structures of power in emergent social ills, while more comfortably placing the blame on the individual child or family as the source of educational failure or other social problems. These approaches encourage students not to question but to accommodate to the world as it is.”
It’s apparent that these collected works will attack the “normal child” (white, middle class, and preferably male) emphasis in middle school thought. Brown and Saltman aim to be comprehensive in their support of a more critical approach to middle school education, but due to space limitations there were choices made about the topical content of the book as well as reluctant omissions.
Thankfully one of those omissions was Kumashiro’s “Toward a Theory of Anti-Oppressive Education”. Although I find his definition of oppression-a situation or dynamic in which certain ways of being are privileged in society while others are marginalized- quite useful, the rest of the article I found to be a waste of time. My main objection to the article is Kumashiro’s negativity. He presents four ways to conceptualize and work against oppression only to highlight the futility of such endeavors.
Kumashiro’s words seem more foolhardy than those he attacks. He argues that “teaching involves a great deal of unknowability” merely as a way to acknowledge that he has no better idea on how to deal with “Others”. When he says that the goal is not final knowledge, but desire for more change I can’t help but imagine an anarchist hell-bent on writing articles that in essence state the obvious, no curriculum can appease all students. He seems to think that his skit about stereotypes was a grand success, even though he offended a student of his (probably one of the Others in his class). He ends the article by applauding the efforts of educators who have tried to address the Others issue, but really spent the entire article second-guessing their efforts.
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I interpreted Kumashiro's argument about "teaching involves a great deal of unknownability" as to be that teachers who teach with anti-oppression in mind do not know how students will react. In addition, I also interpreted it meaning that teachers do not know how students are going to react to the ways in which teachers go about teaching with anti-oppression theory in mind. I would have really liked for his article to have some information about best practices for educators or concrete ways as to how anti-oppressive education would look like beyond the skit example.
ReplyDeleteIf you're interested, this article eventually became the beginning of his book, _Troubling Education_ in which he identifies several best practices.
ReplyDeleteI thought your comments were interesting about the Kumashiro article, I also found it interesting that your main concern was the negativity aspect. My major issue was the aspect of reality, in that his article in every way was unrealistic. HIs suggestions were ridiculous. For example he thought it would be lovely to post an upside-down pink triangle(also a symbol in the Nazi camps that someone was gay) on the door of a classrooom to welcome and prove that it was a safe space for homosexuals. Well, you just offended the jewish children in your classroom. I understand that as a teacher you cannot "be all things to all people" but realistically, how far are we supposed to go so that one child feels comfortable, when we are marginalizing or excluding 10 more?
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