[Xmca-l] Re: What is a Pedagogy of the Oppressors?

[Greg Thompson]

Francis,
I too try for an approach of (viral?) immanent critique. I think that there
are situations where people will "get it" (or maybe "get infected by it"),
but I particularly sympathize with your day-by-day worries that I'm not
doing enough and that I should be taking more radical action. But I also
recall the words of a mentor of mine, feminist scholar and philosopher of
education Audrey Thompson, who used to point out the importance of carrying
out a work on multiple levels - some more radical than others but all are
necessary for change to happen (e.g., Malcolm X and MLK). Still not sure
I'm convinced of that (if not now, when? if not you, who? and all that...),
but it's where I'm at.

The overwhelmingly white and mostly middle-class students I confront have
very good hearts and are often quite interested in this project of
"liberating the oppressed" (a phrasing that still makes me nervous -
Perhaps because it seems overly ambitious, or perhaps because it smacks of
paternalism, but for both reasons I think it is a propos for describing
what my students are up to). The problem is that my students seem to think
in ways that are ideologically individualistic. These students can't see
beyond psychological thinking in which individuals are entirely responsible
for all that they think and do. They can't see how anything beyond the
individual could have much relevance to the individual, much less how it
could play a constitutive role. They are entirely taken by the myth of
individual will and see the task of liberation of the oppressed to be a
simple task of educating the oppressed to be more willful in their efforts
to succeed in an (assumedly) meritocratic system. As a result, they throw
all their energies behind projects that are doomed to fail in terms of
accomplishing what they want to accomplish, i.e., "helping" other people.

So, for me, a pedagogy of the oppressors (which, is, in part to say, the
focus of my own re-search and education) is a pedagogy that can help
liberate these students from an individualistic ideology (and following
Michael G, this is not to say that there is anything wrong with people
thinking as individuals - the problem lies with the ideology of
individualism). And yes, here is where I see the approach of CHAT to be
really remarkably useful precisely AS a pedagogy of the oppressor. CHAT
offers a way of appreciating the role of context in the ongoing
constitution of individuals. That seems useful. Perhaps even liberating...

cheers,
greg

p.s. One recent TED talk I came across that I find useful (particularly for
those students of mine who are interested in international development, of
which I have a fair number) is Sirolli's talk titled "Want to Help Someone:
Shut Up and Listen":
http://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someone_shut_up_and_listen

The talk and Sirolli's approach leave a lot to be desired, but I sincerely
appreciate the sentiment "if you want to help someone, shut up and listen",
and I have found this to be useful to get students to actually begin to
realize that the world may be bigger (and perhaps badder) than they had
previously imagined.








On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 6:16 PM, FRANCIS J. SULLIVAN <fsulliva@temple.edu>
wrote:

> Wow, this is a great thread, one I think about all the time, as one of the
> oppressors. Not by choice, as I see this as a structural, or rather a
> "positional" category, akin to the workings of power in terms of one's
> relationship to the means of production. I can still recall Horkheimer and
> Adorno's anecdote in *Dialectic of Enlightenment*, one the ways that the
> songs of the Sirens went unheard by Odysseus' crew--as he had stoppered
> their ears--yet remained useless to Odysseus as he was lashed to the mast.
> So, I certainly agree that we need a pedagogy of the oppressors as a
> complement to that of the oppressed. I always thought that was the major
> effort of the Frankfurt School.
> As someone who teaches secondary school pre-service teachers, I am quite
> aware of my structural position as an "officer of the State." I was in the
> middle of revising my syllabi for the upcoming semester when I saw this
> thread emerge. The advent of the corporate reform of schooling called
> Common Core poses a fundamental threat to the democratic roots of education
> in the US, yet I can neither ignore it nor simply trash it. The students I
> prepare must be able to address the Core if they are to have a career at
> all. So, for better or worse, I find the best resistance to be the tightest
> embrace of the "principles" embedded in the Core, an embrace that, I hope,
> lets me transform them into a useful and useable critique of the Core
> itself. So, this semester, we examine "speaking" and "writing" standards in
> terms of dialect, code, and register differences. We develop lessons and
> units in which high school students grapple with the reality of
> "code-switching," and the choices one can make to successfully navigate
> speech and writing situations defined by conflicting purposes and
> relational hierarchies.
>
> Of course, all this is news to my students, almost all of whom are white
> and middle-class, and most of whom are male. So, I approach these topics by
> emphasizing that learners develop best when teaching meets them where they
> are and builds on what they know. I choose texts that de-emphasize the
> kinds of oppression that plays out in the lives of urban students. So,
> where does someone like me fit in this mosaic? Are we "leading the
> resistance from behind; or allowing ourselves to be co-opted?" My answer to
> that changes at least weekly, sometimes daily. I can only say that I'm
> doing what I can.
>
> Francis J. Sullivan, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor
> Department of Teaching and Learning
> College of Education
> Temple University
> Philadelphia, PA 19122
>
>
> Find out what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact
> measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.
>
>  Frederick Douglass
>
> On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 3:46 PM, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> >
> > I am peeling off from the old thread to begin a new thread!
> >
> >
> > Our inquiry hear appears to be: What is a Pedagogy of the Oppressors?
> >
> >
> > I suggest "a" and not "the" because there could be more than one, surely?
> >
> >
> > For new arrivers to this thread, it commenced from this thread here:
> >
> > http://xmca.ucsd.edu/yarns/15848
> >
> >
> > With its genesis here, thanks to Greg!
> >
> > http://xmca.ucsd.edu/yarns/15848?keywords=#52332?
> >
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> >
> > Annalisa
> >
> >
>



-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson