Because obviously there are only two options: learn, or go to jail. |
Earlier last year, the Onion published an article titled “Point/Counterpoint:
My Year Volunteering As A Teacher Helped Educate A New Generation Of
Underprivileged Kids/Can We Please, Just Once, Have A Real Teacher?”
Despite the rapid transfer of information over the internet,
I only encountered this article recently; needless to say, I was immediately
intrigued. While I do not serve as a teacher, the work I have been discussing
in my latest blog series on Jumpstart fits into many of the features pegged by
the article: fresh graduate works in underprivileged school to “make a
difference.” Whatever that means. [...]
As I struggled to pinpoint my unease with the article, I
realized that it was this unsettling vagueness—“make a difference”—that got
under my skin. Because really, what does
that mean? What kind of impact can a
fresh, young graduate from a point of high privilege have on students whose
classroom is short on supplies, whose life experiences are much less likely to
fit the societally endorsed American dream of a nuclear family and perpetual
opportunities for betterment (if only you try hard enough), and whose knowledge
and language skills are largely different than my own?
In other words, what kind of impact can I possibly have?
Apologies: this post is going to be nowhere near as pithy or
amusing as a post by the Onion.
It will instead: focus briefly on the underlying assumptions
of the article and the ways they map onto my own experiences.
Of course, there is something to be said for the Onion’s
tactics—what better way to critique the underlying assumptions of our
consumer-driven capitalist society than by poking fun, digging so far into the
morass of a given perspective that it becomes absurd rather than status quo?
But where does that get us? Is society changed in any way
through this critique? Or is this simply another way to inhabit life, thinking
ourselves somehow better for having thought about the ridiculous ways we view
the world, without ever having to actually change our behaviors?
This is exactly the issue the Onion parodies in this
article: the over-optimistic, packaged-for-consumption construct of bettering
society by “reach[ing] out to a new generation of underprivileged children in
dire need of real guidance and care” offers an image of domesticated
colonialism perfected as altruistic societal improvement. Teaching underprivileged
students in this model has little to do with real ideas of how to promote their
success, and everything to do with feeling that one has stepped outside of one’s
position of privilege without having to give that privilege up.
It’s action for the sake of marketing, rather than action
for real amelioration. Like stereotypical church ladies handing out Bibles to
the homeless or hosting Bible studies as “community outreach,” the kind of
service the Onion is poking fun at is one which is meant to make the person in
privilege feel better about being in that position of privilege.
It’s action which isn’t informed by critical engagement with
the real issues behind social problems.
And thus the conclusion for the imagined teacher: “it
changed all of our lives…Ultimately, I suppose I can never know exactly how
much of an impact I had on my students, but I do know that for me it was a
fundamentally eye-opening experience and one I will never forget.” The lack of
specificity—what exactly changed in the teacher’s life or the children’s?—is something
I struggle with in my own work: what difference am I really making?
All well and good to say that I gave children individual
attention, and tried to teach them how to build linguistic bridges between
their own language and society’s “standardized” English, but I have a perpetual
sense that what I do works merely to alleviate a symptom, rather than the
larger ideological constructs behind it.
Although the preschoolers I work with have not “been
abandoned by the system,” they do face immense challenges—educational disparities,
political, social, and economic barriers, and biases for example—challenges which
cannot be resolved by the correct teaching of math, as the counterpoint by an
imagined underprivileged elementary school student seems to suggest.
Is it really the case that “Graduating high school is the
only way for me to get out of the malignant cycle of poverty endemic to my
neighborhood and to many other impoverished neighborhoods throughout the United
States”? While graduating high school is a vital step as more and more
education is required to get even a decent-paying job, simply graduating will
not remove social biases, nor will it resolve the larger systemic issues that
enable widespread poverty.
“I can't afford to spend these vital few years of my
cognitive development becoming a small thread in someone's inspirational
narrative,” says the imagined student; yet at the same time, the power of
inspirational narrative is that it inspires
its audience, breathing into it a passion or at the very least a knowledge of
social issues.
Perhaps there is a way for such a narrative to actually make a
difference. While I share the skepticism of the Onion in regards to the lack of
critical reflection and engagement that generally accompanies these educational
endeavors, which position themselves as privileged-savior-helping-nonagential-underprivileged-children,
I am also skeptical of a position that sees no merit in putting enthusiastic,
engaged, and energetic educators into classrooms to acknowledge and help
children’s actual (and not just perceived) needs.
Special thank you to another Jumpstarter, Bart, who showed me the article and instigated a thoughtful, engaged discussion about the work we do!
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