Conceptualizing Oppression in Educational Theory

Abstract

For educators, theoretical problems regarding the nature of oppression are reflected in important practical questions. Is the key struggle with regard to schooling basically about curriculum—is it a matter of working against sexist and racist representations, for example, in the content that is presented as legitimate and the mastering of which is the criterion for academic success? Or are the possibilities for liberatory education more or less determined by the structural support, in terms of facilities and resources, that are disproportionately available to students from wealthy families? Are such formulations themselves narrowly reformist—and is the essential task to link, in the minds of teachers and students, their struggles in schools to struggles outside, to larger movements of resistance against global processes of domination? How important in all of this is white supremacy, as opposed to poverty, or class oppression, or the gendered discourses that make schools sites of danger for lesbian and gay students and help to inculcate the violent rituals of masculinism? On the other hand, is it necessary for teachers first of all to engage in the work of deconstructing their own official interpellation as professionals, which already flattens them spiritually, and destroys the possibility of creativity in oppositional teaching?