Revisiting “The Master's Tools”: Challenging Common Sense in Cross-Cultural Teacher Education

Abstract

According to Kevin Kumashiro (2004), education toward a socially just society requires a commitment to challenge common sense notions or assumptions about the world and about teaching and learning. Recalling Audre Lorde's (1984) classic essay, “The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House,” I focus on three common sense notions and practices within cross-cultural teacher education that often leave marginalized students bearing the burden of cross-cultural work at the expense of their own learning. Specifically, I critique the assumptions that students ought to share their experiences with others, that they should do so willingly, and that they should tell the truth in these exchanges (whether in reflective journals or in-class discussions). I offer no easy solutions; instead I call for re-examination of the ways in which everyday practices in teacher education risk serving as tools to “keep the oppressed occupied with the master's concerns” (p. 113) as an important step toward social justice in teacher education. Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master's concerns. Now we hear it is the task of women of Color to educate white women—in the face of tremendous resistance—as to our existence, our differences, and our relative roles in our joint survival. This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal thought. (Lorde, 1984, p. 113)