We are doing our best
As discussed in my positionality statement, I conceptualize my position as a Learning Specialist and Diversity Coordinator as an insider/outsider to both educational institutions and the academic content taught in the High School. I have great respect for many of the pedagogical choices made by my colleagues and wholeheartedly believe they are doing their best to share what they love about their discipline with their students. I also understand the skepticism and frustration of those “outside” these academic discourses when they are told:
Only a very few could overwhelm and subsume the tradition [of the Western Canon], and perhaps none now can. So the question today is: Can you compel the tradition to make space for you by nudging it from within, as it were, rather than from without, as the multiculturalists wish to do?
The movement from within the tradition cannot be ideological or place itself in the service of any social aims, however morally admirable. One breaks into the canon only by aesthetic strength, which is constituted primarily of an amalgam: mastery of figurative language, originality, cognitive power, knowledge, exuberance of diction. The final injustice of historical injustice is that it does not necessarily endow its victims with anything except a sense of their victimization. Whatever the Western Canon is, it is not a program for social salvation. (Bloom, 2014, p.29)
Nevertheless, I believe what may appear to be blind allegiance to canonical pedagogies can be more productively framed as an intentional and discursive choice made by the teacher. As Cornelius explained,
So in my own classroom, I don’t-- I kind of want everyone to just read the book and talk about what the book is interested in talking about in a reasonable way. I don’t-- we talk every once in a while about current events but it’s-- I don’t know, I don’t know. I think my job in terms of the moral education of these kids is to open them up to the world as curated by these particular authors who are all, in different ways, resistant to structures of power and all of whom are non-conservative in different ways. That’s what I do. I feel like that’s my thing. I don’t know. Do I want to open it up so people can debate whether immigrants should be allowed to be in the United States? No. I’m not talking about that. (Cornelius 08:31, Phase Two Small Group 6, 10/26/18)
Although I initially read this response as “wishy-washy” -- that is, Cornelius is not sure because he repeatedly says “I don’t know” -- Cornelius does know and has made an intentional pedagogical choice: “to just read the book and talk about what the book is interested in talking about in a reasonable way.” That is his “thing.” As Cornelius explains, he understands his role as exposing the students in his class to “the world as curated by these particular authors who are all, in different ways, resistant to structures of power.” This suggests he believes exposure to multiple models of resistance create the conditions for students to assemble their own framework for critically navigating #TheRealWorld.
Like Cornelius, many of the participant responses suggest they were doing their best to provide all students with an equitable experience in their classrooms by diligently protecting what they perceived as the neutrality of the classroom space. For example, part of this participant’s explanation about the role teachers can play in disrupting patterns of racial inequity and interpersonal racism includes:
I come at teaching from a [religious] perspective in that, I have a commitment to love all human persons and to try to help people become realized as individuals, as individual entities. So that’s what I do. For that reason, I don’t know much about the background of students. How wealthy they are, how poor they are. I’m especially uninterested in learning about the privilege of students. [...] I’d rather not know that. Yeah, I want to minister to the hearts and minds of every student in a consistent way where someone isn’t getting special attention because they have access to social capital. (Participant M, Phase Two Booklet, p.1)
Similar to Cornelius, the language of this response suggests this participant makes an intentional choice with regard to his pedagogical approach to teaching: “I come at teaching from a [religious] perspective” and “So that’s what I do.” This participant’s response also suggests the participant works very hard to mitigate some of the more overt manifestations of income inequality.
Many participants recognized and spoke directly to how we are complicit in and have benefited from the social reproduction and “miseducation” of America’s predominantly white elite (Deresiewicz, 2015). Although essentially all participants found this unsettling, each participant made sense of the “unavoidable” nature of our complicity differently. This can be seen in the exchange between Robert and Sam in which they both took issue with the pedagogical approach articulated in the excerpt above:
ROBERT (03:20) — I get where that person’s-- coming from and, the-- intellock, intellectual pedagogical approach, and they’re probably a far-- better and more generous person than I am-- but it feels-- idealistic and I think wrong-headed.
SAM (03:38) — Interesting. I also marked that.
ROBERT (03:40) — It was you probably.
SAM (03:41) — No. No. I wrote-- [reading from booklet] “I understand the impulse to be privilege-blind, but this feels naive.”
ROBERT (03:46) — Right. But naivety in this-- with these issues is dangerous, right? I’m maybe overstating it, but it-- [slight pause]
SAM (03:58) — Yeah. [skeptical affirmation] Well, I think it’s hard to feel-- good about one’s job teaching in an elite private school-- if one does think about the context and the role we play-- in-- helping privilege further itself or something like that.
ROBERT (04:19) — Right. [Definitive affirmation]
SAM (04:20) — So I, I understand the impulse to be like, “Well, all teaching is good work, and I’m dealing with humans and cultivating them.” Um, but I think it’s definitely worth pushing back off of that [laughter] because-- ah-- it’s like a self-serving narrative too. It helps us feel better about our job.
ROBERT (04:39) — I think so. And I think we should feel good about our job, but I think we should feel conflicted about our job.
SAM (04:45) — Right. And that it carries special responsibilities too--
ROBERT (04:49) — Right. AND for me, at least, it’s one of the many things that I can’t quite-- I won’t be able to resolve. I know that-- I won’t come to a place where I’m-- full-- [pause] comfortable with what I’m doing. I think that’s a good place for a teacher to be.
SAM (05:11) — Here. [Resigned affirmation]
ROBERT (05:12) — Here. Yeah. Yeah. [Self-affirming acceptance]
(Robert & Sam, Phase Two Small Group 3, 10/17/18)
This exchange suggests Robert and Sam are aware they need to actively fight against the urge to take a “privilege-blind” pedagogical approach. Their exchange also suggests they understand this ideological dilemma as something they will need to grapple with for the entirety of their tenure at this particular school. Although it is not clear from this exchange how Sam and Robert understand the “special responsibilities” associated with this job, Robert previously used the metaphor of “walking on eggshells” during Phase One to describe how he understands what white teachers “should be” doing in their classrooms:
We’re walking on eggshells, white teachers, as we should be. But we are walking on eggshells and it makes-- I speak for myself, but it makes me, in all the right ways, very conscious of the words I use, and the context in which I say them, and who else is in the room, and as we should be. We should be very well aware of that. (Robert 44:47, Phase One Interview, 06/11/18)
Here Robert trades in a “privilege-blind” pedagogy for a race-conscious/self-conscious approach to teaching. While there is an element of self-protection here, there is also an authentic desire to do right by our students and our community. We want all our students to feel comfortable and do our best to create a classroom environment conducive to learning the skills students will need to be academically successful.
Nevertheless, when we align ourselves with traditional academic discourses and teaching pedagogies, we also often frame ourselves as lacking the necessary training needed to help students express their personal beliefs appropriately:
And I don't know if the alternative- if the answer to that is to have a dedicated, like...political debate class. [...] I mean, there are people who literally do this stuff for a living. [MARK: Mhmm.] Think about how to have- teach kids to have rational debates and...listen to other people and consider the alternatives and stuff. And like-- None of us are trained for that. (Cornelius 09:52, Phase Two Small Group 6, 10/26/18)
The above response suggests that although Cornelius recognizes students can learn to have “rational debates” about their personal political beliefs, he conceptualizes these skills -- that is, to “listen to other people and consider the alternatives” -- as distinct from the skills possessed by the faculty at this predominantly white independent school: “None of us are trained for that.” Somewhat paradoxically, this admission helps establish and maintain the narrative that our predominantly white faculty need expert intervention.