This article was shared on Facebook and although it talks
about appearance and identity oppression within a church, the same concept can be easily
applied in a school. This blog post describes a pastor who dresses up like
someone from a gang, and walks into a church to see if they feel welcomed. The
pastor however, was oppressed by the community members due to the way he was
dressed, making him feel unwelcomed in the church and to Christianity.
This is an example of the effects of assumptions and
identities in schools. Wadham et al (2007, p.4) states that "we create
ourselves through objects or symbols that we must buy", saying that those
people who choose to wear what they buy form identities. Schools therefore
reflect upon this comment such as private school uniforms and public schools
uniform creating identities or how a student wears a uniform can form
identities as "the external of the body - body-surface, body-image -
becomes the focus of representation and understanding in contemporary culture
of who we really are". The generalisation formed through "identity
markers" (Wadham et al. 2007 p. 13) such as skin colour, religion,
sexuality or even hobbies can predominantly exclude a student from the
community if they were deemed as out of the norm of the school. In restricted
schools especially, such as gender, private or selective schools , students who
go out of that restriction are easily shamed by the community by that single
school similarity. For example for selective schools, most students aim for
high education so if a student were to choose not to take that pathway other
students may cause negative rumors or look down upon them. As Phillips (2006, p.3) confirms
"people's loyalty to their group does not necessarily displace loyalty to
a larger national community, but with distinctness so strongly emphasised,
there is a tendency to see group identities as intrinsically
oppositional". "Norms can either be prescriptive or proscriptive.
Most norms are implicit and we follow them because everyone else is doing the
same thing" (Wadham et al., 2007 p. 11). But, humans are all different and
important identities such as cultural practices or languages cannot and should
not be avoided just to 'follow' the norm and "receive praise and positive
sanctions" (Wadham et al., 2007 p. 11).
As the actor was a pastor who is somebody who "loves
church" (Alleyne 2013) it can be said that as a student, they are should
be able to enjoy school. Wadham et al. (2007, p.4) comments that "schools are
a site of cultural struggle", so how should the student and teacher play a
role within these struggles? Teachers should support students and use methods
of reassurance to stable the student's psychological damage. Another method teachers can approach is
challenging "in-group/out-group dualism"(Wadham et al., 2007 p.15) their
school community, like the blog post, and explain to students that
"something has to change in our city" (Alleyne 2013) if we want to
remove rejection and subjection.
- Andrew Alleyne: Catalyst
Minitries. I hate church (28th August 2013) Retrieved from :http://andrewalleyne.com/2013/08/28/i-hate-church/ [Accessed 22nd September 2013]
·
- Phillips, Anne (2006) What is 'culture'? In: Arneil,
Barbara, Deveaux, Monique, Dhamoon, Rita and Eisenberg,
Avigail, (eds.) Sexual justice / cultural justice. Routledge innovations in
political theory . Routledge, pp. 15-29.
·
- Wadham, B.A., Pudsey, J.P. and
Boyd, R.M. (2007). What is culture?. In Ben Wadham, Jason Pudsey and Ross Boyd,
ed.Culture and Education. Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson
Education Australia, pp. 1- 30.
No comments:
Post a Comment