Presented by:
Jennifer Vo
Definition of the “Other”
Other – other than the norm (students of
color, female, non-hegemonically male,
non-middle class, queer)
 Also includes students with disabilities,
non-English proficient speakers, nonChristian backgrounds
 “Queer” – Kumashiro uses this b/c of
political significance to word,
controversially charged term

What is Oppression?
Actions and inactions marginalize
groups
 Assumptions and expectations for
certain groups

 Sexist ideologies and stereotypes
 Affects treatment
 Who the privileged must be to not be the
Other

Causes “hidden injuries” even when it
seems as if students are “succeeding”
Outline

Four traditonal approaches to antioppressive education
1. Education for the Other
2. Education about the Other
3. Education that is Critical of Privileging and
Othering
4. Education that Changes Students and
Society
1. Education for the Other

Schools need to create helpful spaces
such as
 safe spaces – entire school
 affirming spaces – students can embrace their
Otherness
 supportive spaces – teachers advocate
 therapeutic spaces – deal with trauma
 empowering spaces – students can learn
challenge oppression themselves

Question: What kinds of safe spaces were
in your high school?
1. Education for the Other



Embrace as well as acknowledge diversity
Teach in “culturally sensitive”ways incorporating
home cultures
Teach in ways that are equitable for both boys and
girls
 understand differences in how each need to be taught
 challenge sexism


Don’t assume all students are heterosexual and
sexually “innocent”
Strengths
 Calls on educators to recognize diversity in student
population (the majority of students are marginalized b/c
they are not white, male, hegemonically masculine,
heterosexual, or wealthy)
1. Education for the Other:
Weaknesses

Educators cannot focus only on treatment of the Other and
ignore other ways oppression plays out
 Focusing on the neg. exp. of Others implies that the Other is a
problem
 Need more than preventing harmful interpersonal interactions

Hard to define Other groups b/c they are fluid and shifting
 Who is the space for? Homophobia affects more than one group
 Teaching against racism doesn’t teach against heterosexuality, so
silences queer students of color

Assumes that educators can accurately assess needs of
students
 Instead of searching for a strategy that works, use a strategy that
addresses current known needs but looks for unknown needs

Question: When you are accepted for your otherness, do you
feel that you can express all of your identities at once? (Queer
and Asian, or queer in some sit. and Asian in others?)
2. Education about the Other

2 kinds of knowledge that can lead to harm of the
Other
 Partial knowledge: Other is known through inference and
contrast to norm, proper roles (hegemonic stereotypes of
marriage)
 Biased knowledge: leads to misconceptions of the Other
(stereotypes and myths of the Other)

The knowledges are acquired both outside and
inside the school
 The informal or "hidden" curriculum leads to
incomplete/distorted “knowledge” of the Other

Should incorporate the Other throughout the
curriculum instead of separating into one lesson
2. Education about the Other

Strengths
 Brings visibility to enrich student understanding
 Normalizes differences, increases empathy

Weaknesses
 Otherness becomes essentialized and remains different
from the norm (the “queer experience”, the “Latino
experience”)
 Positions the Other as the expert, reinforces the social,
cultural, and even intellectual space/division between the
norm and the Other
 Impractical to try to teach every perspective

Question: Have your classmates ever turned to you
with the assumption that you can explain a minority
perspective just because you belong to that group?
2. Education about the Other

Learning to resist one's desire to essentialize,
to close off further learnings
 Goal is not final knowledge but to disrupt knowledge,
the desire for more change

Look at what has not been said (by the
student, by the teacher, by the text, by society)
 How do those silences make possible and
impossible different ways of thinking about Other
peoples and experiences?

Question: How do you think your school
could’ve incorporated questioning knowledge
better?
3. Education that is Critical of
Privileging and Othering
Critique and transformation of
hegemonic structures and ideologies
 Unlearning what is “normal” and learning
about Others
 Students need to consider how they are
privileged and how they are complicit in
oppression
 Goal: Take action against oppressive
elements of society

3. Education that is Critical of
Privileging and Othering

Strengths
 Tries to change society
 Challenges students to look at themselves

Weaknesses
 Implies that oppression has same effect on
people, but not all members have same
experiences
 Awareness doesn’t necessarily lead to
action
4. Education that Changes
Students and Society

Hidden curriculum
 The ways in which we think are framed by what is not said
and what is said

Ideas of citation and supplementation
 Stereotypes invoke a history of oppression, people have
to live through the repetitions of these histories
 “queer”: cite existing meanings for the word, supplement
with other meanings/connotations

Teachers need overcome fear of unpopularity to
address controversial topics like sexism and correct
students who perform oppressive acts.

Question: What stereotype about your group applies
or doesn’t apply to you?
4. Education that Changes
Students and Society

In schools, resistance to knowledge b/c we
unconsciously desire learning only that which
affirms what we already know and our own
sense of self
 We are good ppl
 Fear of confrontation


The recognition of the harmfulness of
repetition and the imperative to repeat with a
difference (cite/supplement)
Question: What is a name/term applied to your
group that has a negative connotation? And
how do you see people trying to change that?
Conclusion
Problem: the situatedness of oppression
makes it hard to find a strategy that
works for everyone
 Kumashiro draws from a body of
theories from contemporary feminist and
queer readings of psychoanalysis to
outline 3 insights and solutions

Conclusion: Insights

There exists the unconscious desire for
repetition and the psychic resistance to
change
 anti-oppressive edu. needs to teach the desire for
change

This change psychologically affects student,
involves crisis
 Create space for students to work through crises

Anti-oppressive education creates new, more
diverse, definition of normalcy
 Need to involve changing the self, rethinking who
one is by seeing the Other as an "equal“
 Queer our understanding of ourselves