Privileges

I define a privilege as something we have that we did not have to earn, that other people do not have. Most of the time it is an advantage that we have that we did not ask for or that we do not deserve. Sometimes we do not even want the privileges that we have, but they are there and most of the time we take advantage of them. 

I am the first one to admit that I have grown up very privileged. I have never had to earn my food, my bed, my clothes, or even sometimes my spending money. I am white and I grew up in a middle-class, farming suburb. I was even privileged enough to have friends and family who look like me and like the same things that I do. I had sleepovers, birthday parties, and I even went to a private high school. Nothing about me says underprivileged at all except for maybe a fact that I am a female in the south. In class we mostly discusses privilege based upon race and gender.

All this being said, I think it is very sad that because of where I live and my skin color I am treated any better than others who are different from me. I hope that as a teacher I can get passed the different privileges and see my students for who they are rather than what they are. I want to be able to teach my students to respect people and to earn other people’s respect based purely on actions and personality. I want to treat my students without any biases based on privilege, but rather based on performance and earning. I want to learn about each of my students, instead of making assumptions based upon how they look or how they are being raised. I know that I am human and I have biases that I am not even aware of, but I hope to become aware and make my classroom a more safe, and healthy environment for each and every child I teach. I think his sums up my ideas perfectly :”Banks and Banks (2004) explain that the

chief aim of multicultural education is to achieve educational equity, ensuring that all students can attain academic success. In addition, effective multicultural pedagogy helps students cultivate the knowledge, dispositions, and attitudes needed to join with one another ‘to create a civic and moral community that works for the common good’ (p. xi)” (Flynn 2012, p. 109).

References

Flynn, J. (2012). CRITICAL PEDAGOGY WITH THE OPPRESSED AND THE OPPRESSORS: Middle School Students Discuss Racism and White Privilege. Middle Grades Research Journal, 7(2), 95-110.