'Privilege' Exercises

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Seems to me there's a very serious question about the appropriateness of
such exercises in the classroom, period.  How would feminists  feel if, in
the name of generating awareness, a faculty member with a different set of
ideas about how to make the world a better place were to show pictures of
aborted fetuses and ask students to share their regrets over abortions or
sexual experimentation or whatever else fit that professor's agenda? Just
because there is some agreement among some feminists about the
appropriateness of using the classroom for certain kinds of exercises in
reshaping students does not mean that this is indeed suitable behavior for a
university professor.  It strikes me as an abuse of the professor's own
privilege.

And, in addition (though this would never be my primary grounds for
ojbecting to such exercises), since young people  are likely to "react
against" whatever is forced down their throats-- which I consider a very
healthy impulse-- such exercises may also be counterproductive.  This is the
very opposite of creating a space for exploring a variety of ideas and not
just the professor's pet commitments.  Students' tears and heartfelt words
one day don't preclude anger at having been manipulated the next.

DP
___________
daphne.patai  @  spanport.umass.edu

I think that this is really comparing apples and oranges. This response
isn't so much a response to you, DP, but in general regarding the exercises.
I do support them.

I'd like to speak as someone who has participated as a student in these
exercises and now facilitates them (or some variation) as the professor.

There is something to be said about learning situations that make some
people feel uncomfortable. Isn't this part of what we do? I don't mean
sadistically abusing our privilege as instructors. I mean that we present
material that challenges some students belief systems.

That said, the first time I participated in one of these exercise--it was
really painful. Afterwards, it caused some heated but much needed
discussion. This was in a summer bridge program for students of color in the
1980s. Similar exercises in Women's Studies classes were also thought
provoking. Some people got mad or teary eyed.

I for one am frustrated with what sometimes sounds like coddling students
and their feelings. Gee- it must be nice. Sorry for sarcasm. I just know
that as a young, woman of color, I walk into the classroom w/ little
"professorial" privilege and find this concept amusing. My negotiation of
the classroom in WS is markedly different.

Best
Janni (jan/eye) Aragon

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Janni Aragon
Department of Political Science
University of California Riverside
www.janniaragon.com
jaragon  @  cox.net

"I often think that being a feminist minority scholar is what one is
reincarnated into for
being a male chauvinist in a previous life." Shirley Lim, _Among the White
Moon Faces_

Quite a few people have asked me about the a/p exercises, so I hope you
dont mind me replying to the list.

There is an article in White?Women, published at the Centre for Women's
Studies in York where I work.  Details on www.rawnervebooks.co.uk or Amazon
can get the book, but it takes a long time. I will happily send copies of
the book (dollar cheques can be sent to a US address) or photocopies
(free!) of the article if anyone wants to look.

It might be worth saying, though, that one of the impulses behind the
project was to find ways of looking specifically at UK/ European race - so
much of 'our' race theory has come from US experiences, and while much is
very useful and provocative, it is culturally very different. The
exercises - or maybe the cultural environment - do enable us to be less
angry, more exploratory. This does seem to me to be productive- it's not
about ditching responsibilities, but about doing what we can do best in
academia and being open, trying to make space for new connections and
fruitful ideas to emerge.

Please let me know privately if you would like a book/ photocopy, though it
will be a couple of weeks before I am able to respond.


Ann Kaloski-Naylor
Centre for Women's Studies
University of York
YORK YO10 5DD
England
email: eakn1  @  york.ac.uk

Daphne wrote:

>Seems to me there's a very serious question about the appropriateness of
>such exercises in the classroom, period.  How would feminists  feel if, in
>the name of generating awareness, a faculty member with a different set of
>ideas about how to make the world a better place were to show pictures of
>aborted fetuses and ask students to share their regrets over abortions or
>sexual experimentation or whatever else fit that professor's agenda? [clip]

In what way is raising student consciousness about the disparate
distribution of privilege an inappropriate educational goal?
Given that women disproportionately live at the sharp end of that
stick, I mean.   Whose purposes would it serve to avoid making
students aware of that disparity?

Margaret

--
Margaret Tarbet / oneko  @  mindspring.com
--------------------------------------
Il felino pi· piccolo F un capolavoro.
--Leonardo da Vinci

This response awakened some questions for me. These are meant for
reflection and not to create flames!

Does learning always have to be "comfortable"? When we touch and
become reflective about those places of discomfort or
uncomfortableness, aren't there some things we learn differently or
places where we are challenged to grow? Don't these places of
discordance alert us to injustice? call us to some form of action
(either reactive or proactive)?

It is not only the privileged who are challenged in these exercises
but also those who once again confront the place or source of their
oppressions. From our places of privilege or oppression, how can we
have the courage to go through those places of discomfort? How do we
learn to live with or change the pain, anger/rage, guilt, shame,
fear, etc? Where do we find place of support for this?

And several educators on this list have discussed their own
unwillingness to use these tools because they not only are concerned
for their students but do not want to confront their own discomfort
in using them. If we want to call the best from our students, we need
to be willing to take similar risks for ourselves -- admit our
limitations, call for our own inner courage, seek our own places of
support, understand and learn (again) from our own places of
privilege and/or oppression.

How and why are we resistant and to what? Can we view the limited
region of the classroom as the testing ground for how we go out into
the world? Do we do our students a disservice by not raising these
issues in what MIGHT be a safer place than many other places in the
world?

Who said learning was painless and easy? That doesn't mean we get to
be cruel and harsh, but can't we find ways to make difficult
confrontations productive and compassionate? We have talked around
this - some of the suggestions have been helpful in this regard, but
I wonder if we are denying the ways in which pain sometimes can't be
avoided?

Just wondering....
Mev

>I agree, too, that this can be a very uncomfortable exercise for some, even
>if the discomfort of confronting one's own privilege is really a necessary
>part of the learning process.  definitely not something i'd attempt on the
>first day of class, as dramatic as it might be to get students thinking
>right then.  i forwarded the message/exercise description to a student, who
>expressed the  same sorts of concerns, but suggested that maybe people could
>be asked to close their eyes and open them only at the very end.  that might
>help soften things some..?

--
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Women's Presses Library Project
...keeping women's words in circulation
Mev Miller, Project Coordinator
1483 Laurel Ave.
St. Paul, MN 55104-6737

651-646-0097
651-646-1153 /fax

wplp  @  winternet.com

I agree entirely with those who question whether education should
necessarily  be "comfortable." My objection to these "exercises" was not
related to that issue, and indeed I have strongly criticized  extremely
vague notions of "hostile environment harassment" that rest on a person's
supposed "discomfort" with something said in class.  I also think the
present climate in which professors often issue warnings in class about
classroom material, inviting students to absent themselves if they will be
made "uncomfortable" is a travesty of education. But I *do* think there is a
difference between education and emotional manipulation--and the exercises
described so far very clearly participated in the latter.

Thus, my objection was to the explicit use of consciousness-raising
"exercises" in class with the aim of reshaping our students'
perceptions in accordance with the professor's particular
beliefs--which is especially dangerous when those beliefs are
promoted by a group (like the group of people writing in about this
exercise and having little sense that it might contravene
educational standards), which thus convey a strong sense of
conviction about the right and wrong ways of thinking about issues.
As important as professors believe their particular understandings
are of social justice and how it is to be achieved, it is not for
that that students are in college.  I believe college education is
supposed to appeal to students' intellect, not guilt trip students
about their particular backgrounds and identities.  Students are not
blank slates on whom professors should inscribe their beliefs and
political views.  To ask as if they were requires a good deal of
arrogance and leads to a variety of pedagogical abuses.

DP
---------------------------------
daphne.patai  @  spanport.umass.edu

----- Original Message ----- >
> Who said learning was painless and easy? That doesn't mean we get to
> be cruel and harsh, but can't we find ways to make difficult
> confrontations productive and compassionate?
> Just wondering....
> Mev
>

This debate seems to me to be stemming from a philosophical disagreement
about styles of pedagogy, and the fundamental crux I see in that
disagreement has not yet been named explicitly in this debate (or if it has,
I missed that post and I apologize if I'm being redundant). I see that crux
as being the question of how we define privacy, and to what extent we see
the private realm as fair material for a college class.

I've spoken to many colleagues and students who feel that students'
political beliefs, family life, personal self-images, and other similar
issues, constitute zones of privacy. Many feel that it's really
inappropriate for college instructors to dig around in private issues. I do
realize, and respect, the fact that Women's Studies is a field particularly
well-suited to discussions of this private zone, and that many educators
(and students) feel passionately that such discussions are the only path to
real understanding and change.

I'm not stating a "side" in this debate, for I see both sides. In my own
teaching I tend to favor the personal approach, but I do see and feel some
difficulties there, and frankly, I haven't found a fully satisfying answer,
myself.  I have strong memories of being a student and sometimes resenting
teachers who forced me into revealing my personal zones. I found it a severe
and insulting breach of decorum. It made me feel manipulated, which
disgusted me. At the same time, hindsight tells me that I learned a lot from
*some of those moments.  But not all of them. Sometimes, the offensiveness
of the experience outweighed the value of the results. And I've seen
evidence of that response in many students, both my own and other
colleagues'.

Many students *and teachers feel that the classroom is a professional space,
not a personal one, and that professional spaces should only engage the
public, not the private self--- especially since many "Intro to WS" classes
are _required_ as part of a diversity requirement. When a student hasn't
really known what he or she was signing on for, it seems especially dicey to
make them "get naked" in a classroom. And to many, a discussion of their own
privilege, their own private history, their political allegiences, religious
beliefs, etc., *is a form of getting naked.

In my experience, most students react positively to activities like the
privilege exercise. But "most" doesn't mean "all," and I feel an ethical
obligation to worry about what I'm doing to those students who thought they
were signing up for a college class, and found themselves in an encounter
group instead -- and are angry about it.  The majority of peers I've spoken
to (teachers) see that kind of student response as a challenge -- how do we
break through it, how do we get around it? But, rather to my disappointment,
I haven't heard many talk about a different option altogether, which is to
admit that making students get naked and private in a professional space is
really and truly a hell of a lot to ask, and that a response of resentment
is quite legitimate.

Should going to college mean having your private zones pried open in public?
That, to me, is the crux of this debate. As Mev says, above, many believe
that pain and emotional difficulty are great ways of raising consciousness,
and I've seen this work. (I also, by the way, printed out the privilege
exercise and am keeping it in my "teaching" folder. I've never used this one
before, and I may want to in the future.) But I think it's important to
acknowledge that many, many people do *not agree that pain, messines, and
challenges to "private zones" are appropriate components of a college
course.

One very conservative colleague once asked me if I didn't consider my
teaching style to be the same as proselytizing -- "aren't you basically
trying to force them into having a religious conversion? Why are you mucking
around in their private feelings?"  That comment really stuck with me -- it
was the first time someone had pointed out to me that my students' beliefs
about personal issues were quite possibly none of my damn business, and that
it might-- just might-- be wrong to confuse educating with
consciousness-raising.  I generally don't agree w/ her position, but she
made me stop and _think_ about it in a way that none of my more
radical-pedagogy pals had. We really do have to respect students'
boundaries, I think...  it's very tempting to dismiss legitimate boundaries
as "barriers" that need to be "broken through."  I've been guilty of that,
myself, but really -- it's quite arrogant.

Sometimes radical pedagogy is a bit like Guerilla Theatre. The receiver
(audience member or student) must have her/his "sense of order" entirely
breached, and the results can be very exciting -- *can, if the receiver
isn't offended. The difference is, audiences of guerilla theatre have the
option of getting up and walking away (usually) if they're turned off,
whereas the student may or may not have the option of dropping a class. So I
think we need to be mighty careful about using any exercise that requires
the baring of private zones, and/or the violation of a student's sense of
proper decorum in a professional space. Those students aren't "wrong."

Ilana Nash
inash  @  bgnet.bgsu.edu

I actually second Daphne Patai on this one. I value inclusion and want all
my students to partake in all activities--in fact, I am least comfortable
just lecturing because I want them to be active participants and am
delighted whenever students actively engage with a subject and come to a
new and deeper insight in the process.
This is why I am often uncomfortable with exercises that make some of them
uncomfortable. Yes, I LOVE making them uncomfortable when it comes to
decentering their assumptions (many of them rooted in privilege no matter
what their backgrounds, since 80 per cent of the world at least is so much
worse off than any US college student can ever really be). But I am not in
the business of making them cringe (sometimes a fine line in these culture
wars); I cringe when a student tells me they never had such a
"left-wing" teacher before (what do they mean?)
One exercise that teaches the same principle and which produces that
"click" without cringing is dividing the class randomly into groups (say,
two or three) and asking each group to come up with requirements for
inclusion that would keep one group out and allow another group
in. Because the random groups are so mixed, they can only come up with
things like "wearing glasses" or "sandals" etc., and we carry the
conversation on from there.

Liora Moriel
Comparative Literature Program
2107 Susquehanna Hall
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-8825
"No Melanctha, it just is, you never can have no kind of a way to act
right, the way a decent girl has to do, and I done my best to be telling
it to you Melanctha Herbert, but it don't never do no good to tell nobody
how to act right; they certainly never can learn when they ain't got no
sense right to know it, and you never have no sense right Melanctha to be
honest," Gertrude Stein (Three Lives)

On 4/17/02 6:39 PM, "Ilana Nash" <inash  @  BGNET.BGSU.EDU> wrote:
>
> ... I see that crux as being the question of how we define privacy, and to
> what extent we see the private realm as fair material for a college class....
>
> Should going to college mean having your private zones pried open in public?
> That, to me, is the crux of this debate. As Mev says, above, many believe
> that pain and emotional difficulty are great ways of raising consciousness...
>
> Sometimes radical pedagogy is a bit like Guerilla Theatre. The receiver
> (audience member or student) must have her/his "sense of order" entirely
> breached, and the results can be very exciting -- *can, if the receiver
> isn't offended. The difference is, audiences of guerilla theatre have the
> option of getting up and walking away (usually) if they're turned off,
> whereas the student may or may not have the option of dropping a class. ...

For some pertinent material, see

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~n51ls801/hrosqwsh.html

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~n51ls801/PHI340mirror/dangknow.html

The first focuses on classroom discussion of sexuality (and pertains to
discussion of a great many controversy-causing topics) and the second is my
response to a student's complaint about challenges to religious belief.

Comments welcome.

David.
--
David F. Austin
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~n51ls801/homepage.html
http://courses.ncsu.edu/phi340/lec/001/wrap/ [NCSU only]
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy and Religion
Box 8103
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC  27695-8103
(919) 515-6333
FAX (office): 919-513-4351
Winston Hall 006
David_Austin  @  ncsu.edu
Harassment Resolution Officer
NCSU Harassment Prevention Policy:
http://www.ncsu.edu/equal_op/hro/

Hi all,
I teach one class of cultural diversity that is reserved for middle
school education majors (that is, people who are preparing to be
middle school teachers).  One of the assignments this class does is
to create some kind of activity or material that will introduce the
theories of white/skin-color privilege, male privilege, and/or class
privilege to middle-school aged children.

In the course I teach, we did do a version of the privilege exercise.
I also used a version that asked the participants to think about how
long it would take them to reach a "finish line" point.  After we did
this exercise, we critiqued it in terms of how well it reflected (or
did not reflect) the theoretical articles about privilege that we had
read.  (My students were of the opinion that the version I have was
too focused on class and did not address racial differences enough.)

For his assignment, one of the students in the course I teach
"revised" the privilege exercise for use with middle-school aged
children.  First, he pared down the number of questions (from 50 to
about 15) and he simplified the language in a couple of them.  But
then, he suggested the following:

the students would be given "profile sheets" giving the life history
of fictional characters or historical figures.  Each student would
have a different character.  The students would get to know these
characters/figures through the profile sheets.  Then, when the
"privilege activity" was done in class, the students would do it in
character--not about their own lives, but about the lives of the
people/characters they had learned about.

I thought (and I still think) that this is a fabulous idea.  If the
goal is to provide students with a visual representation of the
operations of privilege in our society, then why do they necessarily
need to see this representation in terms of their own lives?

I would also like to say that I do not think this change renders the
privilege exercise irrelevant or superfluous.  If the change had
rendered the exercise irrelevant or superfluous, then I might
conclude that the exercise is a "C-R" activity rather than an
educational one, but this is not the case for me.

Jeannie
--

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
"[R]estrictive pedagogy comes from the belief that we are teaching
solely the subject
matter, rather than the actual reality that we are teaching live human beings."
        --Jyl Lynn Felman, *Never a Dull Moment: Teaching and the Art
of Performance*

Dr. Jeannie Ludlow
jludlow  @  bgnet.bgsu.edu                          *Spring, 2002, office hours*
Director of Undergraduate Program                       MWF 2:30-3:20 pm
American Culture Studies                                T 9
am-1:00pm, 2:30-4:30 pm
107 East Hall
Bowling Green State U
Bowling Green OH 43403
(419)372-0176

About the privilege exercise: one might make note of the fact that
being able to participate in this activity, i.e., to take steps
independently either forward or backward, is in itself a type of
privilege not available to those who use wheelchairs for mobility or
those who can achieve mobility only via the use of some other form of
aid.  The privilege of those who can hear the directions about how to
participate, the privilege of those who can see where the instructor
is pointing, the privilege of those who can process the information in
order to conclude for themselves whether to stay still, to step
forward, to step back -- the privileges of the non or not-yet disabled
people. . . .  Why are the additional privileges of health, of not
disabled bodies, of bodies not perceived and discrimiated against as
abnormal because they are fat or ugly or mutilated in some way. . . .
why are these secondary concerns if concerns at all?  Susan Koppelman
<<huddis  @  aol.com>>

Susan Koppelman's message strikes me as very relevant to the discussion of
getting students to recognize privilege and its absence.  But I think
Susan's message gains its real power from being read not literally but
ironically - as an illustration of the endless proliferation of possible
privileges once one embarks on an exercise of making students aware of
privilege and its absence.  I think, therefore, that she has aptly
demonstrated both the pointlessness and inappropriateness of such exercises
in the classroom.

Everyone is privileged in one way or another in relation to some other
specific persons, and unprivileged in some other ways.  By the time we have
such a mixed bag of "privilege" to label, there's no point to the exercise
except to induce feelings of shame, pride, etc.  Again, it's not the aim of
education to mess with students' psyches in this way.

DP


---------------------------------
daphne.patai  @  spanport.umass.edu

As someone who has done unlearning racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. groups
for more than 20 years, I find this conversation a bit unsettling.  It's not
been my experience that anyone really "likes" doing this kind of work.
Clearly, great thoughtfulness and sensitivity are required by the instructor
doing the exercise--and I think it helps if it's made clear in advance that
no one asks for the privilege or lack thereof s/he is born into--no one will
be judged, at least overtly.  Beyond that, our job is to make sense of
whatever upsets do occur---because if they don't, the exercise has not
achieved its purpose.  And I think if we are not prepared to handle those
upsets it's best that we not do anything that might create them.
However, as educators, isn't this our work, at least in part--to teach about
oppression?
Isbel Ingham
Conflict Resolution Department
Portland State University
ingham  @  pdx.edu

Daphne wrote:

>[clip]
>
>Everyone is privileged in one way or another in relation to some other
>specific persons, and unprivileged in some other ways.  [clip]

I really don't think you could support that contention in any
meaningful way.  For any reasonable taxonomy of 'privilege' there
exist people who approach being completely privileged (e.g.,
G.W.Bush in childhood) and others who are all but utterly bereft
(e.g., the profoundly multi-handicapped).  Trying to obscure and
deny such differences is good politics if you're privileged, but
it's difficult to take seriously.

Margaret

--
Margaret Tarbet / oneko  @  mindspring.com
--------------------------------------
Il felino pi· piccolo F un capolavoro.
--Leonardo da Vinci

Margaret, Actually, I agree with your larger implication that failure to
draw distinctions makes rational argument impossible.  The point then
becomes what are college teachers really aiming to accomplish by targetting
a particular set of privileges as the ones students need their consciousness
raised about, i.e., as the ones that really "count"?  Answering that
question would uncover the real agenda of these teachers - which I take it
is to inspire their students toward a particular kind of political action.
Thus, the claim to simply be making students aware of one or another problem
is exposed as a thin disguise for a different and more questionable aim in
the context of higher education.
D.

---------------------------------
daphne.patai  @  spanport.umass.edu