Interrogating Privilege: Reflections of a Second Language Educator
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Interrogating Privilege: Reflections of a Second Language Educator
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Overview
While teachers’ focus on the learning process and class goals are quite important, there is not enough attention paid to the types of privilege—or lack thereof—that individuals bring to the classroom. Through chapters that can either stand alone or be read together, with topics such as gender, age, and colonialism (the author is the daughter of missionary parents) in second language teaching, this book seeks to address the experiences of teachers, scholars, and students as “whole persons” and to observe the workings of identity and privilege in the educational setting.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780472033942 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Michigan Press |
| Publication date: | 10/23/2009 |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Interrogating Privilege: Reflections of a Second Language Educator
By Stephanie Vandrick
The University of Michigan Press
Copyright © 2009 Stephanie VandrickAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-472-03394-2
CHAPTER 1
An Introduction
I am writing a book of personal essays that I hope will illuminate issues related to privilege in education, especially second language education, in particular TESOL. These chapters contain stories about myself, about my students, about my colleagues, and about academe, in the context of our larger society. The chapters follow a different path than most academic writing; they blend theory, analysis, and narrative. I hope that readers will find the essays both engaging and thought-provoking.
Yet as I begin writing the introductory chapter — this one — I find myself writing in generalizations and in academic-speak. I need to do so in order to explain the book to readers, especially, first, on the topic of privilege and, second, on my reasons for the choice I have made to write very personally. So I am caught in a contradiction: I seem to need to write in a somewhat traditional academic style in this introduction before getting to the chapters that combine academic analysis with personal narratives.
I begin each chapter with a story or a note; in the case of this introductory chapter, I begin instead with this appeal to you, the reader, to understand my dilemma, and to read this chapter for background, as a foundation for the rest of the book, with the understanding that you will soon get to the main text, the body of the book: my narrative essays.
* * *
A look around any classroom, including any ESOL classroom, will show how many identities students and instructors have. Various nationalities, ethnicities, races, social classes, genders, sexual orientations, religions, abilities, disabilities, health statuses, and ages are among the identities on display, or sometimes hidden but still important, in classrooms. Privilege and its effects are found everywhere, in and out of classrooms, yet privilege is often invisible, and even when it is visible, we often prefer not to acknowledge it. In the United States, we like to think that everyone has equal opportunities to succeed if she or he is willing to work hard. Many in the United States and elsewhere, including those of us in academe, seem to be made uncomfortable by the thought that privilege is so prevalent, and so powerful in its effects on people's lives. In particular, we seem not to want to talk about social class privilege; however, class privilege is extremely powerful, both on its own and in its interactions with other identities such as gender, race, and sexual identity. As bell hooks so forcefully puts it, "As a nation we are afraid to have a dialogue about class even though the ever-widening gap between rich and poor has already set the stage for ongoing and sustained class warfare" (2000b, p. 11). Proweller (1998) adds that
While class is a central category of social analysis inside American culture and society, it remains a relatively unspoken descriptor, commonly filtered through discourses of gender, race, and ethnicity. The "myth of classlessness" is notable among Americans in general who tend to describe themselves as middle class because they see the middle class as a universal class with universal membership. (p. 69)
Although educators tend to be progressive, and are perhaps more aware of certain types of privilege (such as racial privilege) than others, there is still a tendency not to want to acknowledge the profound effects of privilege, or lack thereof.
In this book, I explore the following topics as they relate to education, especially second language education/TESOL: which identities are privileged; when, how, and why they are privileged; how these identities, including their accompanying privileges or lack thereof, intersect and interact; ways in which identities are not unified or static, but rather multiple and fluid and evolving; and what the effects of such varying types and levels of privilege are in the classrooms, institutions, and societies in which we teach and live. My own teaching site is a university in the United States, and most of my stories and my examinations of privilege are in that context, but I believe that they also have a wider resonance.
As I discuss various types of privilege that do or do not accompany various identities, I hope it will be clear that I am not "judging" any of these identities as inherently better or worse; rather, I am attempting to identify these identities, especially as they exist in the ESOL world and, more generally, in the world of education, and to examine ways in which privilege manifests itself and makes its influence felt. In addition, I am hoping that such examination will facilitate both instructors' and students' taking responsibility for acknowledging their (our) privilege and its ramifications in our educational settings.
Note that throughout this book I use the terms ESOL and ESL interchangeably. ESL is still the most widely used term, and thus more widely recognized; ESOL is more accurate, in that for many students, English is not simply a second language but perhaps a third or fourth language, and may be used equally with a first language, or may only be used in certain contexts and for certain specific purposes. I use the term TESOL when I refer to the teaching aspect of our work, but also in a larger sense when I refer to our profession and our academic field.
This introductory chapter is divided into three sections. In the first, I discuss social class, as it is the identity I most focus on in this book, along with its intersections with other identities and other forms of privilege. In the second section, I explore the role of personal narrative in scholarly writing, and I discuss my reasons for choosing to write in a hybrid genre that blends personal narrative with more traditional academic writing. In the third section, I provide an overview of the structure of the book.
Social Class in Interaction with Other Types of Privilege
I am concerned about and interested in all types of privilege and their manifestations, especially in ESOL classrooms and environs, and in this book I examine privilege related to gender, race, sexual identity, academic status, age, and other identities and factors. In particular, the strongest focus of this book is on one specific aspect of privilege: the social class identities of ESOL students and their instructors, and the effects of social class privilege on students, faculty, and educational institutions. Even when addressing other factors, such as gender or sexual identity, I look at the connections and interactions between those identities and social class identities. One reason for this focus is that social class status is even less acknowledged than many other identities. In our professional literature, and even in our classrooms, ESOL educators have increasingly — although still not enough — discussed race and gender, but very rarely discuss class. And in the few instances when ESOL scholars address class issues (e.g., Auerbach, 1993; Auerbach & Burgess, 1985; Benesch, 2001; Morgan, 1998), they almost always focus on working-class or poorstudents. Middle-class identities are almost never addressed, perhaps because middle class is considered the norm and therefore an unmarked identity. Upper-class identities are even less often addressed. Because of this near universal lack of mention of the middle and upper classes, and because many of the students in my university classes, at an expensive private university, come with a great deal of social class privilege, this is a topic I have explored in my own work, especially in an article entitled "Privileged ESL University Students" (Vandrick, 1995a). In that article, I noted the signs of privilege displayed by wealthy international students, such as expensive cars and clothing, and often attitudes of entitlement, and I noted that such privilege affected the dynamics of the classroom. Less privileged students sometimes feel inferior and/or resentful; even instructors may feel resentful, especially if they feel they are being treated as glorified servants. I have also studied a subset of this privileged group, one I call "students of the new global elite" (Vandrick, 2007); these students are not only wealthy and privileged, but have lived and studied in at least three countries. They are "a curious combination of rooted and untethered; they are rooted in one place, yet they have acquired additional roots elsewhere; they feel comfortable and connected everywhere and yet do not feel they totally belong anywhere" (Vandrick, 2007). Although it is probably true that students with these identities are — by virtue of the very class privilege they enjoy — less in need of understanding and aid than others, I believe that it is important to examine all levels of social class identity, to provide a full picture, and to see how each level affects and is affected by our instruction and classroom interactions.
There are more publications about social class in our "sister" field, composition studies, as well as in English studies and related fields, but not many. Curiously, the biggest single group of publications about social class in composition studies seems to be edited collections of essays by working-class academics about their own experiences in academe, such as those by Shepard, McMillan, and Tate (1998), Tokarczyk and Fay (1993), and Zandy (1994). Those who have written about the class status of students (occasionally referring to the class status of faculty as well) include Coiner, Frankenstein, Miller, Rudnick, and Slapikoff (1995); hooks (2000a, 2000b); Ohmann (2003); and Tate (1997). Again, writings about the middle or upper classes, whether referring to students or faculty, are much rarer. Bloom's article "Freshman Composition as a Middle-Class Enterprise" (1996) is one well-known exception; another exception is Proweller's (1998) research on upper middle-class youth culture.
Academe itself is classed. Certain universities — especially certain private universities — have more prestige than other institutions. Research universities have more prestige than others. Universities with graduate programs generally have more status than those without, and both have more status than community or junior colleges. Faculty, too, are definitely classed: In addition to possessing the status provided by various professorial ranks, those with tenure are regarded more highly than those without, and those with full-time jobs have much more status than those with part-time positions. Students with higher social class levels are more likely to attend institutions with higher statuses. Each reinforces the other. Universities benefit from students who can pay full (high) tuition and who are often better prepared because of their access to good schools and resources during their elementary and high school years; students benefit from the high status of the more prestigious universities because they gain a reflected high status from their attendance there, and because their degrees from such institutions often help them attain more success after college (DeGenaro, 2001; Soliday, 1999). O'Dair (2003) notes that although higher education has expanded, affluent students make up a higher proportion of undergraduates now than in the past. Thus institutions themselves both empower and reproduce class differences (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977).
These are not just matters of graduation and career statistics. These are matters of the lived experiences of students and instructors being strongly affected by their social class identities. Sternglass (1997), among others, reminds us that just paying for college and earning degrees within a reasonable number of years are highly classed activities; she quotes one student, Ricardo, saying "I've been on the honor roll for three years, but if I can't pay the rent and eat, who cares about grades?" (p. 105). Bell hooks (2000a) tells us, with her strong feelings still evident many years after the fact, of her difficult experiences as a young student from an African-American working-class family attending Stanford University. She speaks of students who "flaunted their wealth and family background" (n.p.) and who trashed her room as a prank:
I hated that girls who had so much, took so much for granted, never considered that those of us who did not have mad money would not be able to replace broken things ... that we did not know everything could be taken care of at the dry cleaner's, because we never took our clothes there. (n.p.)
The social class split may be most obvious at elite universities such as Stanford, but almost every university has students (and faculty) from a range of class and economic backgrounds, and there are often tensions between those at the two ends of the continuum. International undergraduate students are generally at the higher end of the class spectrum, as they almost always have to be able to pay full tuition (as opposed to immigrant students, who often have legal resident or citizen status, and thus pay in-state tuition at state universities; immigrant students are also eligible for financial aid). For example, at the private university where I teach, my students "write unself-consciously of their parents in high positions, of summer homes, of expensive overseas vacations, of servants, of parties at exclusive hotels and clubs, and of upscale cars given them on their sixteenth birthdays" (Vandrick, 1995a, p. 375). In addition to the obvious material manifestations of wealth, these students generally exhibit "the self-assured, comfortable demeanor usually found among young people who are used to financial security and privilege"; there is also often "a clear sense of entitlement, of feeling that it [is] natural and given that they [are] among the affluent and elite" (Vandrick, 2007, n.p.).
One whole area of emphasis and concern that is clearly underpinned by class differences is the area of remediation and accompanying perceptions of deficit. Many students who are labeled as "underprepared" (and this label often has to do with language skills) and needing remediation, before or while being mainstreamed, are from social class backgrounds that did not provide them adequate educational preparation for higher education, and these are concerns that should be addressed. However, remediation has sometimes become a way to separate (some would say ghettoize) students from such backgrounds from more prosperous students from middle- and upper-class backgrounds. There is much discussion in academe, and in particularly in writing programs, about how best to deal with such differences in preparation. Should there be separate sections of composition for underprepared students? Should students who come from immigrant families and whose English language abilities may still not be on a par with those of native speakers be in separate sections? (For more detailed discussion of such issues of remediation, see Benesch, 1988, 1991; Merisotis & Phipps, 2000; Soliday, 2002.)
As for faculty — who were once students as well — one of the most heart-wrenching stories I have read in an academic publication is that of Patricia A. Sullivan, a long-time and well-established professor of composition. Sullivan came from a very deprived working-class background, and for years she never told anyone about this background; she excelled at "passing" as middle class. But at a certain point she came to feel it was wrong that "Class is academe's dirty little secret, its last taboo, that about which we dare not speak" (1998, p. 239), and she decided, with much trepidation, to speak out about her own background. She writes of working sixteen-hour shifts, living in the cheapest dorm, receiving smuggled-from-the-cafeteria food from friends, getting food stamps, doing without new clothes or shoes, and borrowing toothpaste and shampoo from her roommate. Other working-class academics describe how difficult it was
to picture themselves as being academics, how little support they received, how they felt unentitled, and felt that others from the middle and upper classes knew the secrets of academe, which they, shamefully, did not. They speak of passing, of anger, of loneliness. (Vandrick, 2001a, p. 28)
Sometimes these class differences not only cause mental and emotional anguish for faculty, but can actually be a source of (generally unintentional) discrimination. Some years ago I became familiar with a situation in which an applicant for an academic job, though in many ways the most qualified candidate, was not chosen for the position. It seemed to me that the main reason she was not chosen was certain "markers" which indicated that she was from a working-class background. Consciously or not, those who made the hiring decision (middle-class academics and administrators) did not feel quite comfortable with this person, but framed the decision by deciding that this candidate didn't seem likely to fit in at the institution in question. I believe this type of decision occurs more often than we would like to think.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Interrogating Privilege: Reflections of a Second Language Educator by Stephanie Vandrick. Copyright © 2009 Stephanie Vandrick. Excerpted by permission of The University of Michigan Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Chapter 1: An Introduction,Chapter 2: ESL and the Colonial Legacy: A Teacher Faces Her "Missionary Kid" Past,
Chapter 3: Tea and TESOL,
Chapter 4: Shifting Sites, Shifting Identities: A 30-Year Perspective,
Chapter 5: Fathers and Mentors,
Chapter 6: Gender, Class, and the Balanced Life,
Chapter 7: Sexual Identity and Education,
Chapter 8: On Beginning to Write at 40,
Chapter 9: The Power of Writing Groups,
Chapter 10: The Aging Educator,
Questions for Reflection and Discussion,
References,
Index,