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Chapter 1: An Introduction
- University of Michigan Press
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1 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 academicspeak . 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. Interrogating Privilege 2 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. Alook 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. [3.238.64.201] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 16:51 GMT) 1: An Introduction 3 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...