Issue - 1

PRIVILEGE IN THE EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT

Learning and collaborative learning happens beyond university, planned study courses and teacher-led sessions. This journal demonstrates the high motivation, interest in knowledge use in education and critical reflection skills of our Education and Globalisation degree programme students. Students decided on what they wanted to reflect on and came up with the theme ‘Privilege in the educational context’. The authors of this thematic issue are students who study in the context of Finnish higher education which is characterized as being egalitarian in international comparative research of education systems. Education is a universally agreed fundamental human right and education contributes to well-being, yet inequalities are still evident. The authors’ choice of ‘privilege’ suggests that we need to critically look at our positions as (future) educators in diverse learning contexts, work and in the wider world; and recognize our values, beliefs, identities and world views, and the lenses we use in our work that aims at creating spaces for meaningful learning, sustainable lifestyles and constructive dialogue. The journal articles offer some insights and thoughts of the ethical dilemmas in education which are core contents of the study programme.

-Professor Elina Lehtomäki

The Education and Globalisation master’s programme at the University of Oulu (nicknamed EdGlo) is a special space in which to think and be. Reflecting upon my own EdGlo experience as a student and as a lecturer, reflecting together with past and current students, past and current faculty members, I found it easy to realise that by evolving as and with EdGlos, we are privileged.

We are privileged in the colloquial sense of the word; we have the opportunity to do something special together. We can easily recognise that we are privileged in that sense. We come from different places and walks of lives, and we have the chance to come together and cogitate at length over issues pertaining to social justice and education. Yet, even if we compose great diversity in where we are from or where we land on the socio-economic spectrum, even if we have different mother tongues, skin colours, cultures, religious affiliations, abilities, or gender identities, we are all privileged to different extents, also, in another sense of the word, a more substantial or political sense. We benefit from special unearned advantages over others, and that kind of privilege is considerably more difficult to recognise (Coston & Kimmel, 2012, Johnson, 2006). As this privilege sense is complex, we consider necessary to indulge in this conversation and thus, we have the privilege to examine our own privilege.

By evolving and spending much time thinking together, our awareness is consistently growing and shifting, yet often aligning in many ways, enclosing us in the so-called EdGlo bubble. Our invisible walls can at time give us the impression that since we think alike, those similarities are probably to be found also outside the bubble. Therefore, we must remain vigilant about echo chambers dangers and should welcome the frequent and important reminders of such pitfall. As such, in a recent class discussion involving students from inside and outside the bubble, one student witnessing the lengthy consideration of an ethical issue from different angles came to an outburst. That student said something paraphrased as follows: “we cannot just think about the same issues or things over and over, relentlessly, we also need to move on”. This comment served important reminders to us all. First, it is important to remember that the way we think is the product of the time spent together and that we should strive to strategically empathise (Zembylas, 2012), strive to include more people in our conversations for everyone to gain more perspectives and avenues for critical thinking. Second, the instinct to get out of spaces of discomfort, or the tendency to rush away from difficult issues is natural but often at the centre of problems. It is important to realise that addressing injustice and oppression is painful, inconvenient and time-consuming, and that by ‘just moving on’ we are complicit in perpetuating parts of the history that led us there (Huegel, 2020). Disruption and change happen only if and when we make them, and the first step to change is awareness, preceded by conversation (Oluo, 2019). With this journal, we hope to burst the EdGlo bubble (at least a little) and spark larger conversations about the political sense of privilege, then perhaps raise awareness about one’s own privilege, then hopefully entice action in addressing privilege.

Stemming from our class engagement, interesting ideas, questions and connections emerge in various forms: in discussions, workshops, presentations, essays etc. I have felt that it is a shame to encase all this meaningful work within our invisible walls and thought this journal would be an excellent opportunity to make insightful student work more public. While this journal idea originated in a specific course, we decided as a group that the construction of this particular journal would be a collective effort with the students, and that it would be targeted first to educators but also to anyone involved in education. In a will to contribute to alternative thoughts dissemination and to ease the engagement of young scholars in academic discussions and knowledge production, we wanted students to engage in scholarly supported papers, while speaking from their own experiences. We feel our collectively constructed knowledge and voice are important and valuable within academic and practical discussions. Finally, we decided together that the very first issue of our journal would pertain to Privilege in the educational context, and that all papers would relate to this thematic.

This journal issue is organised under three themes: Privilege and work, Uneven starting points for students in class, and Systemic privilege. For each of the themes, students worked together on video introductions to bring about the relations among their papers, and with the theme. Because we thought that those videos could also be used as time stamp of the pandemic present, those are recorded in the Zoom environment rendered so familiar to all of us during the last 12 months. Each of the journal’s themes include a number of papers written by the students, either in groups or individually. Moreover, students wore different hats aside from the author one; students were in turns journal editors, proofreaders, web designers, photographers, social media experts and more. Needless to say, students worked tenaciously on this project; launching a new journal and its very first issue is tedious work but an exciting endeavour.

On a final note and as a group, we want to outline that we do not mean with our texts to tell ‘what is right or wrong’, rather, to give an opportunity to gain awareness in a space that is meant to be non-shaming and constructive. We want to open up the discussions we have in class and hope to (re)open conversations that might have been deemed concluded, akin to post-feminists arguing that gender equality has been achieved and we can therefore move on (Mirza & Meetoo, 2018). Privilege is certainly something that concerns all of us, now, and we hope to convey that reflecting on our own privilege does not have to be negative or shameful. It can be a peacebuilding tool to help us all in locating and better understanding ourselves and others.

References

Coston, B. M., & Kimmel, M. (2012). Seeing privilege where it isn’t: Marginalized masculinities and the intersectionality of privilege. Journal of Social Issues, 68(1), 97-111.

Huegel, V. (2020). On the politics of nonviolence an Interview with Judith Butler. Interfere: Journal for Critical Thought and Radical Politics, 1, 86-91.

Johnson, A. G. (2006). Privilege, power and difference (2nd ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Mirza, H. S., & Meetoo, V. (2018). Empowering Muslim girls? Post-feminism, multiculturalism and the production of the ‘model’ Muslim female student in British schools. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 39(2), 227-241.

Oluo, I. (2019). So you want to talk about race. Hachette UK.

Zembylas, M. (2012). Pedagogies of strategic empathy: Navigating through the emotional complexities of anti-racism in higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 17(2), 113-125.