picture found here
Since I am back in school for the winter and spring, I have a lot of readings given to me. Today I started to go through my 550 page e-book of feminist theories, or Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories
One of the definitions I had to look up for my next Gender and Pop Culture class was “Feminist Pedagogy” and pathetically enough, I didn’t know what the definition was prior to reading it. For anyone else who has no idea what “pedagogy” means, it is essentially any type of teaching and in this case, feminist teaching. Think of a really cool, but sadly fictional, teacher who incorporates social justice, democracy and open discussion to the classroom while trying to dismantle traditional patriarchal educational structures. That is basically what feminist pedagogy means.
But, I digress.
In the text, there is mention of how these teachers traditionally believe in redistributing power. This means students not having an authoritarian teacher, but rather an authoritative teacher.
The text stated, however, that this has recently changed due to post-modern/post-structuralist academia:
“Subsequent scholarship on feminist pedagogy has reclaimed the authority of the teacher, declaring that teachers weaken their capacity to contribute to students’ learning if they retreat too far from their institutional and other forms of authority. Indeed, many scholars and teachers now argue that power is to be embraced, not shunned. This position is associated with post-structural theories that offer a complex understanding of power as circulating rather than possessed, productive as well as repressive, and, ultimately inescapable. From this perspective, feminist educators attempt to acknowledge their power and use it knowingly. Teachers will sometimes be confrontational. Classrooms will sometimes be risky."
(Lorraine Code, Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories, pp. 381-82).
There are several issues here that I would like to address. Firstly, my mind is trying to untangle this idea of teachers weakening their capacity to contribute to students’ learning if they take on a less authoritarian role in the classroom. On one hand, I cannot picture a classroom of ten year olds sitting quietly and respecting their teacher because they just feel like it. I remember being ten years old, and I remember not listening to my teacher all the time, not because I disliked them, but because I was ten! If we are speaking about university or college classrooms, which the entry mentions is the most common institution to see feminist pedagogy, then how can one excerise the same authoritarian rule? Then again, I have had my fair share of “tough” profs who have a 'no crap policy'. I respect no-crap policies, but I don’t respect treating students as the “others”, if you will.
As for children, most of us can agree that our younger counterparts need clear rules and direction as well as discipline. Note that when I use the term discipline, I am using it in a way that seperates it from punishment. Punishment sounds more like an inescapable defeat that happens when power is horribly unequal. Discipline occurs, at least in my understanding, when a child is aware of the rules but decides to break them anyway leading to the children suffering the predicted and routine consequences, ie. “time out” chairs. This, in my opinion, is authoritative – it provides guidance and direction through establishing clear rules and being respectful. In contrast, authoritarianism focuses mainly on punishment instead of the changing of problematic behaviours. It also pits the teacher as the “all mighty”, a figure to fear rather than respect.
This means that on one hand, I agree with a differential in power as a way to keep a calm environment with younger children, but have it carried out in a way that is not causing the child to be fearful. The post-modernists, at least according to this text, seem to believe that they are “reclaiming” power. This whole post-modernist cliché of “reclaiming really awful activities and words in order to somehow get rid of them” is really gathering dust. We are all familiar with the post-modern rhetoric of reclaiming woman-hating language like “cunt” or “bitch” and trying to make it sound empowering to a select group of white, class-privileged women in the West. These words, in my opinion, existed as a way to harm women. Why would one try and “reclaim” such words? Why not set the bar a little higher, PoMos, and actually challenge something for once. It seems, as you can read above, that many post-modernist thinkers have pretty low standards of what social change means. Believing that power is “circulating” rather than “possessed” is just silly. Go tell that to a marginalized group of people, let’s go with, I don’t know…women; tell the women of the world that in order to fight male power, they must become more like men by creating unequal power imbalances with others. By this I mean, trying to encourage women to take some power of men by regurgitating harmful masculinity, or wait for it to circulate, then use it against others as a way to find empowerment. The example can be used for various groups of people, how about talking to Jews about this idea of power as "circulating". I mean, are these people serious? Or is this all just an attempt to sound uber-abstract and academic?
Men and women, according to this theory, share power, as it somehow “circulates” through classrooms, bedrooms and society at large until it rests into each person’s hand eventually. If this is wrong, please let me know! This is merely my critique of post modern theory. All will fall together in some strange, trying-to-sound-super-abstract kind of way that post-modernists believe. Power is possessed. Trying to deny this fact will cause a great deal of people to think you’re an ass-hat. What this denial does is tell people who have been tradtionally systematically oppressed for thousands of years that power “circulates”, it’s not in the hands of one or a group of people but rather it belongs to everyone, somehow. I guess they just forgot about all the non-white, non-western academic groups of people living around the world.
Moving onto the next little tidbit from this piece that asserts that power is “productive as well as repressive, and, ultimately inescapable.” First of all, and forgive me for my lack of abstract, learned-it-from-some-white-dude rhetoric regarding the mysteries of life, but how can something good encompass any repression or oppression for that matter? Or is "good" an abstract reality, too?
I realize that being productive can be repressive in circumstances, but this is no excuse for reigning terror over students or anyone else for that matter. This again is the sheer laziness of academic, post-modernist thinkers. Why are we to settle for repressive circumstances, simply because we see them as ultimately inescapable? I don’t know about you all, but I’m not content with just “dealing” with the current situation and “working” around it. It’s a pathetic excuse for wanting to, rather than abolish harmful power struggles, re-embrace them as if they were stolen somehow. It is not empowering to use the power you have against others. That is not fair, nor does it ever bring justice to anyone and it certainly doesn’t belong in a political movement dedicated to social justice, fairness, respect and egalitarianism. Post-modernists seem to over-complicate issues for themselves as a way to avoid their reality – I know that is a sweeping statement, but I’m just telling it like I see it.
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