...I would be saying that G-d is calling me to homeschool my kids. But I'm not a capital C Christian, I'm a bit too prosaic to really believe in a Deity who takes an active interest in His creation, nudging them this way and that. Don't get me wrong, religion is cool, and all, but I like my gods abstract. I don't want my god to tell me what to do, already :)
But really, most of the blogs I've been reading lately are those of homeschooling women. Hint, hint.
And a lot of my university readings discuss oppression - the bread 'n' butter of a profession committed to social justice. Today's assigned reading for my class, the Politics of Multiculturalism (government policy since the 70's here in Canada, the first country in the world to make it official) is the opening chapter of Paulo Freire's classic, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970).
Pedagogy, of course, is the science or art of teaching, the theory of how to teach, but it also has connotations of conceit; a pedagogue is a pedantic, narrow-minded teacher. (You've gotta love the circularity of dictionary definitions. Pedantry is an ostentatious display of knowledge, an insistence on the importance of trifling points of scholarship, from the Latin paedagogus. All definitions from Funk & Wagnall's Canadian College Dictionary, 1989.)
But The Pedagogy of the Oppressed is about the struggle for justice and equity within the educational system. The first chapter explores the relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor, the colonized and the colonizer. Friere, like Fanon, cites Hegel, and ventures into ontological discussions of freedom and humanity and authenticity. However, so far I've been finding his analysis to be somewhat analytical. There is a dialectic between the oppressed and the oppressor, just as between Hegel's master and slave. But this duality, this opposition between the two keeps them separated. Who is the oppressor, in my reality? Am I the oppressor, a white descendant of European immigrants living on the stolen land of the original inhabitants of this continent? Or am I, a working class woman, a former single mother, a student with a significant debt, the oppressed?
Tied up in all of this is my role as a parent. Am I the radical parent with no rules, no rewards and punishment schemes, who follows, rather than leads her child? Or am I the oppressor, disciplining my child by yelling, forcing him to attend an institution he hates, telling him he has to fit the mold?
Add to all of this the fact that my son's teacher called today after school. He missed recess, lunch and art, if I remember the conversation correctly. This was because he passively resisted doing his work. He just sat there. His teacher doesn't understand his motivation. She is institutionalized, obviously, as she can't see that my son is resisting being institutionalized himself. Does this make her the oppressor? Am I the oppressor for continually requiring that he go to school?
If I had the resources, I tell myself, and others, I would homeschool my son. But we live on just my husband's meager salary from his retail job. I receive student loans each semester that I attend school. I'm creeping up towards $45000, with two more years to go. I don't have the time to spend being his teacher, I need to focus on my expensive education. If I take him out of school, do I lose my government funding for after school care? Besides, now there is my stepson. How can I take one child out of school and leave the other? How can I carve out the time to teach two rambunctious boys, to teach myself to teach them, and to study for my own classes - up to 30 hours a week.
If I was really one of those religious freaks, I'd be praying to win the lottery, or for my husband to miraculously double his salary...
But I don't really pray.
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