Teaching Resistance

School is where I learned to internalize those things, to hide aspects of my interior life to make everyone else comfortable, and, more importantly, to avoid the ridicule and abuse to which I was subject by students and teachers alike.

This situation mirrored countless others, in and out of school, where I could find no authority figure to hear what I had to say or to take my concerns or inquiries seriously

By purposefully being left out of equitable opportunities to discuss issues and problem solve, I was inadvertently taught another skill: question authority at all times.

Noam Chomsky reminds us that as far as school is concerned:
The important thing is to be able to obey orders, and to do what you’re told and to be where you’re supposed to be…. [T]he institutional role of the schools for the most part is just to train people for obedience and conformity.

retribution for an offense, an exclusionary act by which students are removed from the opportunity to learn; it is harm inflicted … through which outside regulation becomes internalized subjectivity.

I celebrate teaching that enables transgressions—a movement against and beyond boundaries. It is that movement which makes education a practice of freedom.
—bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress

Many diverse perspectives can and should be considered in any classroom setting, and an open-minded, accepting teacher who is also transparent about their own worldview helps to set a standard of honesty for the entire class. But the pressure to conform to a model of purported neutrality serves the purpose of perpetuating some of the most harmful aspects of the status quo, continuing to effectively marginalize many student identities and stifle critical dissent.

the intersectional lens encourages ever more crucial and detailed focus on the deep, underlying problem(s), with one eye always trained on the wider context—the “big picture.”

Kids like the kid I once was are suffering in our institutions, and when kids are suffering, their behavior tells us.

suffering is the internal consequence of oppression. Suffering is the result of the psycho-spiritual injury resulting from oppression.”1 There are degrees to suffering, as in most things. The damage caused by daily microaggressions causes suffering. Witnessing the brutalizing of people who look like you causes suffering. Worrying constantly about your safety and well-being causes suffering. Being made aware of your difference in the world as a negative causes suffering. Suffering accrues incrementally, and as it does it draws in more alarming terms: violence, crime, trauma, and abuse. As we take in these terms, we also necessarily distance ourselves from them so that we may alleviate the potential damage that suffering will cause. Suffering occurs in many realms of human existence. It persists especially in education.