Mark Hart
This article relates to the readings of Wildman and Davis. Gelernt took action against the system of socialization by addressing the issue of class. She did this by making the youth aware that class exists even in schools and by showing who is privileged and who is not using simple day to day examples. She allowed the students to see the difference in the daily life of their peers which brought an understanding of who fit in what social class and how it effects that person's life. By seeing how your classmates live and comparing their lifestyle to yours, you can get a better understanding of what it means to be privileged.
Wildman and Davis address the topic of privilege and how it can be recognized in society. An example of privilege in this article can be seen in the following example. Let's say there's a student who has to walk to school and there's a student who can catch the bus. The student who can catch the bus is privileged because that have no worries about transportation a corporate company did this, or neighbors from different parts of the world did this. How does each student feel? What can that student do as a solution to eliminate a subordinate and only have two equal parties?
Do you think that this type of exercise would improve our society and bring it together? Why or Why not? Also, how do you eliminate the possibility of someone being privileged or unprivileged.
COMMENTS:
Mark, this is an amazing article. I want to state right off the bat that I completely agree with with this stance on raising awareness and reducing class segregation especially at such a young age. However, I do see some serious holes in this theory to reduce classism. How would you feel as an underprivileged or someone who does not have access to unearned entitlements and having someone who is privileged and or has access to unearned entitlements walks into your home? At that age kids can say the darndest things. Imagine at a young age coming home from that field trip is supposed to raise awareness and equality suddenly blows up in the teachers face and you've created an even bigger division because now privileged students see how underprivileged students live and it becomes a teasing point in school. I am completely playing devils advocate because I am a huge advocate for raising awareness and breaking down the perpetual systems that society has created to increase these divisions. To connect this to Johnson article titled "Privilege, oppression, and difference," we can see that privileged is a 'loaded' word. We need to commit to systems of awareness to break this label of the word privileged having association with racism, sexism etc. It is this education and awareness about these labels and privileges that can break the systems of our society as is evident in this teachers commitment to create equality and awareness in the her classroom. Really interesting article Mark, I really enjoyed reading it!
JOE FOSTER