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- Jun 27, 2011
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A professional education consultant and teacher trainer argued at the White Privilege Conference (WPC) in Philadelphia that great teachers must also be liberal activists, and described in detail her goal for destroying the āwhite supremacistā nature of modern education.
Heather Hackman operates Hackman Consulting Group and was formerly a professor of multicultural education at Minnesotaās St. Cloud State University, where she taught future teachers. On Friday, Hackman was given a platform at WPC to deliver a workshop with the lengthy title āNo Freedom Unless We Call Out the Wizard Behind The Curtain: Critically Addressing the Corrosive Effects of Whiteness in Teacher Education and Professional Development.ā The long title masked a simple thesis on Hackmanās part: Modern education is hopelessly tainted by white supremacy and the āwhite imperial gaze,ā and the solution is to train prospective teachers in college to be activists as well as pedagogues.
In fact, Hackman argued teachers shouldnāt even bother teaching if they arenāt committed to promoting social justice in school.
āEducation is not about the mere reproduction of knowledge,ā Hackman said. āEducation is the practice of freedom. And as a result, we have to have [teaching] students becomes activists as well as teachers.ā
Creating educators who are proper activists, Hackman continued, means training them to not only to encourage diversity but also to engage with the systemic oppression she says is pervasive in the entire educational system. In Hackmanās telling, virtually everything associated with being a good student in modern education is actually just a tool of racist white supremacy.
āThe racial narrative of White tends to be like this: Rugged individual, honest, hard-working, disciplined, rigorous, successful,ā she said. āAnd so then, the narrative of U.S. public education: Individual assessments, competition, outcome over process (I care more about your grades than how youāre doing), ādisciplineā where we care more about your attendance and making sure youāre not tardy than we care about your relationships ā¦ proper English must be spoken (which is just assimilation into standard U.S. dialect), hierarchical power structure, and heavy goal orientation.ā
While the traits listed may simply be regarded as positive traits for success in the modern world, Hackman described them as specific cultural traits chosen and emphasized to favor whites to the detriment of non-white groups, who are forced to assimilate white traits such as good discipline and goal orientation or else be left behind.
Read more: Professional Educator: Grades, Showing Up On Time Are A Form Of White Supremacy
................................................................
And we wonder why we have a permanent underclass?
Heather Hackman operates Hackman Consulting Group and was formerly a professor of multicultural education at Minnesotaās St. Cloud State University, where she taught future teachers. On Friday, Hackman was given a platform at WPC to deliver a workshop with the lengthy title āNo Freedom Unless We Call Out the Wizard Behind The Curtain: Critically Addressing the Corrosive Effects of Whiteness in Teacher Education and Professional Development.ā The long title masked a simple thesis on Hackmanās part: Modern education is hopelessly tainted by white supremacy and the āwhite imperial gaze,ā and the solution is to train prospective teachers in college to be activists as well as pedagogues.
In fact, Hackman argued teachers shouldnāt even bother teaching if they arenāt committed to promoting social justice in school.
āEducation is not about the mere reproduction of knowledge,ā Hackman said. āEducation is the practice of freedom. And as a result, we have to have [teaching] students becomes activists as well as teachers.ā
Creating educators who are proper activists, Hackman continued, means training them to not only to encourage diversity but also to engage with the systemic oppression she says is pervasive in the entire educational system. In Hackmanās telling, virtually everything associated with being a good student in modern education is actually just a tool of racist white supremacy.
āThe racial narrative of White tends to be like this: Rugged individual, honest, hard-working, disciplined, rigorous, successful,ā she said. āAnd so then, the narrative of U.S. public education: Individual assessments, competition, outcome over process (I care more about your grades than how youāre doing), ādisciplineā where we care more about your attendance and making sure youāre not tardy than we care about your relationships ā¦ proper English must be spoken (which is just assimilation into standard U.S. dialect), hierarchical power structure, and heavy goal orientation.ā
While the traits listed may simply be regarded as positive traits for success in the modern world, Hackman described them as specific cultural traits chosen and emphasized to favor whites to the detriment of non-white groups, who are forced to assimilate white traits such as good discipline and goal orientation or else be left behind.
Read more: Professional Educator: Grades, Showing Up On Time Are A Form Of White Supremacy
................................................................
And we wonder why we have a permanent underclass?
