Privilege and Identity in Elite High Schools

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Post One of series  “It is not enough to be compassionate, you must act.”14th Dalai Lama

Was it an ironic coincidence that I read Adam Howard’s Elite Visions: Privileged Perceptions of Self and Others (Teachers College Record Volume 112, Number 8, 2010, p. 1971-1992 http:// www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 15799, Date Accessed: 5/15/2012) and then set off to the public library to review my son’s high school required summer reading list, which this year consists of books that fall under a school wide theme - compassion? 

Those familiar with the scholarly literature on privilege know that one must view privilege through the lens of one’s advantages (visible and invisible) instead of through the disadvantages of others.  If we are to break the chain of inequality we must view the varied components of privilege as power links within that chain.  Howard, in the above-cited article, introduces identity as an added link closely connected to one’s privilege.  His research looked at elite high school students’ perceptions of privilege; he found that his participants connect their privilege to their sense of self.  Specifically, privilege was not simply about the advantages one has or doesn’t have, but who they are as people, and their earned place in the world as privileged citizens. “ ‘It is just the way the world works.’ They accepted unfairness [inequality] as natural and unavoidable (p. 9)”

Students consciously or unconsciously work to justify and internalize their sense of privilege.  This is constructed from their knowledge base, their ways of knowing the world. As an educator it is my responsibility to help students understand other ways of knowing, and thus enable them to adjust their worldview to make a difference and break this chain of inequality.  In order to accomplish this Howard conveys the importance of exposing students to alternatives to “privileged ways of knowing and doing (p. 10).”  But he insists that in understanding students’ resistance towards alternatives, and acknowledging the commitment and desire of educators to positively influence youth, we must work through this resistance and take steps “toward transforming our students’ taken-for-granted assumptions about themselves, Others, and the world around them (p. 10).”

So, when I visited the Summer Learning web page, The Glass Castle, Nickel and Dimed, and The Soloist, quickly stood out and pushed me to reflect upon how as an educator of an elite school, I can use these works that focus on poverty and inequality not solely to think about compassion, but to help students think critically about privilege and inequality. What is our role as educators and how can we use the messages of these authors and characters to help our students break the many links of the chain of power and privilege? How do we ensure that our dialog on compassion moves beyond ideas and “feel good” tendencies and toward an urge to influence social change?

I will try to follow the Dalai Lama’s advice, “It is not enough to be compassionate, you must act.” Let’s act together and use this theme of compassion as a launching point to help students move beyond simply acknowledging the “taken for granted assumptions about themselves, Others, and the world around them (p. 10).”