Category Archives: 1.1 Social Justice

How Semester One Made Me ‘Check’ Myself.

The values module last semester was a really eye-opening and thought provoking one for me. The very first lecture of the values unit is one that will stay in my head forever. I learned about the ‘unconscious’ bias that everyone holds within themselves, the reason why we all are – either a little or a lot – homophobic, racist, transphobic, sexist, or in any other way discriminatory of a specific group of people. You might be reading this and thinking, ‘I’m not any of those things!’, and you might well not be on a conscious level, but unconsciously you probably hold the same preconceived ideas about these groups that society has pushed us to think and probably never forget. That’s the thing, the unconscious bias creeps up on you when you don’t want it to, and it’s something you don’t have power over because it just happens and, before you know it, you’re trying to make yourself look like the opposite to your thoughts. We were shown a video of an Irish drag queen, Panti Noble, who addressed an audience at the theatre and spoke to them a little bit about the unconscious bias. He explained that after a nasty encounter while standing at a crossing, he would continuously ‘check’ himself to see what it was that made him stand out. He confessed that he hated himself for doing so, and he would start to rethink things and make himself try to seem less of himself just so that he could be protected from the opinions of other people who were acting homophobic towards him. He explained that “to grow up in a society that is overwhelmingly and stiflingly homophobic, and to somehow escape unscathed would be miraculous. So, I don’t hate you because you are homophobes. I actually admire you. I admire you because most of you are only a bit homophobic, and to be honest, considering the circumstances, that is pretty good going”, and I couldn’t have said it better myself. This was one of the most important moments of semester one for me, because it is something I think about, and will continue to think about, every day. I can use this to reflect on my actions in my profession, to decide if they were caused by my own unconscious bias, and how I can change this. Learning about it has made me understand myself a lot more, and the fact that society can have a huge effect on a persons’ unconscious bias makes me believe that I need to use my future position as a teacher, to change this for the people I might come across through my job. Although, I’m hoping that by that time, society is a lot more accepting of ALL people.

References/ background reading:

Panti Noble https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXayhUzWnl0

Equality Challenge Unit https://www.ecu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unconscious-bias-and-higher-education.pdf

An Envelope, a Group Task, and a Deeper Meaning

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During Tuesday’s group work task, classes were split into four groups and each group received an envelope, which inside contained a few stationery supplies, some groups with more than others. We were all given the same task – to come up with something useful to a new student at university, and to make whatever we came up with using the given supplies. My group opened up our envelope and were a bit confused with the contents: some blu tack, a pencil, three paper clips, a single sticky note, and a rubber band. What were we supposed to make with all of this stuff?

After a group discussion and tossing around of ideas, we came up with a map of campus to help a new student navigate their way to important places like the Dalhousie building, the library, and of course, the Union. The groups presented their ideas to everyone else and we all proceeded to bring them to life using our supplies. Once everyone was finished making their projects, we presented them to the class, too, and that’s when we really saw. Some groups had been given enough supplies to make actual boxes full of stationery or booklets for new students, and then other groups made maps of campus and buildings. The groups with more supplies got graded a higher mark out of ten and my group were pretty happy with our 5/10 compared to the 9/10, 7/10 and 3/10 that the other groups were awarded. But then, why should we be graded this way when we all participated and followed the task, and we all came up with good ideas even if we were less fortunate to have the emptier envelopes?

Just as you may have been thinking, there was a deeper meaning to this task, hence the title of this blog post. Everyone gets given the same task, but what we want to do and what we can do are sometimes two different things. The groups with less would’ve probably loved to have made a fancy student survival box to impress the advisor, they just didn’t have the means to create one. I know if I could have made one or thought of making one then I would have (thinking back now I could have used the envelope to make a pencil case but never mind). The point is, you can assign the same task to a group of people and the results will always be varied because not everyone has the resources to make a box and fill it with supplies, they make do with what they’ve got and that’s the main thing. You need to consider that people come from different backgrounds and everyone goes home to different situations. Not only does this happen with children in the classroom but all over the place. There’s always someone who has more than you, but there’s always someone who has less than you too, and that needs to be taken into consideration because you cannot expect to tell a group of people to each go and build a rocket and assume that they’ll all come back with full size ones that can actually take off (one of my fellow students said something along these lines at the group work session and I thought it was a great example). Social inequality is a thing, and recognising how it can affect a situation is very important.

I cannot wait to see what the rest of the Values module is like, because so far it has been a real eye opener for me. Who knew an envelope full of stationery could get you thinking so much?