Anti-Oppressive Education

Challenging “Common Sense”

Oppression refers to a social dynamic in which certain ways of being in this world—including certain ways of identifying or being identified—are normalized or privileged while other ways are disadvantaged or marginalized at various levels, from the individual and interpersonal to the cultural and institutional to the ideological and discursive. Forms of oppression include racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, colonialism, and other “isms.” These isms intersect and overlap, reinforce and contradict one another, are similar to and different from one another, and manifest in different ways depending on the context. Although it takes multiple and varied forms, oppression is always in operation.

One of the primary reasons why oppression is difficult to challenge is that it is often difficult to identify. Recognizing, for example, that one racial group is privileged over another is difficult to do when that privilege is conceptualized and talked about as simply the way things are or have always been, as natural, as normal, as desirable, or simply as “common sense.” Common sense does not often point out the many ways that oppression is functioning, and in fact, is often what convinces us that the status quo is neutral or non-oppressive. Scholars have described how challenging oppression, therefore, involves questioning what is meant by common sense.

So, too, with oppression in education. Scholars have noted how common sense does not often tell us that oppression plays out in schools, particularly when the definition of oppression consists of only the most visible forms of discrimination. However, for decades, education research has revealed that oppression appears in subtle and hidden ways, which means that not challenging oppression indirectly allows the status quo to remain unchanged. Scholars have pointed out that some traditional and commonsensical approaches to teaching and learning actually contribute to oppression in schools and society, and some popular approaches to reforming public education actually overlook or mask the oppression that lies at the core of inequity in schools. Scholars have noted how attempts to change education often fail precisely when they do not conform to the common sense of schooling.

Working the Contradictions

Scholars have noted that recognizing the need for anti-oppressive education does not easily lead to change, because of the contradictions that abound in both education and any anti-oppressive movement. For example, policies can mean a range of different things to different people, not only because they are interpreted and implemented variously, but also because they emerge from histories of which politicians and educators are not always aware. This was the case when attempts to strengthen the teaching profession involved initiatives that were first developed by groups aiming to weaken the teaching profession. Scholars such as Sonia Nieto and Kevin Kumashiro have described how learning involves both a desire for and a resistance to knowledge, and it is often the resistance to uncomfortable ideas that keeps eyes closed to the oppressions that abound. Teaching involves both intended and unintended lessons, and it is often in the unintended, hidden lessons that oppression finds life and reinforcement.

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