Essay On Power And Powerlessness

Our course has challenged us to understand texts that will affect our students. In the texts, there are three reoccurring words: power, privilege and oppression. Unfortunately, these words and their context will likely impede our future students. Since they have this potential, it is increasingly important that we comprehend their definitions. The course has equipped us with new definitions and perspectives that will aid us copiously when we become educators.
As described by Bobbie Harro, our cycle of socialization core has five central themes: fear, ignorance, confusion, insecurity, and power or powerlessness. The final theme, power and powerlessness can affect our students because of its relation to privilege and oppression. Harro argues that “people with power have gained it through the existing system.” This reflects the same idea of many of our …show more content…
This course has already proven to be helpful because it has grown my knowledge on terms like privilege, power and oppression. It has offered new outlooks that I did not consider at the beginning of the semester. The terms and their influence exist not only in our society as a whole, but also in the classroom. It has taught me that education, even with the numerous attempts, is still not equal. As educators, especially with my focus in history, we have to be mindful of how diverse our classrooms can be. History can be taught through many narratives therefore it could potentially exclude groups of students. In the same manner, the school district’s teaching standards could intentionally exclude certain parts of history. All students do not have the privilege of their history to be told, just as McIntosh explained in bulletin point. Furthermore, history is more likely to discuss very controversial topics and I must be able to incorporate what I know about power, privilege and oppression to avoid