Rambling.

[shawnaree]

I meant to write something ensightful and eloquent in here about my course work, which, at the moment, is focused on the lower educational expectations set for children of parents in poverty; however, I'm having a particularly difficult time divorcing myself from some personal issues which make it uncomfortable for me to fully participate in a

Comments

[peaceofpie]

This post was really helpful to me; it helped me clarify a piece of self-awareness. The experience you've described here is very much the kind of experience that drove me from higher education -- I really can't separate myself out enough to study effectively most of the time. I need to be able to not separate myself -- and that's true regardless of whether the issue in question is one I've personally experienced oppression from or not. I don't really learn things I feel separated from, and school for me -- being in a classroom discussing theories, reading about them in books, writing papers about them -- creates that separation that bars me from really being able to get the information in my system.

I have a bunch of other thoughts on this too, but my eye hurts right now? So I'm gonna stop looking at the computer.

[shawnaree]

I find it more difficult to study myself from an academic perspective from within myself. I need to be able to distance myself from who I am to see who I am, else I get all bogged down in wanting to protect me from understanding myself. I understand that you don't have that issue, however.

Though, I find that it's easier to study non-identity-based academia when I /can/ connect it to who I am-- and the research supports that. Any teacher who tried to get you to learn about things other than yourself by ignoring who you are was a piss-poor teacher, and I apologize to you for them.

Either way, you can learn without a teacher, and you can study without a classroom. <3

[peaceofpie]

yeah...for me, i can read about stuff all i want, come up with all kinds of smart shit to say about it, but i only REALLY learn stuff if i live it and do it. i have learned more about gender and class and race and oppression from just knowing as many people as i do who each have totally unique experiences of those things, than i ever could from academically studying them. i think a lot of what academia does is very much in line with the way most people think...people like to try to understand things better by relating them to other things they know, by grouping things together, by creating boxes and formulas and patterns and charts and measurements. and that's cool for people for whom that works, but it doesn't help me very much. especially because i always feel like i have to unlearn stuff like that in order to really connect with people as PEOPLE, if that makes any sense. like, if i spend a lot of time reading about racism, for example, that's when i start grouping people of different races together in my head and seeing them as a

[shawnaree]

I think that's where we differ. I don't think that learning about racism is learning about other people. I think that learning about racism is learning about yourself. Being given the framework for understanding parts of yourself you don't have an opportunity to see every day, in an environment that is safe for you to do so.