Week 6 - Are you the same?

In Week 6 I wrote a forum post about how we discuss and conceptualise when we talk about the 'other' in adult education. My initial post was about how when we talk about the 'other learner', we make it invisible what it is that creates the other learner, i.e. the power structures. Based on that I wanted to highlight something I noticed in the forum posts.

In the forum, many people talk about their individual experiences of 'othering', as is the case in one of the core articles we had to read. I see it as important to distinguish between what I would like to call 'personal othering' (for lack of a better word) and 'structural othering'. In the forum, there are a lot of accounts of othering, that I would put down to power structures. For example, being shamed for having an accent that is not 'Western English', having certain learning styles preferred over others, etc. Others are about not feeling good enough, feeling like the only one who 'doesn't get it', not liking a particular assessment style etc. Now of course, these could be unpacked and may be connected to the power structures as well, but I feel they are emphasising personal othering more than structural. As educators, both of these are important to avoid, but I cannot help but be reaffirmed in my original post when going through the forum. If we would focus all our attention on improving these personal issues, and see them as such, we would be working mainly on an individual level. In order to achieve social change, I believe we have to focus on the structural level. I believe that by doing that, we will actually decrease the level of othering on a personal level more effectively than if we try to address each individual.

It is just so important to realise that we are not all "equally different" - we have inherited a power system that we exist within. Confidence is not enough to overcome that, changing of structures is needed.

#Week6 #Revisit