“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world”.

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“Whether or not any of us become racists is a choice we make. And we are called to choose again and again where we stand on the issue of racism at different moments in our life.”

bell hooks, Teaching Community

Setting the Scene

What is the purpose of education? Throughout my own educational journey, I’ve heard on numerous occasions that “if you don’t work hard in school, college, or university you won’t have a good job”. But is this the primary function of education? To find a job at the end of studies? When I consider the purpose of education, today now more than ever, my mind is taken back to the words of Paulo Freire, bell hooks,(1) and Ivan Illich, that education is the practice of freedom. It is to see ourselves a little more clearly, to act in and with the world, and that the act of becoming educated does not always correspond to the classroom. 

Let us reflect on the place of “education as a practice of freedom”,(2) in the work of anti-racism and at the level of Further Education. Throughout this piece, I refer to Further Education more broadly to highlight how educating as a practice of freedom does not run solely along academic lines, but is instead an ongoing endeavour within all educational spheres, vocational and apprenticeships alike. I do so with the work of Paulo Freire in mind, who urges his reader to consider the transformative potential of reading the world in order to change it, before we come to read the word, and showcases that we do not have to be engaged in scholarly studies to become active agents in shaping change.

To do this, there is one key question driving me as I write this – ‘how might we engage in holistic anti-racist education at the level of further education?’. Whilst this question could be a book in itself, I have chosen to keep this blog post short, with the acknowledgement that we all (including myself) come to read with different time constraints, some of which are defined by the clock, and others by our (dis)abilities. As a result, the two sections to follow will lightly touch on these questions, with the necessary links for you to engage in further thought and reflection in your own time. To begin I want to briefly outline a key concept that will be used as an anchor for dealing with the topic at hand, namely ‘standpoint epistemology’, before reflecting more broadly on the subject of anti-racism in further education. 

1) Lower case intentional throughout.

2) Note: this book is 1 out of a series of three – ‘Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Teaching Community: A pedagogy of Hope, and Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom’.

Standpoint Epistemology

Standpoint Epistemology is a framework to understand how a person’s intersectional positionality – i.e. the various facets that make up their identity and the positions that these identity markers carry in the world – informs their overall idea of the world, its power imbalances and its differences. According to standpoint epistemology, there will be some aspects of society that some see, whilst others do not, based purely on each person’s intersectional identity. As a result, the understanding that a marginalised person’s experiences in society can tell us more about the social injustices, and the power relations of any given society in which they live, than someone who is less marginalised, is a central component to its framework. Educator, writer and theorist, bell hooks, lovingly reflects on the power of this standpoint position in her article ‘marginality as a site of resistance’, and in doing so pushes her readers towards considering the transformative potential of the marginalised perspective in contemporary society. By centring this experiential knowledge in the classroom and understanding the gaps in our systems of knowledge, standpoint epistemology can be used to actively inform our learning journey as educators, as well as our students, and impact society for the better.

Anti-Racist education in Further Education

Further Education provides a unique crossroads for those returning to the classroom. On the one hand, it is a point at which students just leaving school have moved towards the next stage of their educational journey, having chosen a set of subjects they feel reflect their specialised interests. On the other hand, it acts as a crossroads for those who wish to enter back into the classroom after many years away from formal schooling. I returned to Further Education with the hope of getting grades that would take me to university, after leaving college seven years prior, and was joined by people from many different walks of life.

It is precisely because of these reasons that Further Education is an ideal place to explore the construction of an anti-racist future. Aside from the necessary calls to decolonise our lesson plans, change our reading lists, and consider the plurality knowledge, the combination of standpoint epistemology and anti-racist pedagogies in the classroom provides a vehicle to explore more clearly how these structures disadvantage ourselves and our peers, and how we might go about making such changes. Both Freire and hooks remind us that the role of a teacher, is to also take on the role of those who learn. An understanding of standpoint epistemology helps us to remain cognisant that in the classroom our students have as much to teach us about anti-racism as we do them, no matter the subject. 

So then how might we engage anti-racist education at the level of further education? By deploying standpoint epistemology and anti-racism within the learning environment, we are asking our students to view the reproduction of society through a critical lens; one that acknowledges other experiences and emphasises that we can all play a central role in shaping the future of our societies for the better. As a result, students and teachers alike are encouraged to look at, and listen to, the multiple ways in which our current order of society disadvantages its marginalised members and consider how such forms of marginalisation are embedded within our social structures. It offers a unique opportunity to explore and understand how race, class, gender, sexuality and (dis)ability inform our daily lives and share common ground within these experiences.

For students, this might be the first time they have considered such critical perspectives (offering the opportunity to unpack previously held beliefs and experiences) or a continuation of their learning journey. For us as educators, by engaging with standpoint epistemology, we may be forced to reconcile with the multiple ways we reproduce such inequalities in our classroom, be it not taking the goals of our racialised students seriously – and therefore contributing to the award gap within education – or not allowing our students to critically engage with the social injustices that affect them in their own lives and the various conversations surrounding them. In both cases, when we don’t open space for such dialogue we risk leading our students to the belief that ‘formal’ education, no matter the discipline, is not a space that welcomes the possibility of social change. 

The work of anti-racism and the use of standpoint epistemology then acts as a guiding principle for the subjects and conversations we welcome into our learning environments. To engage in anti-racist work is to acknowledge and actively combat the various ways in which racism is reproduced. This means that an understanding of racism often isn’t enough, but that as educators we must actively look for, along with our students, the various structures and narratives that prop up and reproduce racism within society. Engaging in such work alongside the use of standpoint pedagogy provides the opportunity to no longer be constricted by the subjects, trades, or disciplines that we teach. Instead, we can turn to the world around us, and our experiential knowledge alongside that of our students, to unpack the multiple ways in which marginalisation manifests, and orient ourselves towards actively challenging these structures within the microcosm of our classroom. Ultimately, we turn to ourselves, and our students as a point of departure to better understand the world around us.

A closing reflection

To come back to Freire’s assertion that we need to “read the world before we read the word”, the use of anti-racist education coupled with standpoint epistemology moves beyond the boundaries between tertiary education, vocational training, and apprenticeship studies. The world is changing. As educators in Further Education, it’s important to consider what types of knowledge our students leave our classroom with and take with them into the world. Often, these life lessons move across disciplinary boundaries and orientate our students towards feeling comfortable and equipped to navigate an ever-changing world. By finding common ground amongst one another, by understanding our shared differences, and the multiple power structures that disadvantage many of us on some level or another, we can create learning spaces that equip our students to shape a world they want to see in everyday acts, and not just through the type of work we/they take up.