Let's Talk About Class: Reframing What is Happening In HigherEd

Hi. How are you? Don't say fine. I know you are not fine. None of us are fine. This isn't fine. You can also feel free to DM me about how you are doing. I will listen I promise. 

I want to frame today's blog around class. Not class as in the classroom space, either physical or virtual, but class as in the socio-cultural framing and identities that we all take into educational spaces and encounter through our communities.

I had a really good convo with a faculty on my Twitter DM yesterday (which is where a lot of my really good convos are happening lately, which should tell you something about where we are at in HigherEd), and class came up. We were talking about how education is framed  differently depending on where and how you grew up. If you were working class, education was often seen as the "way out" or the "way up" and you may have been surrounded by people who motivated you through education for something that was different to where you grew up. These kinds of instances can be both positive and negative. The positive is that it demonstrates possibility, but the negative is that depending on how it is framed and who frames it, it can lead to actively wanting to erase or forget where you came from (which can often racist, ableist, and definitely classist).

For me my motivations towards higher education was certainly based on where I grew up and  how due to linguistic and sexual orientation tensions I always had a deep feeling and need to "get out." So I read, and read, and tried to learn as much as I could to move on from where I grew up. In this process, I realized that education, as Freire mentions, is the practice of freedom, but also has the real possibility to create community and support others in many ways. These are the kind of alignment to ethics that my maternal grandparents gave me and so this really resonated deeply and thus created a real connection to learning and any kind of school. The more I reflected I discovered that being drawn to education, was not about really "getting out" per se, it was about supporting and being in community.  Now this is certainly not the reason why many are drawn to education, and we are seeing this play out in real time now.

Students are often told by their families that education will help with securing a future, with securing a place in society. In some instances families tell students that education can allow you to support community, but is not as common. And this is why everyone who is part of higher education today and who joined because of this belief of being part of and supporting a community, from students, to instructors, to staff, to those who have the unfortunate role of lower level no power administrators (course coordinators I see you) are hurting so much right now.

The privileged are telling us that community support is not to be found here, the privileged are telling us, if you want to part of this space you need to be okay with literally stepping over the bodies of your colleagues and those learners you are supposed to be in community with. What is happening in HigherEd right now is hurting a lot of people. However, I would argue it is probably hurting those who were told "this is your way out, this is your way to help and support your community" a lot more. 

We were sold a false bill of goods about what education could be. We are so so far away from Freire and hooks right now, we might as well be on Mars. Those who have the power to make change are being silent, regurgitating scripted lines, or have their performative allyship on high. Those in classrooms everyday trying to figure out just what to say or do to support students in all this are finding no support from anyone except for the kindred spirits on social media who actively call out all the crap that is happening. 

I heard this week the threat of making post-secondary an essential service. If this is something that happens, then they better be putting zero tuition college and university in place at the very same time, because otherwise there is no way post-secondary is an essential service and to suggest otherwise is classist crap. Tell every person who had to work 2-3 jobs for decades to pay tuition (and have loans to repay for 3/4 of their lives) that post-secondary is an essential service. You know the same people working now and risking their lives at work to be able to further risk their lives for their education. I am begging for some kind of awareness that is not cis white straight male abled upper class without children or care responsibilities and all of those intersections that others grab in the hopes to keep moving up the promotional ladder. The only learning that is happening and being reinforced right now is Capitalism rules (yes with the Big C), and if you don't have any kind of socio-cultural privilege (or the ability or desire to mimic socio-cultural privileged rhetoric and dialogue), you do not matter or belong in HigherEd; and that is incredibly sad.