3. Equality Diversity and Inclusion, Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality and Policy in Education

I’ve had a flurry of intense emotional responses whilst going through the materials for this blog post. Perhaps it is because much of it resonated with my own intersectional experience of going through education systems that followed colonial practices. My experience of kindergarten was most mild as it was very small and kinder then my later school experiences but I learnt then what authority was and what it wanted from me. To be obedient and follow instructions. Very quickly my convent education thwarted my curiosity. At home I was always asking difficult questions. In school that was not allowed. We needed to rote learn everything and the books were always right. It wasn’t until I went to an independent art and design college where I earned a diploma in communication design that I was encouraged to think critically. But even this had it’s confines. We were asked to think critically but not to challenge authority 

Asif Sadiq’s Tedx talk was approachable, direct and mentioned key approaches that I practice –privileging process in pedagogy and storytelling. I resonated with his point about not being responsible for educating others and the futility and frustration over essentialising identities.

The clip from the Telegraph lacked nuance and served to reinforce ‘wokeness’ as a criticism of criticality of academia. It lacked nuance. While it mentioned what was happening to free speech in academia, not enough was interrogated effectively. Foucault’s “Fearless Speech” came to mind. In this series of lectures that has been published as a book, he distinguishes between free speech and fearless speech.

The Channel 4 clip of young schoolchildren taking part in a persona pedagogy exercise was excruciating to watch. It was a very inappropriate exercise to reinforce marginalised positions in such young people. Who did this help and what was gained (rather not gained) from the exercise? Persona pedagogy is most effectively to be used in ways to allow students to imagine stepping into other people’s shoes to explore different positions that can equip them to reflect on their own identities (and not publicly incriminate them to leave them exposed and vulnerable).

Bradbury’s article made me acutely aware of my own privilege in convent school. Being a girl of north Indian heritage and having fairer skin afforded me privileges I had not recognised then (and for a long time after). I also remembered what classmates with darker skin experienced – being told they did not clean themselves well. Teachers would admonish us for speaking ‘butler English’ when we did not enunciate English words correctly. What this article illuminated for me was policy sociology in the context of education and the stages that it needs to be considered in: the context of influence, the context of text production, and context of practice. A larger question that I probe here as I think about pedagogy is who does this education serve? And if we are honest about this then perhaps the needs of the student will be centred. This will also force the writers of policy and educators to imagine futures of these children. Who are they, where do they come from, where can they possible go and how will this education serve them? What seems to be missing from this study is a critique of the financial structure and business that education has become today. These institutions are built for profit first – this is a structural nuisance that is in direct conflict with the values that education must embody for real diversity, equity and inclusion.

Garrett’s article struck a different chord. It resonated completely with my adult intersectional experience of being an academic and educator in the UK as well as my brief stint as a PhD student at an Indian university. My move to the UK has made me acutely aware of my intersectional identity in this context and the struggles voiced by the interviewees resonate loudly with my own experience. As an educator my focus is on student learning and a large part of my pedagogic practice in Fine Art is to offer my students the chance to privilege their own lived experiences and knowledge in ways that they can most effectively do so. I gave up my PhD nine months into the program because I had a mentor who was a patriarchal male from the social sciences who did not understand art /design practice. I also know first-hand the experience of struggling with the language of academia. Criticality can be voiced in different ways.

Bibliography

·  Bradbury, A., 2020. A critical race theory framework for education policy analysis: The case of bilingual learners and assessment policy in England. Race Ethnicity and Education, 23(2), pp.241-260.

·  Channel 4, 2020. The School That Tried to End Racism. [Online]. Youtube. 30 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I3wJ7pJUjg [Accessed 2 July 2024].

·  Foucault, M., 2001. Fearless Speech. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).

·  Garrett, R., 2024. Racism shapes careers: career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, pp.1–15.

·  Orr, J., 2022. Revealed: The charity turning UK universities woke. The Telegraph [Online]. Youtube. 5 August. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRM6vOPTjuU [Accessed 2 July 2024].

·  Sadiq, A., 2023. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Learning how to get it right. TEDx [Online]. Youtube. 2 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw [Accessed 2 July 2024].

·  UAL, 2024. Anti-Racism Learning Hub [Online]. Available at: https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/sites/explore/SitePage/218540/anti-racism [Accessed 15 June 2024].

·  UAL, 2024. Student Diversity [Online]. Available at: https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/sites/explore/SitePage/218540/anti-racism [Accessed 15 June 2024].