A few weeks ago, my column attempted to address the question of who speaks in Core.   I find that the dominant voices in Core are, unsurprisingly, the dominant voices in our society.   Many of the reactions I received were various formulations of, “So what?   Whitman is a school for rich white kids.   Why should I care?”   This is a dangerous, insulting response that denies the role that every individual Whitman student plays in the creation of our community.

The university is the spawning ground of the intellectual class in contemporary American society.   It is difficult, if not impossible, to have scholarly work recognized by the “academy” if it is conducted outside its sanction.

The distinction between “educated” and “uneducated” provides an important service for the dominant forces in society by producing knowledge and intellectuals who legitimize, maintain and provide ideological support for the institutions and structures that perpetuate structural violence.   This violence manifests itself materially by affecting the livelihoods and possibilities for billions of people around the globe.   At the same time, it devastates the ability for individuals to claim and exercise their own agency by disciplining subjects who attempt to theorize outside of “accepted” ideological coordinates.   The evolution of this style of learning has roots in so-called “Enlightenment” thought, which in turn traces its history to the “classical” philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, precisely the approach to knowledge that is pursued in Core.

This Platonic ethical science is the dominant paradigm in most fields of academic study.   Rationalism produces a great deal of information on a given subject, because it is designed to arrive at conclusions.   At the same time, however, the world view it advocates is a “black box” model aimed at producing reliable models, rather than at inculcating understanding.

The rationalist line of thinking assumes authority for itself, adopting a privileged viewpoint from which certain readings of reality are inherently acceptable and all others may be seen only as threats.   To borrow from Brazilian educational theorist Paulo Freire, Core functions as a “banking model” of education, where students function as empty vessels who “receive” the knowledge Professors attempt to impart to them.   A one-way transmission of information, as discussed earlier, does not function adequately.   Such a strategy treats students as objects that must be saved.   It privileges a certain way of thinking and knowing to the degree that we must standardize worldviews and identities in order to be in accord with the canons of knowledge that the curriculum seeks to promote.

In order to have a pedagogical viewpoint that encourages pluralism and justice, we should strive to enable students to think about how the knowledge they gain interacts with the power of dominant cultural groups to enable and silence certain voices and viewpoints.   Reading Core as a unitary text helps one to realize that the voices presented therein are in fact, choral.   In a world where we can explain the function of systems, goes the argument, we have no need to politicize or problematize our material.   Objective knowledge, in other words, speaks for itself.

But there is no knowledge that is not already political.   Knowledge and the power to define allow subjects to structure the world, but the structures that are created in this process can often be violent.

Students are not, and should not be, thought of as objects.   Both students and educators are Subjects, intent on exploring reality and acquiring new knowledge.   A cooperative process of education that sees all these knowledge as partial is the first step in formulating a new critical pedagogy for Core.   It requires a curriculum that not only reads the texts as formative of world views, but also reads them against each other.   It requires the inclusion of texts that problematize and call into question the “givenness” of their identification as canonical.

This perspective can assist in caring and understanding for others, and is the beginning of a new direction for pedagogy that will, hopefully, assist in the schooling of academics that strive for justice.   Such a step is important if we hope to change the violent and exclusionary policies of our government and the society in which we live.   I know that if any school can do it, that Whitman can.   We should not forgo the opportunity.