Reflection on writings from The Feminist Classroom

When I started reading this book, two months ago, I thought I would never be
able to get through it, which I still havent, but I am beginning to understand
the complex, underlying issues of gender, race, and privilege, and most
importantly, power. I think the actual title should be changed to include
power, but I can understand that there is probably an underlying reason for
leaving it out. My first perspective on reading the title was that feminism
has nothing to do with facilitating learning in higher education. But after
reading the introduction and the first chapter, I understand that it is not just
a perceived notion of feminism, its about respecting what every marginalized
group has to offer, that we can all learn from. Feminism encompasses
gender, and race issues, as well as examines the balance of power in our
world, and the institutions we learn and work in. The authors examination of
universities, Wheaton, Lewis and Clark, Spelman, University of Arizona,
Towson State, and San Francisco State, are varied, and focus on the women
studies courses, the women who teach them, and the students they interact
with.
One of the first examples of inequality, and the way women, especially nonwhite women are treated is described by a teacher at San Francisco state,
Carla Trujillo, who explained that:
Her sense of her own position is tied to growing up as a Latina in
California, which she experienced as a situation of unequal power
relations that tries to take away what we have within us by telling us
that we are inferior, or no good, or that we wont succeed.
Her perspective of trying to take away what we have within us, is a plight
of women no matter what race, when I think about this, my own vision of
what is successful, is looking at important, successful men, and not
embracing my own strengths, but trying to be and act like a man in order to
advance myself. Little girls do this when they try to be like brothers, they act
like a tom-boy, try to be tough, and say they can do anything a boy can do.
Well we can do what boys or men can do but, to be successful doesnt mean
we have to act like a them to do it.
Chapter 3 in the book is titled Mastery. Mastery has a different meaning for
everyone, it doesnt necessarily mean that we have mastered techniques or
skills in our teaching, it has a better definition in this text:
No longer limited to the acquisition of knowledge on the terms of the
experts, the notion of mastery has been expanded by our informants to
mean the interpretation of knowledge from the new perspective of
students, women, and other marginalized groups whose lives represent
the bywaters and tributaries to mainstream academic culture.

Wow! When I read this, I kept thinking about how, if I had taken courses that
explained things in this way, how different my life would be. When put into
perspective, from a learners view, how many women taught college courses
in subjects other than English, or Literature, or Humanities, or Psychology? I
can remember one Chemistry teacher who was a woman, and one Math
teacher, one Biology teacher, whose husband was also the department chair.
Even with that I think I only had two other women professors throughout my
University years, and only one of them inspired me to think outside the box,
a Political Science instructor, who introduced be the writings of Franz Fanon.
Reading this book, opens up many questions that relate to hidden power
struggles that we as women face daily in the world of men, and I still dont
comprehend all the complexities faced by other women of color, because
that is another, deeper layer that I dont have experience with because I am
white. I cant understand what it is to be a black woman or an Asian, or a
Latina, because I was born who I am. But what this book does, in a sly
manner, is to open up the dialogue for creating learning environments that
are respectful, and appreciative of what each of us brings to class. We bring
our prejudices, our cultural differences, and our different ways of knowing,
and when we can sit in a circle, and let each person have the chance to
contribute to the discussion we are all better as a result. Positionality is
another aspect that I have not considered. We all refer to our position in
relation to someone else, another group, another race, another class,
another country. Its similar to saying youre poor. Depending on how you
are raised, your idea of being poor is different from another. My mom always
said you werent poor as long as you could pay all your bills, and put food on
the table. But if she could see what poor is in relation to a family of another
race from another state or country, she would probably have a different view
of poverty, and that persons view of being poor would be different from my
moms.
So again, relating this back to facilitating learning, we are trying to make
meaning from our experiences, but creating a successful learning
environment means that we, as educators, learn from our diverse student
population, just as much as they learn from us and each other. The
challenge is to create the types of courses that examine the relations of
power, race and gender, in a positive way.

Maher, F. A. & Tetreault, M. K. (2001). The feminist classroom: Dynamics of

gender, race, privilege. Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.