Final Reflection - Connection to Practice
As I ventured through this course, I started thinking a lot more about how the content I learnt from this course connected to my everyday life now. We as working humans in society have been socialized by the systems and people around us to think a certain way. In school, we receive messages as children that reinforce dominant values of what is “good”. Anything that deviates from it is considered “wrong” or “different”. As I reflect on hidden curricula in school that currently exist, I think about all the invisible cases of oppression that have occurred in the past that have gone unnoticed by me. When I filled out forms in my elementary and middle school years, we were confined to selecting either “male” or “female” for our gender”. When I was younger in elementary and middle school, teachers often made the assumption that because I was a girl I had to be quiet and gentle. These assumptions are all hidden in the curriculum in the school that reinforce gender norms and stereotypes.
In the portion of the course where we were discussing hidden curriculums, I reflected a lot on the cycle of liberation and how we can free ourselves from the cycles of socialization, and how we can work to help free others as well. I hope to bring about change not only in myself, but also in my future work. By maintaining the current systems and power dynamics in schools and our society, we will never be able to progress to achieve equity for all. Unless the current systems are dismantled and the very nature of what “femininity” and “masculinity” is is taught differently to children, we will never be able to break free from the cycles of socialization.
Harro’s read on cycles of liberation was especially an important read to me because it shows me the steps that I can take right now to improve myself. By reaching out, building a community, coalescing, creating change, and maintaining this change, I hope to continuously re-educate myself on new ideas and constantly learn how to improve myself. I want to be there as an ally and supporter for people who are oppressed by the harmful heteronomrative values that currently exist.
Whatever career path that I may undertake in the future, I hope to integrate what I learnt and my values into the heart of the work I do and how I work with other people. Whatever it is that my future holds, I hope to carry with me what I have learnt from this class.