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Critical Wisdom


The Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College has a reputation for being difficult, especially at the doctoral level. It isn’t difficult in the way my advanced data analysis class is difficult, where we are expected to learn complex statistical concepts while also learning how to code in the dreaded Stata software. Instead, it is impossibly abstract and theoretical, with most classes requiring us to write papers where we construct complex arguments supported by plenty of other people’s theoretical musings. These frameworks challenge us at our very core, a process that is fraught with emotional ups and downs, so much so that a professor in the department has called the program as a “Pedagogy of Monsters” and written an article about it.

The program has changed the way I see the world. For example, I recently went to go see Isn’t it Romantic with some colleagues from the Writing Center. Besides the social aspect of actually going somewhere that wasn’t to work or accomplish a necessary task, I wanted to see this movie because Priyanka Chopra is in it and I love (and feel a sense of trepidation as I hope that the actor/actress has represe
nted Indians well) seeing Bollywood actors finally be acknowledged by the West.

Instead of enjoying the eye candy that Chris Pine was supposed to be, or the ridiculous dance number that happened on the middle of the street, I had two thoughts: Priyanka Chopra was given very little screen time, she was given a vaguely Hispanic name that completely ignored her actually cultural heritage, Bollywood has been doing better, more elaborate dance numbers for years.

So the result of my 3/4 of a year in Curriculum and Teaching has been that I cannot go anywhere—the movies, the mall, walking down the street—without thinking about how power and privilege are exerting their control in every situation. Every week in one of my classes we read articles about exclusion, isolation and discrimination immigrants, migrants and refugees face, which adds to the sense of the world being a very unwelcoming place to be anyone who is not a white heterosexual male.

Besides this new, alien mindset, the program also quietly pushes you to be a voice when faced with these injustices. We must be constantly vigilant and ready to spin verbal and written arguments that pull of Foucault, poststructural theory, CRT (the list can go on and one, and if you don’t know what they are, that it is perfectly ok).

Yet I have been realizing that being critical all the time is ok for some, for others, however, it only causes a constantly disturbed mind. By disturbed, I do not mean dark and brooding but rather as the opposite of serene.

And here is where there is a gap in all of these studies that we are doing. While our intellectual abilities are being nourished, that intellectualism is not helpful without wisdom to know when to use it. That wisdom must be rooted in community, love and compassion so that when we must stand up to injustice, we do it not only out of love for the victim, but also with love for the victimizer. I’m still trying to figure out what that wisdom looks like in an academic space. But it is a journey well worth taking.

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