Privileged Schools

A privileged school community should take advantage of the fact that they have a pedestal in the way that they are more likely to have an influence of their community. What these schools should be doing is focusing their missions on the improvement and betterment of society since that is what should be a main goal for education in general- educating students for the sake of learning knew knowledge in the classroom that will help them progress through school and educating students in order for them to take the knowledge they learn in class to the help them be positive, successful members of society, in the hopes of them making society itself better. Another action privileged schools should take is to use their platform as a way to inform the public about social injustices in their community or society as a whole.

There is one important point that needs to be made, and that is that the students should never be made to feel bad about being in a privileged school, because they can’t help that their parents chose to send them to there. These schools also shouldn’t make it seem like because the students go to a privileged school they have an obligation to give back to the community or improve the society. This in a way goes directly against Swalwell’s belief that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Instead, these schools should have the students still think about how to improve society, help others, etc., but have them do so because that is what everyone in society should be doing. Students can think critically and take action whether they go to a privileged school or not.

Stepping away from the taking action aspect that schools should be doing, it is also crucial for the privileged schools to stress the idea to their students that even though they are privileged, it doesn’t make them better than others who are not. In Peru there is already a divide between different social classes, so if privileged schools made it seem like they are better than everyone else then it would just increase the issue. Once students see themselves as on the same level as everyone else, then teachers can take their lessons and put the focus on critical thinking and questioning, (inquiry). Because they are privileged, it probably means that they have access to a variety and abundant number of resources, compared to non-privileged schools. With these resources, the students may have a better opportunity to first research problems in their community/ society and then actually take action. All students are capable of asking questions and brainstorming solutions, no matter the socioeconomic status of the school, but more privileged schools may have better technology or access to more resources that can aid them in the deep research on a certain topic. Privileged students having better opportunities to actually take action is in the sense that they may have more funds that allow them to take action farther away from their school, take action on a certain topic for a longer period of time, etc. The idea stated before, that privileged students should feel as they are on the same level as everyone else, is in the perspective that they shouldn’t be made to feel better, that is not to say that they shouldn’t realize and be grateful for the position they are in, or realize the privilege they have over other students, so I guess the idea that privileged schools should be relaying to their students is that privilege does not equal better. Privilege instead is related more to “ease.” It is easy in the resources that the students have, and with that ease comes better opportunities.

The concept of just is sometimes debatable. Some may say that they are acting just when they are volunteering for a day or week, the problem with this belief is that a lot of times the outcome of the activity or volunteering experience is more of the volunteers raising their self-esteem and making them feel better about themselves, rather than doing it because it is the right thing to do and actually changes the way things were before, so that society was improved in some way. This also goes back to the idea of voluntourism. It is important to make the determination that the underlying outcome of the experience is not the improved image one has of her/himself. This idea is related to education because if students are taking action, especially privileged students, then they should continually be reminded that they are working towards improving society/ the community for the long-run not just for a short-term.