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Sanna KIVIMÄKI
cultures. Falling in love with words like empowerment, optimism, surviving and feel-good might need a reality-check and the capability to face also miserable situations. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu is perhaps the best known critic of academic intellectuals. According to him (1984) researchers and teachers should be much more self-reflective and they should avoid unreal and alienated interpretations of life. The world is not only meanings but also problems to solve. The liberal slogan “live and let live” is not enough. The challenge is how to implement all kinds of different perspectives on the courses at the same time. How to act in a way, which doesn’t exclude any students with “different” background? Especially working-class students might feel themselves outsiders easily when attending universities. Anyway, we should be more interested in all kinds of outsiderness, whether it is related to class, nationality, sexuality or age. BUT HOW TO DO IT? IDEALISTIC IDEAS ABOUT PEDAGOGICAL ACTS How to be more class sensitive – without declining other differences? What kind of pedagogical acts would be significant to handle this difficult class question? I have borrowed some ideas from two Americans, Karen Robertson and Susan Zlotnick, whose workshop Putting class back into women’s studies curriculum was held in Uppsala in June (Challenging Education – Feminist and Anti-Oppressive perspectives on teaching and learning 14.-16.6.2009). First of all, a media teacher should be very aware of her/his own position in the power system – a position, which allows to name and rename phenomena and evaluate different kinds of students’ interpretations. As a teacher, you shouldn’t suppose that students think like you do, or that they try to think in your way. You have to give up the assumption of sameness and you can’t suppose anything about students’ social class, gender, sexuality, race or religion. You can’t assume that students are white, heterosexual and from the middle-class background – despite the fact that probably most of the university students fill these criteria. One concrete step towards more class (and gender) sensitive teaching is to pay attention to some classified, gendered and radicalized contents in teaching: the taken for granted presumptions of “a good student” or “a good media researcher”, for instance. A teacher should reflect the language and especially metaphors used in academic discourses, teaching situations and text books, as well as all kinds of examples which are used. One essential point is to understand that class does not mean only working-class (Ruoho, 2002).
Is there any class in this class? Class sensitivity in higher media education