Real Knowledge

            According to the Cambridge Dictionary, knowledge is the “understanding of or information about a subject that you get by experience or study” ("KNOWLEDGE"). While knowledge can be experienced, for most children it is obtained through “study”. They go to school for 8+ hours a day and learn a curriculum established over 100 years ago. Even the structure of the classroom has failed to change. They have one teacher who is in charge, and everybody else is expected to follow their orders and do as they are told. They are taught not to speak up for themselves and to follow the crowd. The bias of these teachers, no matter how well they think that they can hide it, leaks into their classroom and onto the impressionable children. This personal prejudice furthers institutionalized racism inside of the school system.

            For example, if there is a white teacher, specifically someone from a wealthy background, in charge of teaching a classroom of black students, that teacher is not able to relate to the experiences of her students. While this seems like it is not a big issue, this failure to relate plays a major role in the validation of minority beliefs. If that same class was to discuss the modern impacts of slavery, the teacher’s personal beliefs on the situation would likely cause her to invalidate the ideas of her black students because they contradict her own. Teachers should not be able to determine what is and is not “real” knowledge. That should be up to the students to decide what they are going to believe. Yet, students, especially those of a younger age, simply do as they are told and usually end up agreeing with and believing the ideas of their teacher. And this failure to think for oneself impacts the lives of these students because they will forever believe that their experiences are less valid than those of white people.

~ Ezra Akresh

Works Cited

“KNOWLEDGE.” Cambridge Dictionary, dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/knowledge. Accessed 18 Feb. 2023.

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