Reclaiming Education
In 2010 three education researchers published an article about working-class students in higher education. A few of the students interviewed were anonymised and wrapped together as ‘Dylan’. Dylan was partly me.
I had forgotten most of it until I went looking for material for an Introduction to University course I was developing, and I came across the article again. This is in it:
Dylan believes, for instance, that university changes your life. Because of this, he would now love to teach at university. He wants to teach people who are like him, those that ‘should not’ be at university. More than anything else, this is what keeps him there.
This article was co-authored by the person who founded ‘Uni Focus’ at Murdoch University, and was responsible for my entry into university. If it wasn’t for her research, the program wouldn’t have existed. This person was also responsible for keeping me in university when I tried to run away out of fear, but that’s a story for another time.
The quote above isn’t something I authored. Someone else listened to me talk, decided that was the important part, and wrote it down. Sixteen years later I design and deliver a course for people coming into university without the schooling that is supposed to precede it, people who, in the words of that quote, ‘should not’ be at university.
Do I believe certain people shouldn’t be in university? Absolutely not. Upon reflection, I knew what I meant at the time, but I wasn’t as articulate as I am now back when I spoke those words into existence. I’d always been called stupid, a disruption and a failure, and this was the voice that was always in my head. It was a self-critical internal voice that had developed from educational disadvantage. ‘People like me’ was referring to the systemic exclusion of students such as myself.
Through the person who helped me get into university, I found a deep love for education. My relationship with education isn’t a traditional one, but I think that’s where my true power as an educator resides. My disadvantage becomes an advantage to those that I teach, I know their struggles because they used to be the same as mine.
The same 2010 article contains a second line about me, and it is less flattering:
Even Dylan, though he frames his own script as one of resistance when he acts against the grain by dropping out, also effectively colludes in his own exclusion.
‘Dropping out’ was artistic licence, so to speak. I dropped out because I was on the verge of expulsion. I wouldn’t call it resistance, as it didn’t resist anything, I was still excluded from education. However, much like I mentioned earlier, the background to the expulsion is a story for another time, and certainly wasn’t one I was willing to divulge when I was interviewed as part of the ‘Dylan’ pseudonym.
The researchers’ point is that leaving on purpose and being pushed out can be the same event described from two directions.
Both of those descriptions are in the same article. One says I wanted to teach. The other says I helped push myself out. I’ve stopped thinking I have to pick one.
What I’d add now is the part neither of them could see, because I wasn’t telling anyone at the time and I certainly wasn’t telling researchers. You don’t collude in your own exclusion because you agree with it. You do it because leaving on your own terms is the only part of the situation you still control.
That’s what I try to hold onto when I’m teaching. The people in my classes aren’t short of intelligence or motivation. Most of them made a decision that looked, from the outside, like giving up, and they’ve been carrying it around ever since as evidence of what they’re worth.
Reclaiming education, for me, wasn’t the degrees. That came much later. It was realising I could walk back into the place that had written me off and be useful there, and that being written off was the qualification rather than the obstacle.
I don’t teach in spite of any of it. That’s the whole point.
Pearce, J., Down, B., & Moore, E. (2010). Working-class heroes. Professional Educator, 9(4), 18–21.