Remote Learning Power and Privilege
How Remote Learning Subverts Power and Privilege in Higher Education
It is important to use the lessons of this transition to challenge what Paulo Freire calls “the banking system” of education—where professors aim to simply deposit knowledge into students—and instead create inclusive pedagogies that acknowledge the diversity of our students and provide a safe space that invites them to speak up. Decolonization is not just about removing a few dead white men from our syllabi, or adding more women of color. It’s about making sure that everyone’s experience is represented. It’s about decentering the traditional power hierarchy in the classroom, so that the professor is not the sole transmitter of knowledge who imposes a singular (and often Western) view. It’s about ensuring equitable participation among students, so that they don’t remain silent and passive receivers whose varied life experiences are dismissed.
In a Zoom classroom, the teacher is no longer the central authority. Chat offers real-time parallel participation. The ability to enter and exit at will equalizes power.
Even before the pandemic, many educators knew that the traditional methods of teaching and research would have to be overhauled at some point. As a professor of humanities, I had been aware of the need to employ hybrid pedagogies more in tune with the digital age and shortened, over-stimulated attention spans. Advantages to joining students in their digital space far outweigh dated arguments railing against the medium; if anything, the pandemic’s isolating effects already prompted students to seek refuge there.
At this moment, the modern university stands at a turning point. Instead of wanting to go back to how things were, we should be looking at radical pedagogical interventions that make the most of remote learning as an accompaniment to the traditional classroom experience. This is the time to put “interdisciplinary” ideas into practice by experimenting with new methodologies.