How has your upbringing/schooling shaped how you “read the world?” My upbringing was within a family of five children, and two married parents. My father toiled for thirty+ years as a University professor at the UofS, while my mother gleefully ran the family farm. My formal education was at a conventional small town prairie school, while my informal was place-based within a barnyard. I read the world through the lens of a Caucasian, non-religious, personally responsible citizen who derived his common sense from the systemic means of the status quo.
My biases/interpretations, which became “the norm or standard to which all others must conform,” was from an agrarian upbringing, within a medium sized family of moderately conservative world-views. Instilled was a work ethic that suffered no lack of integrity, or weakness in moral compass. Nothing came free, but with effort. I would venture to say this was a stereotypical household environment of a small town middle class farming community of the 1970 and 80’s.
The literature read during middle and high school years may have included Shakespeare, and 20th century writers such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Hound of the Baskervilles), and F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby). I do recall the most influential writers in my informal education included Ayn Rand, Leon Uris, and E.B. White.
How this has shaped my reading of the world is that I have a politically and socially conservative leaning in my views, while flavoured with a the liberal understanding of the importance of arts within our communities.
What biases and lenses do I bring to the classroom? The biases and lenses I bring into the classroom have grown from those established as a young man fresh out of highschool and into my early twenties. These are built from two ingredients. There are the personal and professional experiences in a workforce not protected and safe as an academic institution. One is guarded when introduced to opinions/topics espoused by academics, as their life experiences come with limitations. Secondly, for most people outside the ivory walls, it is the individuals, media, internet, and literature that one interacts with daily who have a more profound effect in shaping the biases and lenses. Who and how one interacts with these are key – ex. Fox news or CNN, Ben Shapiro vs. Randi Rhodes, etc. – to establishing biases.
How might I unlearn and work against these biases? Funny enough, returning to the safety and confines of a post secondary academic culture, allows me to reflect with critical thinking tools in which to evaluate my tendencies. I’ve seen this in my growing perspective on Indigenous matters, Transgender issues, the importance of music and the like.
Which “single stories” were present in my own schooling? Whose truth mattered?
The single stories present in my schooling were of the dominant culture within Canada – as I was taught through the readings of Shakespeare, and the texts directed by a Euro-Western dominated curriculum. I cannot recall ever learning about matters related to Indigenous, transgender, or immigrant peoples (this was the 1980’s).
Ken Chaplin 