TOK – Privilege and Paradigms

What links you are making between this idea of privilege and paradigms. Can you draw on your own experiences of your own privilege here?

I think our perception of privilege stems from our immediate living circumstances at a given age (when we begin to understand our life in comparison to those around us). Our environment influences our perception of what is regular and normal, creating paradigms of what we interpret to be privileged or not. Initially, we understand privilege along with the concept of luck – when we think of children saying “you are so lucky to have …” however I think this matures as we better understand our place in society. Through education, and social awareness, we grow to recognise predominantly those who are less fortunate than us. In economics, we learn about the distribution of income, the top 1% or even the top 0.1%. We also focus on those in less fortunate circumstances when we look at poverty, standards of living and child labor, once again influencing our paradigm of privilege however it think our interpretation of this tends to be bias through human emotion through sympathy.

In my opinion, privilege comes with two different connotations. Sometimes we recognise that our privileges have allowed us to benefit from what is given to us and has allowed us to achieve goals with less difficulty than what it would have been without these opportunities. There is also another side of privilege that comes with negative associations, the fact that we are not able to appreciate what is given to us. The reasoning behind our perception of our own privileges is sometimes altered by this negative connotation and our refusal to accept this negative ideology.

In regards to personal experience, I would say that I benefit from privileges regarding wealth and opportunity – especially moving to UWC from a local government school, the contrast between the opportunities don’t necessarily the change my privileges but rather the recognition and appreciation of it – in turn motivating me to work harder and to make the most out of this ‘privileged’ situation. In other circumstances, I benefit from growing up in a rather inclusive community where gender and racial discrimination did directly impact my opportunities (to my knowledge) however I have heard stories from my parents about such racism in their workplaces. This has influenced my thinking into believing that the workplace is more discriminatory against such aspects and that race and gender plays bigger influence in one’s perception on another – though this may not necessarily be true, given the frequent occurrence of childhood bullying. I think that my paradigms will shift with my own experiences in the future.

 

Posted in TOK

One thought on “TOK – Privilege and Paradigms

  1. Thank you Rebecca for this piece. You have taken and expanded the notion of privilege in a few ways here. I agree especially where you say “Sometimes we recognise that our privileges have allowed us to benefit from what is given to us and has allowed us to achieve goals with less difficulty than what it would have been without these opportunities”. I guess from a TOK perspective, related to paradigms, the point is that sometimes, depending on our context, we do not even *realise* that things are easier for us than they would be for others. Male privilege, straight privilege, white privilege… and in oru conext, maybe private-school privilege is something that members of these groups often do not realise they even possess.

    So it can be hard to realise it. Often we see it in others (and I would be interested to know about your experiences in other schools, Rebecca) but it can be hard to see in ourselves.

    Interesting post; thank you

    Nick

Leave a Reply