Diane's Response to Check

Reflection #6 Diane Kuthy

Check, Ed. (2006) “My Working-Class Roots in an Academic War Zone: Creating Space to Grieve and Honor.” Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, 24, 23-35.

My Working-Class Roots in an Academic War Zone: Creating Space to Grieve and Honor

Summary:

In this article Ed Check uses autobiography to describe his experiences of a working class background, Polish Catholicism, and queerness. He considers the relationship his background has for his current understanding as teacher, artist, and academic. He discusses the way he honors and grieves his background.

Personal Reflection:

“I struggle with how I see myself as both working-class and middle-class as both an activist and an academic.” (24)

Ed Check’s stories are important to hear and tell. As an art educator, I appreciate how Check honors and grieves his background in relationship to his current ways of knowing through his activist artwork, research, teaching, and mentoring. His passion and emotionally charged truth-telling in this article are admirable.

Truth-telling stories make others want to tell their story.

I grew up in a working class suburb of Youngstown, Ohio called Austintown. When I went to high school the entire school population was white and probably over 90% of the parents worked at the General Motors plant nearby. Their grandparents as well as mine had worked or still worked in the Steel Mills in Youngstown. My father was one of the only people to have a college degree in my suburb/town. He was an artist and teacher and read poetry to us. My Mom ended up completing a college degree when my brother and I were in high school.

Much of the time, I felt like an outsider straddling both a working class and a middle class background. I grew up with conflicting messages about class. On one hand my family was struggling financially, and our friends and extended family were working class, and on the other hand artistic and intellectual pursuits were valued above everything else in our home. Our family was a big supporter of labor and at the same time was resentful that our neighbors’ salaries working at the GM plant were more than teachers’ salaries. Typical working class values of hard work etc. were not values instilled by my immediate family although they were ubiquitous in the larger community. In our home learning to think freely was valued over accomplishment in school which sometimes put me at odds in my working class high school and the state school I attended for college. Some of the grammatical structures I still employ in speech are reflective of the working class community that I grew up in.

I have had a lot of shame in the past about my working class education and have many gaps in my education which I blamed on something lacking in myself. This shame was intensified by an apparent learning difference which affects my writing. Everything is a jumble and I can barely get anything down when I write long hand. Thanks to computers I am able to write this and thrive in the professional world. I still remember when my favorite teacher in high school got really angry because he interpreted my inability to answer a question on an essay test as a lack of discipline. He thought if I studied or even just read the text, I would be able to answer an essay question. Most of the tests I took in high school and in undergraduate school were objective so it rarely came up. The shame was most apparent when I went to a private art college for graduate school and then again when I married into a family of highly educated Jewish intellectuals. More than a few people I went to graduate school with had learning disabilities, but since they came from more affluent backgrounds and therefore attended better schools they were helped with their issues in childhood. In graduate school the only thing that I wrote was a one page artist statement for a thesis exhibition. Oh boy, can my family by marriage write! They are lining up to be editors for my future dissertation!

The way I see it now is that the desire to learn and question was instilled in me, but not necessarily the tools to pursue this in an academic way. I think that I gravitated towards art in part because that was the way I figured out how to best satisfy my desire to learn and question. If I was born into another family and attended a school without an art teacher I may not have had a viable form of expression. Now, I view my particular educational and background constellation as an asset that helps me critically analyze the public school system etc.

My experience growing up in a working class town taught me to recognize the genius that is sometimes veiled from other people because of class, race etc. While working at another university, I participated in intense discussions around class and race bias. A student, ironically from my hometown in Ohio, was struggling and another faculty member quickly attributed his difficulty to class. She said it in such a way that, of course, we as middle class or upper class faculty knew exactly what she was talking about. Why was this faculty member so sure that a student teacher from a middle class background would be more successful than a working class student teacher guiding working class students? How can a range of assets be valued in our university classrooms? How does privilege create boundaries and obstacles?

While reading this article, I thought about a studio faulty member in our university who is sometimes dismissed by other faculty. I hadn’t thought about it in terms of class before. Frankly, I hadn’t thought about it that much, but when I did I attributed it to something personal between the parties. The reason I decided to work at my public university rather than the elite art school where I worked in the past, was that students come from a range of backgrounds including many from working and lower middle class backgrounds. Although, I explicitly address racism in my classes, I have not made it a priority to address classism. These conversations could be really empowering for our students.

It has been really important for me to unpack my privilege. I have personally benefited from my heterosexual, class, and race privilege. Faculty as teachers and researchers need to acknowledge their privilege as well as acknowledge the lack of privilege in themselves and other people. The more I practice speaking up about issues of class and race privilege and oppression in all spheres the clearer and more comfortable I feel. Like Check, I sometimes struggle with how to be an activist and an academic. What I am thinking now is that academia is exactly where an activist is needed. Sometimes it takes small subversive acts like not calling anyone Dr. or not referring to college teaching as higher ed. (higher than who?) If we want to promote non-hierarchal schools that promote freedom of thought why would we? Sometimes it is actively recruiting and supporting students and faculty from less privileged backgrounds. Or perhaps writing research in a way that is understood and interesting to teachers from non-privileged backgrounds …or to support and defend the research interests of my working class colleagues.

“Take care of the students’ physical and emotional needs, and the intellectual needs will take care of themselves.” (pp.31-32)

Check didn’t really explain, but taken on face value I strongly disagree with the statement. Helping students reach their intellectual capacity is of equal importance and is intrinsically connected to emotional and physical needs. One of the things I tell my pre-service students working with any students, but especially students that do not come from privileged backgrounds is that it is their job to find the brilliance in the student and then help the student bring it forth. Often students from substandard Baltimore City schools have a great chasm between their academic and artistic skills, and their brilliance. Under these circumstances, it would be criminal to only focus on their emotional and physical needs. Many young people’s emotional and physical needs have to be satisfied before they can learn, but it can’t stop there and it certainly doesn’t take care of itself. Sometimes the art room is the only place a student can access their intellectual brilliance and therefore satisfy their emotional needs. In addition, activism is the province of the intellectual, emotional and physical realms. What could be more intellectual than analyzing power systems and creatively engaging holistic selves in the process of changing the systems?

“What is the impact of working class histories and ethics in relation to art and teaching?” (32)

I am really interested in the Worker’s Center in Check’s hometown! Perhaps he will give voice to other working-class artists and art teachers through his research?