This week in class we were assigned to read a document by Kumashiro on the topic of common sense and the problems that follow it within the world of Education, as well as the general population. Kumashiro generally defines the idea of common sense as the regular and expected algorithm of life and social norms specific to a certain group of people – whether that be by race, gender, culture, social class, or, in the context of this article, by school community and where that school is located.
Within the article, Kumashiro takes us through their journey of becoming a teacher in a country and a school community foreign to them, and how the social norms and “common sense” that they brought along from the US ended up clashing with that of the common sense of their new students, causing a culture shock to both the students as well as Kumashiro. Their understandings of how a school day works were based around how they came to know a regular school day in the US, which their students did not agree with, as in their school, it seemed that everything was very standardized and based solely around testing.
I believe it is important that us as future teachers deeply understand the idea of common sense and how there is more than one singular “common sense” in our world, and how these common senses plays a role in our lives as teachers in an ever growing multicultural society not just within our classrooms, but also our greater communities. I believe that this is important since, just as in Kumashiro’s abroad experience, our own biases and “common senses” are constantly being tested by our students as well as our future colleagues upon the basis of all of our own differing upbringings, and we will have to know how to work around this and find a way to provide the best education for our students that we can without disrupting their own environments and causing oppression on certain groups of students, or, in contrary, we must know how to work with our future learners and colleagues to build a curriculum and way of learning and using “common sense” that everyone can understand, as well as putting our focus onto anti-oppressive education.