Globalisation, Markets and

Education: Lecture 2
Article: Young (2004)
Presentation
Outline ✓ Oppression
✓ Liberty / Freedom
✓ What is social justice?
✓ Oppression according to Young
✓ Five Faces of Oppression
✓ Preparations for the next lecture
 Some Synonyms of
Oppression
Misery, Hardship, Abuse,
Brutality, Coercion (persuade
by force), Cruelty,
Dictatorship, Domination,
Injustice, Maltreatment,
Persecution (ill-treatment),
Suffering, Autocracy,
Abusiveness, Compulsion
(force), Tyranny (cruel
government)
 Some Antonym of
Oppression

Liberty, freedom, autonomy, birth right, choice,

convenience, decision, deliverance, emancipation
(liberated), enlightenment, independence, license,
opportunity, permission, privilege, right, self-
government, sovereignty, unconstraint (no limits),
free speech, power of choice
 ‘… the power or right to act, speak, or
think as one wants’

Liberty -
Freedom ‘… the state of not being imprisoned or
enslaved’

‘…the state of being free within society

from oppressive restrictions imposed by
authority on one's way of life, behaviour,
or political views’
 Social Justice

✓ Based on the concepts of

human rights and equality

✓ Justice in terms of the

distribution of wealth,
opportunities, and privileges
within a society.
Social Injustice

✓‘Social injustice issues would

be things like unfair labour
practices, racial
discrimination, discrimination
due to gender, sexual
orientation, ethnicity, age’.
 Oppression
according to Young
Discussion in Pairs
1. What is the traditional definition
of oppression?

2. How does Young define

oppression?
The opposite of freedom is oppression
What is the traditional definition of
oppression?
Oppression means the exercise of tyranny by a
ruling group. Yet, oppression creates injustice in
other circumstances as well. People are not
always oppressed by cruel tyrants with bad
intentions.
Oppression according to Young:

1. Reducing people’s potential to be

fully human

2. Making others less human: treating

them in a dehumanizing manner

3. Denying people opportunities to be

fully human in mind and body
Oppression
according to Young
4. ‘… few people’s choices or
policies … societal rules (that)
can become a restrictive
structure of forces and barriers
that immobilize and reduce a
group or category of people’
 THE OPPOSITE OF FREEDOM IS
OPPRESSION
Some consequences of oppression:
 Depression
 Self-esteem
 Unemployment
 Low levels of well-being (esp. disease: stress/anxiety/over-eating/bulimia)
 Lack of functionality
 Poor performance
 Broken relationships
 Substance abuse
 NB: Human beings need spaces in which they can flourish.
 Five Faces of Oppression

1. Exploitation
2. Marginalisation
3. Powerlessness
4. Cultural imperialism
5. Violence
 Exploitation:

Young’s definition
‘The act of using people’s labors to produce profit while not
compensating them fairly/ to take unfair advantage of someone
Exploitation creates a widening gap between the rich and poor
 Property ownership
Type of employment
 Level of education
The key point is that exploitation creates inequality
 Examples of Exploitation:
15

 Human trafficking
 Slavery (Child Labour)
 Sexual exploitation (forced prostitution)
 Forced Marriages (some cultures)
 Labour exploitation (pay low/no wages)
 Misuse teachers who are always prepared to
help with tasks in a school
 Marginalisation:
16

is the act of relegating or confining a group of

people to a lower social standing or outer limit
or edge of society.
Overall, it is a process of exclusion.
the act of treating someone or something as if
they are not important
Marginals are people that the system of labor
cannot or will not use
 Consequences of marginalisation

Impact on psychology and education:

1. Poverty
2. Stigma
3. Anxiety & fear
4. Shame

Other consequences?
18 Examples of Marginalisation:

Emotional degradation of children that don’t

produce good academic results or a sports
team that nearly never win
Treat children who don’t participate in sports
and culture as losers and not important
SMT ignore the input of staff that don’t socialise
with the rest of staff (exclusion)
 POWERLESSNESS:
Young’s definition
fundamental injustices associated with
‘…
powerlessness are inhibition to develop one’s
capacities, lack of decision making power, and
exposure to disrespectful treatment because of
the lowered status’
The powerless are those who lack authority or
power even in this mediated sense, those over
whom power is exercised without their
exercising it; the powerless are situated so that
they must take orders and rarely have the right
to give them.
 Powerlessness
 Impact on psychology and education:

1. NB: Internalised oppression

2. Silence
3. Pathology (aggression/depression)
4. Learning difficulties
5. Stigma

Other consequences?
21 Examples of POWERLESSNESS:

The principal or SMT are the only decision

makers in the school, the staff only take orders
Teachers never ask the children or learners for
their viewpoint on important issues in school e.g.
handling of drug abuse or bullying amongst the
children
 POWERLESSNESS & silence

Varying levels of silence:

❑ Surface level of silence: know you are being oppressed but don’t talk about it
❑ Deeper level of silence:
1. Indoctrination – teaching people to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.
2. Oppressed people become so powerless they don’t talk about oppression; it
becomes a culture of forbidden talking
3. Dehumanized – deprivation of positive human qualities.
4. Internalised negative images lead to silence by choice
5. Negative images of yourself
6. Education and literacy are withheld to prevent knowledge
 Cultural imperialism

Young’s definition
‘…establishing the culture of a ruling class as a norm’
. The groups that have power in society control how
the people in that society interpret and communicate.
- Those who are oppressed by cultural imperialism are
both marked by stereotypes and made to feel invisible.
The stereotypes define what they can and cannot be.
 Cultural
Imperialism

‘The USA dominates world media with

85% of the global film market and 68%
of the television market.

A cultural imperialism perspective

argues that American values and
ideologies are imposed upon the rest
of the world, through media texts’
25 Examples of Cultural imperialism:

Minority groups in a school must submit to the

language and culture of the majority group

The dominant group in society is heterosexual,

so all other types of sexuality are grouped as
Others and viewed as inferior or abnormal.
26 Consequences of Cultural imperialism

Impact on psychology and education:

1. Language
2. Participation
3. Self-esteem
4. Development (whole person)

OPV Article by YOUNG

 Violence
 Young’s definition
 ‘The most obvious and visible form of
oppression’
 Live with fear of unprovoked attacks
 Intention is to damage, humiliate, or
destroy the person
Targets of violence:
❑ Race
❑ Gender/sexuality
❑ Disability

Other forms of discrimination?

28 Examples of Violence

violent oppression is the direct result of

xenophobia (an intense and irrational fear of
people, ideas, or customs that seem strange or
foreign).
Children who ”rule” the school using physical
force to dominate the other children (bullying)
Preparations for next
lecture
✓ During the next lecture,
you will watch a video
depicting the
oppression of a
particular group of
people.
 Preparations for next lecture

Read:
Christie, P. (2008). Changing Schools
in South Africa: Opening the Doors of
Learning
Thank You