Academic Concerns.

Are Academic Problematic? Yes.
I appreciate this is a broad sweeping comment, but I do have concerns about the self referential industry I find myself in. I am in this industry so I need to represent the change, but as a minority this feel overwhelming.

The current entry point into education are infinitely high right now in regard to financial boundaries, which limits the inclusiveness of this offer to individuals in lower socioecnomic classes and can limit it to the privileged. I am not personally from a very affluent background, and my experience in education and academia has been very middle class. In academic literature, in meetings, in the teaching space from my personal experience there has been a echo chamber of middle class perspectives. Even the discourse around the need to support disenfranchised communities have come from a privileged middle class positionally, and because it is so engrained institutionally, few people seem to be aware of this, or at least self-aware.  As academics we generate new theories, vernacular and language to help support complex ideas, but at times a lot of these inventions feel more othering to people that are not in this privileged bubble of education then beneficial.  For people outside of the institution of education that do not agree with these context specific expressions and new definitions we have a tendency to unremorsefully tell them that they are wrong, or even potentially problematic. Where I find our unrecognised privilege is the more problematic element here.

These thoughts relate to this unit and the manifesto I wrote at the start because I want to ensure we hold ourselves accountable in our practice, especially when exploring new theories.