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Religion projects the rule of the father into the firmament where it becomes the supreme law of nature - and then reflects this majesty back on each earthly father in his household" Erhenreich, Barbara and Deirdre English. This structure, which is repeated in the family, the school, business, the town, states, the nation, privileges men.
It is not a structure that promotes equality. Whenever an organization bases its structure on the traditional family, as Patricia Hill Collins notes, women need to beware Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice , As Paulo Freire points out, in his The Pedagogy of the Oppressed , it is the internalization of the values of the oppressors that keeps the oppressed in line, inactive, unable to see alternatives to their oppression.
How we construct divinity, how we as a culture construct God is how we create power. Recently Viewed. For example, Hazel Carby sees the idea of black feminist criticism, as well as any notion of a specifically black feminist consciousness, as a problem and not a solution. We will deal with loneliness, scarcity, depression and narcissism, by clearing the traces of an abusive economic system on our bodies. Meeting the challenge: Innovative feminist pedagogies in action.
Once people see the structure in which they exist; realize that this structure benefits only a certain few; and conceive of or discover alternative structures, ones in which the oppressed - women, people of colors other than white, the poor, non-heterosexuals, etc. Spiritual feminists and eco-feminists and believers in the Great Goddess assert the interconnection of ALL the elements of earth.
That is, all beings - human and animals, insects, etc. Some people view this as the female principle absent from current constructions of divinity; other people see it as the immanence of the Goddess - everything is the Goddess not the Goddess is in everything, but everything is the Goddess - and others see it as an ecological reality.
In any case, it is a way to re-think, re-structure ideas of divinity and our relations to each other and the earth.
It is a way for women and non-dominant people to see the divine in themselves. It is a way to think of human beings as part of the world, not in domination over it. It is a way to emphasize the importance of what we do to each other, now. Though patriarchal religions have tried to eradicate the female element, they were not completely successful.
There exist strong feminist or womanist traditions within some of these religions. Beverly Wildung Harrison has noted that if women acted as though they believed they were like our cultural idea of white women - passive, weak, feeble minded, over-emotional, needing to be led, etc.
She finds in the Judeo-Christian tradition the power of love to be a great force, particularly in our ability to change, and asserts that we are most God-like not when we are removed and objective, but when we are in our bodies and connected to others Present-day worshipers of the Goddess are called Witches or Wiccan other traditions include the Druids and Faery. Writes Starhawk in The Spiral Dance , they believe that "the earth is alive and all of life is sacred and interconnected.
We see the Goddess as immanent in the earth's cycles of birth, growth, death, decay and regeneration" Spiritual authority comes from within each person, as each person embodies the divine. Both Goddess and God are honored, as female and male images of divinity, along with the idea that "their essence is a mystery that goes beyond form. We value peace and nonviolence, in keeping with the Rede "Harm none, and do what you will.
We work for all forms of justice: environmental, social, political, racial, gender, and economic" 6. Social aspects of individuality are suppressed while what students learn accords with self-interests and personal gain in the public realm of existence Elshtain, ; Goodman, An unknown error has occurred. Please click the button below to reload the page.
If the problem persists, please try again in a little while. Read preview. Schools and Society The role of schools in perpetuating unequal social, cultural, political, and economic realities is a central theme of critical and feminist theorists who agree that schools serve the power of dominant ideologies and beliefs e.
Read preview Overview. Adams, Elizabeth T. Multicultural Education, Vol.
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