This paper reflects my journey, as a racialized settler and K–12 practitioner in British Columbia, Canada, towards developing a pedagogical understanding of how to transform the experience of inherited colonial shame among settler children in my classroom. Canada has a shameful history of colonialism, the progressive revelations of which provoke an iterative cycle of shame among many of the children in our schools. This cycle prevents these children from emerging as responsible agents of reconciliation. I examine the hidden pedagogical potential (...) of shame to function as an ethical catalyst for reconciliatory change. I posit that Aristotle’s conception of shame (aidos), when paired with Freire’s (1970) critical pedagogy, can provide the means to energize my pedagogical efforts to address the shame of settler students and enable them to pursue respectful mutual relationships with Indigenous Peoples in Canada. By fusing the philosophical horizons of Aristotelian shame with Freire’s critical pedagogy, I argue that the future for settler children need not appear as a fait accompli, in which the “sins of father” will be visited upon the children of another generation. (shrink)

This article draws from the work of scholars in Critical Whiteness Studies to provide a nuanced analysis of ‘white shame’ in anti-racist education. In particular, it is argued that antiracist politics and pedagogy can be enriched by recognizing the affective and political complexities emerging from white shame and shaming. The purpose is to suggest that white shame has different manifestations depending on context and subject/group, and that those manifestations are related to feelings about white privilege, white ignorance, white fragility, and (...) white complicity. The author uses examples of white shame to discuss the pedagogical principles that inform the development of strategies for anti-racist education, emphasizing how educators can capitalize on teachable racial moments in the classroom that: move beyond white students’ tendency to default to shame; and, move beyond white students’ affective investments to racial inequality, while critically equipping white students to explore responsible ways of inhabiting their whiteness. (shrink)