White privilege in experiential education: A critical reflection

Increasing diversity in the outdoors is not enough when experiential education traditionally privileges majority participants

This critical analysis seeks to understand the role of White privilege in experiential and outdoor education, and how it might negatively affect participants. Rose and Paisley draw directly on their personal experience as well as on critical race and critical theory frameworks to look at their own role as experiential instructors in perpetuating the processes of privilege and marginalization of less powerful groups. They point out that experiential education curricula are rooted in the White experience of leisure as the norm, and expect people of color to conform to them.

The authors question the assumption that educators occupy a neutral stance when they facilitate courses and set up physical challenges like climbing mountains or navigating difficult terrain in the wilderness as strategies for personal development. In fact, they say, these challenges perpetuate existing power dynamics and might trivialize the much more real challenges of daily life that students of color might face at home.

They suggest that increasing diversity in the outdoors alone is not enough to ensure that experiential outdoor education serves social justice goals of benefiting students from less privileged backgrounds. Instead, we should be acknowledging the inherent privilege of these institutions and try to change them with approaches that are compassionate towards those already dealing with daily challenges at home while challenging students from more privileged backgrounds to confront their own status. Ultimately the authors suggest integrating input from participants to reform experiential education pedagogy and implementation, customizing challenge to more appropriate formats, and creating life metaphors out of these experiences that are directed towards social justice goals.