What is the problem with common sense?

The first example Kumashiro refers to about what common sense is, is  when his neighbours in the village of Nepal were informing him on the villages facets of life. Because Kumashiro did not know how to cook or how to mix in American food in the Nepali meals, the villagers assumed that he didn’t know anything about cooking. Now this is very ironic to me because I see this all the time in society. For example, there was a time I had to stop at 7-11 and fill up on gas. I was waiting in line when I noticed the fellow ahead of me was giving the cashier a hard time because he had a strong (what it sounded like to me) Jamaican accent and couldn’t understand what the cashier was asking. When really the cashier was only asking the man what number he fuelled up at. Anyways, my gas wasn’t quite finished yet so I initiated conversation with this same cashier. We got talking and he mentioned that he was waiting for his work visa to pass so he could start applying for engineering positions. He informed that his initial education was an engineering degree. The man earlier giving the cashier a hard time, relied on his common sense and assumed the cashier wasn’t smart only because he wasn’t able to understand him. So when I read Kumashiro’s experience in Nepal I thought of this because common sense is everywhere in the world. These two prime examples of common sense only really go to show the effects of what relying on common sense can do.

For future educators, awareness as to what exactly common sense is, is crucial inside schools. People rely on common sense to help them have a better understanding of how schools work. However, as Kumashiro noted “common sense often makes it easy to continue teaching and learning in ways that allow the oppressions already in play to continue to play out unchallenged in our schools and society.”(p. 36)  Common sense doesn’t allow people to realize the oppression inside of schools which is why drawing awareness to common sense is so important. Paying attention to common sense could lead to positive changes inside classrooms.