The Pinocchio Effect

Automatization and systematic exclusion are beyond common sense within U.S. public schools. The failure to address social problems spills over to schools where youth who refuse to conform to the broken system are labelled as deviant and legitimately excluded. Students who conform are made real by the system and allowed back into society to keep manufacturing the same inequalities. This is the Pinocchio Effect. It involves the legitimization of hegemonic knowledge and the oppression of bodies, mind, and spiritualities. The book analyzes the impact of colonialities within U.S. public education by examining the learning experiences that influence teachers’ and students’ spiritualties, affecting the construction and oppression of their identities. Consequently, the author examines how educators can decolonize the classroom, which functions as a political arena as well as a critical space of praxis in order to reveal how realities and knowledges are made nonexistent—an epistemic blindness and privilege.