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From: Amy Fitzgerald <AFitzgerald@LiteracyKC.org>
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Subject: [NIFL-WOMENLIT:978] RE: Guilt and responsibility
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-----Original Message-----
From: Jenny Horsman [mailto:jhorsman@idirect.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2000 10:02 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [NIFL-WOMENLIT:977] Guilt and responsibility
I've been reading with interest - I'm always awed by the power of detailed
descriptions of work in the classroom when we are critically reflecting as
instructors and trying to support students critically reflecting themselves
as part of the learning process - I can just hear the interactions in your
classrooms Deborah and Kate. I'm helped by having seen Kate's centre and
heard many of those unusual creative ideas in the past (many are in the
book!). I was very taken by the idea of suggesting the student do the clean
up work in secret - feels to me like it shifts something crucial - so she
might get jolted out of her regular pattern and begin to notice for herself
why she does this work, why she wants to guilt others about it - does she
feel she won't be seen if she doesn't do this, does this allow her an outlet
for her anger, does she feel she must do it, must be a good girl, is she
scared she won't know who she is if she doesn't do this..... etc etc.. I
was fascinated by the richness of some of the journal writing when some
women in my group had spent more and more time reflecting and questioning
the taken for granted - their increased awareness about the complexity of
what was going on for them was full of new insights. Something that stops us
in our tracks always seems to open the questions that we weren't even
asking. Your example Deborah got me thinking about my group and wondering
about the balance between setting "rules" and opening up talk about the
otherwise taken for granted - I loved your example of opening up the talk
about the put downs instead of shutting it down. Some of the women I
interviewed for my book worked in programs that serve people on the street -
they talked a lot about the exhausting work involved in trying to create a
peaceful setting for learning in their centres. This included strongly
enforced rules that no weapons were allowed into the centre - students had
to leave knives at the door and even turn t-shirts inside out if they showed
symbols of violence - they worried about trying to enforce rules:
"People appreciate a safe space, but in order to create a safe
space--there's a lot of conflict, 'cause you're kicking people out and
you're confronting people. I think of a safe place as peaceful. Everyone
just knows how to behave, does the appropriate thing. Working with
predominantly men, my first inclination is [to] kind of shut up that sexist
remark, shut them down, I don't want to hear it. On the other hand, what is
the process of change for them? Have they ever had an opportunity to engage
with a feminist on this topic? And I think the ideal is a men's group with
a male facilitator, and they're questioning each other. But a lot of men
who need to go to a men's group wouldn't go to a men's group, so just kind
of what is the process of challenging men's sexism in a way that promotes
their change? And is that our job? In addition to protecting the women,
we'll be educating the men... "(Interview, Community and Street Program
Literacy Workers, Toronto, February, 1997)
Questions about how to create change of attitudes just keep
surfacing for me and remembering these women I interviewed - many of whom
have now left literacy - also questions about how we look after ourselves
and don't get worn out and worn down in the process float alongside! So I
still want to keep asking the question - what have you tried, or want to
try, how has it worked?
They led to me mulling the question of responsibility - being responsible,
not being responsible - I've had many conversations with a women I used to
tutor about how we get caught in that one - she often says "I just had
to...." we talked about whether she had to and what other options she had -
it led me to noticing how often I was avoiding my own responsibility in
choices I was making - there's a powerful poem we read in the women's group
I led (as part of our third month focussing on making change) about keep
walking down the same path and falling in the same hole, until eventually
you go round the hole, and then finally choose another path. It led to some
wonderful discussion in our group about the balance between recognizing that
circumstances often exert incredible pressure limiting choices enormously
but there's also the possibility in spite of that pressure to begin to make
different choices - I say this very cautiously because I think there's an
enormous danger here - the slippery slope to the "just get over it" you're
responsible, you can make better choices and the shaming that accompanies
that feels ever present - yet staying in a victim place of I just have no
option and I will never have any option is obviously paralysing. I think
there are crucial questions for literacy workers about whether/when we
become complicit in helping someone stay in that place - by somehow
participating in negative patterns, rescuing, sharing the belief that IS the
person etc. A therapist I interviewed talked about one of the biggest gifts
you can give a person is to hold a belief in their possibility to get to a
better place, when they can't believe it themselves - I've been trying to do
that since and been fascinated with the response.
Now before I stop I can't not mention the whole huge strand about different
attitudes to violence in different cultures and religions - I've been
pondering that one and wondering how I would respond in a class. I like
Kate's reminder about being authentic - it gives me space to think about
naming my own beliefs and why I hold them - but I am also anxious about the
role of the teacher and outsider to someone else's culture trying to change
views - so I think I would be tempted to look for activists - in person
ideally, or through their writing - from that culture or that religion who
can talk about their position and why they take a stand against violence to
open up the questioning and rethinking. I wonder whether anyone else has
tried that and seen how that worked? What other ideas do you have about how
to respond to the - in our culture we think that's OK issue - what have you
done or said, how has it worked?
So many fascinating threads in what everyone has been saying it is hard to
know which ones I want to pick up most and if I didn't have a "task" to do
to "lead" discussion I would just sit back and just "listen" as there's so
much happening - if there are others of you out there thinking the
discussion is doing just fine without you I hope you will jump in - because
the discussion is definitely richer as we hear about different contexts -
great to hear that there are folks in Nepal and England - where else are
you - and what are your struggles/"solutions"?
Thanks everyone for sparking my thinking!
Jenny
PS Sue sorry to hear you had difficulty getting the book (though delighted
to hear its circulating) - I passed that info. on to the international
publisher Lawrence Erlbaum - I'll let you now what they say about how to get
it. I went with them because they are a huge publisher and promised
brilliant distribution in every continent. Of course if all attempts to buy
from local independent bookstores fail there are some feminist bookstores on
the internet and failing that Amazon.com. The addresses for both publishers
(McGilligan Books published in Canada) and some bookstores are on my website
www.jennyhorsman.com
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