The Classroom as Borderland: Necessary to Become Homeless?
Ever since I heard it in probably 2016, I have been plagued with the memory of a presentation my father gave at the Annual Research Conference in Adult, Community, and Higher Education. Now that I am a graduate student and teaching in higher education myself, I find that it comes to mind more and more. Readings in the two teaching composition classes I have taken and the discussions we have seem to circle around what my dad spoke about in this presentation. I can never quite seem to articulate my thoughts about it, but it permeates so much of what I am accosted with each week that I want to try and make some sense of it now.
The presentation was titled “Finding Our Home In-Between Jihad and McWorld: The Practice of Being Border Intellectuals and Critical Professionals.” (Border intellectuals and critical professionals are terms used by Paulo Freire and Mary Alfred, respectively.) I could probably write an entire book about this presentation and my thoughts concerning it, but I will try to keep it brief. In this presentation, my dad talked about the importance of crossing boundaries and coming into contact with people who challenge our perception of the world. One of the main things that sticks out to me is a story my dad told about teaching in the prison system, which I will quote some of here:
“One of the stories that I would share about me really crossing the boundary and going away from home was when I was teaching a class, ‘Peoples and Cultures of the World,’ and I decided to––instead of taking another on-campus class to teach––that I would just teach that class in the prison system. Now, many of the people that I talked to about teaching in the prison said, ‘Well, it’s just uncomfortable to teach there,’ and ‘It’s really not the safest environment, why would you want to do that?’ But I ignored them and so I crossed the boundary from the society in which I lived in to enter into the prison to do the teaching that was there” (Stults: 2015).
“Now, one of the interesting things that happened to me there––in this peoples and cultures of the world class––was on the second day of my class when Lamar decided not to come into class. He decided, rather, to sit in the library area right adjacent to the place where the classroom was at. Now, you see, Lamar had worked his way through the system to be able to get into this educational program and he was taking a huge risk not coming to class because he was exercising the little freedom that he had for a quiet act of rebellion. Lamar really didn’t like the idea of being in higher education at all. He preferred his education on the streets. And so when I came out to the break time, Lamar came up to me and he said, ‘Professor, I just want you to know that I mean no disrespect, but I wanted you to know why I wasn’t in class: I’m sick and tired of this Eurocentric program that we’re a part of and, you see professor, I’m a revolutionary. I’m willing to fight, and willing to kill to see that the values of these United States are changed. That’s why I’m in here today’ ” (Stults: 2015).
“He was a revolutionary. So we chatted a bit about what it meant to be a revolutionary. And I chatted with him and I shared with him my perspective. I said, ‘You know, I want to see the values changed as well. For me, I’m following the teachings of Jesus and his actions, and others who have went in a way of non-violence: Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Margaret Fell, Cesar Chavez. I’ve learned a lot about what it looks like to live in a dominant cultural system and work for change. And I had the opportunity to work alongside Quakers and others in this work and so, I would rather be killed than to kill to see the values changed. But I agree with you: The values of these United States need to be changed’ ” (Stults: 2015).
“And an amazing thing happened that day when we engaged in that dialogue, in that conversation. Lamar turned around and he reached out his hand and he said, ‘We could use you.’ And I was really not expecting that turnaround. He came back in class and from that moment on we engaged in a dialogue that spilled over into the community and in fact, a couple other professors teaching there began engaging in discussions of critical theory and other ways of engaging in the culture. And an amazing transformation, for me, took place in that place: Between the society and culture I lived in, and the prison that Lamar was in. It was a borderland place between the two cultures that the classroom had become. And I was different, and Lamar was different because of that” (Stults: 2015).
My dad then goes on to talk about the concept of Jihad vs. McWorld that Benjamin Barber discussed in his book of the same title. Jihad is essentially the notion that one culture is being subordinated by the dominant culture. “And it cries out for resistance and for identity and Lamar recognized this. He knew that McWorld was wanting to turn him into somebody else and he didn’t like that and he was afraid that the same thing was going to happen as he entered into the educational system. So, the system was McWorld to Lamar, but Lamar was Jihad to those that were in power. And I learned from Lamar the reality of the contrast of this dialogue” (Stults: 2015).
This presentation made me see the classroom as a borderland, as a middle ground of the sort that Richard White theorized (and I could go a great deal into this even and how it relates to learner-centered teaching). The classroom is a place where differing dialogues can clash. We can let them create a conflict of a potentially violent nature, we could picture ourselves as McWorld and try to stamp them out (claiming that we are the ultimate authority on knowledge), or we can allow ourselves to be open to the point of even changing our own beliefs.
The main takeaway from all this was the idea that the dialogues created in the classroom should change us (meaning both teacher and students) to the point that when we return home, we are no longer comfortable there. My dad argued that this would cause us to find, or create, a home in our homelessness and that this very idea has long been a hallmark of higher education. It’s the idea that we need to be made uncomfortable, that if education is not making us uncomfortable we’re doing something wrong. Perhaps this is why teaching in the prison system was such an integral moment to this realization. After all, he had been warned that ‘It’s uncomfortable to teach there.’
As I have been thinking about these concepts while writing this post, I am realizing that a lot of these ideas are central to my teaching philosophy (and just my mentality as a human being). If we don’t put ourselves into the position of being both teachers and students at the same time––which I think is necessary for ANYONE who comes into a place of learning––then how can we allow that dialogue to occur? If we don’t make ourselves uncomfortable (even in life), if we don’t make our students uncomfortable, then perhaps we’re missing the whole point?
I am curious to know what you all think about this. Do you agree that education should be about making people uncomfortable in their own culture? Have there been situations in your own teaching when either you or your students were made uncomfortable? Did any good come out of it or was there a backlash?
Quotes Sourced From:
Stults, Vincent. “Finding Our Home In-Between Jihad and McWorld: The Practice of Being Border Intellectuals and Critical Professionals.” YouTube. November 6, 2015.
First of all, Cassia, your dad sounds like an amazing human being and because he had the courage to do the uncomfortable thing, it no doubt created growth for him and his students. There is a great PBS documentary you might be interested in called College Behind Bars that highlights the Bard College Initiative that is currently running in the Indiana Women’s prison (as well as many other places). I got the chance to hear the director of the movie speak in Indy last year and it was reminiscent in some way of what your dad had to say. Some amazing work being done there.
ReplyDeleteI haven’t had as many uncomfortable learning moments as a teacher as I had as a student. I am so thankful I had so many great teachers that challenged me in ways I didn’t necessarily like in the moment but made the most positive lasting impressions. I hope to cultivate a fraction of this in myself as a teacher, but I still feel miles away from it. Thanks for sharing this very personal story with us.
Thank you for suggesting that show Mary. It sounds very intriguing and I will definitely check it out. Education in the prison system has always interested me and I wonder how much literature there is out there about teaching or being taught in prison? I’ll have to do some research…
DeletePerhaps it is the temperament of someone who willing goes to grad school, but I cannot think of times in class as a student where I have felt uncomfortable. Rather, I have always found the uncomfortable comfortable. Being challenged brings growth, and I relish that experience.
ReplyDeleteBecause I think everything comes back to poetry, here's Robert Frost:
"My poems - I should suppose everybody's poems - are all set to trip the reader head foremost into the boundless. Every since infancy I have had the habit of leaving my blocks carts chairs and such like ordinaries where people would be pretty sure to fall forward over them in the dark. Forward, you understand, and in the dark."
The key term for me here (and for him, since he repeats it) is "forward." When I think of classroom discomfort, is it not the kind that puts me on my ass. It is the kind that propels me in new directions.
Your father's interaction with Lamar would not have occurred unless Lamar initiated the interaction. Lamar was already moving forward on his own journey of learning. In a sense, your father and Lamar were both moving forward and tripped each other into the boundless.
What stumps me is what happens when our students aren't a Lamar, or even a Lucas. What happens when they are still or even moving backwards? I think all of this theory is great and applicable in the right circumstances, but unless a student understands that the classroom encounter is not a sadistic game on our part, I don't think something productive will transpire.
I would be interested to hear more about your father's non-traditional students beyond Lamar. How did he interact with those who were not as active? Perhaps, because of the additional steps members of that population had to complete to get to the point of being in the classroom, they were already signalling in some way their desire to be uncomfortable.
It would be foolish to assume that most, or even many, of our students are that receptive, particularly at an institution shifting admissions standards. Many are coming to Ball State for, at best, purely economic reasons.
How do we begin to get those students moving forward?
Hi, Cassia,
ReplyDeleteYour dad sounds incredible! When I was a freshman here, my ENG 104 professor at Ball State was writing her thesis on Prison literature - I'm so really interested in the idea of prison pedagogy. It's something that I think we don't talk about a lot - which is kind of strange, don't you think, since we're so obsessed with cop/prison shows, as a society?
I don't know if "uncomfortable" is quite the word I want to use when talk about what teaching should do. I certainly have felt uncomfortable in the classroom - but I've also felt interest, and disgust, and a lot of other things, too. Personally, I like the term "cognizant" - I feel like teaching should open up doors for students, and opportunities to see perspectives or things they didn't understand before. That could make them uncomfortable - there's always that possibility. But it could also not be uncomfortable for them. Like Lucas discussed, some people welcome being uncomfortable, especially if illuminates a new part of themselves.
Cassia,
ReplyDeleteSometimes it’s a hard mindset to get into to not only allow ourselves to be offended by hard topics, but welcome it as an introduction to a new worldview that we don’t yet understand. I know I’ve sat through a lot of classes where I did not agree with my professor’s views, yet I didn’t take that as a bad thing or complain to the university about it, or to the professor in my evaluation, but saw it as an opportunity to understand why that person thought the way they did – to allow myself to explore the reasonable foundation of that point of view even if I still did not ascribe to it. After all, isn’t that what rhetoric is about—confronting arguments and opinions and learning from those experiences? To listen to new voices you haven’t heard from before? Being openminded to reason as we are trying to create reasonable arguments of our own? As you put it, it should make us uncomfortable when we allow our viewpoints to be challenged.
I think most of us who have progressed to this point in our education get this—we have a desire to explore new ideas, learn new things, and be challenged. It’s why many of us would say we’ve never necessarily been uncomfortable in the classroom. It’s hard to get our students to this point of view though; I try to bring up often the ideas of open-mindedness and exploration, how arguments are never black and white, and the importance of respect towards others with differing opinions, but ultimately it’s up to them if they decide to close themselves off from this opportunity. Maybe some of them just aren’t ready yet.
-Jessie
Hi Cassia,
ReplyDeleteI think in higher academia we often hear (and have even told our students) that the purpose of higher academia is something that is there to make us uncomfortable. We are meant to be unsettled and shaken by the things we are learning in order to grow. That being said, your writing above, and the descriptions you gave of your fathers work raised some interesting questions for me.
Of course we want our students to be uncomfortable and we want to push them as much as possible, that being said, what if the discomfort we producing has less to do with academic growth and more to do with the cultural suicides we are forcing people to under go by conforming to eurocentric ideas. I thought the story your father told of Lamar was interesting because it was not that Lamar was uncomfortable with learning, on the contrary, he seemed to want to learn very much. He was simply uncomfortable with and defying the fact that much of the collegiate world pressed eurocentricity. I feel like a less astute professor may not have picked up on the nuanced difference. By understanding that he and Lamar have similar goals that they are enacting in separate ways, you father expressed a form of higher education that could perhaps work for Lamar and his beliefs... not against them by making him uncomfortable at a core and personal level. I hope this makes sense. I think there is an insight into the types of discomfort we expose our students to to be had out of this discussion.
Thank you for your comment Sarah this is something I will definitely be thinking a lot about now. I really like the breakdown you made in separating the desire to learn from the state of being uncomfortable.
DeleteAs I have been thinking about this idea of being “uncomfortable” more and more, I am realizing that there is another dimensions to this. Sure, exposing our students to new ideas and making them disquieted in the classroom is all well and good (and this is an important step), but it’s about what happens then outside of the classroom that really matters. I think what my father was arguing and what the story about Lamar was trying to illustrate was the fact that it’s really a matter of causing what happens in the classroom to wake us up to the world around us. The whole discussion my dad brought up about being homeless illustrates what I’m trying but failing to say: The “uncomfortable” I’m talking about is one that happens when we LEAVE the classroom. It’s about when we return home to our own culture that this “uncomfortableness” really happens.
I know what my dad was saying (and something I wholeheartedly agree with) is that it’s a discomfort with the Eurocentric system that occurs in this homelessness. I hadn’t even really considered the dimension that a lot of instructors are pushing this Eurocentric system in their classrooms (even at an unknowing level). Perhaps it’s because of my background in history and especially anthropology that this hadn’t been something I had really realized before. Maybe, even, those classes where I took issue with the professor and the content were when that Eurocentric system dominated?