December 15, 2015 - 00:31
Throughout this semester, so many memorable things happened that stood out to me about the topics of dehumanization, critical reflection on personal narratives, the importance of multidimensional understandings about social issues. However, I want to reflect on our experience of final evaluation in the last lesson and talk about a major concern that has been becoming more and more obvious for me.
I feel that the women inside seldomly express strong opinions. I had a question in my revision of the second experimental essay that "how could people leading or facilitating the movements [we facilitating the lessons here in our praxis context] get their constructive opinions across without creating new hierarchies and silencing the directly oppressed group?" And I asked the women inside in our last lesson that since we always prepare a list of questions for discussions about the reading materials, would they feel that the conversations were too much guided by us that there would always be something unspoken or missing that may speak more directly to the issues they genuinely care about. However, there was no answer.
I am really glad that they enjoyed the lessons a lot and one of them even said that she thought the lessons were perfect, but I am still not satisfied with no direct critiques or suggestions of how we could make the lessons better. There are two reasons of my concern. Firstly, I believe that even though they are talking and sharing opinions based on personal experiences, if the conversations are mostly guided by us, it is still not a true "dialogue" according to Freire and a new power dynamic would inevitably be created. And I was really struck by what Michelle Fine said about participation, "artificial collaboration would have been easy to accomplish, simply having them around the table would have been an exercise in what Nancy Fraser recognizes as the bourgeois version of a public sphere: inviting political unequals to the table and calling that democracy". Even though the women inside would not realize when some "artificial democracy" is potentially being created, I still want to keep that risk in mind and try to avoid it as much as possible.
Secondly, even though I understand that for most of the women in our lessons, this 90 minutes' classroom environment would be a temporary relief and they would prefer to relax, expecting to talk about things that are more joyful or entertaining, and they indeed expressed some frustrations after one of our earlier lessons about Hurricane Katrina that the topic was so depressing and not uplifting, my personal goal is much higher than only "having a great time chatting with them". Honestly, I never believe that the women inside are "equal" with us. It's not that I am being biased or arrogant when I say that. What I mean by not being equal is that we are already too privileged in so many aspects. If we always "console" ourselves by saying that "we are equal", we may risk ignoring our responsibilities in making real changes that are able to compensate the disenfranchisement and inequalities. What Sula said in class about being reluctant to say that she feels proud of people since it may sound condescending (maybe I misinterpreted Sula?) really echoed with my reluctance to be easily satisfied with what we've done with the women inside. Higher respect with more sense of responsibilities lead to higher expectations. And I want to quote Gaskew that "prison educators can also be a dangerous cultural safety cusion. Many compassionate, dedicated, and decent people walk into prison education settings and try to build an illusion that the inside of their classrooms are outside of the racism, white supremacy, and white privilege realities".
Nevertheless, I don’t want to discredit the importance of maintaining a safe space. In our lesson planning groups, there are always debates or discussions over whether to include contents or questions of the reading materials that may be depressing or triggering to the women. One side would support to contain those unsettling elements since that is the reality of this world, and the other side would oppose anything that may be disturbing to the women. I can see the rationalities of both sides but I failed to find a balance between them, to create a safe (but maybe a little uncomfortable) and constructive space.
Although I am a little frustrated about myself failing to do that, I can see that parts of the objective reasons come from the limitations of this prison setting. It is difficult and almost impossible for us to maintain a stable communication with the women inside to really know them and make the lessons best fit their needs since not everyone on the list could really come into the lessons every time, and our only connection is through the 90 minutes’ lesson each week. Therefore it is hard for us to get enough feedbacks from them in time, comparing to our 360 that even though the conversations are not finished in class, people could still continue the discussion on Serendip or by having meals together. Although I’m not continuing this praxis next semester, I conceived two possible solutions that may be done to alleviate the restrictions. Firstly, a questionnaire can be designed and required to be completed by the women who want to sign up for the literacy/book club, asking about their topic interests, expectations for the class setting, reading/writing preferences, reflections/frustrations about the club if they have been in one, etc., just like our evaluation forms in Bryn Mawr. Secondly, lesson plans should be started earlier, such as two weeks ahead. By planning earlier, we can bring up the key points of the following week’s lesson at the end of each class, in addition to giving them homework writing prompts. They can comment on whether they are interested in the topic or not, how they like the in class activities to be, what the possible limitations they foresee, and what specific contents that they would feel triggered or unsafe to talk about. By doing this, we could have them “participate” in the lesson planning, know more about the extent in which we can push them forward, and consequently more in depth conversations may be evoked.