THE HOUSE THAT FEMINIST IMAGINATION BUILDS: LOVING PRESENCE DEVELOPING A COMMUNITY OF CRITICAL FRIENDS IN TEACHER EDUCATION Volume I By Corinna s. Hasbach A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Teacher Education 1995 ABSTRACT THE HOUSE THAT FEMINIST IMAGINATION BUILDS: LOVING PRESENCE DEVELOPING A COMMUNITY OF CRITICAL FRIENDS IN TEACHER EDUCATION By Corinna s. Hasbach There is a dearth of qualitative research about teacher educators who are feminists teaching undergraduate education. In this study, through feminist methodology and scholarship, I present a rich portrayal of a teacher educator with feminist imagination; how she teaches, how she thinks about her own teaching, learning, and students. I describe and analyze her actions, beliefs, commitments, and context through in-depth conversations, journals, and classroom observations. I also probe the students• interpretations of her teaching through in-depth interviews, classroom observations, written work, and feedback forms. In this portrayal, I delve into the concepts of arrogant and loving presence and their manifestations. I employ the metaphor of tilling the soil to describe teaching and learning about oppression and privilege. I explore the theme of a community inhabited by critical friends working toward social justice. I inquire into what context-specific adventurous teaching means for a teacher educator with feminist imagination. I present a case of conflict which illustrates the teacher educator in relation to her students. I investigate the factors which contributed to the case of conflict and move beyond the conflict to look at how silence plays out in educational institutions for women. I also explore how speaking up and out is perceived as grounds for potential failure for both men and women students. I uncover the contextual factors which had a more general bearing on the teacher educator and her students, such as: the context of teacher education, post-feminist young women, and the sexual dynamics of a mixed-gender class. I look at how a teacher educator with feminist imagination can help students develop a critical consciousness. I raise questions about what true reform might mean in teacher education, suggesting the need for loving presence and critical friendship. I also reveal how my own conception of feminism changed from a view of "one" feminism to a richer conception of feminist imagination. Copyright by CORINNA SABINE HASBACH 1995 DEDICATION our schools and colleges, institutions of the patriarchy, generally teach us to listen to people in power, men or women speaking the father tongue; and so they teach us not to listen to the mother tongue, to what the powerless say, poor men, women, children: not to hear that as valid discourse. I am trying to unlearn these lessons, along with other lessons I was taught about my society, particularly lessons concerning the minds, work, works, and being of women. I am a slow unlearner. But I love my unteachers--the feminist thinkers and writers and talkers and poets and artists and singers and critics and friends, from Wollstonecraft and Woolf through the furies and glories of the seventies and eighties--! celebrate here and now the women who for two centuries have worked for our freedom, the unteachers, the unmasters, the unconquerors, the unwarriors, women who have at risk and at high cost offered their experience as truth. "Let us NOT praise famous women!" Virginia Woolf scribbled in a margin when she was writing Three Guineas, and she's right, but still I have to praise these women and thank them for setting me free in my old age to learn my own language. (Ursula K. Le Guin, 1986, p. 151) This woman's work is dedicated to all the feminists who have gone before me, my unteachers who with "ordinary courage" (Rogers, 1993) challenged the mainstream and the "malestream" (Warren, 1989). To those who were dismissed, unacknowledged, erased, and labeled "mad." To the "madwomen in the attics," who often were merely different, this is dedicated to them all. This is especially dedicated to my mother, Barbara Hasbach, the first feminist and unteacher in my life who with ordinary courage and sometimes extraordinary courage survived. She was a woman before her time. My mother has stared tragedy in the face and survived, " ••• i•ve been through so much pain that i•ve popped out the V other side" (Littlebear, 1983, p. 158). She was born in 1932 and lived with her mother and father, Rita and Hans Hasbach, her sister Sabine, and her brother Michael. The first seventeen years of her life were spent in East Germany, during the time of Hitler and World War II, and after. When she was thirteen her father, an interpreter for the Germans interrogating Russian defectors during World War II, was arrested in the middle of the night by the Soviet military. He was imprisoned in a Siberian gulag for eleven years. In the gulag he was tortured and dehumanized. My mother's mother was lonely without her husband and sought companionship from another man. She became pregnant. Alone and afraid, terrified of the consequences of having a child outside her marriage, she had an illegal abortion. The abortion was botched. My mother watched her mother, ashen and afraid, hemorrhage to death. My mother was fifteen years old when she became a motherless, fatherless child. My mother's paternal aunt Emmy came to look after her and her siblings. Emmy mentally and physically abused them. After two years of abuse my mother could take no more. Alone, at seventeen, she crawled beneath barbed wire fencing, evading machine-gun fire, fleeing East Germany and Aunt Emmy to make a new life in West Germany. Barbara Hasbach survived the first seventeen years of her life. In May 1956, Hans Hasbach was released from prison. vi He was alive but irreparably scarred. He was able to emigrate to West Germany and join his daughters and son. At the age of twenty-three my mother became pregnant. She chose not to marry. Her choice to have a child without being married challenged the mores of German society. I was born on June 22, 1956. Having a girl made my mother glad, for as Marge Piercy says, "When a girl is born, in her heart her mother is twice glad. Because she is born over again in her daughter, and maybe this time it will be better" (1987, p. 55). Four years after I was born we left for Canada. My mother had no friends there, nor did she know the language and culture. She did not know what our future would hold. She spent hard years struggling as a sole-support parent. Yet, for me, she fashioned a life filled with both love and security. Many years passed in relative peace. At age fifty-five, when my mother should have been enjoying the "golden years" of her life, she was raped. {Women are never safe at any age; their years may still be filled with tears.) At age sixty she learned of her father's suicide. He had lived thirty-seven years after his imprisonment, healthy of body but sick of heart and soul. Again my mother lost her father. Yet she survived all this and is healing her Self. Through the living text of her life, my mother taught me about adventure, risk, and courage. She taught me that vii women could be independent, courageous, and survivors. She taught me to be woman-centered--that women are valuable people in their own right, and valuable to one another. Although she has experienced much pain in her own life, she was able to teach me about happiness and love, and how to delight in life. When I was little, she played with me for hours with patience and enthusiasm, teaching me joy, laughter, and friendship. As I grew up, she read innumerable stories to me, allowing my imagination.to soar. As I became older she talked with me for hours, teaching me to think and speak my mind. She handed me a legacy of feminism before I knew what feminism was. My mother has always had the soul of a poet. In recent years she has begun to write poetry. In her poem "My Child," she connects three generations of women: Rita, Barbara, and Corinna. With this poem my mother is "Making the past walk through the present" (Marge Piercy, 1987, dedication). IIY CHILD Entering life at the break of dawn, Traces of morning mist, Ethereal, divine, transparent, A soul untouched Frail. Changing my world. A Mother's mother Child. World beyond world reaching, Coming together. Words beyond words forming viii· Gestalt, autonomy of two women Transilient, manifest in a third. Secret threads unravelling Mysteriously. A dream.flowing through. Unfolding In a fragment of time Becoming reality Given birth Adding change continuity Eternity. (Barbara Hasbach, 1994) Like my mother's poem, this dissertation is women speaking to women, past, present, and future. From our rooms to their rooms and their rooms to our rooms. The past informs the present and the present informs the future. ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to thank Michael Michell, my partner. He taught me that men can "unlearn the myths that bind them" (Christensen, 1992). By doing difficult soul searching and critical self-reflection, he reinvented himself. In Michael's manuscripts, "Forgive me mother for I have sinned" (unpublished), and in "Michael's Story: The Struggle to be Open Minded" (1994) he provides powerful examples of the honesty and self-reflection that can make men allies to women in the struggle for justice and peace. He is unlearning how to oppress the Other (de Beauvoir, 1952/1974). It is men like Michael, willing to do what it takes to reinvent themselves, that will "re-write the future" (Warren, 1989, p. 46). · I am also extremely grateful for the enormous help he has given me on this dissertation. Our lengthy conversations, his feedback, and his editing have been incredibly important to this work. I want to thank my committee members. There were many criteria by which I chose the people on my committee- intellectual strength and courage were especially important. Each gave me the freedom to let my imagination soar unfettered by what is "traditional" or "conventional." Each has been my critical friend. With loving presence each has pushed my thinking and my ways of seeing the world and myself. Each has let me express my ideas Aru1 emotions in X front of them each has allowed me to express the whole range of what is human. Each member of my committee has supported me intellectually and emotionally innumerable times. I have stored in my memory many vignettes that speak to their mentorship, in the following paragraphs I choose one illustration that speaks in part to how much they have contributed to my educational life. I first met Bruce Burke in Manila, Philippines when he taught a course for Graduate Studies in Education Overseas. When I was planning to leave the Philippines and complete my masters in East Lansing, I sought him out as my unofficial advisor. He was the one who left a notice of Gender and Schooling, a new course taught by Lynn Paine and Annelies Knoppers, in my mailbox and suggested that I take it. In so many ways this launched my professional passion and commitment to feminist issues in education. Also, in so many ways Bruce has had more faith in me than I did in myself. As I was fin~shing up my masters and contemplating whether I should pursue an Educational Specialist or a Doctorate in Education (actually believing there really was no way l could do a doctorate1) I asked his advice. He 1 Tllil feeliaa of not beilJI able to IUCCNd It a new academic li1ullioo ii not IUIIIIUAl for Jir1a or women to nperieace. The America Auoc:illion of 'Univenity Womea (1992) llatc: Slucliea allO reveal that competed re-- bave bipor expectatiom of failure and lower aelf-coafideace when ~ new academic lilualioDI than do malN with limilar abililiel. The nault ii that female ......... are more libly 10 abandon academic tub. (p. 70) xi counselled me to enter the doctoral program, for as he said, when I wrote a dissertation I would be contributing to the knowledge in education. A simple piece of advice, but symbolic of.the kind of faith and mentorship that Bruce provided. He has given me careful and thoughtful feedback on this dissertation and all aspects of my education and career. He has guided me and supported me from the day I met him. Early in my doctoral studies, I remember being upset and frightened by what another graduate student told me. He emphatically warned me one day, "You cannot be nice in higher education; you will never make it!" My heart and stomach sank. Being brand new and uncertain of the norms, but knowing that kindness and compassion were values I held highly, I felt dismayed and worried. I went to Doug Campbell's office depressed and emotional. I told him what the other graduate student had said. He did not dismiss my concerns, or agree with the graduate student. Instead, he pointed out to me the people he knew who had "made it" (perhaps not by conventional standards, but were at MSU and were happy and doing what they wanted to be doing). I was relieved and hopeful. This may sound like such a small incident yet it is symbolic of the kind of hope and faith that Doug embodied at every turn. He has-also given me thoughtful and insightful feedback at every turn with my work and dissertation, and he "takes women students xii seriously" (Rich, 1978), a disposition valued and valuable in an institution of higher learning. He has always affirmed me and at the same time pushed my thinking. I first met Susan Melnick when I was taking one of the first classes of my doctoral program. My feminist Self was speaking up and out in classes and never did I feel my ideas were trivial or did I feel dismissed. One incident stands out for me. Susan had to leave for a conference and another professor was taking her place. Two sections of the class were together that day. The professor had us do a role play about implementing an educational policy. He gave out various roles. One of the women in the class was to be a spokesperson for education for this policy. A man was to be a senator listening to this "testimonial." The woman was speaking and at one point said, "Let me paint you a picture •••• " Before she could finish, the man (the senator) interrupted and lewdly asked, "A centerfold?" As another woman and I protested, the professor dismissed our annoyance with "Well, senators are like that." When I told Susan about this, she did not dismiss me, instead she was angry. I knew that had she been there that casual sexist comment would not have been dismissed but would have been confronted. Her ability and readiness to "call out" sexism and other forms of domination have always made me feel that I had an advocate on my committee. In addition to being an advocate, Susan has given me significant and wise feedback xiii on my dissertation. She pushed my thinking in ways that helped to make it more thoughtful, reflective, and clearer. She has also made herself available to counsel me at every turn about my studies and career. She puts students first, an important and precious quality in higher education. I first met Lynn Paine, the chairperson of my committee, during my masters when she was co-teaching Gender and Schooling with Annelies Knoppers. This was the first class that I took where I felt completely at home. It was not that I did not love and value other classes that I had taken, but this was the class where my passion for feminist issues had a forum for intellectual and philosophical consideration. I had never realized that my passion for feminism and my professional life could merge. This was the first class where I read feminist scholars and theorists critique education. I was thrilled and I had never before encountered such work. This class was really the catalyst to my pursuing a life's work-in-progress. Lynn and Annelies taught the class in a way that I was also not familiar with. Not only did they team teach, but they taught "differently." At first I did not really recognize what this "difference" was, but as I read more of their readings, I had an epiphany. They were engaging in "feminist pedagogy." This was the entryway for my fascination with and commitment to feminist teaching. Lynn has always been willing to listen to my conceptions of feminism, feminist teaching, oppression xiv and privilege with loving presence. There must have been times in the past where I went to her and told her about my conceptions that now seem to have been imbued with arrogant presence, but I never felt that she did not listen and did not push me as a critical friend. She has taught me that as a scholar and as a teacher you can engage in feminist issues with loving presence and treat the other as a critical friend. I appreciate not only what she knows but who she is as a person. She has modeled what I hold dear in a scholar and a teacher. There is another person who was not officially on my committee but has been such a wonderful support for me during the grueling intellectual and emotional ups and downs of writing a dissertation that I care so much about. I want to thank Joan Hunault for being who she is. I would speak to her about my dissertation, often with tears in my eyes, afraid that I could not say all I felt and thought with enough articulateness that it could be comprehensible. Joan always listened, supported, and I felt understood when I talked about the need for compassion and loving presence in teacher education. She has been there as a critical friend and with her own loving presence has helped me add to feminist theory. She has been an invaluable, unofficial member of my committee. All these people have truly let me· "dwell" in the realm of ideas, caring enough to let me work toward becoming all I xv can be. I am truly grateful for their intellectual, emotional, and philosophical support throughout this dissertation, but even more throughout the last years of my professional exploration and development. They have and are helping me paint a room in the house that feminist imagination builds. I want to also acknowledge Reebok, our mutt, who has shown me that sometimes life is as simple as a playful, joyous tug on the pull-toy. Reebok was there during my coursework, to give me puppy warmth and unconditional love. Underdog, the newest addition to the family, during the writing of this dissertation showed me that sometimes my deepest concern had to be whether the puppy pooped and piddled outside the house rather than inside. Vegan and Tahoe, two strays abandoned by others, show me that regardless of what is going on, the purring of cats is a most welcome sound. These creatures teach me about life in ways that are unique because they take complete glee in being alive. They are also part of the great voiceless exploited creatures, the "animal guides" (Daly and Caputi, 1987), who we could learn so much from if we unlearned some of the lessons about "brute beasts" and "dumb animals." 2 2 I loved wbea Dooovu (1990a) in ber article, • Animal riJbta and fominilt 111oory• llated: 1bia article ia dediwecl to my peat doJ llooaey (1974-87), wbo died u it wu bein, completed but wbOle life loci me to appnciatc Ibo aobility and dipity of lllimala. (p.3SO) II ii 10 impodalll dw dlia wort bo ""111 and bow elle but to acbowleclae 1bole •wbOle lan,uqe ia not beard ••• wbo arc callod voicelea or mute, .VIII Ibo earthworms, ffOD Ibo lbcll-fiab and Ibo l!pODIU ••• • (Griffin, 1978, dedication). xvi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES THE FORETHOUGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • • . . . . •. . • FEMINIST IMAGINATION IN THE TIME OF "BACKLASH" CHAPTER I INTO THE WOMAN'S STUDY: WOMEN'S LIVES AS THEORY IN THE MAKING • • • • Women Working Together: Or Don't Close That Door. Entering the Field. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Methodolotry, Methodology, and Method: Methodology • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • With Feminist Imagination is "Not Your Father's Paradigm" • • • • • • • • • • • • • Data Sources and Collection • • • • • • • • • The Limits of Feminist Imagination and My own • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Situatedness Dialogue and Dinner at Daly's • • • • • • • • • • The "Style" of This Dissertation. • • • • • • • . • • • • • • • • • • The Observer and the Observed A Sojourn Into Possibilities. • • . • • . • • xxi 1 10 24 24 37 40 44 48 52 62 65 66 CHAPTER II INSIDE THIS WOMAN'S STUDY: WRITINGS BY WOMEN, WITH . . • WOMEN, AND FOR WOMEN . . Concepts Important in This study. • • • • • • • • 69 73 Feminism • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 7 4 Oppression and the Sex/Gender System • • • • • 83 Feminist Teaching • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 90 Paradigms of Knowledge: Positivism • • . . . . . . . . and Constructivism. • • • • • • • • 102 Finding Our Way: Re-reading and Re-writing the Malestream•s Word and World • • • • • • • • • 106 CHAPTER III WHO IS PIERCY SAND? A PARTIAL DESCRIPTION • • • • • • • 111 Keys and Doors and Cardboard cut-outs: What a Researcher can and cannot Do • • • • • • • • 111 The Personai is Political is Pedagogical • • • • • 114 What's In a Name? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 xvii CHAPTER IV PIERCY SAND'S CONTEXT AND COURAGE: ADDITIONAL DESCRIPTION AND LOCATION • • • • • • • • • • • • . 125 The House of Education and Piercy•s Role • • • • • 128 The Context of "Educational Foundations" (ED 277) 131 ED 277 Fulfilling a Gender Requirement: Problematizing Gender, Race, and Class • • • 134 The First Day of Class: A Door Into community •• 138 What's in One Class? The Door Opening to Who Piercy Was • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 141 Piercy•s Thoughts on That First Class: Keys to Her Ways of Thinking • • • • • • The Purposes of ED 277 and Risky Business 142 146 Ordinary, Transgressive, and Political Courage •• 154 Courage, Strength, and Empowerment--the Tension Within: What Doors are Opened But What Windows are Closed? • • • • • • • • • • • Courage and "Whiteliness" • • • • • • • • • • The Personal is Pedagogical: About Piercy and Unexpectedly About Johnny • • • • • • • . A Woman Teacher Educator With Feminist Imagination . • • • • • . • • • • • • • . . . 158 . . 161 . . 164 . . 169 . . 174 CHAPTER V PIERCY SAND: LOVING PRESENCE • • • • • • • • • • • "What is Essential is Invisible to the Eye": What are Arrogant Presence and Loving Presence? Epiphanies, Arrogant Presence and Loving Presence • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 174 • 179 What is Arrogant Presence? • • • • • • • • • 180 What is Loving Presence? • • • • • • • • • • 193 CHAPTER VI PIERCY SAND: LOVING PRESENCE TILLING THE SOIL • • • • • 217 Teacher as Tiller of the Soil: Or One Important Metaphorical Step Backwards in the Garden •• 217 Instances of the "Wrong Kind" of People • • • • • 222 Selecting the "Right" Kind of Students? • • • • • 227 Transformation of the Intended and Unintended . . Tilling the Soil, Radically Removing Arrogant Kind 229 • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Presence • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 2 3 7 Falling Through the Trap Door: Raising Consciousness, Becoming Conscious, or Double Consciousness--Are There Subtle but Important Differences? • • • • • • • • • • • 242 Raising Consciousness • • • • • • • • • • • • 242 Raising Consciousness or Becoming Conscious? 245 Double Consciousness • • • • • • • • • • • • 250 The Teacher Educator, the Students, "A community Class," and the Knowledge They Come to Together • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 2 5 3 xviii CHAPTER VII· PIERCY SAND: LOVING PRESENCE DEVELOPING A COMMUNITY OF CRITICAL FRIENDS • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Piercy•s Motif of Community • • • • • • • • • • • What Was This Community Like? • • • • • • • • • • Friendship and Love • • • • • • • • • • • • • Faith and Esteem • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Honesty • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Deep Listening • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Friendship and 'World'-travelling • • • • • • CHAPTER VIII PIERCY SAND: TEACHER EDUCATOR WITH AN ADVENTUROUS FEMINIST IMAGINATION . . • . . • . . • . . . . . . Context-specific Adventurous Teaching • • • • • • "Whiteliness," Privilege and Adventurous Teaching The Fulcrum of our "Whiteliness" and Privilege • • • ; • • • • • • • • • • • • A Discrepant Case of Color-fullness • • • . . Adventurous Teaching and the Struggle Against Scapegoating and Inauthenticity • • • • • • • . . Patience . . A case of Adventurous Teaching, Stretching Beyond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the Walls of Sexual Identity Privilege • • • One Cannot Talk of Teachers Teaching Without Talk of Students Learning • • • • • • • • • • • • 258 261 265 268 269 272 276 278 281 285 292 295 299 301 306 312 320 CHAPTER IX PIERCY SAND IN RELATION WITH STUDENTS: A CASE OF CONFLICT • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 326 An Entryway to Conflict • • • • • • • • • • • • • 329 Phase One: Feedback and Facts • • • • • • • • 330 Phase Two: "Too Much Feminism" • • • • • • • 336 Phase Three: After the Video • • • • • • • • 363 . . . • CHAPTER X THE ISSUES THAT LAY UNDER THE SURFACE OF THE CLASSROOM: • • UNLEASHING CONFLlCT Piercy•s Reaction to the Class Conflict Phase one: Facts • • • Phase Two: Too Much Feminism • Phase Three: After the Video • Phase Four: Conflict as Turning Point • . . . . • Reflection in Hindsight Authority and Power in the Teacher Education • . . . . • • . . • • • • . . . . • • . . . . • • . • • • • • . . . • . . . • . . . • • • • • • • Classroom • • . . • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 383 385 391 396 418 427 444 445 CHAPTER XI SPEAKING UP AND OUT IN THE CONTEXT OF TEACHER EDUCATION: FACTORS WHICH HINDER CRITICAL FRIENDSHIP • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • . . . . . 448 xix "Unlearning to Not Speak": Speaking Up and out in the Classroom • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 448 Understanding Who These students Are and the "Culture of Silence" A Wall of Silence: "The Ones Who Couldn't Explain Themselves" • • • • . • . • • • • • • 459 • • • • • • • • • • • • 449 The Fear and Dread Within Educational Institutions • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • . 466 Unlearning the Power Differential and Learning How to be a Critical Friend: "Changing the Constructs in People's Heads about Power, that Teachers Aren't There to Get You." • • • 475 CHAPTER XII THE CONTEXTUAL FACTORS WHICH MAKE TEACHING WITH • • • • • FEMINIST IMAGINATION AN ARDUOUS AND CHALLENGING • . . . . ENDEAVOR • • • The Context of Teacher Education • • • • • • • • • Post-feminist Young Women • • . • • • • • • • • • Sexual Dynamics of a Mixed-Gender Class • • • • • Caring for the Men • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • The Amorphous Generic Male Gaze . • • • • • • • • • • • • Variance in the Men's Response . . • • . • . CHAPTER XIII FEMINIST IMAGINATION AND TEACHER EDUCATION • • • • • • What One "Mellow Little Education Class" Can (and • • • • • • • • • • . • • • • • • Cannot) Do A True Reform: Invoking Loving Presence and . . Passion . . The Challenge For True Reform • • • • • • Content That Unteaches, Teaches Compassion, . . . . . . . . . . . . . Caring, and Anti-bias strategies • • • • The Role of Teacher Educator: Moving Toward Critical Friend • • • • • • • • • • • • • The Need For Unlearning in Teacher Education: Teaching, Living, and Loving Against the . . Grain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CHAPTER XIV EPILOGUE: RE-VISIONING A FEMINISM AND MOVING TOWARD FEMINIST IMAGINATION Gaining Access to Difference and Commonality: . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . Stretching the Personal, the Political, and the Pedagogical • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Access to Difference: No Laughing Matter •• "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who is the Fairest (Best, Most Liberated •••• ) Feminist of All?": Will the Real Feminist Please Stand Up? • • • Learning Through Relationships and My Position Vis a Vis students • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • xx 482 482 485 488 492 495 498 507 507 513 520 527 532 536 540 540 547 561 566 Imagining New Rooms in the House Where Feminists . . Reside • • • • • • • • • • . . . . . . . 568 572 579 582 584 585 586 588 590 596 APPENDICES Appendix A: Syllabus for Educational Foundations Winter 1992 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Appendix B: FIELD ASSIGNMENT: GENDER • • • • • • • Appendix C: "What Should I Tell My Children Who Are Black" by Margaret Burroughs • • • • • • Appendix D: Midterm Feedback Form • • • . • • • • Appendix E: Final Feedback Form • • • • • • • • • Appendix F: Student Interview# 1 • • • • • • • • Appendix G: Student Interview# 2 • • . . . . • . Appendix H: My Presence Appendix I: student's Interviews and Final • • • • • • . • • . • • . Feedback Catalogue • • • • • • • . BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . xxi LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Students• Interviews and Final • • • Feedback Catalogue • • • 594 xxii 'l'BB PORB'l'BOUGJIT3 The Bouse That P-inist I11agination Buil4• Many years ago, the poet Diane di Primia wrote a line that comes back to me now: "The only war that counts is the war against imagination." I often wondered what she meant by it, but now I think I understand. All war is first waged in the imagination, first conducted to limit our dreams and our visions, to make us accept within ourselves its terms, to believe that our only choices are those that it lays before us .•.• But if we hold to the power of our visions, our heartbeats, our imagination, we can fight on our own turf, which is the landscape of consciousness. sacred Thing. 1993, p. 238) (Starhawk, The Fifth Mystics have always traditionally considered the feminine aspect of the universe as a ••• house ••• as well as an enclosed garden. Another symbolic association is that which equates the house ••• with the repository of all wisdom •••• (Cirlot, 1971, p. 153) 4 I invite you into a house. A house built by feminist imagination. You will enter one of the rooms. A room, a study actually, with many shelves filled with many books. 3 The tide of "Tbe Forecboupt• ia takoa from W. E. B. DuBoia (1903/1994, p. v). In DuBoia' foretbouptbe writol: Heroin lie buried IIIIDY dw,p which if rad with patience may lhow Ibo llraDp IIIAIIUII of bem, black bero in tbe clawma, of tbe Twemicdl Ceamry. naia IDIUIUII ia DOt without inlorell to you, Goade Reader; for tbe problem of tbe Twelllietb Cealllry ia tbe problem of the color-line. I pny you, tben, receive my li1lle book in all charity, lludym, my words with me, forsive millab aad foible for 11b of Ibo faith aad pauion that ia in me, aad aeekm, Ibo ,rain of truth bidden tbero. (p. v) I, lib DuBoia, ut you to rad with patience, aad IIUdy tbe worda coalained in tbia text wldt me. I a1ao ut that you forsive me for tbe millaba aad foiblel that I am bound to make u • writer tnpped within my own pandipla. I try to lhow you tbe muae lllNIIUII ofbem, • woman with reminiat ima,ination, writm,, ellillm,, teacbilw, aad 1e1rnm, within• •xl,ender, race, aad clau ayatem, all tbe while writm, aad wortm, apimt tbe very ame ay11em. DuBoia Olllnala bia readen to bear bia faith aad pauion, aad I mate tbe aame requeat. 4 The .__. ia alao a powerful symbol in .venl American Indian mylholotiea. For example, tbe lroquoia of New York uaed to apeak of their omire territory, llnCcbm, • dilllaDce of aome three bundnd milel, u tbe pu& •1oapou•• of tbe confederated nationa. Al Niapn Falla, Ibo Seaeca were keepen of tbe weurn •c1oor, • while tbe Mobawb were bepen oftbe eaurn •door• in tbe Hud8on Jliver .... AIDC>IW tbe North American PaWDN, tbe world'• rim, or horizon, wu collliclerecl to be tbe circular •w.u• of tbe ,reat hOUN, with tbe sty u iaa •roof,• reproNllbDJ tbe traditioaal domed OU1b-loclp. And liDce anyone who iababilecl an ordinary bouN WU Mid to be •imicle, • tbe umYerN U a whole WU called tbe •imide land. ■ (Bierbont, 1994, pp. 109-111) 1 2 There are books of fiction and nonfiction. Books that are theoretical and practical. Books that meld the two. There are mystical and magical books. Futuristic and children's books. Books of poetry and drama. There are songbooks too. I have been dwelling in and painting this study for a long time. It is actually a life's work-in-progress. This study exists within a house and I invite you to explore this house. This is an unusual kind of house, though--it is a house that feminist imagination builds. A house where new rooms keep appearing--the construction is not rigid. Fronts become backs and rooms have indiscernible shapes. This kind of house verges on the mystical--verges on that which cannot be known, but which many thinkers for many centuries have struggled to know. This house is a metaphor for the theory that feminist imagination built and builds, a theory constructed by many tears. Do not forget the tears. Tears cried for the "madwoman in the attic," the room with "yellow wallpaper," and the "ontological basement for women and children."5 It represents a theory constructed with much laughter. Do not forget the laughter, nor the humor, joy, and passion. The theory is fluid and dynamic, even when constructed. 5 'l1le ·lllldwoman in tbe lllic· ii tatea from Gilbert & Gubar (1984) and "tho yellow wallpapor" ii borrowed from Oilmaa (1192/1899/1973). 'l1le •Olllolop:al ba111111111" ii from a quoee by Mar1in (1982): Loreane Cwt bu lhown that, from the undpoiDl of political theory, women, children, and the family dwell in lbe "Olllolop:al balemlm." oUllide and underneath the politieal llnletun. 'lbil apolitieal •tu1 ii due oat to biltoric:al accidem or oeceaity but to amitnry definition. (p. 162) 3 Can a theory be like that? Can a house be like that? Not in present ways of knowing. We need to take flights of imagination. Authors of fiction have the capacity to take this flight. We can learn much from them. As educators who are feminists and profeminists imagining that which others say is impossible is crucial. To conceive of the impossible allows us to question that which we have judged inconceivable. To conceive of all the possibilities is, for me, feminist imagination: "The possibilities, she told us are endless •••• The possibilities, we see, never end ••• "(Griffin, 1978, p. 192). John Crowley in Little. Big (1981), a book of mystical and magical conjecture, describes a house. His house suggests the kind of house I will ask you to enter--an unusual and unfamiliar abode: "My room--see?" He peeked in, and mostly saw himself in the tall mirror. those stairs. Turn left, then turn left." The hallway seemed concentric, and Smoky wondered how all these rooms managed to sprout off it. "Here," she said. "Imaginary study. Old orrery, up The room was of indiscernible shape; the ceiling sank toward one corner sharply, which made one end of the room lower than the other; the windows there were smaller too; the room seemed larger than it was, or smaller than it looked, he couldn't decide which •••• " Alone together ••• in the walled garden at the back "The back front?" ••• This used to front of the house. be the front," Daily Alice said. "Then they built the garden and the wall; so the back became the front. It was a front anyway. And now this is the back front" •••• "That's not really it," she said, looking birdwise at her star, "but sort of. See, it's a house all fronts •••• It's so many houses, sort of put inside each other or across each other, with their fronts sticking out" •••• "Look. See?" she said. He looked where she pointed, along the back front. It was a severe, classical facade softened by ivy, its gray stone stained as though by dark tears; tall, arched windows; symmetrical detail he recognized as the 4 classical Orders; rustications, columns, ·plinths •••• She ••• led him by the hand along the front, and as they passed, it seemed to fold like scenery; what had looked flat became out-thrust; what stuck out folded in; pillars turned pilasters and disappeared. Like one of those ripply pictures children play with, where a face turns from grim to grin as you move it, the back front altered, and when they reached the opposite wall and turned to look back, the house had become cheer~ul and mock-Tudor with deep curling eaves and clustered chimneys like comic hats. (Crowley, 1981, pp. 29-31, emphasis added) Odd, strange, disconcerting, improbable? Perhaps yes, but Crowley pushes us to stretch our imaginations to think about something we know so well in radically different ways. He pushes, as I push, to make the familiar strange. Something normally rigid and unyielding is made elastic by the novelist's imagination. So the house with the rooms, especially the study that I am painting, moves and shape shifts. My room--my contribution to feminist theory--shape shifts, because contexts shape theories. Are you willing to enter such a house, such a room, such a study? You will need to turn left and then left again to reach this study. Some theorists argue that feminism is more radical than other leftist analyses. 6 In my conception turning left and then left again means that you are moving in a circular motion, which is encompassing 6 For aamp1a SIM•lemid! ll"'ll'Ulolle (1972) llalea: TIie CCllllealpOmy radical femiailt poeilion_il Ibo dinlc:t deleead.tlll af Ibo llldica1 femiailt lim in Ille old 1111M11118111, IIG&lbly championocl by SlalllGa ud Alllboay, ud Iller by Ibo militalll C-,reaioaal Union -■blequeady mown u 1bc WC1111U'1 Party. It ... feminist ilmel DOI only u - • • tint priority but celllnl so any lupr revolutionuy Ullylil. It refi■Na IO aecept lbc exiltina leftilt analylil DOI because it ii too radical, but bec.lUN II II 1tOI ra4Jcal -,It: it ... 111c curnat left analylia u outdated ud auperficial, because lbil analylia doN DOI relate Ille lll'Uclure of the ICODDIDic claa sylfmn IO iu on,im in lbc IOml clw 1Y1fmn, Ibo model for Ill other exploilive 1Y1fmn1, ud dlu lbc tapeworm daat 1111111 be elimiatecl .... (p. 37, eq,bali1 in ori,mal) and therefore supports inclusivity. It is not a linear left 5 to "right" model, with "arrival" points which end up excluding by categorization. In this room you may see yourself in the mirror; in this theory you may see a reflection of yourself. I want to suggest that this feminist theory is constructed in place and time, but "echoes forward" (Featherstone, private communication, 1994) to a much less fixed vision of what is possible. Please bring your imagination and your paintbrush because there are spots unpainted. You have choices in dealing with the unpainted spots. You could criticize and berate me for missing the spots. You could show me where the spots are and I will attempt to paint them myself. Or you could pick up a paintbrush and help me paint the spots, thereby helping me paint the room. 7 I hope you will embrace the third. For this is an invitation to pick up the paintbrush and to become a part of a community of critical friends, to dwell for a time in my study. I use the term critical friend to indicate that you are crucial and significant to my learning and growth by fostering my intellectual, emotional, and psychological development with challenge and support. By critical, I mean being analytical and discerning, but not disparaging or belittling. As a critical friend, you are assessing and 7 1bia imaaewu creaaed by Marilyn Frye (1994). She relayed it IO Michael Michell in • paper be wroce for ber in a Femiailt Theoryc ..... 6 reacting to what I write and you will push my thinking. With your help we can make this a new and brightly painted room. The room is part of the theory that I am trying to create, theory that undoubtly has missing pieces--unpainted spots. So take up the paintbrush and join me--be my critical friend. Help me avoid painting myself into a corner. The unpainted spots are an invitation for others to enter into the spirit of the community I will be writing about--the community of critical friends, the community of feminist imagination--a community I wish to help develop in teacher education. This spirit gets at the essence of the kind of community of scholars and teachers that could be created within the academy for pre-service teachers in the classroom (in the schoolhouse) to talk about issues that are complex and difficult. Such a community would not rip apart theory or attack members• ideas for violence's sake. Rather such a community would work to create theory through criticism that is without the edge of violence that creeps into its tone. Maybe violence is too strong--without the contempt for other work that seems to come with the territory •••• Maybe one has to distinguish between a criticism that actually attends to something and a criticism that's really dismissive •••• What we need is an ethics of criticism. (Gallop, Hirsch, & Miller, 1990, p. 368) I am proposing that we act as critical friends. Within the context of this text, I invite you to become a critical friend for the time that you read and react to this work 7 about a teacher educator, her students, and the researcher teaching and learning about issues of privilege and oppression. Let your feminist imagination help you construct this house and its many rooms. Pay attention to the locks, the keys, the doors, the trap doors, the windows, the glass ceilings, and the mirrors--they are all part of the study. Go outside of the house to the garden--for there is land there that needs to be tilled, and seeds that need to be planted and worked into the ground. This is grounded theory in the making. It is theory grounded in life. There is life in this house, a live house. "Out of our lives, we make theories; according to our theories, we live our lives. And I do not know which comes first" (Torton Beck, 1983, p. 291). we need to unearth the possibilities that our lives hold for the creation of feminist imagination. Notice the wall that surrounds the garden. A wall can provide safety and create a safe place, building defenses. But it can also entrap us (as can the house). Walls are potential barriers and we want to make sure that our imagination can scale those walls. I also "struggle endlessly endlessly" not to be trapped within a White house, built by the bricks and mortar of "whiteliness."1 Will you help me paint it more color-fully? 1 Tbo phrw •11n1g1e eadleuly eadleuly• 1 bormw from Monlea (1983) to empbl111ize the coalimlal m comillelll -,o,t lbat I 1118d to do in . - ofmy nee privilep, and the tenn •whileJineu• ia created by Marilyn Frye (l983-1994)wbich I will nploro later in the cliNedalioa. 8 What does it mean to dwell within a house, within a community? What does it mean to have an institution like education inhabited by critical friends? What would it mean to till the land and work together in harmony to create a safer place? It does not mean working without conflict. In fact, it is how we approach conflict and what we do with conflict that I want us to think about. Feminist imagination can open the door to a new kind of vision of conflict. If we come together as critical friends I believe it will enable us all to move beyond our own limits and the limits of our singular imagination to a vision full of possibility and hope. In a meeting place of critical friends, we are no longer isolated and individualistic, but working and learning together to create a shared vision, a house to dwell in, to care in, to feel compassion in, to develop loving presence9 in, a house built by feminist imagination. Critical friends could build a coherent vision of learning, peace, and social justice for all. 9 The concept of Jovi11a preaeace will be developed fully in the cbapten which follow. 9 !'his awakening o:f dead or sleeping It is ezhilarating to be alive in a tiae o:f awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful. consciousness has already a:f:fected the lives o:f aillions o:f woJll811, even those who don't Jeno,, it yet. It is also a:f:fecting the live~ o:f Jll8ll, even those who deny its clllllll upon thEm. • • • !'he sleep,rallcers are coaing awake, and :for the :first tiae this awakening has a collective reality; it is no longer such a lonely thing to open one's eyes. Re-vision--the act o:f looking back, o:f seeing with :fresh eyes, o:f entertaining an old tert :fro• a new critical direction--is :for woaen .110re than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act o:f survival. Until we can understand the assuaptions in which we are drenched we cannot Jeno,, ourselves. (Rich, 1971, p. 167) 10 l'BIIIIIIS'l' IDGIIIA'l'IOII IR 'l'IIB 'l'IJIB 01' 11BACKLUB1111 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way •••• (Dickens, 1859/1980, p. 13) This is a study of how a teacher educator with feminist imagination and her students explored issues of gender, race, and class in an educational foundations course, all the while being with/in, and constructed by a gender, race, and class system. This is also a study of the ways in which the teacher educator, Piercy Sand, and I learned together through our working together. 11 This is also a study of the deep learning that occurred for me and the ways in which I re-visioned feminism in teacher education and conceptualized feminist imagination. This study, this house that feminist imagination builds, is located in a historical context. 12 Context affects scholarship and scholarship affects context. They are dialectical and reflexive. Dickens' words were written almost a century and a half ago, however, they seem IO The coaicept of "blcldub• 11u been Uled by bocb Faludi (1991) 11111 Miller (1986). II Piercy Saad ii a pNUdoaym. Alac> all of die lllldeala' name, 11111 Ibo 111111181 of die collep 11111 die IOWD.,. ,-.doayma. 12 I am limiliDa my aalylil of die bacldub ID tbe c:omext of die United Slates, ratmr lbaa IDOWII out p,bally, fiJr I dliat lbat I cu oaly apeak of bow I perceive wbat ii oceurrina within Ibo boundariel of tbe COUlllry in wbicb I am livioa- I am acutely ...,. daat J1oba1 iuuc1 affect tbe United Stata 11111 daat I cannot divon:o what oceun 1lol,ally with what oceun in tbe Unitad Statea. However, lliace Jlilrcy Saad, her IIUdom, lboir odueatioaal imtilulion 111111.,. IIIOll immediately lituated within Ibo Unitad Statea, it - IO bo impol1am ID uncover tbo bactlub primarily wilbin Ibo United Statea. 11 timeless. I believe we currently exist within these paradoxes. Is it merely because this is my time that it seems to me that we are situated within a time of great extremes? or, are the 1990s especially polemic? I feel that this particular moment in time is a time like no other. Perhaps the phrases are forever true, yet somehow, during this time of incredible progress and incredible backlash, they seem even truer. Is it only because I have come to understand that two seemingly contradictory truths can coexist? Perhaps that is why Dickens' words seem to speak to me and the dissertation I write. Whether it is historical reality that these extremes exist, or whether it is my heightened perception, Dickens' phrases seem especially pertinent. It is a time when the popular press tells us that the feminist movement is the culprit for nearly everything that is ailing women in general. For example, Professional women are suffering "burnout" and succumbing to an "infertility epidemic." Single women The New York are grieving from a "man shortage." Times reports: Childless women are "depressed and confused" and their ranks are swelling. Newsweek, says: Unwed women are "hysterical" and crumbing under a "profound crisis of confidence." (Faludi, 1991, p. ix) It also claims that women's equality has really been won (Faludi, 1991). Yet, when we look at the statistics regarding women's "progress," it is shocking: If American women are so equal, why do they represent two-thirds of all poor adults? Why are nearly 75 percent of full-time working women making less than $20,000 a year, nearly double.the male rate? Why are 12 they still far more likely than men to live in poor housing and receive no health insurance, and twice as likely to draw no pension? ••• If women have "made it," then why are nearly 80 percent of working women still stuck in traditional "female" jobs--as secretaries, administrative "support" workers and salesclerks? ••• Nor is women's struggle for equal education over; as a 1989 study found, three-fourths of all high schools still violate the federal law banning sex In colleges, discrimination in education. undergraduate women receive only 70 percent of the aid undergraduate men get in grants and work-study jobs- and women's sports programs receive a pittance compared with men's. (Faludi, 1991, pp. xiii-xvi) 13 Sometimes it is easier for me to think of the worst of times in the United States, a time when the neo-nazi movement is burgeoning and a conservative and "neo nationalist backlash" (Hate and Hope, 1994) abounds. It is a time when hate crimes are on the rise. 14 It is a time of homelessness, AIDS, poverty, crime, violence, the abuse of children and animals. During this historical period those who care about social justice seem to need even sharper vision, for the means and methods of backlash are sophisticated. For example, "blaming the victim" (Ryan, 1966/1976) has achieved such new and subtle convolutions that it is at times 13 no Amoril:an Auoc::iatioo of Uaivenity Women (1992) a1ao npom 1bat Occupatioaal •,reption amoaa women of color i■ even more extreme. Fony~ pen:ea& ofblact women woctioa in ■ervke oc:cupalioa■ ue employed u chambermaid■ , welfare ■ervke aide■ , cleanen, or aune'■ aides. For Hi■panic women, job •sre,ation bu IDIUII cli■proportioaato employmem in low-level factory job■ in 101111 of the indullriN lwde■l hilt by tbe C1lff9III downlllm in the economy. (p. 4) l,4 no ltalal reveal that ncial bale crime■ are OD tbe me durilla the 1990■: llacially moliv1ted violence ii OD the me, the aumben indicate. Mon tbln SO murden acrou tbe United Stltca in 1991 and '92 were clu■ified u bite crime■ by IClaawllcb, 1 re-■rch sroup in Binninpam, All., lblt bu mooitorecl hate-p-oup activity ■ince 1979 .... "The-,. ii to everyone in lbat sroup: 'You don't beloq.'" (Brutll Crime■ Apin■t All a.cu on the Increue, 1993) 13 difficult to figure out when the phenomenon is being enacted. Jones (1993) tells us that a "simple" question, such as why a woman who is being beaten by her partner doesn't just leave, is an insidious form of blaming the victim. It is a time when "affirmative action" is called "reverse discrimination. " 15 As Nathan, one of the students in Piercy Sand's class, stated: I think affirmative action is more discriminating than discrimination. I don't like the idea of like, having minority requirements at schools, where the school has to have a certain percentage of minority students, I think that's just as demeaning as not having any. It is a time when women are demanding the freedom to be out at night and protesting rape and violence against women with "Take Back The Night" marches. These marches are occurring on campuses nationwide, including Atwood College, where Piercy taught. "Take Back the Night" marches are usually made up of all women, however, when men are invited they walk behind the group of women. This all-women march is a statement that women SHOULD be safe to walk the streets at night without the protection of men from men. Matt, a student in Piercy•s class, told about the men's reactions to this march on Atwood's campus: Some guys from [an apartment building] yelled down to •em [the women] "I'm gonna come down there and rape you all," which the people in the fraternities didn't realize. Some of the guys in the fraternities did holler some stuff at them [but] not as bad as that. 15 See Greenawalt (1983) for a more tnditioaal definition and related concepta of •rev- diacrimination• and •affirmative action.• Abo aoe Daly and Caputi (1987, p. 257) and Daly (1987, pp. 248-260) for broaderdiacullionaoC-revenala• iD lquap. 14 Matt reported that the women on the march were angry, and "yelled" at the men in the fraternity dorms. After the march some of the men put up a sign that read, "Take Back The Night But Don't Start A Fight" by "The Coalition Against The Persecution Of Men." By telling us this story, Matt is suggesting a larger issue. As women speak up and out about their oppression, men react in verbally hostile ways and claim that they are being "persecuted." Miller (1986) tells us that backlash happens when small changes have occurred: At the same time that we recognize that women have just begun to act for and from themselves, we see that a backlash has arisen in reaction to even partial change. A backlash may be an indication that women really have had an effect, but backlashes occur when advances have been small, before changes are sufficient to help many people. For example, women have been blamed for the "breakdown of the family" or for all the problems of youth, drugs, crime, and unemployment •••• It is almost as if the leaders of backlashes use the fear of change as a threat before major change has occurred •••• Thus, we are in a period of great flux, a time of transition with trends in several directions. (Miller, 1986, pp. xv-xvi) Miller predicted that a great flux would come at the end of the eighties. We are now in the mid-nineties, encountering that flux. We are going in several directions at once. This is a time when the backlash against women's progress is "undeclared" but vicious. Faludi (1991) writes: ·tThe] last decade has seen a powerful counterassault on women's rights, a backlash •••• The backlash is at once sophisticated and banal, deceptively "progressive" and proudly awkward. It deploys both the "new" findings of "scientific 15 research" and the dime-store moralism of yesteryear; it turns into media sound bites both the glib pronouncements of pop-psych trend-watchers and the frenzied rhetoric of the New Right preachers. The backlash has succeeded in framing virtually the whole issue of women's rights in its own language ••• the backlash has convinced the public that women's "liberation" was the true contemporary American scourge--the source of an endless laundry list of personal, social, and economic problems. (p. xviii) It is a time during which speaking of equity brings charges of "political correctness." It is a time when talk shows have titles like, "White Men Fight Back: I'm Sick of Being Discriminated Against," and participants shout out that "White, straight men are the minority" and this is "reverse discrimination. • 16 In this time of backlash speaking up and out about oppression and privilege and feminist imagination makes some of us feel alone, lonely, and "mad" at times, because others don't seem to cry out at the same injustices and inequities. I am reminded of Emily Dickinson's poem, about "madness" making divine sense: Much madness is divinest sense To a discerning eye; Much sense the starkest madness. 'Tis the majority In this, as all, prevails. Assent, and you are sane; Demur,--you•re straightway dangerous, And handled with a chain. ( 1993, p. 30) It is in this interesting time that I began investigating what feminist imagination means to a teacher 16 lkti Lab, Fcbruuy 23, 1994. 16 educator and teacher education. It feels like the season of light and the season of darkness, for this is a time when feminist scholarship and research is being accepted in some of the_publications which are highly·regarded (see for example Rogers, 1993; Lewis, 1990); yet, it is also a time where there is a counterassault inside and outside of academia against feminist thinking.(Paglia, 1991; Limbaugh, 1992, 1993). It is a time of speaking up and speaking out. It is a time of polemics and a time of bitter controversies. Yet these times provide an opportunity for dialogue which could help push toward a brighter tomorrow. Dickens' phrases are also a reminder to me that I need to challenge my own dichotomous thinking, away from an either-or way of seeing the world. It is a time when people are speaking publicly about issues that were rarely spoken about in public forums in the past: Gay and lesbian rights, sexual abuse, child pornography, rape and violence against women. People are talking about invisibility in the disciplines, who is included and excluded and why. It is a time of Rush Limbaugh (1992, 1993) and John Stoltenberg (1990, 1993). It is a time of Camilla Paglia (1991) and Susan Faludi (1991). Their voices tell us about the polarities and paradoxes we live with/in. Limbaugh is extremely popular. Many North Americans feel he speaks for them. I have felt like dismissing him outright as a buffoon or a comic. Yet, I think this is not 17 advisable. He appears on many respected media shows, is named by the newly elected Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich as a friend and inspiration, and reaches a huge audience through his bestsellers, and his nationally syndicated talk show. His name is a household one. Many people are obviously taking him seriously enough. Perhaps part of his appeal is that he has an either-or way of looking at the world. Limbaugh labels readily and easily. For example, he calls some feminists "feminazis." Many feminist leaders are humorless, militant, pugnacious, and very unhappy people who do not want to equalize the status of women, but instead want to irreversibly alienate women from men and vice versa (p. 188) •••• Increasingly feminist groups are viewed as a fringe element who, because they are incapable of assimilating into mainstream society, are exacting their revenge on it. They are trying to change society to make it conform to them, rather than accepting the fact that they are not the mainstream ••• I prefer to call the most obnoxious feminists what they really are: feminazis. (Limbaugh, 1992, p. 192-193) Stoltenberg is being published at the same time as Limbaugh. His books, Refusing to be a Man: Essays on sex and Justice. and The End of Manhood; A Book for Men of Conscience. are not bestsellers. He is not well known by the mainstream, and his name is not a household one. When I read his work, I understand why. Stoltenberg is trying to challenge the social construction of manhood and masculinity. He writes: What would happen if we each told the deepest truth about why we are men who mean to be part of the feminist revolution--why we can't not be part of it- why its vision of full humanity for everyone so moves us? ••• "the male sex" requires injustice in order to 18 exist. Male sexual identity is entirely a political and ethical construction, I argue; and masculinity has personal meaning only because certain acts, choices, and policies create it--with devastating consequences for human society. But precisely because that personal and social identity is constructed, we can refuse it, we can act against it--we can change. The core of our being can choose allegiance to justice instead. (1990, pp. 2-4) A woman's voice in opposition to feminism is Paglia (1991). Paglia makes many feminists and profeminists shudder. She claims that rape is more of a sexual act than a violent act and that it is: a mode of natural aggression that can be controlled only by the social contract. Modern feminism's most naive formulation is its assertion that rape is a crime of violence but not of sex, that it is merely power masquerading as sex. But sex is power, and all power is inherently aggressive. Rape is male power fighting female power. It is no more to be excused than is murder or any other assault on another's civil right. Society is woman's protection against rape, not as some feminists absurdly maintain, the cause of rape. (Paglia, 1991, p. 23) Many feminists declare Paglia's theory as absurd, and Faludi writes about the other absurd ways in which rape is talked about--actually as a backlash against women. She writes: The u.s. Attorney General's Commission on Pornography even proposed that women's professional advancement might be responsible for rising rape rapes. With more women in college and at work now, the commission members reasoned in their report, women just have more opportunities to be raped. (p. xii) It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to explore this backlash in depth. I include these conflicting voices on pressing feminist concerns because they highlight the paradoxes and polarities of the larger society in which this study is located. I as the researcher, Piercy as the 19 teacher educator, and Piercy•s students were located within a time of extremes, where the popularity of arch conservatives was on the rise and yet the scholarship with and for women was reaching new acuity and acceptance. 17 Times have changed enough so that women are in universities writing about women's experiences and realities. So I see the times as receptive to women. It was not that long ago that higher education was not even available to women (see Sadker and Sadker, 1994, pp. 15- 41).11 I am able to see how the lives of some women have improved greatly. on the other hand, many women's lives are still filled with tragedy and despair. When I think of the poverty which exists in this country, one the most prosperous in the world, I also feel that this is the season of darkness. Dickens' words also remind me to see the complexity within the nature of truth and reality. This complexity is difficult to grapple with--it is elusive. Although I may yearn at times for order and Truth with a capital "T," current feminist and constructivist scholarship tells us that this is not possible. Instead, we are told that we need to learn to operate in a world that is filled with wisdom and foolishness, lightness and darkness, hope and 17 I will be llliDa lbe pu& 1.e111e, for readability but alao became dlil IIUd:y md lbe participulla were localed in a moment in time, we are no Jonaer lbe people we were. 11 See a1ao Clifford, 1982; Solomon, 1985, pp. 133-140. despair. 20 I found these same contradictions in my work. I found that I need to learn how to negotiate in a world where contradictions exist. I found that teacher education needs to be able to figure out how to help future teachers negotiate within these contradictions also. This is no easy feat. Many theorists claim that we now know there are no longer laws that guarantee certainty and uniformity in the sciences or social sciences. Instead, open-endedness is a major quality of this post-modern framework (see Doll, 1992) • 19 This open-endedness is what I invite you into, this room where multiple realities and multiple interpretations are possible. Part of what makes liberatory education such a complex and challenging task is that one enters into the realm of human consciousness. Education for liberation attempts to transform individual and collective lives by transforming consciousness. As Starhawk (1993) reminds us, "Consciousness is the most stubborn substance in the cosmos, and the most fluid. It can be rigid as concrete, and it can change in an instant. A song can change it, or a story, or a fragrance wafting by on the wind" (p. 153). 19 A definilion of pollmodemiam that I bavo found helpful i■ found iD Roy (1994) SboUc and Demti ~ poo,toumu,n with lflOUl'JIUIII: •Polbnodcrnilm, u a form of cultural criticiam and u a bi■torica1 coaditioa, clirocdy cballonp■ the project of moderai■m [by qllCllioaina] modcmilm'• reliance on Ibo nocion of lbe autonomout individual, the empba■i1 on the linearity of thoupt, the ae■thctic of rationality and order,• and lbe pnomincnco of WOllem bi■lory and thoupt (304). 'lbe pollmodem view of loarncr■ u difforomly •,oodored, raced, c1uaot•-eacb learner alway■ and already ■illla&ed iD race, c1ua, and ,ender comm, ndtiply ovoriappm, and uurconnectm,, and f'requonlly iD conflict .••. (p. 200) 21 Liberatory education seeks to transform consciousness, the students' and the teacher educator's. Therefore, no longer can the teacher educator be a transmitter of information. "The teacher's role will no longer be viewed as causal, but as transformative ••• learning will be an adventure in meaning making" (Soltis, 1992, p. xi). The adventure in meaning making will be a communal enterprise, where the teacher educator and the students are transformed together. If teacher education could help future teachers regard teaching and learning as an adventure in negotiating the complexity, ambiguity (Cohen, 1988; Lortie, 1975) and disorder (Finley, 1988) which exists in the world, this would be transformative teacher education. But this means breaking down the dichotomous thinking so many of us have been schooled in. Dickens has helped me to outline the complexities and the paradoxes. My feminist imagination asks, How do we as teacher educators help future teachers create the best of times for all students and the epoch of belief in social justice for all? How do we create a season of Light, where no one is blind to injustices and inequity? To come closer to answering these questions would signal the best of times. Chesler (1989) writes at the end of her introduction, "In bringing you this book, I feel like a time-traveler turned messenger, a bearer of bad news. I wonder how you will receive it, I wonder what you will do" (p. xxxvii)? I 22 claim something slightly different, yet end with the same questions. By inviting you into this house, into this room, I, too, feel like a messenger. I am the bearer of good news and bad news, for I believe these are the "best of times, the worst of times, the age of wisdom, the age of foolishness ••• the season of Light, the season of Darkness, the spring of hope, the winter of despair." I tell of barriers and possibilities. I wonder how you will receive it. I wonder what you will do? 23 We can iaagine wo-n•s e.rclusion organized by the foraation of a circle aaong 11NUJ who attend to and 'treat as signi~icant only what .11en say. !'he circle of 11NUJ whose writing and talk was significant to each other ertends baclclfard as far as our records reach. What am were doing was relevant to am,· was written by am about aen ~or am. one another said. lfen listened and listened to what 2'hat is ho,r a tradition ~s foraed. A way of tb1ult:ing develops in this discourse through the .118di1.111 of the written and printed word as well as in speech. It has questions, solutions, thUl&s, styles, standards, ways of looking at the world. 2'hese are foraed as the circle of those present build on the work of the past. Fro• these circles woaen have been ercluded or adaitted only by a special license granted to a woaan as an individual and never as a representative of her ser. (S111.th, 1987, p. 18) Discern1.ng what action, attitude, and stance are really liberatory, for ourselves.and others, is alaost never easy. We have been confused and nsinforaed, have been taught since the cradle values which p.roaote our subordination rather than our liberation. 2'o a large ertent these learned values have even caught us up in the oppression of others. Because of this, we have to think and analyse and talk with each other endlessly about ho,r to understand the inforaation we have, ho,r to assess our feelings and desires, how to change ourselves; we have to thinlc together and discuss aaong ourselves what sorts of collective strategies are sound, are •cost effective,• are least prone to cooption, and so on. Everything is in question. Everything has to be created an&lf.(Frye, 1991, pp. 15- 16) CHAPTER I IIITO TBB WOMAN'S STUDY: WOMD'S LIVBS AS TBBORY Ill TBB MllIBG women working Together: or Don't Close That Door [W]e must first, quite literally, learn to see. To see what is there; not what we've been taught is there, not even what we might wish to find, but what is. We literally cannot see women through traditional science and theory. Learning to do so is no simple task; it is not simple even for feminists. The distorting perceptual and conceptual lenses of patriarchy are the lenses we have all been taught to look through; removing them is slow, sometimes painful and frightening as it opens our eyes to reality-without explanation; and it is often startling. It is also communal, not an individual task. As each one of us removes those lenses and is able to say what she sees, the world opens up for all of us: things begin to make sense. (Barbara Du Bois, 1979, pp. 109-110, emphasis in original) In this chapter I examine the barriers that exist for women working toward "woman-centered scholarship" (Du Bois, 1979, p. 108). I explore what it means to engage in feminist methodology and scholarship, for example, my own subjectivity as an integral part of this study. I also provide the data sources that I used. I explain why I have conceived of and written this text in the way that I have. In this chapter I also introduce you briefly to Piercy Sand, the teacher educator I studied. By allowing me into her classroom and into her life, she worked with me to conceive of what feminist imagination in teacher education could mean. Du Bois states that the task for women is to see differently and that this seeing is a communal task of women 24 25 working and learning and re-seeing together. Yet, herein lies a painful condition of women's lives. That is, women are often kept from, or keep themselves from, developing and maintaining communities of women in their lives. Research and scholarship are not exempt. The idea of women working together to "unlearn the myths that bind them" (Christensen, 1992) is not as commonplace or as accepted as one might assume. What does it mean for women to learn and build community together, community which honors and values women? Community as a construct means different things for women and for those who see women in community. Why do I highlight that a community of women is different in kind than a community of men and women? It is because women have been taught to align themselves with men, not other women. They have been taught that for economic, psycho-sexual, and intellectual community, the company of men is more essential than the company of women (see Lewis, 1990; Miller, 1986). Women have been left out of the circle of men and believe that to be of "worth" means entering into that circle of men, reaching for that "special license granted to a woman as an individual and never as a representative of her sex" (Smith, 1987, p. 18). For a woman to align herself with women, to say she likes women, or to say she loves women in this homophobic and sexist culture rings warning bells for many. Odd, isn't 26 it, when one really thinks about it. caring for women, for women's conditions, caring enough about women to take them seriously (Rich, 1978) and wanting the best for them is so contrary to this culture, a culture that Dworkin (1974) calls "woman hating." This culture does not promote or educate women to love each other, or to work with and for each other. Women are trained to be male-centered and male identified, versus woman-centered or woman-identified (see Eisenstein, 1983; Radicalesbians, 1973). I share with you some vignettes from this study and from other sources to accentuate that women in the company of other women is not as customary as one might hope for. Piercy told me a story about telling a colleague of hers, a male philosophy professor, about the work we were doing together. She told him that I had been a student of Marilyn Frye's (a philosophy professor and also an "out" lesbian). Be said, "I think you better leave your door open when this woman comes in." She just laughed in response, not taking his warning seriously. Yet, what if she had been homophobic? What if someone suggesting that I could be lesbian would have frightened her? Would she have worked with me? Could this have harmed our work together? Are labels like lesbian one of the mechanisms used by the sex/gender system to keep women apart? Instead of dismissing his comment as my first inclination might be, I need to pay attention to a comment 27 like his. His doubts may also reflect doubts others might have about our work together. Comments like the philosophy professor's alert us to the homophobic, heterosexist, and sexist culture that still exists in the nineties (see Pharr, 1988; Bunch, 1987). I must remember that many women still fear the term lesbian. Klein (1983) reminds us, "Because, ideally, our work is undertaken in groups, we should not underestimate the barriers that keep women from working with each other" (p. 100). A little more than ten years after Klein forewarned women, women working with each other still churns a homophobic reaction in some observers. If woman-centered community and scholarship is to be created we need to understand how "lesbian" is used as an undermining tool to women's work: Lesbian is the word, the label, the condition that holds women in line. When a woman hears this word tossed her way, she knows she is stepping out of line. She knows she has crossed the terrible boundary of her sex role. She recoils, she protests, she reshapes her actions to gain approval. Lesbian is a label invented by the Man to throw at any women who dares to be his equal, who dares to challenge his prerogatives (including that of all women as part of the exchange medium among men), who dares to assert the primacy of her own needs •••• Affixing the label lesbian not only to a woman who aspires to be a person, but also to any situation of real love, real solidarity, real primacy among women is a primary form of divisiveness among women: it is a condition which keeps women within the confines of the feminine role, and it is the debunking\scare term that keeps women from forming any primary attachments, groups or associations among ourselves •••• As long as male acceptability is primary--both to individual and to the movement as a whole--the term lesbian will be used effectively against women. (Radicalesbians, 1973, p. 241-243) Another question raised by the philosophy professor's 28 caution is, What if I was a lesbian? Would this have affected my work with Piercy? I am reminded of Bunch's (1987) statement that "Male society defines lesbianism as a sexual act, which reflects men's limited view of women: they think of us only in terms of sex" (p. 161). As Piercy quoted him, I am reminded that in 1992, as I collected my data, homophobia and heterosexism were pervasive, and "smart" people (like this philosophy professor) were not exempt from the myths surrounding these issues. In 1994 as I write this dissertation, I realize that academicians still have their own myths to unlearn about women working together. Grumet (1988) states, "Sexual difference is not a mere anatomical decoration on the surface structure of personality but central to the personality's experience of the world" (p.46). I can think of four examples that elucidate this problem even further. Two that Marilyn Frye told her class in 1990 were as follows: She and another woman were sitting in a restaurant eating dinner. A man approached and asked "Why are you girls eating all alone?" She then told that on a Saturday night with a dorm full of women--the lament heard loudly is, "We are all alone on a Saturday night." A recent coaent by a woman in her all-woman support group, highlights this problem even further, "I don't want to be With a bunch of women, it'll just be a hen party" (Mary, January, 1994, private communication). Finally, Lynne 29 Cavazos told me (July 7, 1994) that when she suggested to a woman she worked with that they form a woman's discussion group about science, the woman's reply was, "I would rather have men in the group. I like men." It seems clear to me that part of what we need to teach each other and our women students is that caring about women means caring about oneself, and that caring about oneself means caring about women. It seems that we need to create circles of women who attend to and treat as significant what women say, a circle of women whose writing and talk is significant to each other, where what women are doing is relevant to women, where women listen to one another and write with and for one another. I must also not underestimate the taken-for-grantedness of the male as norm (see Miller, 1986; Spender, 1985; Rich, 1973-1974) in work environments and how it is sometimes seen as odd or inconsequential that a woman would want to study women and deal specifically with feminist issues. This kind of thinking afflicts not only men but women also. As Fetterley (1987) states, "As readers and thinkers and scholars, women are taught to think as men, to identify with a male point of view, and to accept as normal and legitimate a male system of values" (as cited in Obbink, 1992, p. 39). Miller (1986) explains that in the realm of the academy women are still second-class study subjects, and also are invisible in most of the disciplines: 30 Most members of the professional and academic world still do not consider the study of women to be serious work. They view it as secondary or peripheral at best. They do not perceive the obvious implications for the total human community, for all society, for men as well as women. or perhaps they glimpse this profundity and perceive it as threatening. Perhaps this fear accounts in part for their disparagement of this work, even when some of it is brilliant and almost all of it stimulating. (p. xvii) Almost ten years have passed since Miller wrote this and one would assume much has changed. However, when women do start questioning why women are invisible, ignored, or erased in a certain field, responses from others may be to blame the questioner. Lynne Cavazos tells a story about being a student in a graduate class and challenging a man in the class about the androcentric nature of science. Other women added to her challenges. On the way out of class the man said to Lynne, "How did I end up in a class with so many man-haters" (February 6, 1992)? The preeminence of men in scholarship is not often questioned. For example, in my own teacher education graduate work there were not many opportunities to uncover the ways in which research and scholarship were male centered and did not adequately reflect women's knowledge or experience. Smith (1987) looks at this androcentrism: In the field of education research itself, our assumptions are those of a world seen from men's position in it. Turn to that classic of our times. Philippe Ari~s•s centuries of Childhood. Interrogate it seriously from the standpoint of women. Ask, should this book not be retitled Centuries of the Childhood of Hen? or take Christopher Jenck's influential book entitled Inequality. Should this not be described as an examination of the educational system with respect 31 to its implications for inequality among men. The very terms in which inequality is conceived are based on men's occupations, men's typical patterns of career and advancement •••• The problem is not a special, unfortunate, an accidental omission of this or that field, but a general organizational feature of our kind of society. (p. 22) In the vignettes mentioned above there are important implications for women working with women. If groups do not have a male presence, the women are "all alone," that is, they are working without the benefit of men (see Murphy, 1991). Male approval syndrome (Frye, 1990, private communication) is something that keeps women from seeking out other women to work and learn with. The deep invisibility of androcentric reality, including research, often does not alert women to the need for women to discover and recover their own realities and experiences. In the academic profession "women contest most directly the old norms denying the power of female minds, and they meet most directly the current forms of ancient resistance to their efforts" (Aisenberg & Harrington, 1988, p.5). This connects to the demographics of faculties in the academy: "Three out of every four professors are male, and nine out of ten are white and non-Hispanic •••• With Hispanic and African-American women comprising only 1 percent of the faculty ••• " (Sadker and Sadker, 1994, pp. 166-167). In education women earn more.doctorates than men, yet "where they claim almost 58 percent of the doctorates, they are only 45 percent of the faculty" (Sadker and Sadker, 1994, p. 167). 32 We should never underestimate the barriers that keep women separate from one another. I did take for granted the ways in which Piercy and I sought to work together, and did work together. The male philosophy professor was helpful in reminding me that women do not necessarily and with ease work together. In the "minute phenomenon" of his casual comment, _he reminded me of what Rich (1979) entreats women to do: To question everything. To remember what it has been forbidden even to mention. To come together telling our stories, to look afresh at, and then to describe for ourselves •••• To do this kind of work takes a capacity for constant active presence, a naturalist's attention to minute phenomena, for reading between the lines, watching closely for symbolic arrangements •••• (Rich, 1979, pp. 13-14) Piercy and I studied, worked, and learned together. As women we learned from one another, we entrusted one another with deep felt emotions and ideas. This alone was a political act. This may sound dramatic, but when I look at the ways in which women are encouraged to affiliate and align themselves with men instead of women in most realms, it was political. I use political as Millett (1970) does: The word "politics" is enlisted here when speaking of the sexes ••• Groups who rule by birthright are fast disappearing, yet there remains one ancient and universal scheme for domination of one birth group by .another--the scheme that prevails in the area of sex ••• whereby males rule females. Through this system a most ingenious form of "interior colonization" has been achieved •••• However muted its present appearance may be, sexual domination obtains nevertheless as perhaps the most pervasive ideology of our culture and provides its most fundamental concept of power. (pp. 32-33) 33 This dissertation is an attempt to declare that women as Subjects of study are serious and important contributions to the world of teaching teachers. They are not peripheral, they are not secondary. We are women teaching primarily women, who teach boys and girls. It is important that the sex/gender system is taken into account, not as a subtext to be ignored, but as an important text to be considered. What was complex and intricate about studying a woman, being myself a woman, is that I was theorizing and writing about a sex/gender system within a sex/gender system, having been shaped by a sex/gender system. As women, Piercy and I have been objects, who tried to make ourselves subjects (which we essentially were), but we had internalized objectification in innumerable ways (see de Beauvoir, 1952/1974). I was also trying to study other subjects as subjects not as objects. However, I had internalized ways of observing that treats those I •watched" as objects and not as subjects. As Mies (1983) tells, women in academia will realize that their own existence as women and scholars is a contradictory one. As women, they are affected by sexist oppression together with other women, and as scholars they share the privileges of the (male) academic elite. out of this split existence grows a double consciousness which must be taken into account when we think about a new methodology. Women scholars have been told to look at their contradictory existence, i.e., at their subjective being as women as an obstacle and a handicap to "pure" and "objective" research. Even while studying women's questions they were advised to suppress their emotions, their subjective feelings of involvement and identification with other women in 34 order to produce "objective" data. (p. 120) I was also theorizing about a race and class system, within a race and class system, having been shaped by a race and class system. At times this boggled my mind. There were moments when this was so difficult to write about because I second-guessed myself, aware of the caveats and qualifications I needed to mention, yet needing to write in the midst of the complexity and ambiguity. This writing was difficult and it suggests the difficulty that Piercy and I experienced when we spoke of these issues: we were trying to "see" clearly what is in fact very complex. As Frye states, "A clear picture of a fuzzy line is still a fuzzy line" (private communication, February, 1994). The father tongue has so influenced the language that I am able to use that finding the mother tongue in my writing was difficult. Spender (1985) states: Language helps form the limits of reality. It is our means of ordering, classifying and manipulating the world •••• Having learnt the language of a patriarchal society we have also learnt to classify and manage the world in accordance with patriarchal order and to preclude many possibilities for alternative ways of making sense of the world. (p. 3) Therefore, I am aware that the very ways in which I attempt to tell the story of Piercy, her students, and myself are limited by a language that constructs and reflects the world according to male norms and male reality. The effort to use a language that often does not speak for women but rather about them means that I am constantly aware of how saturated 35 in symbol and connotation the words that I use are, and the symbology and connotations are not usually favorable to women (see Adams, 1990; Spender, 1985; Mills, 1989; Miller and Swift, 1988). Du Bois states: The values and epistemology of the researcher inform each phase of the process, and contrary to general ideas of strict scientific neutrality, the process of science-making in fact involves interpretation, theory making, and thus values, in each of its phases. "Naming" is probably the first order of interpretation in science--the naming of the question, the naming of one's observations, and so on--and naming, the capacity to name what we see, is, as a matter of language, inherently expressive of culture. In science as in society, the power of naming is at least two-fold: naming defines the quality and value of that which is named--and it also denies reality and value to that which is never named, never uttered. That which has no name~ that for which we have no words or concepts, is rendered mute and invisible: powerless to inform our consciousness of our experiences, our understanding, our vision; powerless to claim its own existence. (Du Bois, 1979, pp. 107-108) I have made declarations, aware of how limited my language was to get across all the nuances and subtleties of the theory and study at hand. The effort to tease out what I meant to say and how I could say it was a source of excitement and challenge in this work, although at times also a source of frustration. Seeking out the wild questions, the interconnected "whys" unfragmented by the fathers• philosophies, is the way beyond mere escape and into enspiriting process. This requires hard work, for the categories of Aristotle, of Kant, of ancient myths and contemporary -ologies have shattered the deepest questions, making them seem disparate, unrelated. The questions--such as Why? If? When? Where? How? How come? Why not?--have been frozen. The natural flow among them has been intercepted. Males have posed the questions; they have placed the questions, tagged and labeled, into the glass cases of mental museums. They 36 have hidden the Questions. The task for feminists now is con-questioning, con-questing for the deep sources of the questions, seeking a permanently altering state of consciousness. (Daly, 1978, p. 345) Seeking out the "interconnected 'whys'" was something that I thought I was doing as I shaped this study. I thought that I had placed my own questions, I thought I had uncovered some of the hidden questions, yet it was only in doing the fieldwork and looking deeply in the mirror that I saw my own questions had been fragmented and undergirded by the father tongue. This study's proposed title, "The Journey of a Teacher Educator With a Feminist Perspective"--seemed to lay out my path in a clear fashion. That was also the danger--that in the "journey" that I was proposing, a search for the one true feminist perspective, I missed the deep questions, the ones I didn't even know I was looking for. I believe I have found new questions, ones posed and placed with the help of the participants and myself. Yet there remain some frozen Whys, Ifs, Whens, Wheres, Hows, How comes, Why nots, for I have been schooled well in the lessons of the fathers: "Under patriarchy, Method has wiped out women's questions so totally that even women have not been able to formulate our own questions to meet our own experiences" (Daly, 1985, pp. 11-12). I need to keep learning and teaching the lessons of the mothers. This is a constant struggle. This dissertation is only a small piece of that process. "Questions, it seems, contain enormous power ••• whose voices 37 we hear, which details we attend to, which perspectives we take as our own. Ultimately, our questions inform and are informed by political issues" (Obbink, 1992, p. 43). Entering th• Piel4 As Corinna enters the field, she takes off the buttons that are pinned to her coat. _These buttons declare her politics. "Live and let live, be a vegetarian," "If she says no it's rape," and "No fur." She takes them off because she knows that they are red flags. They would declare who she is before anyone has a chance to know her, and this could alienate those people with whom she wants to speak, jeopardizing her field work. She leaves her buttons at home but not her politics, her beliefs. 20 In many ways this dissertation is about leaving those buttons at home, but not being able to leave the beliefs at home. The personal is political is pedagogical. This vignette surfaces two issues for me which are central to this dissertation and its focus on teacher education with feminist imagination. First, feminist scholarship says outright that a person cannot leave her politics at the door when she enters a classroom to do research. There is no such thing as bias-free scholarship. Who we are as people is in part who we are as observers. I cannot and will not pretend that my beliefs and values do not affect what I see, hear, and experience. [F]eminism argues that "the personal", lived experience is intensely political and immensely important 20 I uae lbe voice of lbe dwd penon in lbia particular piece to dramatiu lbe penoaaVpolitical epilode and to create lbe tooe of boin, oblln'Cld by ID oullidor. Michael Michell abarod lbia technique wilb me. He leamecl lbia lecbnique from VIC10r v.uaau.va, Jr. (1993) Bomlrap1: Prom ap American Academic of Color. 38 politically. (I]n order to examine "the personal" ••• it's necessary to locate not only the researched but also the researcher, thus making her extremely vulnerable in ways usually avoided by researchers like the plague •••• Traditionally, social science identifies people's understandings of their experiences as deficient or incompetent. The only certain way to avoid doing this is to move away from presenting "them" as the focus of the research and instead present ourselves in the form of our understandings about what's going on, by examining these in any given context. We must make ourselves vulnerable and not hide behind what "they" are supposed to think and do. "Vulnerability" thus makes absolutely explicit the centrality of researchers in all research processes. All research necessarily comes to us through the active and central involvement of researchers, who necessarily interpret and construct what's going on. There is no other way to "do" either research or life. Wise, 1983, pp. 194-196) (Stanley & The assumptions I have and that are embedded within my writing, I will attempt to uncover. As I unearth my own assumptions I can become clearer about the myths I need to unlearn. This is part of learning to learn. I invite the reader to question the assumptions I have not been able to question or uncover; the ones that are so deep as to be invisible to me. We will look at all questions and issues from as many sides as we can think of; but I am inescapably a feminist •••• You must question my assumptions, my sources, my information; that is part of learning to learn. You should also question your own assumptions. Skepticism about oneself is essential to continued growth and a balanced perspective. (Rosenfelt, 1973, as cited in Rich, 1973-74, p. 145) Second, why did I feel that I needed to leave those particular buttons, those politics "at home?" Was it a lack of courage on my part not to shout out what I believe? That is probably part of it, but there is also the issue of 39 colleges of education being conservative and conserving institutions. "Radical" ideas rarely first surface in the field of education. Many of the people who enter education are White, 21 middle-class, young people who have been and are privileged, and they do not necessarily see themselves as social activists or change agents. There is a great deal of scholarship on the unchanging nature of the teaching profession (see Jackson, 1986; Lortie, 1975; Cohen, 1988; Saranson, 1971; Weiler, 1988). Would I have felt the need to take off those buttons had I been walking into a center for women's studies somewhere? A sociology department? I am not sure. But there is a need to look at teacher educators who are attempting to teach and learn about issues of oppression and privilege in an institution which often seems to promote conservativism in an already conservative enterprise. As Giroux (1980) states: Bernstein and others have argued that schools are the primary agents of ideological control. This raises specific questions about teacher-education programs since they "train" those intellectuals who play pervasive and direct part in socializing students into the dominant society ••• schools do not transmit culture, instead they play a fundamental role in reproducing the dominant culture ••• teachers at all levels of schooling are part of an ideological region that has enormous importance in legitimizing the categories and social 21 I bave cboaen lO 111e the term "White" IDd c:apilalia it u Nieto (1992) 111,...aa: You will notice that the tormi White IDd Black, when med, are c:apitala.ed. I have cbOIOD IO do 10 becauae they refer IO ,roup1 of people •••• ,.. 111cb, they daerve IO be c:apitala.ed. Altboup tbe■e are not the acielllitic term■ for race, term■ ■uch u Ncp,id IDd Caucuian are no lonpr u■ecl in everyday apeec:b or are rejected by the people IO whom they refer. Tbeae more commoaly u■ecl word■, tbeo, llhould be treated u the term■ of preference. (p. 17) 40 practices of the dominant society. (Giroux, 1980 p. 410) Giroux asks, "How does the dominant ideology manifest itself in teacher education programs?" (1980, p. 410). This is an important question. I pose another one: How can teacher education with feminist imagination promote the unlearning and unteaching of the dominating ideology? Teacher educators and students are not entities that merely react to a system. They are not "merely social puppets in the machinery of domination" (Giroux, 1980. p. 404). Instead, they shape and alter it; they create it. I wanted to find out what a teacher educator who cared about feminism, and who was committed to confronting issues of privilege and oppression, thought about, reflected upon, and what her practice was like. My task became how to create ways of doing research with and .f21.: a teacher educator (Noddings, 1986) that would illuminate the ways in which a teacher education class could be a site of struggle around key feminist issues, instead of a place where these issues were unaddressed or glossed over. How to'accomplish this without falling into the trap of "methodolotry" (Daly, 1985) became the challenge. Xetho4olotry, Xetho4ology, and Xetho4: Xetho4ology With l'-ini ■t Iaagination i• "Bot Your l'ather•• Para4iqa" The tyranny of methodolatry hinders new discoveries. It prevents us from raising questions never asked before and from being illumined by ideas that do not fit into pre-established boxes and forms. The 41 worshippers of Method have an effective way of handling data that does not fit into the Respectable categories of Questions and Answers. They simply classify it as nondata, thereby rendering it invisible. (Daly, 1985, p. 11) "A declaration to stop putting the answers before the Questions" is Daly's (1978, p.xv) summons to women--to engage in studying women. So often the answers have been placed before us and we have not even had a chance to ask our own questions. This dissertation came out of a yearning on my part to grapple with what it might mean to be a feminist in a teacher education class. I began with questions. However, I did not know that I had a whole slew of answers deep within me. I was to find this out. I believe that I was able to stop those answers and return once again to the questions, in the process revising my own conception of A feminism as feminist imagination. My conception of feminist imagination in research and scholarship now is that it is a way of seeing, of looking at a classroom and the human beings within it. It is seeing the sex/gender, race, and class system being enacted inside and outside of classrooms and having a heightened awareness of their manifestations. It is a commitment to listening to the participants and struggling to make sense of their lived experiences. It is about letting participants speak of their own reality. Yet, it is more than this. It is examining those lived experiences and voices with feminist imagination, uncovering the ways in which sex/gender, race, 42 and class systems inscribe on all our psyches. It means trying to tease out the ways in which androcentric theories and ways of seeing have defined all of us, and how to create theories that better describe women's lives. Feminist imagination is trying to stretch to see how the personal, the political, and the pedagogical meld in individual lives: "Recognising that life cannot be separated from knowledge ••• that we are knowledge, nothing out there ••• who we are means what we know. My life, my biography [is] inseparable from what I know" (Spender, 1983, p. 30). Feminist imagination means that as the researcher I need/ed to use "methodological humility" and "methodological caution": By the requirement of "methodological humility" I mean that the "outsider" must always sincerely conduct herself under the assumption that, as an outsider, she may be missing something, and that what appears to her to be a "mistake" on the part of the insider may make more sense if she had a fuller understanding of the context. By the requirement of "methodological caution," I mean that the outsider should sincerely attempt to carry out her attempted criticism of the insider's perceptions in such a way that it does not amount to, or even seem to amount to, an attempt to deny or dismiss entirely the validity of the insider's point of view. (Narayan, as cited in Warren, 1989, p. 50) I sought "methodological humility" and "methodological caution" at each stage of the research: the observing, the gathering, the analyzing, and the writing. I tried to take a methodological step backwards, instead of judging what I saw with the assumption that I had the final word on feminism, I tried to figure out what I saw said about g . 43 The methodological humility and caution relied heavily on listening and hearing what Piercy said, and then examining my own Self in relation to what I had heard. In this study I wanted to hear the participants make sense of their lives, given their own personal, political, and pedagogical "truths." However, in all qualitative studies it is sometimes difficult to discern whose voice is really being heard, the insiders• or the author's. The author is the one who gives the final shape to the information she has seen and heard. She is in the privileged position of te~ling the story she believes she has witnessed (see Clifford and Marcus, 1986). As the translator of this story, I had "the final authority in determining the subject's meanings--it is then the former [the translator/author/I] who becomes the real author of the latter" (Asad, 1986, p.162). Piercy and I talked about the nature of ideas and the authorship of those ideas. I worried that the ideas we had together conceived of I would "author." She wrote in her journal the following: You can't help but claim our thoughts as your own--to me I believe in what Foucault refers to as "anonymous authorship" ••• our ideas develop in community, with community exchange thoughts become more complex- intellectual caring/conflict bring us to deeper levels (undated, Sunday, 7:00 a.m.) of thinking. I am in the privileged position of not only claiming ideas as my own, when they were actually developed collectively, but I get to decide which ideas get developed and which are unaddressed. 44 I invited Piercy to write an epilogue, to give her a chance to speak in her own voice completely, about what I have written for, with, "about" her, her students, and myself. This is an attempt to have her tell about her own growth and change. The dilemma of any work such as this is that words freeze moments in time, yet identities are continually moving through time, evolving and transforming. Le Guin (1976/1987) speaks to this in her piece "Is Gender Necessary? Redux." She re-visits and revises an earlier piece of writing. She lets the older version stand and writes the additions in italics, the past and present standing side by side. She states in her introduction, "It doesn't seem right or wise to revise an old text severely, as if trying to obliterate it, hiding the evidence that one had to go there to get here" (p. 7). And so, this dissertation is one moment in time that tells of what we thought and felt in the past. However, it allows us to reflect on who we were and who we are. It becomes a text from the past that can speak to the present and "echoes forward" (Featherstone, private communication, 1994). Data source ■ an4 Collection Feminism influenced each stage of this work. It influenced the way that I collected data because I wanted the teacher educator and the students to tell me what they wanted and needed. I emphasized interviews in this study, 45 for as Zavarzadeh and Morton state, the power of interviews is that they "affirm the belief that people contain knowledge" (cited in Lather, 1991, p. 113). I attempted to truly listen to what the participants said and, as much as possible, allow them to "write" the text. Their voices suggested the themes and motifs, their ways of being told me about what seemed important to document and write about. I conducted in-depth interviews with the students in the class. I conducted in-depth conversations with the teacher educator. I do not call them interviews because they were dialogical in nature~ There is controversy about the "right" way to conduct an interview. Theorists like Seidman (1991) claim that one should not lead the interviewee and should remain distant and detached. Yet, others claim that interviews are political acts, and should be like conversations. Brunner says that in-depth interviews are a relationship that is built over time with shared vulnerability. The interviewer is a participant observer. This kind of interviewing is reciprocal (private communication, 1992). Piercy and I felt the latter position made more sense for our work. She asked that we engage in dialogues, where I had as much right to create the agenda as she did. With the students I did two rounds of interviews (see Appendices F & G), the first round at the end of February and the second round at the end of April and beginning of 46 May. I was able to interview eleven students two times. These 22 interviews were transcribed. With two students I was only able to do the first interview; these interviews were also transcribed. One student, Darlene, I did not interview on the first round, .but after her participation in the conflict that is a focus of this study, I especially wanted to interview her. I interviewed her on the second round and this was also transcribed. The students• interviews were fairly structured but open enough for the students to tell what they wanted. I tried to create interview questions, and opportunities during the interview, that would allow the students to raise any issue they felt important and be able to talk about their thoughts and feelings. (See Appendices F & G for illustrations of this.) In the first interview I asked questions like, "If you were to explain to a friend about what you are learning in ED 277, what would you tell the friend?" "Tell me what you think or feel about ED 277." I also asked some specific target questions that were less open-ended to be able to address issues that were important to me, for example, how the students felt about the ethos of the class. One such question asked the students to place themselves on a continuum from very comfortable to uncomfortable. The questions in the second interview were similar but were a little less structured toward specific feelings like "comfort." I asked questions such as "How do you feel about 47 the way that gender issues were discussed in ED 277"? ("How about race?" "Class?") "How did you feel about the issues which were raised in this class?" I also tried to personalize the second interview since there were individual issues that arose throughout the semester that I was familiar with and that I wanted to ask the students about. For example, Ellen seemed very uncomfortable when Piercy went around pointing out people who spoke and those who did not, and I asked her about that. And I asked Dan about the time when Darcy came as a guest lecturer to speak about gay and lesbian issues and he seemed very uncomfortable. All the conversations with Piercy were open-ended. We met and spoke on eighteen occasions, for at least two hours each time. I transcribed all of these conversations. The process of transcribing each conversation was invaluable because it allowed me to hear Piercy•s voice inflection, intonation, and tone. For example, her adventurous spirit came through in not.only what she said but also the way she said it. Piercy and I created a midterm feedback form (Appendix D) and had students fill them out anonymously. Fifteen students filled out these midterm feedback forms out of the 22 students. The final feedback was also jointly created but was not anonymous. Eighteen out of 22 students handed in the final feedback forms. 48 I received copies of the college's standard feedback forms on the instructor. I observed 21 classes, which were all the classes except the second class of the semester and a two week period in March. I took fieldnotes on all of the classes I observed. All classes, except the first, were audiotaped and videotaped, including the ones during the two week period in March. I received copies of the students• papers, journals, tests, and essays. Piercy and I also wrote dialogue journals to one another. The Lillit• of F-ini ■t I-gination an4 Ky own Situate4n••• Detailed though this data collection effort was, this study is constrained within a history of its own, that is, as an investigator I am a product and an agent of the culture in which I am situated. No matter how far I stretch my feminist imagination there are doors that are locked, windows that are closed, and keys that I do not have. As Friedan suggests: [N]o social scientist can completely free himself from the prison of his own culture; he can only interpret what he observes in the scientific framework of his own time. This is true even of the great innovators. They cannot help but translate their revolutionary observations into language and rubrics that have been determined by the progress of science up until their time. Even those discoveries that create new rubrics are relative to the vantage point of the creator. (1963, p. 105-106) I am a White, middle-class, heterosexual woman who lives with a man, who works with teachers-in-preparation, who studied a woman similar in many ways to myself. This 49 made for an unusual insider/outsider status. My own historicity allowed me to see certain phenomena and not see others. "Insiders studying their own cultures offer new angles of vision and depths of understanding. Their accounts are empowered and restricted in new ways" (Clifford, 1986, p. 9). Being close to the subject matter I was studying, my own beliefs were even more likely to influence every stage of the process: (T]he closer our subject matter to our own life and experience, the more we can probably expect our own beliefs about the world to enter into and shape our work--to influence the very questions we pose, our conception of how to approach those questions, and the interpretations we generate from our findings. Bois, 1979, ·p. 105) (Du I also consider myself a "hybrid" (Cavazos, 1994, private communication) of an ecofeminist and a radical feminist.n By radical I mean, as Frye (1991) does, "to the root"; that is, I recognize that oppression and privilege n Warnn (1994) atca: "Ecolosical feminiam• ia ID umbrella term which caplUrel a variety of multicukural penpectivea oa Ille nature of Ille CODMCtioaa wldtln aocial l)'lteml of domination between lhoee human■ in IUbdomina.- or IUbordinate poaitiona, putic:ularly women, and Ille domination of noahuman nature. Fll'll imrocluced by FrlD\ioiae d'Eaul>oaoo in 1984 to delcribe women'• polemial to brina about ID ecoio,ical revolution (d'Eauboaae 1984: 213-52), "ecofemiaiam• hu come to refer to a variety of I0-<81led •woman-nature coanectioaa"-biatorical, empirical, conceptual, reliJioua, iMruy, political, clhical, cpiltemoio,ical, mcthodolop:al, and lbeorelica1 CODDDCtioaa OD how ODI INatl WOIDlll and Ille ear1b. Ecofemiaill aaalyau of Ille twin dominatioaa of women and nature include CODlidentioaa of Ille domination of people of color, children, and Ille uoderclau. (p. 1) Frye (1991) talb about what radical femiaiam meaaa to her: lT]he lerm 0 ndical feminiat• ia a term which almolt no one in the academy would UN to name or locate henelf. Oddly out-of-touch, I lhoupt 0 ndical femiailt• meant "feminill to the root,• "femiailt all lbe way,• 0 eX1remely feminiat, • or even "extremiat feminilt. • I lhouJht dult if you toot femiaiam ablolutely aerioualy, embnced it c:oun1eoualy and io,ically (croae-lo,ically or lelbianic ao,ically) to ita c:oacluaioaa, you were a Radical Feminiat. ... 1'bia union and imc,ntioo of analyaia and action, thia llwtl theory, doea not aepante politic• from liviaa- Every ID0lllellll of livm, hu meaninp conaected with our oppreAioa, our reaiataoce, our libentioa ••.• Radical feminiltl, I mean extremill feminiltl, want to produce auc:h theory, for Ibey waal all their penooa1 raoun:..-boclily eacflY, ardor, inlellipace, uadcntaodiaa, vitality-CO be available and eoppd in lbe creation of a world for women .... (pp. 12-15) 50 direct and redirect many of the relationships that are possible between human beings, and that power relations undermine and harm the connectedness between all peoples. The reason that it is important for me to also embrace ecofeminism is its explicit addressing of the ways in which nature, and all the living beings within nature, are arbitrarily hierarchically arranged. Ecofeminism honors and respects the interrelatedness and intermingling of all life, envisioning a new tomorrow (see Warren, 1994; Griffin, 1978; Adams, 1990; Ruether, 1975; Donovan, 1990a, 1990b; Daly and Caputi, 1987). Radical feminism and ecofeminism together seem to speak for the voiceless and the silent, and to see and show the invisible: These words are written for those of us whose language is not heard, whose words have been stolen or erased, those robbed of language, who are called voiceless or mute, even the earthworms, even the shellfish and the sponges, [and] for those of us who speak our own language •••• (Griffin, 1978, dedication) We are the bird's eggs. Bird's eggs, flowers, butterflies, rabbits, cows, sheep; we are caterpillars; we are leaves of ivy and sprigs of wallflower. We are women. We rise from the wave. We are gazelle and doe, elephant and whale, lilies and roses and peach, we are air, we are flame, we are oyster and pearl, we are girls. We are woman and nature. And he says he cannot hear us speak. But we hear. (Griffin, 1978, p.1) At this moment a Muse cups her ear and tells all to be silent. She says she Hears thundering of hooves, flapping of wings, splashing of flippers. coming!" she cries. (p. 53) •••• [We are] adventuring and Questing for the Lost Words. We are assured by the animals that we can find these and that when we Sound them, we will be Heard. (Daly and Caputi, 1978, p. 55) "Our parade Guides are here." "They're 51 My own subjectivity helped and hindered the ways in which I saw the participants in the context I was studying. Rogers (1993) writes that it is becoming more common for researchers and feminist researchers to locate themselves in regard to their gender, race, class, and sometimes sexual identity, 23 but not telling much more about themselves. Rogers states that it is important.for the researcher to include her own subjective voice. "Writing in an artistic, subjective voice is not an impediment to theory building but allows me to build theory and use theory to make suggestions for educational practice" (p. 266). I have sought to weave my own voice throughout the text of this study because this study is hot only about a teacher educator and the students she was teaching, but also a study of a deep learning experience about my conceptions of feminism and teacher education. I use the metaphor of a mirror to relay that as I looked at Piercy and her studenbs, I also looked at myself. As Rogers (1993) states: A feminist methodologist ••• rejects the belief that one can separate the "subjectivity" of the researcher from the "object" of her research and, in fact, creates research practices that close the inevitable distance between the researcher and the participants in the research. (p. 266) The research that I wanted to be involved in was not to be something done ~o the teacher educator, or on the teacher 23 1,_ tbe term •xual idemity u many uae the term "•xual orielllation. • I uae the term •xual idemity for I believe that it affinm and validale1 that beiDa Leabian, Biaexual, Gay, or Trampader (aee Sean, 1994) ia I!!! juat a mailer of •xuality, but include■ many more dimellliolll of beiDa a human beia, within a culture that ia homophobic and beleroacxiat. 52 educator, but something done with and for the teacher educator (Noddings, 1986). Piercy and I took seriously Lather's (1991) idea that, "reciprocity in research design is a matter of both intent and degree ••• what I suggest is that we consciously use our research to help participants understand and change their situations" (p. 57). This was not merely a study where I observed at a distance the teacher educator. Rather I interacted with her by giving my opinions, pushing her thinking, challenging her ideas, as she did for me. This came about because of an explicit conversation we had early in our work where I asked her what kind of relationship she wanted. I asked her if she wanted to be able to just talk and I would listen, or whether she wanted us to engage in dialogues. She wanted the latter. So I decided not to engage in "contemplative, uninvolved 'spectator knowledge'"(Mies, 1983, p. 124). Instead I decided to engage in active and involved knowledge construction. Dialogue an4 Dinner at Daly'• Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education. (Freire, 1968/1985, p. 81) The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things that you get ashamed of, because words diminish them--words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure. And you may make revelations that will cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny 53 way not understanding what you said at all, or why you thought you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear. (unknown author) Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there is no real education. But those things that we care so deeply about, those passions that lie deep within, are often not included in our dialogues. If this is so, I then question what happens to the education of the spirit, the heart, the soul, and the intellect. To have meaningful dialogue do we not need to speak with our hearts and our souls? In certain communities this can occur. I believe this occurred between Piercy and myself. There was trust and connectedness, of the soul, heart, and spirit. We were able to honor in each other all the human passions, all those emotions that make us human: anger, fear, pain, sadness, conflict, and laughter. Early in our work together, I worried that our comfortable conversations may not have been providing the kind of "research" that Piercy might have anticipated or wanted. I talked to her about the ways in which we were communicating. During the second week of the semester we had the following conversation: Corinna: One of the things that I want to talk about tonight because it may change our interactions, but it may not because I read your journal entry where you said you 'felt heard by me. [The way that it has been is] that you would say these really neat things about your belief system and then I would say things and we had this long and really good conversation, I was worried that you weren't feeling heard. I really want 54 to clarify with you what you want our interaction to be like and I read the article you wrote, the idea of co generative dialogue and that's sort of the impression that I had in terms of what we had. That we both come with things that we want to talk about and things to say. Piercy: Oh yeah. And I feel totally comfortable in challenging you when I disagree, and I read that into you, and I like that when you say, "Think about it this way." Corinna: That's what I wrote in my journal, you like that intellectual challenge and intellectual conflict. I really kind of worried, here's Piercy telling me all these really neat things about her belief system and I am jumping in. That was a tension for me, what is this research going to look like. I could be the interpretivist who just sits there and nods her head •••• Piercy: I hate that. Corinna: ••• and lets you surface everything. But actually I don't think that's collaborative. Piercy: I agree. Corinna: Okay. Piercy: It's funny because we talk about that in the class, Soltis and the interpretivists. doesn't smack to me [as collaborative). I say that that Corinna: What's so interesting about all of this is that all so interconnected, the personal, and the political, the public. The issues that you and I are dealing with, your students are dealing with, it's so enmeshed. Piercy: So interrelated. This conversation was important because Piercy asked for a collaborative, relational kind of research. In hindsight, it probably could not have been any different, given what I now know about her yearning for intellectual and emotional connection. Piercy wanted reciprocity in the 55 interaction. Lather (1991) captures an important aspect of the work that we did together: "Through dialogue and reflexivity, design, data and theory emerge, with data being recognized as generated from people in a relationship" (p. 72). Clandinin and Connelly (1988) say that collaborative research is similar to a friendship: [C]ollaborative research constitutes a relationship. In everyday life, the idea of friendship implies a sharing, an interpretation of two or more persons' spheres of experience. Mere contact is acquaintance ship, not friendship. The same may be said for collaborative research which requires a close relationship akin to friendship. (p. 281) This dissertation is about a search whereby two women with feminist commitments attempted to find new ways of being and learning with each other in order to do research, new ways for teacher educators to be with their students, and new ways of being in the world. Through our conversations we attempted to make sense of the issues we were struggling with and to construct theories through co generative dialogue. Piercy and I listened to one another. This does not mean that we always accurately heard one another, but we attempted to listen with what Daly (1985) calls an inner ear. Piercy wrote in her journal: I was thinking about our conversations together and how much I feel heard by Corinna •••• I hate being dismissed. I wonder if that isn't similar to saying being taken seriously •••• Somehow having you with me. Having you care about my students has to be the most gratifying, most exciting part of my life. This work hits pretty deep. I feel cared about- I crave depth. Noddings talks about caring that to me is intellectual 56 caring. There isn't any sincerer form of love than caring for a person intellectually in my mind. In a way that is what good teaching is--more than hearing, caring for another person's concerns. Helping them to see how their concerns are part of a community's larger conversation. (January 23, 1992) We became critical friends. Critical friends are those who foster another's intellectual, emotional, and psychological development with challenge and support. For Piercy intellectual caring was a sincere form of love, taking the person seriously and willing to engage with them in intellectual issues of import. We were able to both speak and be listened to, have our concerns attended to and attend to another's concerns. She linked this attending to another's concerns to the wider community, and how good teaching for her was that ability to care for another's concerns. Piercy and I spoke about the challenge and trust in our relationship during the first month of the study. Piercy had been relaying to me that she found a committee's questions "enjoyably challenging," but contrasted it with our relationship and how I questioned her about her practice: Piercy: When you challenge me, it is definitely a challenge of belief and a challenge of trust. There is a trust behind your challenge that I didn't feel in their challenges. There's a belief either I'm teachable or •••• We haven't explored that enough with each other to have total trust but, you know, there's an area that both of us wonder about each other's knowing and each other's sense, but underneath it all is a trust. It was a fascinating difference. I think Corinna: Can I just pick up on something, and I don't 57 mean to interrupt you, but one of the things and I think this is very interesting, the belief and the trust. Would this be putting words in your mouth or not, but that somehow we enter in good faith and in friendship? It's real interesting, there is this article of Maria Lugones called "Playfulness and World Traveling" where she talks about the ways in which White women and women of color can interact and it has to be entering in friendship. It has to be entering in good faith. And there is something about that that I think is really important because it changes the tone. Piercy: And you see, I think again this is where the political and personal, our forward view and both of our hopes is that together we are going to be able to make something that is going to be better. That we're going to develop a new vision of the world, [and it will be] better. That together we are gong to do this. So, part of our challenging of each other and uncovering our differences is going to lead us to being [better]. This relationship is positive and not threatening in a lot of ways. know that it could, we could have such a time with each other that we could, but I think we know we are going to be all right. We want it this way. But again, this is where the personal and the political comes in. I mean our conflict, we Piercy talked about the ways in which we challenged each other, all the while the challenge was undergirded with trust. Piercy was n·ot sentimental and naive, claiming that there was complete trust, for that takes years to develop. Yet we had a trust between us that allowed conflict and difference to exist. We worked together, with challenge and support, to conceive of what feminist imagination in teacher education could mean for better education and for a better world. Davis (1983) states that feminists need to listen to the complexity of traditional women's lives: It is as important for feminists to learn to listen as to be heard-to understand the complexity of ••• women•s lives as to present the alternatives of their own. 58 Otherwise, no one is "advanced"; we are all still in first grade. The challenge to us as teachers is ••• to listen to each other. (pp. 92-93) I broaden this idea to include all women's lives, including other feminists• lives, for this is a form of love and intellectual caring. By listening with an inner ear, Piercy and I learned much from one another. At Daly's we held up the mirrors for one another. Our conversations ran the gamut of the personal, the political, and the pedagogical. We struggled together to make sense of the constructs of equity, diversity, and oppression. During one of our conversations I told her that, in teacher education, I valued asking questions as a way to make sense of these issues. Piercy said that she thought education was about taking a position and then standing back and questioning the position rather than only asking the questions, for that seemed too timid to her. I changed my mind about merely asking questions, and agreed that taking a position and then questioning seemed to make more sense. And so in our conversations, we took our positions, stood back and questioned our notions of truth and visions of what teacher education could be. Delpit (1988) speaks to the kind of "special listening" that is needed for people to hear alternative view points. It is a listening that requires not only open eyes and ears, but open hearts and minds. We do not really see through our eyes or hear through our ears, but through our beliefs. To put our beliefs on hold is to cease to 59 exist as ourselves for a moment--and that is not easy. It is painful as well because it means turning yourself inside out, giving up your own sense of who you.are, and being willing to see yourself in the unflattering light of another's angry gaze. It is not easy, but it is the only way to learn what it might feel like to be someone else and the only way to start the dialogue ••• we must learn to be vulnerable enough to allow our world to turn upside down in order to allow the realities of others to edge themselves into our consciousness. ethnographers in the true sense. (p. 297) In other words, we must become All of our conversations took place over dinner. We would eat and talk, talk and eat. our interwoven conversations were so important.u It was over dinner that we debriefed and processed what happened in the classroom, and talked about the personal and the political, the personal and the pedagogical. I came to think of these talks as "Dinner at Daly's."" As Grumet (1989) states, "along with the soup and salad, Abigail served murmurs and memories of warmth and intimacy" (p. 21). so, too, warmth and intimacy was served up at Daly's. Yet, all the while we realized that as "Bromidic though it may sound, some questions don't have answers, which is a terribly difficult lesson to learn" (Graham, cited in Partnow, 1978, p. 349, emphasis in original). Across the dinner table, we talked out loud about our personal lives and our educational experiences. Lessing U I lat. lbia idea of ullelWO¥Oll c:oavenatioal from die tide of I boot by Newmu (1991) lmerwoyep cogyenatiom: Learpjpg NI' 'Wba lbroym critigl Nftectiop. " I 1111 lbia pbrue for it reminda me of ID 111ic:le wriaen by Gnamet (11111111)', 1989), •Dinner ll Abipil'a: Nllllllrint Collabandoa· about I c:ollabonlive teac:her'1 lfOUP wbo would JO out to I IUIUfllll IDd .. , IDd talk. 60 (1994) argues that when a writer includes the personal she is writing about something much larger than just "the personal": [T]here was no way of not being intensely subjective ••• to recognize that nothing is personal, in the sense that it is uniquely one's own. Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions--and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas--can•t be yours alone. (Lessing, 1994, pp. xix-xx) We verbalized the seamless web of our lives, the personal, the political, and the pedagogical. The feminist phrases "the personal is political" (Hanisch as cited in Humm, 1990, p. 162) and the "political is personal" (Steinem, 1992, p. 17) come to mind. Yet a new set was forged for us as teacher educators with feminist imaginations: the personal is the pedagogical and the pedagogical is the personal, the political is pedagogical and the pedagogical is political. By studying our own lives, Piercy and I were entering into something much larger. This is how women's lives become theory in the making. Conceiving of lives as theory is "DZ your father's paradigm" (Lincoln, as cited in Lather, 1991, p. 113). Seeing women's lives as theory, and allowing interwoven conversations to inform that theory, is moving toward feminist imagination and toward a paradigm reconstruction. I named the restaurant Daly's where Piercy and I met, because of the inspiration feminist theorist and author Mary Daly has been to me. Playful and passionate, irreverent and 61 heretical, with words Daly topples entrenched hierarchies and the status quo. For example, in her and Caputi•s (1987) Websters' First New Intergalactic wickedary of the English Language they play with revered institutions. For example, they have entered the word "academentia" in their Wickedary which they define as "n: normal state of persons in academia, marked by varying and progressive degrees; irreversible deterioration of faculties of intellectuals" (p.184). Daly turns the sex/gender, race, class, and sexual identity system on its head in the most delightful way. She outrages and infuriates some and teaches and inspires others. I think she is marvelous. The dinner conversations Piercy and I shared were enveloped in the aura of irreverence and passion. As Daly does, we, too, were trying to set oppressive systems on their respective heads. The name of the restaurant is also a tribute to Piercy•s irreverent and passionate nature. Her irreverence was actually a feminist tool, that is, she did not revere any particular dogma in her ways of understanding teaching and learning, and feminism. This irreverence helped Piercy move to new ways of seeing and thinking about issues. Piercy•s playfulness may be considered another feminist tool. As Frye states, being playful also implies that you don't have to have all the answers (private communication, 1994). This is part of the "practice of courage" that Rogers (1993) speaks to: 62 This practice involves the art of being playful and outspoken, and of being a·vulnerable and staunch fighter--someone who transgresses the conventions of feminine goodness. To engage in this practice would upset the structure qf formal education that preserve the status quo of our society. (p.291) While at Daly's, talking across our differences and our commonalities, I re-visioned my own conceptions of what it means to be a feminist--what I now call having feminist imagination. In Piercy•s classroom and at Daly's I learned about Piercy and at the same time gained some unexpected insights about myself. Daly's was where we spoke what we believed to be "true" about pedagogy, politics, and our personal lives. Th• "Style" of Thia Diailertation [T]his piece is not--will not be, cannot be- constructed or understood according to patriarchal literary standards or masculine literary tradition. This is women's writing; it must be read differently. It does not answer male questions; it does not conform to male expectations. (Obbink, 1992, pp.39-40) The collaborative work that Piercy and I did does not answer traditional questions--it does not conform to the traditional research paradigms. We were asking different questions and our tentative answers therefore were also different. They were not definitive nor absolute. Instead the answers we came up with only served to raise new questions. However, I believe the proposed answers open up di•logue around issues of teacher educators struggling with/in feminist imagination. 63 This dissertation is a life's work-in-progress. It is a room filled with other authors• writings, for part of who I am has to do with what I have read. The style that I have taken in this dissertation is a deliberate one. My·author•s voice is only one of many in this text. I want to represent the voices of those who spoke in the past in their own authentic ways. These others'/Others• knowledge and beliefs are often represented by including quotes from them. 26 Their own words are essential. Paraphrasing does not always do justice to their ideas. I want their original words to be represented, for all too often Others• voices are silenced, stolen, coopted, redirected, or made into something other than they w~re intended.v I use others'/Others• voices in conjunction with Piercy•s and my own. You may find the same idea represented by various voices. There is a conscious overlapping of ideas washed into this text. The style is like the strokes of a paintbrush that is being used in a circular motion. You may encounter ideas and themes presented earlier, but there is a slightly different shade or hue to the later use of the idea. It may at times feel like the paint is on too thick. However, it is because I have attempted to present 26 "r1 J me dlil way of repruentina ocben and Odien 10 that it ii clear that I am apcakiDa about •oeben• wbo are DOC comidend cippreaed and "Olben" (NO do Beauvoir,1952/1974)wbo are. -nil clou DOC imply that I will alway■ fully ,n■p or Ulldentand the depth of what another ii tryh,a to •Y, only that in lbepm, the words a■ the on,iaal author wrote lhem it ■eem■ to honor that voice more than panpbruina and allena, it. 64 the idea in a slightly different fashion and from a slightly different. angle. In her writing Lather (1991) states that her "accumulation of quotes, excerpts ••• is ••• an effort to be 'multivoiced,' to weave varied speaking voices together as opposed to putting forth a singular 'authorative• voice'" (p. 9). I am trying to do the same. This dissertation's blend of theory, description, interpretation, poetry, song, and voices {my voice and the voices of others'/Others') in this dissertation is my attempt in content and form to meld the personal, the political, and the pedagogical. There seems to be a tendency within academia to separate theory and practice and this has "escalated into a peroration for the new and much improved feminist theory called feminist postructuralism or, indifferently, postructural feminism •.• [where] postructuralism is the theory and feminism is just a practice" {de Lauretis, 1990, pp. 259- 261). I believe that we have been schooled to be fragmented thinkers, but this is not inevitable. We can unlearn the fragmentations and learn the interconnections of all that is life. The writings of deep ecologists say it best for me: To the western mind, interrelatedness implies a causal connectedness. Things are interrelated if a change in one affects the other. So to say that all things are interrelated simply implies that if we wish to develop our "resources," we must find some technological means to defuse the interaction. The solution to pollution is dilution. But what is actually involved is a genuine intermingling of parts of the ecosystem. There 65 are no discrete entities •••• (Devall & Sessions, 1985, p. 48) This sense of the intermingling is a way of being in the world for me. I want this dissertation to "speak" my beliefs in content and in form. Th• Ob••rv•r an4 th• 0b■ •rv•4 I hope the tone of the dissertation resembles the tone that I am suggesting for teaching with feminist imagination. It is an invitation to explore what feminist imagination could mean for teacher education. This is not a study about "exemplary" feminist teaching and learning. The tone that is suggested within the notion of exemplary is that of "right," that there is a kind of liberatory teaching that is best. Instead, I want this study to have a tone that keeps questioning and curiosity in the forefront. The notion of what is exemplary suggests as much about the person doing the judging as what is being judged. That which is unfamiliar, unique, or different may register for the observer as something other than exemplary because she does not recognize it as such (Allison & Pissanos, 1993-94). I did not want to engage in research that scrutinized a person as object; I did not want to be the observer dictating what counts as good, right, or best. Instead, I entered with the premise that pedagogy for liberation is a messy, complex, and confusing endeavor. Honoring and unearthing the struggles and the complexities of such an 66 endeavor in a study would promote dialogue around the issues of teaching with feminist imagination. Lives lived with feminist imagination help illuminate the theory that we are trying to build. A sojourn Into Possibilities For a relatively short period of time I was a sojourner, dwelling in another's room in order to learn more about my own room, the one that I am painting. I was a temporary resident, not knowing much of what came before I entered, or much about that which came after. So this is the telling of a moment in time for all of us. Neither Piercy nor I knew what we were agreeing to in this research; we did not anticipate the ways in which we would change because of it. I had intended this study to be primarily about a teacher educator. I initially decided that I would choose about five target students to hear their perceptions of the class. As the inquiry evolved, I found that I wanted to hear as many students• voices as possible. However, the relationship that developed with Piercy was much deeper than any I developed with the students I interviewed. In part, this had to do with the initial design of the study. Originally, I did not understand how my own learning would figure so prominently in the study. I came to understand that I was an integral part of the story that I 67 was telling, that my own story had to be told along with the teacher educator's and the students•. Therefore, this.is a story of the ways in which Piercy and I worked and learned together. This is a story of the ways in which our feminist imagination was conceptualized by the work we did together. This is a story of the ways in which one teacher educator and her students grappled with issues of gender, race, and class, in a foundations course, all the while being constructed by a gender, race, and class system. This is also a story of the ways in which as teacher educators, Piercy and I grappled with issues of gender, race, and class, all the while being constructed by a gender, race, and class system. This is the story of barriers and possibilities. The barriers are strong, yet the possibilities are also strong. Griffin (1978), in her book woman and Nature; The Roaring Inside Her, speaks of the tragedies and horror that exist for women and animals. She speaks of the great possibilities which exist. She speaks of the "capacity to dwell in possibility" (Rogers, 1993, p. 278). I turn to her words, for they are like a refrain of possibility for me: This teacher tells us we must ride the unknown •••• She says we cannot rely on a formula •••• She says we must learn from each act, and no act is ever the same ... recipes are useless. These will achieve only the conventional, she says. But beauty demands a more arduous process •••• Suddenly, we find we have a new language. The possibilities, she has told us, are endless ••• The possibilities, we see, never end. 68 (Griffin, 1978, pp. 191-192) CHAPTER II IBSIDB THIS WOKAll 1 8 STUDYI WRITIBGS BY WOKDI, WITH WOIDDI, HD POR WOKDI In each of the chapters which follow the voices of others/Others are present, illuminating ideas, concepts, and theories. I explore four large ideas in this chapter because they are fundamental to understanding this dissertation and yet they do not get examined closely in subsequent chapters. Those are: feminism; oppression, especially as it pertains to the sex/gender system; feminist teaching; paradigms of knowledge, particularly positivism and constructivism. In this chapter I review what other writers have said about these large ideas so that all who enter this study may have a sense of what these ideas have meant to me in conducting this research. These writers are the ones who have collectively struggled to help open all of our eyes: "This awakening has a collective reality; it is no longer.such a lonely thing to open one's eyes" (Rich, 1971, p. 167). In this chapter I also suggest that as teacher educators with feminist imaginations we need to find our own way. We can use the constructs and ideas that male critical theorists have developed, but we need to reforge and create our own. That is, we need to re-read and re-write the malestream•s word and world. There is a song by the female pop-folk duet Indigo Girls entitled "Virginia Woolf." Those who have been touched by Woolf's writings will understand the meaning 69 70 behind the following excerpt from the song's lyrics: they published your diary and that's how i got to know you key to the room of your own and a mind without end here's a young girl on a kind of telephone line through time the voice at the other end comes like a long-lost friend soi know i'm alright i just got a letter to my soul •••• (Saliers, 1992, p. 6) A woman writes a song about Virginia Woolf, honoring a woman who spoke and speaks to women. Echoes from the past, "echoing forward." Long ago, but actually just a moment away, women like Virginia Woolf sat and wrote of hopes and dreams for a world in which things would and could be different. These unteachers from yesterday help us today "unlearn the myths that bind us" (Christensen, 1992). These women in their rooms and in innumerable other places- wherever space could be found--wrote and spoke to the women coming after them. They formed a community of friends never to meet in a literal sense, but nonetheless, giving hope and affirmation, articulating the belief that our experiences are real and have been felt before. Their words are keys to the past and doors to the future. I sit in my room and those who have gone before me speak to me about their houses, their rooms, their locks, and their keys. "I needed all this murmured chorus •••• They were like mothers and sisters to me, these literary women, many of them already dead ••• they seemed to stretch out a hand" (Fraser, as cited in Rose, 1993, p. 19). Emily Style (1988) writes about windows into other people's realities and mirrors into one's own. The house 71 that feminist imagination builds has many windows and many mirrors. It also has many doors that you can enter into other rooms and look out other windows. Some of the keys have been lost and we need to re-search for them. Some have never been cut. Some are being held by people who do not even know they hold the keys. And others are still searching for someone to help them find a key. I invite you into my study, a study constructed of women's lives, by women, with women, and for women. As I participate in this construction, I am poignantly aware of the limitations of a "room," a "house," and particularly a "study," as a metaphor for All women. A significant percentage of women do not have homes, have no "room of their own," and few, only the most privileged, can afford a study. The limits to my metaphors need to be acknowledged and remembered; it is my own privilege that allows me to envision these metaphors as possibilities. And while I know that women continue through the centuries to speak to one another, I never forget the women locked away for what they did, wanted to do, and thought about in their rooms (Chessler, 1989; Gilbert & Gubar, 1984; Gilman, 1892). Her husband ••• has confined her to a large garret room ••• and he has forbidden her to touch pen to paper until she is well again, for he feels, says the narrator, "that with my imaginative power and habit of story-telling, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency." (Gilbert & Gubar, 1984, p. 89) 72 I never forget the madwomen in the attics. Never forget the rooms with yellow wallpaper. Never forget the women locked away in the houses that patriarchy built. 28 Never forget the women who had no rooms of their own. Lessons about oppression and survival that women in the past have sent to women of the present who will send them to the women who come after are so important for they tell us that we are not mad. Our hopes, our feminist imaginings for a different and better tomorrow, are not madness. They are what will help create that new tomorrow. Insanity is judged differently today. We are not considered mad for the same kind of imagination that women a hundred years ago had. However, certain visions are still dangerous, and the women of today whose imaginations soar are still dismissed, disparaged, trivialized, and ostracized. [I]nvisibility is a dangerous and painful condition, and lesbians are not the only people to know it. When those who have the power to name and to socially construct reality choose not to see you, or hear you, whether you are dark-skinned, old, disabled, female, or speak with a different accent or dialect than theirs, when someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a game with mirrors. It takes some strength of soul--and not just individual strength, but collective understanding to resist this void, this nonbeing, into which you are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard. And to make 21 In 1D01t cuea I will be Uliaa lbe "•x/pader l)'llem. (Rubin, 1975) to taUt about lbe Wl)'I in which women are oppreued, for it ia mon fluid and dynamic in coaaocalioa. However, in du■ cue patriarc:by ■eemecl the bell choice to explain bow the bouae -■a built with riplity and iq,eaetnbility-locbcl up lipt apia■t women. 73 yourself visible, to claim that your experience is just as real and normative as any other. (Rich, 1984, p. 199, emphasis added) The voices of those "demanding to be heard" tell us we are alright, that our experiences are as "real and normative as any other." The mirrors that have been held up for us by those who would oppress us, who write about us, show us either abstractions or nothing at all. We need to hold up our own mirrors and struggle to see the image without distortions. Often those who are on the cutting edge of new visions, those who see the world in ways that others do not, who are women and thinkers before their time, are still seen as fanatical and dangerous, deviant and insane. I wonder how Daly (1978, 1984, 1985, and Caputi, 1987), Griffin (1978), starhawk (1993), Adams (1990), Dworkin (1974) are judged. These are women who see the "politics of reality" (Frye, 1983) and who "playfully 'world'-travel" (Lugones, 1987). It is often these mad "madwomen" that force me to stretch my imagination and way of seeing beyond the narrow confines of my paradigms. They help me see with fresh eyes teaching, learning, and myself. concepts Important in Thi• stu4y I grew up during a time when "feminist" was not a dirty word. As I grew older I watched the younger women around me reject the word. There seemed to me to be a fear involved, a fear of alienating men. 74 Many college women ••• "feel that the tag 'feminist• has negative connotations in the world at large." The majority of young women seem to believe that, in the minds of homophobic men, feminism is synonymous with lesbianism. Nowhere is this more clear than in their replies about how men perceive feminists. Seventy percent of the comments are unfavorable and reflect extreme stereotypes. An astonishing 68 percent of female students say that men dislike feminists. (Women's Resource Center, 1994, p. 1) The label "feminist" seems to evoke discomfort in many young women, because they think it turns off men. I realized that a label that had been positive during my growing up years was no longer one young women eagerly embraced. In an attempt to counteract a "limited and stereotyped" (Weiler, 1988, p. 116) notion of what feminism is, I will explore the nebulous and often unexamined label of feminism. ruini•• Feminism: This term, from the Latin (femina= woman), originally meant "having the qualities of females" •••• Alice ROSSI has traced the first usage in print to a book review published in The Anthenaeum, 27 April 1895. (Tuttle,· 1986, p. 107) Feminism (with the associated feminist), meaning the faith in women, the-advocacy of the rights of women, or the prevalence of female influence, did not appear until the 1890s following the 1892 First International Woman's Congress in Paris which used the label feministe. Before then, womanism had been briefly popular during the 1860s, advocacy (by both females and males) of the rights, achievements, etc. of women. (Mills, 1989, pp. 86-87, emphasis in original) '70s and •sos for the I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute. (West, as cited in Mills, 1989, p. 86) 75 Feminism is evolving and ever-changing and therefore trying to define this movement is a formidable task. I do not try to capture a model feminism. Instead I want to understand the development of my own conceptualization of feminism .as it emerged through the learning Piercy and I did during this study. This I will do as the chapters proceed. Our feminisms will unfold by action, thought, and belief. For many years I thought I knew what feminism was. It wasn't a difficult concept to grasp at all. The dictionary made it quite simple "feminism 1: the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes 2: organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests" (Webster's Ninth New collegiate Dictionary, 1984, p. 456). I believed it was a perspective that one had in relation to women. That is, they were oppressed, they deserved equal treatment in all areas, and they were valuable in their own right. I had the impression that if all women had their "consciousness raised" (see Mitchell, 1971) they would recognize that they were oppressed and work to change that. Of course there were nuances and subtleties within the construct of feminism but those were minor. Women were united "simply" because of their sex and gender. Many years and many readings later, I found out that nothing is as simple as that. The monolithic feminism that I believed in did not exist. There was no unifying 76 framework that connected all feminists. on the contrary, sometimes the strands within feminism served to divide women, even turn them against one another. I was to learn that there are many feminisms, not just one. de Lauretis (1986) says it best for me: The image of feminism as a coherent ideology, a set of dogmas and rules of conduct repressive to some and oppressive to others, has a currency inside, as well as outside, the discursive boundaries of feminism. And this image, too, of a homogeneous monolithic Feminism- whether white or black or Third World, whether mainstream or separatist, academic or activist--is something that must be resisted. (p. 15) My conception of feminism was also imbued with my own privileges of race, class, and sexual identity. When I thought of feminists and feminism I thought of White, middle class, heterosexual women JUST LIKE MYSELF. I had constructed "pseudouniversal definitions of being a woman" (Acosta-BelAn, 1993, p. 133). It is important to acknowledge the critical insight that women are not all alike--there is no •transhistorical changeless, feminine essence" (Clifford 1989, p. 531)--and that race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and religion are ... important determinants in the social construction of the self. (Gannett, 1992, p. 11) The White house that many feminists have resided in and I reside/din was made more color-full by reading the writings of women of color. For example, the book This Bridge called My Back; writings by Radical women of color (Moraga, Anzaldua, 1983) helped me to create a double consciousness. I recognized that although I was oppressed as a woman, I was also an oppressor because of my race, 77 class, and sexuality. These two coexisting realities- oppressed and oppressor--were important for me to come to terms with. For me it is often difficult to talk about gender, when I must maintain parallel awareness of other social constructions--race, class, ethnicity, sexual identity. It seems that often I can only think about one category at a time. However, it is not only because it is difficult to keep all the human constructions at the forefront of one's mind, but it also has to do with privilege. It is all too easy for me to see the world as being composed of people "just like me." so, when I talk about gender, in my mind I see a woman similar to myself. Privilege has etched images in my mind. When I talk of sexism I often see the kind of sexism that a woman like myself might experience. I need to remember to always stretch and think about the kind of experiences I will never need to have because of the privileges of my class, race, and sexuality. Feminism is about "the politics of experience, of everyday life" (de Lauretis, 1986, p. 10) and re-visions hierarchies and categories that are so taken-for-granted that they are unseen. As Warren (1989) states, feminists• work is to uncover the conceptual framework that we exist within, one she calls a "patriarchal conceptual framework." A conceptual framework is a set of basic beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions that constitute the "lens" through which we see ourselves and our world. An oppressive conceptual framework is one in which the 78 basic beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions are used to justify and maintain the subordination of one group by another. An oppressive conceptual framework typically is characterized by "up-down" thinking, whereby what is "up" is assured to be superior to what is "down" by.virtue of some characteristic it has that "down" lacks, and by virtue of a "logic of domination," a moral premise that assumes that superiority justifies the dominance of what is "up" and the subordination of what is "down." (p. 46) Warren (1989) explains further that this framework places "men up and women down, minds up and bodies down, reason up and emotions down ••• [and it is] characterized by up-down thinking and a logic of domination" (pp. 46-47). This "patriarchal conceptual framework" places all entities in a hierarchal pattern as Schaef (1985) suggests: God Men Women Children Animals Earth God is dominant over men, women, children, animals, and the earth. Men are dominant over women, children, animals, and the earth. Women are dominant over children, animals, and the earth. The earth is at the bottom of the hierarchy; it is seen as powerless and submissive. (p. 164) Schaaf, however, does not take into account class, race, or sexual identity (for example, White woman are dominant(ing) over women of color.)~ What is feminism? Delmar (1986) speaks to this complicated diversity of meanings in "What is Feminism?" She has_laid out a baseline definition that might be l9 Scbae( allO UIU a Judeo-auillian and WNlem bieran:bical anupmoal, helpful: 79 [A]t the very least a feminist is someone who holds that women suffer discrimination because of their sex, that they have specific needs which remain negated and unsatisfied, and that the satisfaction of these needs would require a radical change (some would say a revolution even) in the social, economic and political order. But beyond that, things immediately become more complicated. (p. 8) In the end, however, she suggests ~he more important matter within the concept is that in many cases the differences are greater than the similarities. There are many feminisms, a "pluralism of the ideology" (Mills, 1989, p. 87). No monolithic version exists. Warren (1989) states that ever since feminism emerged as a political movement over three hundred years ago, what it has done is try to re-vision the future. She states that there are many alternative and competing feminisms~ however the one unifying force is that "all feminists agree that sexism (or, _the oppression of women) exists, is wrong, and must be changed" (p. 46). All definitions of feminism must include the end of sexist oppression. Fay (1987) states that the fact that there are many feminisms is not a detriment; instead, "Far from showing the incoherence or irrelevance of such a theory, such a fluid, dialectical relationship between theory, evidence, and practice is precisely what critical social science calls for" (p. 115). Fay states that this reveals the movement's "health and vitality" (p. 115). Tuttle (1986) addresses some of the controversies 80 within the feminist community stating that dictionaries refer to anyone who wants rights based on the belief that the sexes should be equal would be considered a feminist. She goes on to explain that "Bell HOOKS (1984) objects to this 'anything goes• approach, saying it has made the term practically meaningless because 'any woman who wants social equality with men regardless of her political perspective (she can be a conservative right-winger or a nationalist communist) can label herself feminist" (p. 107). However, Tuttle goes on to state that some theorists believe that denying the label of feminist to those who want to use it because they do not follow certain tenets is not only partisan but also denies historical reality. Tuttle cites Jagger (1983): "Just as an inadequate theory of justice is still a conception of justice, so I would say that an inadequate feminist theory is still a conception of feminism" (p. 107). I am uncomfortable with the notion of "inadequate" feminism and feminists. The tendency within the feminist community to decide whether someone counts as feminist· enough, real enough, radical enough provides for all sorts of elitism. such competitive thinking and acting obstructs learning. It is a positivistic approach to imply that a person who embraces feminism may have an "inadequate" conception of what it means. By the same token, it is highly problematic to agree 81 that anyone who wants to be labeled a feminist is one. For example, there are anti-women people who label themselves feminists, and by anti-women I mean those who in action and speech hurt or denigrate women, who could not properly be called feminists. Yet there is value in listening to these people who want to be called feminists. Rather than dismissing them from the dialogue we may learn something about the lives of women. Tong (1989) writes that although she cannot come up with a complete list of the feminisms which exist, she states "feminist theorists are able to identify their approach as essentially liberal, Marxist, radical, psychoanalytic, socialist, existentialist, or postmodern" (p. 1). Tong tells that what she finds intriguing about all the theories is that they want women to take "charge of their own destinies, and encourage ••• each other to live, love, laugh, and be happy as women" (Tong, 1989, p. 2, emphasis in original). The one feminism that I need to add to Tong•s list, for it describes in part who I am, is ecofeminism (see Griffin, 1978; Ruether, 1975; Donovan, 1990a, 1990b). Ecofeminism emerged out of a response to the male dominated(ing) deep ecology movement and is being acknowledged as a powerful way of merging the interlocking systems of oppression. There is political power in identifying oneself as a feminist, and explanatory power in identifying oneself as 82 aligned with a particular theory. However, it is important to remember that any label, any category is limiting and reductionist and there are many women who act in ways that emancipate women that do not identify themselves as such (Weiler, 1988). Although there are many differences among feminisms, de Lauretis (1990) states that most feminists ••• agree that women are made, not born, that gender is not an innate feature (as sex may be) but a sociocultural construction (and precisely for that reason it is oppressive to women) •••• (pp. 256- 257) I have in preceding paragraphs used the notion of gender (as well as race, class, and sexual identity) as a social construction. Hodson and Dennick (1994) provide a partial framework for thinking about the social construction of identities. Although their particular analysis is of the environment, I use this example because the environment would seem to be the last phenomenon that people would think of as socially constructed: [T]he environment is not just a given, but a social construct. It is a social construct in two senses: (a) we act upon and change the natural environment, and so construct it through our social actions, and (b) we perceive it in a way that is dependent on the prevailing sociocultural framework. Thus, our concept of "environment" itself is a social construct, and so could be different. (p. 260) In the same way, gender (race, class, and sexual identity) is a social construct because we act upon, and change the notion of gender, and what it means, by our social actions. And the way in which we perceive gender is dependent to a 83 large degree on the prevailing sociocultural and historical framework. It is precisely because gender is a social construction that the ways in which people interact around gender can be learned and unlearned. In teaching us to see gender as a socially constructed and culturally transmitted organizer of our inner and outer worlds, in, as it were, making gender visible, feminist theory has provided us with an instrument of immense subversive power. And along with this provision comes a commitment: nothing less ••• than the deconstruction and reconstitution of conventional knowledge. (Keller, 1986, p. 67) I will now turn to an examination of the terms oppression and the sex/gender system. Oppression an4 the sex/Gender systg The concept of oppression is a fundamental one to feminism and to this dissertation and hence needs to be defined. Frye (1983) has perhaps one of the most accessible and clear explications of the concept of oppression. She uses the metaphor of a birdcage to talk about the ways oppression works: Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere •••• It is only when you step back ••• take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you will see why the bird does not go anywhere •••• It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as 84 confining as the solid walls of a dungeon. (Frye, 1983, pp. 4-5, emphasis in original) Oppression cannot be understood if one looks at a single act, or a single condition, for that is only looking at one of the wires in the birdcage. It is when one steps back and sees the ways in which conditions, situations, and circumstances combine--as Frye states, "when you look macroscopically you can see it--a network of forces and barriers which are systematically related and which conspire to the immobilization, reduction and molding of women and the lives we live" (p. 7)--that·oppression can be understood. Frye explains that a basic premise of feminism is that women are oppressed. Oppression is a concept that is misunderstood and misused "and is being stretched to meaninglessness" (Frye, 1983, p. 1). The claim that women are oppressed is often countered by the argument that men are also oppressed. The evidence which is used by some males to document their own oppression is that they are unable to cry and that it is hard for them to be masculine. When the tensions and dissatisfactions of being male are used to show that the "oppressors are oppressed by oppressing" the concept of oppression is stretched to •eaninglessness. Frye unpacks the word "oppression," stating that it stems from the word "press," to mold, reduce or immobilize. That which is pressed is trapped between or among forces, 85 which together confine or impede the thing's movement. One of the most distinctive and omnipresent elements of oppressed groups is that they are inevitably caught in double binds. They have very few options, and often the options they do have lead to negative consequences. Frye argues that the lives of oppressed groups are determined by deliberate and external forces which are linked in order to entrap them. It is analogous to a birdcage. Frye points out that to understand oppression one has to recognize that it has nothing to do with individual ability or handicap. Instead it has to do with one's affiliation with a group understood to have "natural" limitations. If the person is oppressed, it is because the person is part of a classification that is systematically diminished and immobilized. One needs to understand that the oppressed person belongs to a definite group. Most groups have characteristics which set them apart, making oppression more visible and group solidarity more probable. Because women are part of other groups (for example because of race, class, and sexual identity) and are, therefore, dispersed, it makes solidarity and recognition of oppression difficult to achieve. However, the common factor amongst all women, regardless of class or race, is their membership in one group which is defined by function. This function is "the service of men and men's interest as men define them" (Frye, 86 1983, p. 9). Women's service to/for men has the destructive nature of combining responsibility with powerlessness. Even though women sometimes are able to serve their own interests and on occasion men's and women's interest overlap, the distinction is that "men do not serve women as women serve men" (Frye, 1983, p.10). Frye suggests that because we are social beings, we are inevitably part of a social structure, which, by its very nature, constrains us and produces frustrations and restrictions. To figure out if a person's anguish, injury or restriction is an ingredient of oppression, one has to look at it in context, to see if it is part of a network of barriers designed to limit or benefit a particular group of people. A person may experience frustrations or restrictions, but contextually the experience may not be one of oppression. Examining barriers, both social and economic, one notices that they affect people on both sides; however, they restrict only one group and maintain privilege for the other. For example, looking at the predominantly female service sector shows us that its barriers not only confine women, but also keep men out. Therefore, some men might feel disadvantaged because they are not able to elect a nurturant lifestyle, and then they claim they are oppressed also, due to "sex roles." Yet, the boundary that keeps women in and men out is constructed and conserved by men for 87 men's own benefit. It is part of a larger picture which guarantees that cultural and economic powers remain in male hands and that their superior status is maintained. Frye states that just because a person comes up against a disagreeable, repressing, or hurtful barrier or constraint, or just because the barrier deprives someone of something they prize, does not mean that the person is oppressed. There are certain questions which need to be asked about the barrier or force. For example, who manufactured it? Who preserves it? Whose interests are served by having it? Who benefits by it? Who is harmed by it? One needs to figure out if it is a part of a framework which restricts, constricts, and immobilizes a particular group. Then one needs to find out whether the individual is part of that oppressed group. Frye states that to adapt to oppression, women have disciplined themselves and have internalized restrictions, such as their constricted postures and attenuated movements, in order to meet the expectations and tyranny of others. Women's behaviors signal self-degradation which is part of a larger system of degradation. This differs from men's feelings of restrictions, i.e., emotional restraint, for women's restraints are pieces of this oppressive framework geared toward women, whereas, the men's restraints are part of the oppressive framework geared toward women. It is in large part membership in the category of women 88 which marks one for "suffering and frustration" (Frye, 1983, p. 15). "For any woman of any race or economic class, being a woman is significantly attached to whatever disadvantages and deprivations she suffers, be they great or small" (Frye, 1983, p. 16). The lack of economic or political power or their lack of achievement arises from the fact that they are women. Men do not experience these same things because they are men, but rather, they benefit from their maleness. "Women are oppressed, as woman ••• but men are not oppressed •• ■an" (Frye, 1983, p. 16, emphasis in original). One of the struggles that seems to surround the concept of oppression is the way in which we try to hierarchically arrange or compare oppression, for example, by claiming that gender oppression is greater than race oppression, or vice versa. As Moraga (1983) says, "The danger lies in ranking the oppressions. The danger lies in failing to acknowledge the specificity of the oppression. The danger lies in attempting to deal with oppression from purely a theoretical base" (p. 29). The challenge for feminists seems to be melding the personal and theoretical into a framework of oppression that recognizes the dynamic nature of oppression and does not try to make it static in order to fit into a pre-existing androcentric paradigm. As feminists we need to develop an analysis and practice that recognizes that "the major systems of oppression are interlocking" (Combahee River 89 Collective, 1983, p. 210). Is this desire to stratify oppression, the result of our own inability to grasp hold easily of a concept like oppression--a concept that is in many cases "so deep as to be invisible" (Firestone, 1972, p. 1)? In the past I have used patriarchy to define the power that men have over women. However, I now use the term the "sex/gender system," for patriarchy implies a rigid, inflexible system that is not contextualized. Rubin (1975) defines the sex/gender system as "the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied" (p. 159). Rubin goes on to explain that what counts as someone's sex is "culturally determined and obtained. Every society ••• has a sex/gender system--a set of arrangements by which the biological raw material of human sex and procreation is shaped by human, social intervention and satisfied in conventional manner" (p. 165). Rubin explains that patriarchy as a concept was instituted to differentiate between the forces which conserved sexism from those that maintained other relations, such as capitalism. The term sex/gender system is preferable because it "is a neutral term which refers to the domain and indicates that oppression is not inevitable in that domain, but is a product of the specific social relations which organize it" (Rubin, 1975, pp. 167-168). 90 One of the givens in this dissertation is that gender, race, class, and sexual identity are social constructions. That is, a culture decides how it will react to someone's sex, skin color, economic situation, and sexual orientation. And within this hierarchical culture--it is "better" to be a man versus a women, White versus a person of color, more monied versus less monied, heterosexual versus gay or lesbian. These social constructions are not inevitable, but they have been powerfully inscribed in our culture and history. However, since they are socially constructed, they can be reconstructed. Feminist teachers are concerned with fighting the hierarchies. They work to resist and challenge oppression inside the classroom so that their students can resist and challenge it in their lives. I will now move to examining what other theorists have written about feminist teaching. Peainiat Teaching I have thought about feminism and teaching for many years. Many questions have arisen for me about the possibilities that feminism holds for teacher education. I have discovered that there is a dearth of information about feminism and teaching and teacher education. Little scholarship exists about how a teacher educator with feminist imagination teaches, how she thinks about her 91 teaching, and how she thinks about her students. There is little information about how she grapples with helping her students develop a "consciousness of seeing" (Piercy Sand's words) and what it might mean to bring feminist imagination into a teacher education undergraduate classroom. My goal is to let us see the struggles of a teacher educator and her students in action in order to provide images and themes for conversation. Because there are hardly any rich portrayals of a teacher educator with feminist imagination, it is difficult to begin a dialogue about feminist teaching. I hope this dissertation can do that. Weiler•s account (1988) of feminist high school teachers and administrators is a context quite different from the university classroom. Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986) talk about what teaching would be like in the "connected classroom." Noddings (1984) talks about what a feminine "caring" classroom would be like. Yet we are not shown how this would play out in an actual classroom. Most feminist teaching texts, such as Weiler•s (1988), Noddings• (1984), Lewis' (1990), Belenky et al.'s (1986), hooks' (1989), and Lather's (1991) present theoretical frameworks of feminist teaching without fleshing out classroom realities attached to the theory. We need to see how an actual teacher education class, or any class for that matter, unfolds when taught by a feminist. Certainly many feminists are writing about their 92 practice. Bunch (1983), hooks (1989), and Rich (1973-74, 1977,1978) all write about feminist pedagogy, but do not locate it within a particular context, other than the academy. Their works are written from the teacher's perspective. No students• voices are featured. Lewis and Simon (1986) wrote about a graduate class and provided the perspective of both the teacher and the student. Lewis (1989, 1990) wrote about a foundations in sociology class, but only featured her perspective. Ellesworth (1989) writes about working through the myths of critical pedagogy in her teacher education graduate seminar on racism. This is a self-selected group, unlike a general social foundations course for undergraduates. Her voice describes and analyzes what occurred. We rarely hear the voices of the students who were within the class. It seems critical to me not only to hear about students but also from students. Goodman and Kelly (1988) describe the issues that the male profeminist elementary teacher faces. They provide a helpful set of principles to guide the teacher committed to feminist ideas: o The teacher is viewed as an alternative role model and feminist advocate who discloses herself ••• as a multidimensional, collaborative learner rather than a detached, omniscient authority figure. o The teacher has an orientation toward student empowerment revealed in basic affirmation of students• personal knowledge, interests, and experience as potential learning resources. 93 o The teacher maintains a concentration on co-operative versus competitive or individualistic norms or activities. o The teacher considers feminist perspectives in the curriculum, viewed historically and in relation to other forms of oppression such as race and class. o The teacher emphasizes emotional as well as intellectual development of [students] and self. o The teacher recognizes the importance of translating understanding into action, reflected in the view of students as active creators and potential transformers of their material and cultural world. (p. 5) These principles are helpful in orienting the feminist teacher, and yet, we are not sure what this might look like enacted in a classroom. Freire (1968/1985) in Pedagogy of the Oppressed explores the ways in which those who have been oppressed exist within a "culture of silence." In spite of being silenced, Freire explains that it is possible for the oppressed to talk about their world and their reality and achieve "conscientiza9ao [which] refers to learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality" (p. 19). Freire•s notion that the teacher who is committed to liberatory education needs to reject the banking concept of education and instead problem-pose with students has been vital to my development of a teacher educator's feminist imagination. Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of men as conscious beings, and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world. They must 94 abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the problems of men in their relations with the world. education, responding to the essence of consciousness- intentionality--rejects communiqu6 and embodies communication. It epitomizes the special characteristic of consciousness: being conscious of, not only as intent on objects but as turned in upon itself in a Jasperian "split"--consciousness as consciousness of consciousness. (Freire, 1968/1985, pp. 66-67, emphasis in original). 30 "Problem-posing" Belenky et al., (1986) are very helpful in thinking about silence in women's lives and their experiences in universities and informal educational sites. They have the women's voices featured prominently. They also talk about what kind of teachers and teaching women need. They make the claim that teachers need to be "midwives," helping to give birth to the students• ideas, and the classroom needs to be a classroom that is geared toward constructed knowing. However, there are no portraits of what the teaching and learning looks like. Many theorists argue that feminist perspectives in education are important in challenging the status quo (Belenky et al., 1986; Weiler, 1988; Lewis, 1991; hooks, 1989; Rich, 1977, 1978). Yet, these theorists do not present us with a teacher educator in relation to her students. Moreover, often the focus is on the feminist 30 I have cboND to not me [lie) or add in [lhe/women/her) after Fnin'• male proaoum. I have a1■o not added female p!ODOUDIIO ocher'• aelectiom I quote in which are u■ed oaly male pmaoum, for example Leaiaa (1971). However, it ii jarriDa for me to read lbe male pronoun u■ed. Jone■ (1993) !alb about how it wa, pouiblc: for Ryan (1967/1977) to write about laflCll of dilcrimiaation and "l,lamm, tbe victim" and yet not tallc about women. It wu pouible for Fnin to tallc about oppreuioa oaly UIUJI male pronoum. Thi■ remind■ me of what Friedan (1969/1984) ■aid ■o prophetically in ]ll! Pemigine Myltique: lboee who are revolutionary lbinken are trapped within their own culture and lbeir pandipn■• lleaeareh iadic:atcl that UIUII male pneric:1 iacl'IIUN ma1e una,ery in the apeator and the lil&ener (llamiltoa, 1918) and that u we read tbae worb it ii impol1anl for III to nmember lbe women that are by vil1Ue of the 1aa,uaae left out. 95 teacher's perspective and often the students• voices are not present, or are only included to emphasize the resistance they display. Lather's (1991) and Wallace's (1993-1994) works seem to address the ways in which knowledge in a feminist classroom is more than just the teacher teaching, and the students either learning or resisting. Lather illustrates what occurs in a classroom when teachers and students construct knowledge together. Wallace makes it clear that no matter what the teacher intends or desires for her classroom community, the students make choices about how they will participate. On the whole, there is little talk of what it means to create a community within a classroom where a teacher with feminist imagination is teaching and learning. There is little discussion of the ways in which the teacher, the learner, and the knowledge interact in the classroom--there is little attention to what Hawkins (1974) characterizes as the "I, Thou, It" relationship. I wanted to hear the voices of the students and how they were experiencing the pedagogy of a teacher educator with feminist imagination. I wanted to uncover the dialectical and reflexive nature of teaching and learning in a class where the community is co-developed by the teacher educator and the students. There is often little description of how difficult it is to teach with feminist imagination, not merely because 96 students resist, but because feminism is in flux--ever changing, renegotiated, reinvented, and reimagined. As Spender (1983) puts it: [E]verything I know is open to challenge •••• there are no absolutes, ••• meaning is socially constructed and ••• This does not apply to everything else BUT feminism; I include feminism in it as well and I can distinctly remember one of the hardest lessons that I ever set myself was to "prove" that feminism is as arbitrary as everything else I know. (p. 28) It is within that arbitrariness, that uncertainty, that chaos that a teacher educator works, learns, and teaches. We do not have vivid portraits of what this is like for the teacher educator. We do not have the portraits of what it is like for the students she teaches; their voices are often unavailable. We have been given accounts of students• resistance to feminist ideas within a course (Weiler, 1988; Lewis, 1991), but the voices of students themselves have not been heard, telling their own stories. I believe that to gain a more complete understanding of the inclusion of feminism within teacher education, the interpretations and reflections of the students in that context are critical to include. Therefore, I chose to interview students, and Piercy and I chose to give them feedback forms two times during the semester. Although in my study the teacher educator is the primary focus, the relationship between her and the students is central. The students' voices help us see the ways in which the teaching and learning were co-constructed. 97 Whenever humans interact there is bound to be conflict (Peck, 1987; Miller, 1986). This would seem especially likely in a feminist teacher's classroom. Weiler (1988) states that conflict can occur in cases where the gender race, or class of teacher and student are different, feminist teaching creates conflicts on various levels. But that conflict can become the text for counter-hegemonic teaching. What is important is not to deny the conflict, but to recognize that in a society like the U.S., which is so deeply split by gender, race, and class, conflict is inevitable and only reflects social and political realities. But recognition of conflict, oppression, and power does not mean their acceptance. It means making them conscious so they can be addressed and transformed. (pp. 144-145) However, we do not have portraits of the kind of conflict that can arise and how it unfolds in a classroom in which a teacher educator with feminist imagination teaches. The texture of conflict is unavailable in the current literature on teacher education. It is precisely within the conflict that there is much to be learned about the issues that a teacher educator and her students grapple with when teaching and learning about privilege and oppression. This dissertation examines a case of conflict closely and how it affected the classroom community. What is also interesting about the works that examine race, class, and gender is how little attention is given to the identity of the researcher/theorist/writer speaking of these issues (see for example Belenky et al., 1986). The authors do not situate themselves within their work. We know very little about them as people. For example, 98 Ellesworth (1989) identifies herself as a "White middle class woman and professor" (p. 297), and Henry (1993-1994) describes herself as an African American woman. However, rarely do the feminist teachers place their Selves within their research. The person who comes closest to placing herself inside the work, melding the personal, political, and the pedagogical is Grumet (1988) in Bitter Milk; Women and Teaching. Rogers (1993) states that it is necessary to place your own subjective voice within the theorizing so as to better flesh out the theory. This is what I have attempted to do. I have inserted my own Self in this dissertation. I weave myself in and out of all the chapters, some more than others, but nonetheless my own subjective voice comes through. Lewis (1989, 1990) uncovers the kind of sexual dynamics that are in play in a mixed-gender class and the kind of effects this has on the students•, especially the women's, desire to engage with issues of feminism. Although other writers talk about resistance, they often do not unpack what factors might be contributing to the reluctance of students to embrace what the teacher is trying to offer. I have tried to uncover some of the reasons I perceive that students may reject.feminism. Ellesworth (1989) states that the race, class, gender and other social constructions affect what goes on in the classroom. Weiler (1988) claims when the identity of the 99 teacher is different from her students, conflict may result. However, there are other life experiences and other identity issues, for example being married, or having a son, which may impact the ways in which feminism is thought about and enacted in the classroom. Teacher educators who are feminists have very few ways of thinking about their practice because of the limited representations available. Although none of these authors include a recipe or formulaic approach to feminist teaching, there is little sense of the uniqueness and individuality of the teacher educator which impacts her thoughts about feminism. Overall, there is a lack of scholarship on feminist teaching. Weiler (1988) states, "Particularly lacking are ethnographic and qualitative studies investigating the impact of feminist ideas on teachers and students" (p. 2). I would add there is even a greater scarcity of qualitative scholarship on feminism and teacher education, featuring both the teacher and the students. There is almost no scholarship on undergraduate preservice classes taught by a teacher who considers herself a feminist. The insights that have been gained about feminist teaching have not been explored in great depth in relation to teacher education. Yet of all the places that exploring feminist teaching would be extremely helpful, it would be in teacher education--teachers teaching teachers. To help teacher educators think deeply about privilege and 100 oppression, in order to help their own pre-service teachers think deeply about these same issues, teacher educators need to have access to studies that explore teacher education for liberation. I wanted to investigate the "political space" that Giroux (1980) states is available in teacher education for teachers to challenge the status quo. As Giroux claims: It is crucial to recognize that teacher-education programs, then, both embody and demonstrate contradictions specific to their own interests. It is the tensions and contradictions in these programs that testify to their relative autonomy, and it is within the context of this relative autonomy that "radical" teachers can find the political space to develop innovative courses and alternative modes of pedagogy. It is an opportunity that should not be ignored. (p. 418) It is important to think about just how much political latitude a teacher educator can take or has. There is little written about the actual unfolding of a teacher education classroom where a teacher tries to push against the boundaries of oppression. There is little written about the ways in which curriculum is uncovered rather than covered (Hawkins, 1974, as cited in Calkins, 1986) in teacher education classes. By uncovering curriculum I mean the ways in which content and pedagogy are unwrapped and revealed for the biases, invisibilities, and hidden messages that are usually taken-for-granted. With a dearth of scholarship in this area, there is little offered to the teacher educator who is a feminist (or anyone for that matter) as she struggles to confront equity and inequity issues in her classroom. 101 I wanted to investigate what a teacher educator with feminist imagination was like in her classroom and what her relationship was like with her students. I felt this would enable all of us to think more deeply and profoundly about grappling with issues of oppression and privilege in the teacher education classroom. Recently a special edition of Action in Teacher Education (1993-1994) came out that featured "Feminist Pedagogy in Teacher Education." In this edition there were very few articles that looked within the classroom at the teacher educator and the students she taught. Henry's article "There Are No Safe Places: Pedagogy as Powerful and Dangerous Terrain" and Roychoudhury, Tippens, and Nichols article "An Exploratory Attempt Toward a Feminist Pedagogy For Science Education" dealt with practice in the classroom. Henry's piece was told from the teacher educator's perspective, but students• voices were not included. Roychoudhury, Tippens, and Nichols's piece was told from the perspective of teacher and student. This is a beginning to building a body of knowledge in teacher education about feminist pedagogy. However, we have far to go to get multiple portraits that uncover the complexities of teacher education being taught by feminists. Teacher education with feminist imagination is undergirded and informed by a constructivist paradigm of 102 knowledge. Piercy and I both described ourselves as being informed by a constructivist theory of knowledge. However, I continue to struggle with a positivistic hold on my feminist imagination and teaching. It is important to briefly uncover the knowledge paradigms that inform my understandings of the teaching of teachers. Para4iq111 of 1tnoyle4qe: Positiyi•• ano constructiyi•• Dividing knowledge into two large frameworks is merely for heuristic purposes, allowing me to show the broad categories I am using when I use the terms "positivism" and "constructivism." I realize that simplification of complex epistemological, ontological, and methodological postures occurs when lines are drawn between theoretical positions. Education has had a long legacy of the positivistic (often called the conventional or scientific) paradigm of knowledge undergirding and informing teaching, learning, and the curriculum. This paradigm asserts that natural and scientific laws can govern knowing and that objectivity is possible and desirable. Positivism espouses that there is an objective reality "out there" which can be ascertained if the observer remains detached, value-free, scientific (experimentation that will be reproducible), and removes confounding influences from the site under investigation. Positivism believes that Truth (with a capital T) is discoverable, generalizable, and 103 universal. In this framework the known is separate from the knower; facts, concepts, and principles are separate from the person discovering them. Positivists claim that neutrality and impartiality is obtainable and that prediction and control of the natural world are possible. This framework asserts that reality is static, measurable, and quantifiable. Therefore order and cohesion are possible. Educators who are influenced by positivism believe that there is a fixed body of knowledge which can be captured if the teacher dispenses the knowledge accurately and efficiently. The curriculum becomes a technical problem to be made more efficient, so that more content can be covered. In this scheme the curriculum must be logical, so that outcomes are predictable and controllable. The constructivist paradigm has recently begun to infuse various educational circles. It has been labeled the naturalistic, hermeneutic, or interpretive paradigm, all of which have nuances in meanings (Guba and Lincoln, 1989). Constructivists claim that human endeavors cannot be reduced to natural or scientific laws because human beings are complex and unpredictable entities. Tomlin humorously and astutely characterizes the constructivist paradigm in her one-woman show The search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the universe, when she asks and answers the question about the nature of reality: "What is reality anyway? Nothin' but 104 a collective hunch" (Wagner, 1986, p. 18). With these two sentences, Tomlin has described the social construction of reality and knowledge. The constructivist conceptualization of knowledge moves pedagogy away from the traditional "banking" (Freire, 1968/1985) notion of teaching and learning and moves pedagogy toward a more fluid, tentative, and dialectical form. No longer is knowledge a fixed, static, and pre packaged "truth." Constructivists espouse that there are multiple, socially constructed realities which are created by individuals as they try to make sense of their experiences, and these experiences are interactive in nature. Truth with a "T" does not exist "out there," but rather there are informed and sophisticated constructions which are assented to within a particular social, historical, and cultural context. "Contexts give life and are given life by constructions that are held by the people in them" (Guba and Lincoln, 1989, p. 175). In this framework, all the facts, concepts, and principles we use are imbued with ideology and are value-laden because they have no independent meaning outside Qf a theoretical rubric. Individuals engage in dialectical processes and co constructions of meaning and knowledge occur. Constructivists assert that all we know and come to know is a result of human social construction. They argue that we 105 are human social agents and we cannot escape our humanness; we cannot divorce ourselves from our values and subjectivity. Constructions come about through the interaction of a constructor with information, contexts, settings, situations, and other constructors ••• using a process which is rooted in previous experience, belief systems, values, fears, prejudices, hopes, disappointments, and achievements of the constructor ••• constructions come about by virtue of the interaction of the knower with the already known and the still knowable or to-be known. (Guba and Lincoln, 1989, p. 143) Constructivists believe that our interpretation of the world and its phenomena are inevitably partial because social phenomena are not in a static state. Therefore, we are unable to freeze their realities long enough to fully comprehend them. "The peculiar web or pattern of circumstances that characterize the situation may never occur in the same way again" (Guba and Lincoln, 1989, p. 98). Phenomena elude us just as we are beginning to grasp hold of them. In order to imagine a new reality for teacher educators there is a need for a researcher who is herself a teacher educator with feminist imagination to hear the voices of a teacher educator and her students, and to place her subjective self in the study. There is a need to examine conflict and the co-construction of a community where the teacher is challenging the status quo. There is a need for women teacher educators to find their way~ re reading and re-writing the world according to their own 106 interpretations. I have attempted to begin this endeavor within the pages of this study. Pindinq our Way1 Re-reading and Re-writing the Kale ■ tre-•• word and world Speaking of critical theory, radical politics, and Paulo Freire, as much as feminists owe to their concepts, it is helpful to remember that they come out of a male model, heavily reliant on the primacy of rationality and abstract principles of justice, assuming a personal power base in their education by confrontation and argument, and that they were put together apart from any consideration of women's experience or women's history •••• For best results, they (critical theorists] are read cautiously, if not skeptically with the understanding that we, as academic women, are still finding our way. We have little of our own to guide us and a very great distance to go. (Wallace, 1993-94, p. 18) I have borrowed Freire and Macedo's (1988) notion of "reading the word and the world," but I have reshaped their phrase to create a feminist rendition of the idea. I agree with Wallace, that as feminists we have learned much from critical and radical theorists who have developed powerful concepts which helped us name our reality. Yet, there is the necessity for those with feminist imaginations to re read and re-write the malestream•s word and world. All constructs that have been handed down to us need to be re examined. Questions must be asked: do they make sense in this context, for this teacher educator, for these students, for this woman? Constructs are defined differently both by and for women. For example, courage is not a generic term; as 107 Wallace (1993-94) reminds us,· "Women's lives define courage differently than those of men, and we pay a different price for it" (p. 19). Many of the constructs that are commonly used to describe teaching and learning may need to be recreated by teacher educators with feminist imaginations, beginning with questioning the underlying assumptions of the constructs. In my study I use concepts such as loving presence, eros, and passion in teacher education, not the common "stuff" of educational research. Very recently, I was given a gift of affirmation. It came in the form of a book by bell hooks, her most recent (1994) Teaching To Transgress; Education as the Practice of Freedom. As I read hooks I felt a deep pleasure and validation because she writes about similar themes and motifs. Feminists who have come before, and are still to come, can offer teacher education boldness and courage. This kind of boldness and courage is needed in a conservative field to push the paradigms that constrain us. Lortie (1975), Jackson (1986), Cohen (1988), and Weiler (1988) talk about the conservatism, cautious~ess, and reproduction of education. Teacher education reflects this conservatism and caution and therefore helps to contribute to a conservative and cautious teaching population and teaching profession. There is a reflexive and dialectical relationship between teaching and teacher education. 108 I believe that the feminist writings both inside and outside of the field of education offer brave new ways to look at the process and content of educating future educators. They help us illuminate what new questions need to be asked, what constructs need to be cast away, unlearned, modified, or created anew. Teacher education has not explored feminist scholarship and method to the fullest. Feminist imagination in teacher education is a rich opportunity to investigate new ways of thinking and new visions for the future for teaching and learning. Teacher education "classics" are seen in new lights with a feminist eye. With regard to mainstream scholarship, feminists continually press the questions "For whom?" "According to whom?" ••• With the appropriate prefixes, it becomes at least an open question whether that [discipline] ••• is truly representative or inclusive of the realities of workers, women and men of color, non-Westerners, of the multiple realities of diverse groups of people. This insistence on prefixing: or "marking" traditions has two very important and related functions: it makes visible the ways in which privilege and power are invisible in the mainstream curriculum, and it raises questions about gender, race, class, and other sorts of bias in traditional scholarship. (Warren, 1989, p. 46) I ask the question, Why, if women dominate in numbers in the teaching field, and there are women teacher educators teaching those many future women teachers, why is there not more "woman-centered scholarship" (Ou Bois, 1979, p. 108)? Although there have been many studies about and on women teachers, and even some on women teacher educators, there are very few that are by feminist women for and with feminist women. All the authors I have mentioned lend their ideas, their constructs, and their principles to my work; however, none are able to comprehensively inform the work I have done. The context, Piercy, the students, and I were at a particular moment in history--herstory. our individuality and uniqueness made this a study that cannot rely on the frameworks of others. This room was constructed by the study of women, for women. I wanted to do the same in this study of a woman teacher educator and her students. I wanted all that I had learned and all that I would learn to work for and with my participants. I wanted what Noddings (1986) advocates: In educational research, fidelity to persons counsels us to choose our problems in such a way that the knowledge gained will promote individual growth and maintain a caring community ••• from an ethical perspective, the difficulty may be identified as a failure to meet colleagues in genuine mutuality. Researchers have perhaps too often made persons (teachers and students) the objects of research. An alternative is to choose problems that interest and concern researchers, students, and teachers •••• Such research would be genuine research .fm: teaching instead of simply research sm teaching. (Noddings, 1986, p. 506, emphasis in original) The chapters you are about to read are this woman's attempt to promote the individual growth of Piercy and mys~lf. It is also my attempt to create and maintain a caring and compassionate community with fidelity to the persons within this study of, with, and for women. 110 I't •2'he Leainis't revolu'tion• ••• is occurring--na,r. occurs as and when woam, individually and 'toget:her, hesi'tan'tly and raapan'tly, joyously and wit:h deep sorrotr, coae 'to see our lives differen'tly and rejec't er'ternally i.-posed fraaes of reference Lor unders'tanding t:hese lives, ins'tead beginning t:he slotr process of cons'truc'ting our own ways of seeing t:h-, unders'tanding t:h-, and living t:h-. For us, t:he insis'tence on t:he deeply poli'tical na'ture of everyday life and on seeing poli'tical change as personal change, is qui'te si.-ply, •reainis••· (S'tanl.ey and Wise, 1983, p. 192, -phasis in original) CHAPTER III WHO IS PIBRCY SUD? A PARTIAL DBSCRIPTIOB Key■ an4 Door ■ an4 car4boar4 cut-out■ 1 What a ••••archer can an4 cannot Do You have encountered Piercy sand briefly in chapters one and two. In this chapter I continue to introduce you to this teacher educator with feminist imagination. As the subsequent chapters unfold you will meet her through her actions, her beliefs, and her commitments. She was a unique and complex woman teacher educator and I can only partially reveal her to you. I begin by notifying you about the limits to this account of Piercy Sand. I tell the tale and am therefore the final interpreter of the story. Piercy would write a different story. Piercy would I am not the center of her have her own version. story, because she herself is that. But I could give her something you can never have except from another person: what you look like from outside. A reflection. This is the part of herself I could give back to her. We are like twins in old fables, each of whom has been given half a key. (Margaret Atwood, 1989, p. 434) I tell about her. I tell what I know, what I have seen, what I have heard, and what I have felt. In these pages, I hold up a mirror. Yet, I can never tell of her Self completely. But we have given each other gifts, for as I hold up a mirror for her, I also hold it up for myself. In this study, we stand side by side. We tell each other what we saw from the outside. We also know that we each hold the other half of the key, the half that opens the inner doors 111 to the Self. 112 In unanticipated ways she tells me about me. This is what searching is all about. This is part of the joy of research. New knowledge is created when I "stop putting the answers before the Questions" (Daly, 1978, p.xv). There are other limits to what I do. Language is never enough to describe reality. I can only tell part of what is "real." I take a vibrant, complex, multidimensional woman and write about her. She appears as words on paper--in unidimensional form. For example, Piercy•s vibrancy is only suggested and implied because she is not living in the pages; here, she flattens •. When I transcribed her words and our conversations on paper, some of her passion was lost, for the dynamic nature of her speech is unavailable to the reader. So part of my task is to get across her spirited nature. She was passionate and she was playful, and she was passionately playful and playfully passionate. My charge is to attempt to capture this aliveness and lively way of being, working, interacting, learning, and teaching that Piercy exemplified. How to relay the life--the Being? With words I can only represent the life. I am reminded of Michael Snow's (1962) cardboard cut-out of a woman. He declares: "My subject is not women or a woman but the first cardboard cut out of a walking woman" (Snow, 1962). His declaration about his art reminds me that I cannot fully render up Piercy in 113 my study. I will not portray her as a "cardboard cut-out," yet her representation is only part of who she was, the part that I witnessed or that she informed me of. Margaret Atwood's key (1989) will not open all the doors to the rooms which no outsider enters: We live ••• with a number of rooms inside us. The best room is open to the family and friends and we show our finest face in it. Another room is more private, the bedroom, and very few are allowed in. There is another room where we allow no one in •.• for it is a room of the most intimate thoughts we keep unshared. There is one more room, so hidden away that we don't even enter it ourselves. Within it we lock all the mysteries we cannot solve and all the pains and sorrows we wish to forget. (Uris, 1977, p. 56) We cannot know what lies deep within the consciousness, imagination, mind, heart, and soul of another, the room that is unshared. This investigation presents only those rooms that I have been invited into, the rooms that I can describe and tell you about, that which have been made concrete to me in words and actions. This analysis only gives glimpses into another. And as such, the mysteries remain. Remember rooms within rooms within rooms. Remember the locks. That mysteries remain is acceptable, for life is mysterious and as such, questions endure. Those mysteries are in part why we seek to learn, why we teach, why we ask the questions and hope for answers. I begin to introduce you to a woman, Piercy Sand, whose history and experiences affected the way she taught and how she saw her students. Piercy had taught for 23 years at the time of this study, three years at Atwood College (her 114 college at the time of the study), eight years at a Big Ten university where she received her doctorate in literacy, and 15 years as an elementary teacher. She was married; her spouse Mark, was a chairperson of a department at a large university. She was also the mother of a college-age son, Johnny. Th• Personal is Political is Pedagogical What did I see as I looked at Piercy? Probably much the same as other people saw, but in the final analysis, perhaps I interpreted what I saw much differently. Looking at women is something that is done consistently and blatantly in the U.S. culture/s. Men look at women. Women look at themselves being looked at. Women look at women often with men's eyes. Appraising. Judging. Rating. Hen act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object--and most particularly an object of vision: a sight. (Berger, 1972, p. 47, emphasis in original) And so the look is very important for women, therefore, important to the description of Piercy. But the look is always just from the outside. This looking has the element of a double vision (McIntosh 1985, 1989) for I was trying to see Piercy through eyes that were woman-centered versus man centered. No easy task. So the look was convoluted and trapped within androcentric ways, struggling not to be. 115 What is necessary is what Du Bois (1979) and McIntosh (1985, 1989) have called a double consciousness: A~ women, we inhabit our world with a "double consciousness." We are in and of our society but in important ways also not "of" it. We see and think in the terms of our culture; we have been trained in these terms, shaped by them; they have determined not only ·the ways in which we have been able to perceive and understand large events, but even the ways in which we have been able to perceive structure and understand our most intimate experiencing. Yet we have always another consciousness, another potential language within us, available to us. We are aware, however inchoately, of the reality of our own perceptions and experience; we are aware that this reality has often not been only unnamed but unnameable; we understand that our invisibility and silence hold the germs of both madness and power, of both dissolution and creation •••• We are observer and observed, subject and object, knower and known. When we take away the lenses of androcentrism and patriarchy, what we have left is our own eyes, ourselves and each other. We are the instruments of observation and understanding; we are the namers, the interpreters of our lives. (Du Bois, 1979, pp. 111-112, emphasis in original) Piercy was White, with an Irish Italian, working class heritage. 31 She had dark wavy hair and green dancing eyes. She considered herself "transparent," and her eyes and face did suggest every emotion she was experiencing. She was in her forties. She was very attractive. She dr•ssed well and was fashionable. Her walk was light and she had a spritely 31 I believe it ii imporlul to tell of lbe herilap of White 111d Black people if oae bu IICC4III to it. Pielcy wu lrilh llalian. I am Oenma. Pielcy bad c:ome IO value lier bori1ap 111d felt lhat it bu bad a impllc:t OD wbo Ille WU. I left Genmay whoa I wu four yean old 111d I have DC1t nplored iDdepdl bow my bori1ap bu affected wbo I am IDd wbat I tbink. However, I believe 1bat Yaamo (1990) matea a very imporlul poilll when Ille IIIIN: 'l'bil eo-callod . . . . . pot bu only IIIC:Ceoded in llirmDI Ill UIIO fat food-,obbJiaa 'panic■' (U in paoric; 'whifD fi>lb' wbo were oace lrilh, Polilb, lluuiln, Enalilb, etc., 111d 'black fi>lb,' wbo were oace Albulli, Blmbara, Blule, Yonaba, etc.). (p. 23) One of lbe siv- of lbia llllcly ii lhat I ucribe to lbe theory lhat Ill lbe aoc:ial CODltnlC1I of wbo -.. ue affect our way, of bowina (NO Beleaty et al., 1916) 111d our waya of--, lbe world. 116 step. She was quick to smile and quick to laugh. She had a voice that was imbued with glee and delight. Her hands gesticulated to punctuate her words. She was slim and petite. Her tiny stature was a seemingly unimportant descriptor, and yet, in the final analysis, her small build, which may have led some to assume that she was diminutive, could not be more wrong. She was strong and courageous, bold and passionate. If Piercy was a color she would have been a bright deep red, vibrant and daring.n Stereotypes about size abound in this society. Although women do not have to endure abuse the way that men do if they are small in a culture that values BIG, 33 small is not necessarily prized. So, from the outside one saw a small attractive woman who was eager to laugh. So what does one do with that information? Although a large number of women professors are in teacher education compared to other disciplines or fields of study, in the context of the academy where the norm is a BIGWHITEMALE, a smallWhitefemale was already challenging the norm. The academy (and teacher education) concerns itself with the intellect. Therefore, it would seem superfluous to speak about physical characteristics. While it is true that physical characteristics are not often a large part of the n I seali7.o dall um, a color u a 1J111bo1 widlia a clacriptioa could be problcmalic (i.e., lbe coanotadom U'CJIIDll wbilo ml black); by um, lbe color red I may evob unamicipalecl reactioa1 ia mme people. 33 'Iba iraay ii dall BIO ii oaly u ia tall, DOI u ia lap for women. See Orbacb (1985) Fat II a fenipi!' Jplf 117 descriptions of the teacher educators who have been studied, I believe it ll. important in this investigation of Piercy because women are too often judged by how they look. Their looks afford them privileges or not. Piercy was tiny--and yet within this tiny frame was a commanding, assertive self assured, secure, poised woman. It seems to me that people underestimate others based on size--"might makes right"- small is insignificant.~ Some of the descriptors that I use for Piercy are sometimes used to diminish women. However, I want to reclaim these: perky, spunky, pert. I want the old connotations to be brushed away. In the context of the academy these are often not the words you hear about a scholar, about a professor. By using them I want to put "a spoke in the wheel" (SEED workshop, 1991) of tradition. That is, you can be a professor, a scholar, a teacher educator and be perky, spunky, feisty, and pert. It is unlikely that these descriptors would be used for men and that is in part why they have been diminished. But here I am describing a woman, and she had these traits. And they are valuable in my eyes, and therefore they do not reduce the person they describe. Part of what I am asking ~ Some femiailll believe dial it ii import.am lo deacribe tbemaelvea pbylically becaue of lbia-dNcn"bm, for example if Ibey are •tat• or •lbin• (Prye, private "-OIDJlll•oiration, 1990) for tbia affects die-yin which die world ialencta with them. For example, fat oppreuion or body faaciam bccomea part of way lhe culture illlcracta with the individual and the individual with the culture. I realm that for IIOllle people die arpment I am 1D1D1J1 about pbylical deacripton may actually bactme. That ii, tbe ureocypeawilljult be reified. However, I 1bint die actnowledsin,ofbow pbylicality in die U.S. cullun (White apecifically) ii coanectocl to ., many 11.ereolypea ii import.am in tbia IIUdy. 118 you to do is to hear them in a new way. 35 Language has been constructed within a male dominating sex/gender system.~ Therefore, words benefit those who hold the most power. Many of the words used to describe women have undergone semantic derogation (Spender, 1985) or have been used solely to describe women. It seems to me if this dissertation in part is to challenge constructs in our heads, the words I use to describe Piercy need to be heard differently (with the "Inner ear," Daly, 1985), felt differently and regarded differently (with the "Third eye," Daly, 1985). As you can see we have a convoluted and complicated set of physical realities. She was a smallWhitewoman, two out of three made her not the norm in the academy, and yet her attractiveness afforded her certain privileges. She was spunky and pert and feisty--all woman-identified characteristics defined as such by a "man-made language" (Spender, 1985). Do you see part of the complexities and complications? As such, these physical attributes were part of her identity in the academy. But only in part because of 35 See Daly (1978) for her dilcuuioa ofworda located in• male dominaliliaworld. For exaq,le: llll1 it allo defined u •an ualy or evil-lootinc woo.n. • But lllia, ~ lhe 1011n:e, -Y be cOllliderecl • compliawal. For lhe beauty of 111'1>111, creative women it •u1Jy• by miqynitlic llaJldanla of °bealll)'. • 1be loot of teu.le-iclenlified women it "evil" to 1hoee who fear ua. As for "old," a,eilm it• f'ealun of phallic 10eiety. For - wbo baw lnlllYaluecl dlia, • Crone it oae wbo lhould be an exaq,le of IINDllh, eounp and witdom. (p. IS) Daly ,on on to •Y in bar index of - - - • becauN Ibey an beard in• - beard in • - way. word&, • Allboup ~ of lhe• an not - way• (p.469). In lhe - ia • way lhe worda UIOd to delcribe Piercy need to be in lhe old - • Ibey an - ~ As Marilyn Frye (1990, private COIIIIIIIIDication) poided out, it it bnpc,rtad to uae 11w lanpap 11w doea not mgett 11w domination it coq,lece or fixed. Therefore I do not uae • •-ie dominul culture ..• • nlher I uae lhe wont dominatina wbicb mgetta to - that it it not• pen, but ralher IOlllfllbiac that can be cOllllrUcted in other way■• 119 course her physical appearance did not define her. Her presence is imperative to consider, especially in teaching, and she had a presence that was substantial. She was a woman of substance. She packed a pu~ch in her words and in her ways. What'• In a Baae7 The name "Piercy Sand" has special significance. In feminist theory naming is essential (Rich, 1977; Wescott, 1979); it empowers, it describes, it illuminates. Therefore the pseudonym of the woman I studied took on a special importance. For me her name had to connote something more than itself. Two weeks into the semester we spoke about pseudonyms. I told her that I was thinking that Hope would be a great pseudonym for her. I went on to describe what I felt when I read her journal: Corinna: I thought what a great pseudonym [Hope would be] and then I was reading your journal and you were talking about intellectual caring and then I thought about Carey as a pseudonym. Hope or care, both are themes. Just in terms of what you feel more comfortable with in terms of a pseudonym. or if you don't like either •••• Piercy: That's interesting. Yeah hope is a real theme, we hope that this is going to be better. This optimism is important to me a, a realistic optimism but hope is more. I care because I hope. Piercy believed that she had an optimism, but she declared it was a •realistic optimism.• I concluded that she was hopeful. But as I came to realize it was more than that, 120 which she alluded to later on. Caring is engendered because hope exists. The one precedes the other. During the same meeting Piercy said, "I think if I don't hope then I forget about the caring, they go together, yeah. But maybe hope is the driving force behind caring." However, later on Piercy stated that she didn't like the name Hope. The next meeting we had we continued to talk about pseudonyms. I think I'm, I don't know, I was thinking Piercy: I was thinking that hope doesn't seem like a volatile enough word for me. I mean I like it but I think it is a benign word and I don't think that I am benign. about desire, but that's not a good name. There's more than hope, it's almost, I don't know, there's something driving me or something. [Hope is] light and kind of bland, and positive. But I don't think that I am that way. I think there's something else there, that level where we really connect. It's I don't even know what it is. There's a vision out there. We are going to get there by God. It's that drive, keeping that word drive, we are a bit driven by this. It's a little out of our control. I don't know if that is exactly what I mean or not. Corinna: Well think about a name that you'd be comfortable with. it doesn't have to capture everything because that would be in the explanation of who you are, right? I want the name to be symbolic but Piercy: But it is more fun and interesting ••• ! think a name does have a certain [meaning]. We want this to be special, really poignant. early to do it because we haven't figured it all out. I think that maybe it's too Piercy was right. It was too early. It was only after we had been together for the semester, and I had let the data dance around in my mind, that I began to see more than hope, more than care in Piercy. She said that having a symbolic name would be fun and 121 interesting. Piercy saw life, love, and teaching and learning as fun and interesting. The first week of class she told me that she got an "intellectual kick" out of teaching and learning. I chose the first name Piercy because it suggested sharpness. Piercy was sharp and incisive and insightful. The name Piercy suggested a person.who got to the point, which she did. She was direct and honest and she valued and honored those traits in others. She also had the ability to pierce through to the heart of the argument and take a critical stance. Piercing eyes is a phrase commonly used to describe eyes which see through someone or something. Yet, I think there is a need to develop the concept of a piercing inner eye. I believe that Piercy had this kind of piercing inner eye and one of her unique qualities was her introspectiveness and reflectiveness. Piercy asked the whys that are often difficult to confront because they are being asked of oneself. It takes "[The] Courage to See" (Daly, 1985, p.xxiii), courage to be able to use a piercing inner eye to look into one's own soul. Daly (1985) speaks of this piercing inner eye: "While looking ••• steadily with her 'ordinary' eyes, she sees ••• with her Third Eye" (Daly, 1985, p. xxi). These Vital Eyes and Inner Eyes ask the deepest whys. The Third Eye has the capacity to envision Other Whys, Other ways, and Other worlds (Daly and Caputi, 1987, pp. 172-180). 122 Piercy is also a gend~r neutral name. 37 I decided to go with a first name that was gender neutral because when we spoke at length about pseudonyms, she wanted to go with the name Earnest. She said that it spoke to a quality that she felt she had. I had felt uncomfortable with the name, feeling that it was not right somehow to have a man's name for a woman who felt being a woman was an important part of who she was as a person and as a teacher educator. When I mentioned that I thought Earnestine would be the female version of it she wanted to go with the male version: Piercy: I've got my name, maybe it is Earnest. Corinna: Earnestine, it would have to be Piercy: No it wouldn't (laughs). I don't want Earnestine. It's one of those fucking things they do to us to make us feminine. How about Earnest? to be, it fits. tough little suckers? I like it. Aren't Earnies usually I want Corinna: I don't want, obviously I am going to describe you as a woman and stuff like that, but I also don't want people to immediately conjure up a male type image. Do you know what I mean? Piercy: That might be a fun twist though. Why do names have to be a gender thing? Why do we have Earnest and we know the meaning of the word and we don't know the meaning for Earnestine. Right? Maybe that could be your opening statement. That names are gendered. And if you like the sound of a name why can't it be yours regardless of •••• Why is not okay for us to have boys• names? Corinna: we can definitely think about this. Remember how you said we are going to have to keep track of how 37 Piercy ia a pnder MUlnl name for me but I realize for ocben if may DOI be. N._ of any t.:iDd evoke cOIIIIIJlatim. dUI I canDOI fonNe. I am awue lbat the IIUDDI I choc.e may be read completely diffenady 1ban I ilUlld them. 123 the name changes too. Because I have a feeling it is going to change (laughter). Piercy: I would be happy to be [Earnest]. That seems like it fits. What I have had before, Hope didn't fit. And so it seemed important to me to honor the idea of a name that is gender ambiguous. Piercy is also the last name of an author I greatly admire, Marge Piercy. In woman on the Edge of Time (1976) Marge Piercy•s feminist imagination built a new society which stretched my feminist imagination to new possibilities in the same way that Piercy has. So Piercy seemed to me to be an appropriate fit. Sand is the last name of the pseudonym George Sand, used by the French author Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, Baronne Dudevant, 1804-76. "A prolific and very influential writer in her time, she is remembered today chiefly for her life style as a passionate, free spirited woman ••• " ( Tuttle, 1986, p. 283). Piercy also described herself as "gritty," and celebrated this "grittiness." Piercy wrote in her journal: lloml seems too detached a word--I think I would prefer something with more~ maybe "Sand" Mark Twain's word for common sense--grounded in reality. Sandy sounds too "flip" Sandra too "formal." I'm working on it. (undated, Sunday 9:30, a.m.) Piercy•s own passionate free spirit needed to be acknowledged and I believe that Piercy "taught against the grain" (Cochran-Smith, 1991); therefore, the last name of Sand seemed apropos. Ergo, Piercy Sand. 124 In this chapter I have indicated the limits of what I as a researcher can do in terms of rendering a portrait of Piercy Sand. I have presented the difficulty of describing a woman, given the androcentric vision I have internalized. By describing Piercy I tell also about myself. The way I interpret and tell of what I have seen and heard tells as much about me as it does about Piercy. I as "the knower (am] an intimate part of the known" (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule, 1986, p. 137) and as the painter am an intimate part of the painting. The room that I am painting in the house that feminist imagination builds is about Piercy but also about me. I have only just begun to introduce you to Piercy in these pages, describing her and telling of the significance of her name. As the chapters unfold you will meet her in new and richer ways. Her actions, her beliefs, her commitments, and her experiences and historicity all combined to create a unique and complex woman teacher educator with feminist imagination. Piercy existed within a particular context which impacted her personally, politically, and pedagogically. In the next chapter I will explore Piercy•s context and her courage which help describe and locate her more fully. However, the description remains still only partial. CHAPTER IV PIBRCY SAIID'S COIITBrl' AIID COURAGE: ADDITIODL DBSCRIPTIOB AIID LOCATIOB In building community, some brave soul has to start. There must, in truth, be initiatives. One by one people genuinely risk rejection or other injury as they escalate (or "descalate") the group into ever deeper levels of vulnerability and honesty. It is always individual, always unilateral, and always riskr.• That's the reality of it. (Peck, 1987, p. 233) 8 We must be willing to restore the spirit of risk--to be fast, wild, to be able to take hold, turn around, transform. (hooks, 1989, p. 54) In this chapter I will explore Piercy•s description and feminist imagination in context. I will tell of the kinds of courage Piercy displayed given the context she was in. I will examine the ways in which the personal is pedagogical. Piercy•s description is integrally linked to her context. Locating her within a structure tells much about Piercy, and much about the structure in which she worked. Piercy worked at a small, private, prestigious liberal arts college, ranked in the top 50 in the country. Academics were highly valued at Atwood, and in contrast to the Big Ten university from which she graduated, Piercy stated "sports players are looked down on." It was located in the town of Morrison. Atwood College was a part of the town, yet also apart from the town. This lush and wealthy college was ironically located within an industrial town that was populated by primarily poor and working poor (which 38 Jlion:7 c:ud M. Sc:oa Jt.c:t u ooo - • of bor idou about c:ommmity. 125 126 Piercy described to her students as "underclass") Blacks and Whites. Piercy stated that "Anything that happens in this state affects our schools, our college, us, crime-- everything." She explained that some of the small industries in the town supplied manufacturers in the automobile industry. And as far as jobs go, the college was the highest employer, the small factories number two. This midwest state's economy had been ailing for a number of years and many people who had secure jobs in the auto industry no longer did. People in Morrison knew unemployment. There were dilapidated houses in Morrison- paint peeling, and falling apart. There were large and luxurious houses in Morrison--designed after houses of historic periods, with well-kept lawns and gardens. There was a stark contrast between rich and poor. Piercy drew the class• attention two and a half months into the semester to the fact that the Gray Factory was not right beside the college. "It is across the tracks in the low income part of town. The Blacks who live in that particular area are more affected by the pollutants."" Piercy talked often of the B Jllenly la aJludilll to the emirommlllal neian a olauilm dial nilll wilhia Ibo Uairad StafN. ll la - fbr pow a l to haw &otoriea plaoed ripl buide 1bem a allo baanlaua WUI& laod&lla. See Ille fbllowuw lllliolN oa ar lllac:t - lbole~: Maui, P. A lullyaa, 8. (April/May 1992). lllloo, Povorty, a Riab. la EPA Jourpl. pp. 6-1. Ibo Ba,,iroaa.111; Tho Dilldvulapd F- Ona1er Bullanl, R. (Muell/April 1992). Ja our 8-c:tyuda: Mimxity Coamw•oitiN Got MOil ofdroe Dumpa. la EPA Jcyrpal. pp. 11-12. U.S. a.-1 ~Hllia, Ot'lioo. (Jw I, 1983) ·s- of Hmnloua w ... Lwlfllla a 'l'lloir c-la1ioa wi1b llllolal - ~ Statua of SumiuDdilw t'CJ1D1D11nitic•" GAO/RCBD-83-168. pp. 1-13. 127 children that her student teachers worked with, the poverty that she and they saw and experienced "close up at a distance." When one drove to the college from outside the town it was almost as if one was entering into an enclosed area. There were no fences and no walls; however, the buildings and the tone of the area were like a place apart. And in some ways it was. The students and the parents of those students were mostly privileged and mostly White. These students and their parents wielded a fair amount of power, based on class and race, in the society at large and at Atwood. Piercy stated about a month before the end of the semester: These kids do know, and there is a real awareness of the power that they do have over people, over their I do professors. And I do think some are abusive. think some are much more abusive because they know they can get away with it, again it has to do with social class and paying a lot of money to be here. I have heard parents say "I paid $40,000 for my kid to come here so far and you flunked her." However, the people in the surrounding area, who were poor and/or Black, did not have much power. An interesting juxtaposition. Another interesting juxtaposition is that you had rich White students who were going to be teachers observing and teaching poor and often predominantly Black children. Atwood students, as Piercy said to me the first week of class, "see the kind of diversity that most have never seen in their lives." 128 The Bouse of Education and Piercy•• Role Atwood had a beautiful campus. During the time of the study, Atwood's education program was located in a beautiful, quaint house. It was a small program with two people overseeing it--Piercy and her chairperson. Piercy had a wonderful office with a big picture window that looked out onto the campus. It was winter moving into spring at the time of this study. During the winter the snow topped the house (of education) and the surrounding trees in a picturesque fashion. Squirrels were foraging around for food on the front lawn in the snow. When spring came the trees were green and in bloom and birds were chirping in the trees. It was like a storybook house. However, the house was located on a side street a distance from the quad, the heart of this liberal arts campus, "marginalized" as Education was marginal on campus. Piercy was hired to "shape up" the education program at Atwood. When I studied her she was in her third year of teaching there. This program had a long history of being, in her words, a "Mickey Mouse" program. "Educational Foundations" (ED 277), the course Piercy taught, was seen to be one that students could just slide through. Piercy had been brought in to create change, yet as an untenured faculty person that in itself was a challenge. The students in the teacher education program at Atwood were all young, undergraduate students. Piercy only had 129 three post-graduates in elementary education in her first three years. She told post-graduates that it would take longer because courses were spread out and the program was set up for undergraduates. The program did not have the funds or the faculty to do it in a concentrated time frame. Both elementary and secondary students took her ED 277 class, but she oversaw only the elementary students for the three years they were in the program. Anyone was able to enroll in ED 277; students did not need to be committed to becoming teachers. All the students who were sophomores in the class that I studied were "new program people." Piercy said that the "old program was awful, students took courses in five weeks. In the old program there were dwindling numbers, but the new program is over-enrolled." Piercy went on to say that "I'm concerned about that individual treatment and help. I really know the elementary education students personally, I have a three year relationship with them." Piercy wanted to create a dynamic and demanding new program. Her chairperson had ties to the old program that she helped to build. Piercy and her chairperson had many personality conflicts and pedagogical conflicts. Yet they needed to work side-by-side until a new chairperson was hired (this chair was retiring and the search was underway as this study was taking place). This was a difficult and unsettling time for Piercy. Her openness to work with me 130 collaboratively at this time showed she was willing to trust that the benefits of this research overrode the risks and that she was adventurous. Piercy had already begun to change a lot of what was happening in the education program. Its reputation was turning around; enrollments were increasing. The "old ghosts" (Piercy•s words) that Piercy talked about were being evicted from the quaint old house. Atwood's education program was voted in as a department at the time of the study, before the search for a new chair began. When Piercy talked about the search for a new chair, Piercy said that she wanted someone who was committed to diversity and who was not oppressive. Another important feature was that the person would help build community and also help people examine their own thinking and assist them to see in different ways. Even in this comment it was evident how important diversity~ community, and getting others to stretch their thinking were for Piercy. In her syllabus Piercy explained the teacher education program by stating: The Atwood College Teacher Education Program prepares teachers competent in subject matter disciplines and in their ability to help their students in the pursuit of personal, intellectual and social growth and responsibility. Given this goal, the purpose of the foundations course is to sensitize students to critical issues in the field of education from a broad interdisciplinary viewpoint. The scope of topics is organized to give a preservice teacher understanding of important ideas and issues that the community of scholars in education have identified as important for improving schools and society. As a beginning course students will observe and discuss impacts of social context on students within schools as a springboard for 131 proceeding courses. Assignments will become a part of an on-going professional portfolio that enable students to assess strengths and continued growth as a prospective teacher. (Sand, Syllabus Winter 1992, p. 1) • Tb• Context of "B4uoational J'oun4atio:n■ " (BD 277) I would suggest that there must always be a place in teacher education for "foundations" people, whose fundamental concern is with opening perspectives on the many faces of the human world. (Greene, 1978, back cover) The class took place within a science building. The building seemed new, clean, and well-equipped. The classroom was big, bright, and airy. The room was carpeted. Windows lined the one wall. The desks were new and moveable. There was a coat rack on the back wall, which I noticed as a nice amenity. A chalkboard covered the front wall and had a pull down screen for an overhead. There were two doors leading into the classroom. Piercy usually had a VCR and monitor in the room, for she would show excerpts from movies related to issues being discussed in class. There was a "teacher desk" at the front of the room with a portable podium on it for lectures. Piercy, however, removed the podium and would walk around her desk and at times sat behind it. When the students were in small groups, which was often, she would monitor the groups by walking around or allowing the students to seek her out when necessary. She used the "Jigsaw" (Cohen, 1986) technique every week so that 132 they would begin to develop collaborative interactions with one another. 40 Except for the first day, students sat in a large circle. With 22 students in the class this was easy to do, given the size of the room and the desks which were not secured to the floor. Piercy most often sat in one of the desks that was part of the circle when she and the students were involved in discussions. I often sat in one of the desks within the circle, on the other side of the room. I sat there and took fieldnotes, audiotaped, and videotaped what was occurring. Researcher presence can be intrusive. However, since I was there from the inception of the class I became a common sight silently sitting there taking notes and watching. By reading Piercy•s syllabus one gets a feel for the kind of course that she created: "Educational Foundations ED 277" is where the students began to "build a foundation for students in the Atwood College Teacher Education Program by emphasizing social, political, ethical, philosophical and personal issues in education •••• Issues such as social justice, social class, gender, ethnicity and equity will be the focus of our discussions, paper assignments and 40 ea11ea a,laim r..- u UIUl8 !be •upoat lllelmique": Divide !be cJua mlO lftlUPI with each p,up ubd to pnparo !be - Sludeala U9 told !bat Ibey 111111t a.ta - lbat each.,.,- ill lbe lftlUP will be abll to fimclioa u an expert OD lbe ■-n to lbcir Nt of qllOlliou ill !be aec:oad pbuc. For lbe aec:oad pbuc, divide up !be ,xpe111., dial lbcra ill - expert for each ■- of qllllliou ill each Jl'CIUP· Then illllnact the 1ft1UP to ao over Ill quNliom ill each Jl'CIUP· Then inllluct lbe lftlUP to ao over Ill quNliom with !be midllll expert K1iDJ u d-..ioa loader for Ilia or her ■- of quNlioaa. Thia ill an adaptatioa of Aa-•• (1978) Jipaw Melbocl. (1916, p. 16) to a diffcna& lot of IIUdy quNliom. 133 students' fieldwork on an on-going basis as we observe and reflect o.n situations in the classroom" (Sand, Syllabus Winter 1992, p. 1). The class met twice a week for two hours and lasted a full semester (in this case from the middle of January to the first week of May). The course objectives were clearly laid out in Piercy•s syllabus. She divided them into three groupings (content, process, and attitude): Content objectives: 1. Students will synthesize and evaluate current issues [tracking, status of the teaching profession, conditions in the classroom and teacher autonomy today, inequity, hidden curriculum, culture, socialization, social class, race, equal opportunity, sex bias etc. p. 3]. 2. students will apply specific concepts and identify equitable social relationships, interaction patterns and assumptions within field sites. Process objectives: 1. Students will understand how to analyze concepts such as non sex-biased teaching and apply these concepts to experiences in the field. 2. Students will understand how to critically analyze both written and spoken texts. 3. Students will learn how to articulate positions orally and in written texts through collaborative group work. Attitude objectives: 1. Students will explain their thinking about the purposes of schooling by writing a philosophy statement. 2. Students will self-assess their interest and awareness of critical issues by observing and reflecting on the required text and field experiences. (p. 2) • 134 Piercy selected three required texts for this class: Foundations of Education by ornstein/Levine41 ; Keeping Track; How schools structure Inequality by Jeannie Oakes; School and society by Feinberg and Soltis. And she had them read three chapters from Sadker and sadker•s sex Equity Handbook for schools. In reading the syllabus there was a definite emphasis on the issues of equity and diversity. From reading the syllabus students knew that they would be dealing with issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and equity issues. From watching her teach Piercy stressed that their attitudes toward the critical issues in education were important for them to reflect upon and do some self-assessment. (See Appendix B for complete syllabus.) IP 222 ru1r1111na • t•nO•r Raauir-nt: Prob1mti1inq t•nOer, Race, ano class Atwood college had moved to creating gender and ethnicity requirements for incoming students. Piercy had been teaching this class for three years. The year that I studied her, ED 277 passed the curriculum committee as a course fulfilling the gender requirement and was listed in the course catalogue as such. The college saw gender and ethnicity as important for they had "institutionally 41 Piercy decided after lbe lllldy WU OYV to JO to a diffinal tcxlboot ...... Ibo felt lbat dail om did nat pt at lbe ilalea in lbe way dall WIii lll0ll bolpfld. She uplaiaecl lbe teldboot lbat Ibo WIii cOllliderinf WIii Ill up u a •poial-ccJUIIIOlpOim• dialope ud wa wriaaa by two womea. Piercy uid lbat lbe tom of lbe telllboot would complement whit Ibo WIii uym, to cnaa. in ber elaaroom. 135 legitimated" (Piercy•s words) these issues. During the first month Piercy stated to me that these were "fascinating times because these issues were being legitimated in a liberal arts college." Piercy•s view was wholly consistent with the Association of American Colleges report in 1985, about the need for integrity in the college curriculum. 42 However, Piercy also stated that there is always a double edged sword to a mandate such as this. For the students began to voice the complaint that all they ever heard about was these issues (which was in part their privilege speaking, for those who are oppressed often think these issues are not dealt with enough in teacher education programs). Three and a half months into the study Piercy talked about how ED 277 had changed over the time she had taught it: I want them to see beyond the surface of a When I think about the first time I taught this course, I know there are it is now a whole different course. things that I do every year. I really try to develop their thinking, push their thinking beyond a surface level. classroom, to look beyond the surface of life, to be able to see what is there, be more reflective people, to be more perceptive people, those are always things that I try to do, they are important. help them develop their writing, whether their thinking gets developed along with it, I wonder. if the two are always synonymous, you can express some pretty stupid thoughts (We laugh]. I think they all get better at writing, they internalize me as their audience. I ask them to clarify and state what they want to state and tell me what they think, that gets If anything I I don't know 42 See Auocialioa of American Colle .... "lntepity in tbe Colle,e Curriculum: A Report to tbe Academic Community." Tbc Auociatioa, Wubinp,n, D.C., 1981. . 136 developed. But those are all such global things. you notice there isn't anything in [my discussion] about gender. But it's all about gender. It's like it is necessary but not sufficient [all the other things I try to develop], but you've got to see gender issues or forget it. (emphasis added) If When Piercy said "it's all about gender," she was right. Women are half the population and all experiences affect women, "because everything affects women, every issue is a women's issue" (Tuttle, 1986, p. 108). However, gender also implies that both women and men are involved. What affects women does affect men because it affects humanity. Also, gender intersects and overlaps with race, class, culture, and sexual identity; one cannot be facilely factored out from the other. Piercy had the students complete a gender assignment, which she paired with the tracking issues in Oakes• (1985) Keeping Track; How schools structure Inequality. She felt this helped them develop their capacity to "see beyond the surface of a classroom to look beyond the surface of life." Piercy wanted them to examine the institutional bias in relation to gender, race, and class that exists within schools. The "Field assignment: Gender" was used by Piercy to help the students begin developing a "consciousness of seeing." In this assignment the students explored the classroom in terms of seating, displays, language, and task allocation. Teacher-student interaction was also explored including discipline and the quality of content. Piercy had students observe the 137 hallways, cafeteria, playground, and library. She also had them take note of the personnel's gender and the messages that this might be sending to students (see Appendix B for a full description of·the assignment). The subtext of this assignment, as others in her class, was "to explore the politics of print" (Bigelow, 1989, p. 640) and the politics of interaction. Piercy wanted her students to start seeing the subtext of curriculum, activities, and actions within schools. Piercy•s curriculum explicitly explored issues such as "survival of the fittest, caste system, hierarchy, tests-stratify [people], and language stratification," which were topics discussed about two weeks into the semester. She wanted them to become critical readers of text, including living text. Piercy also wanted her students to be a critical reader of her. During the second week of class, Piercy said: Part of the agenda here is to have them reflect on what's happening, not to get me to do all the reflecting on what's happening. this environment, to let it happen. Get that kind of consciousness, critiquing my [teaching] and letting them critique me. That is part of the goal, that's not happening yet. till half way through [the semester]. I can almost say that's never happened I'm there to set up Piercy wanted her students to be critical readers of all they saw and heard. ·she also wanted them to challenge her because she believed this would promote critical thinking. Piercy valued students giving her opposite points of view because she felt that it helped them develop a questioning stance towards authority (in her judgment a 138 necessary characteristic of a change agent). As Emily replied in her interview after being asked if felt she could challenge Piercy, "She's made it very clear that is acceptable. Because she is open to our input and she's not beyond critically analyzing her own thoughts, and beliefs, and ideas. That's a wonderful characteristic to have." The Pirst Day of Class1 A Door Xnto co-unity on the first day of class, Piercy was out in the hall greeting students as they entered. I had known she was a cheerful, warm, and open person, but now I saw it in action in the classroom. Before the students arrived Piercy wrote the following agenda on the board: 1. Introductions 2. Purpose of the course 3. Jigsaw Piercy had an agenda every class meeting on the blackboard so that the students would know what was planned for that day. Piercy introduced herself and me. She told her students that this time as she taught ED 277 she would be doing something very special, she would be studying her own teaching. She wanted to think hard about her teaching especially in regard to fulfilling the gender requirement. She told of her own experiences in graduate classes where she had learned about liberatory pedagogy, and yet 139 ironically had the most oppressive teachers. Piercy told them that they would be creating their own philosophy of teaching and that her main philosophy for herself was that she was a learner. Piercy then told them that how she learned was by others disagreeing with her. She stated, "You get points in here for disagreeing versus agreeing with me. I want you to come up with counterpoints to my argument." (In the next class she delineated the role of "challenger" in group work, whose job it was to push their group members' thinking.) Piercy then held up the three books they would use in this course. She told them that the authors came with different perspectives and that "they are just different voices in the collective. You will disagree with some of the things they say. Same with me, if I come up with an argument and you disagree, say so." Piercy then said that she "plants" articles in their readings that she herself disagrees with so that it will generate dialogue. She also said that she "plants" gender biased things that she hoped they would be able to point out and notice. Piercy gave out the exam questions during this first class. She told them, "I want to take away the notion that you have to figure out what I think." She also gave them a criteria list to follow in terms of writing papers. To illustrate what she didn't want in a paper, she read them an example of a paper with lots of stereotypes in it. She 140 read, "Parents of children of poverty don't care." She asked the students if they saw any problems with it. One male student responded with, "The person is just stating facts, not supporting them." Piercy agreed and stated that the person made a "pretty big leap" and used circular reasoning by stating "they don't care because their parents don't care." Piercy cautioned the students to look at the complexity of an issue instead of jumping to conclusions. Piercy then read the definition of a liberal arts college published by Atwood College and keyed in on "self questioning" spirit. Piercy told them that she wanted them to create that spirit in this classroom. She said that she wanted to help them to disagree and develop their own voice. But she also said, "The first thing we need to do is get comfortable with each other as a collective." She introduced and implemented an activity which would help them "loosen up." She had the students create a mnemonic in pictorial form to help their peers remember each other's names. (For example, I drew a picture of an apple core, so that the students could remember my name, Corinna.) As Piercy encouraged someone to volunteer and go first, she said, "We'll find out who is a risk-taker." Piercy went over to a woman and asked her to share first since "she was hiding," but quickly Piercy said she was teasing. There was lots of laughing going on throughout this exercise. The students seemed good-natured and happy about participating in this ice breaker. 141 Piercy then talked about tracking and said that they would be looking for hidden curricula. "What are the hidden messag~s?" She told them that she would bring in a bulletin board and other materials to find hidden messages in them. All during the class Piercy was mobile. Her stride was bouncy and buoyant. She laughed constantly and was quick to smile. I sat there and thought what a cheerful and positive teacher she was. What'• in one c1a117 The ooor Opening to no Piercy h• Although this was the first class, it gives us a strong sense of who Piercy was and what she wanted for her students. We saw a cheerful welcoming teacher. She laughed and teased her students and wanted them to be at ease. Within her discussion she showed that she valued risk taking. She told them that she valued learning about her own teaching. By citing the example of her own experience in graduate school, she told them she did not want to be oppressive as she was helping them to understand liberatory education. She stressed that they were a collective, in a wider collective, and that members of that collective would not always agree. She tried to encourage their disagreeing with her. In essence she invited conflict into the classroom (and in the next class even told them "conflict is positive"). She told them that she wanted them to develop 142 skills in searching out the hidden curriculum as well as the explicit curriculum. She told them that evidence is very important, that issues are complex and jumping to conclusions was not what she wanted them to do. She gave them the criteria by which they would be assessed, including the final exam questions. During this first class, Piercy did most of the talking, except when students shared the mnemonic for their name. This, however, was unusual. During subsequent classes she urged her students to speak up and out. Opening the door to Piercy•s teaching by entering into one of her classes begins to show how Piercy enacted her ideas, beliefs, goals, and who she was personally in this classroom. Piercy•• Thoughts op That Pir■t Cl••·· IUI to Ber Way■ of Thinking When Piercy and I discussed what her overall feelings were after the first class, she said: I think they are great. I don't think I have a read on them They didn't seem spontaneous, not really guarded, but there was a lack of spontaneity, lack of laughing, lack of, not openness. I didn't get anyone that yet. looked glazed over. It will be a challenge to get them to come together as a group. There are real differences in the group there. you could say that about. Maybe it was me, less interaction, less letting go, I was playing it pretty safe. I guess every group Piercy wanted her students to be spontaneous, open, and to have fun. She perceived that they did not laugh much during 143 this class. I, however, perceived that they did. She may have felt that they did not cohere as a group. Given that this was the first class, it makes sense that they were not completely spontaneous. They did not know Piercy, each other, or me. It could be that because this class was being studied added an element of guardedness on the students• part. But Piercy wanted so much to connect with her students that she picked up on the slightest distancing on their parts. She then turned in on herself, and asked if maybe it was her. This was an example of how she was reflective about the things that she said and judgments she made. I asked Piercy if she felt she was on display because I was there and if she had behaved differently in any way. She replied, "I think so, yeah. I think so a little bit. I don't think what I said or what 1· thought about was different. But there was a consciousness." For Piercy being open was essential and being defensive was problematic. It was problematic especially for someone who intends on becoming a teacher. Piercy stated: I don't like working with those kind of [defensive] people because it comes from insecurity. I tend to shut them out and push them away. Part of me worries about that. Maybe I'm picking a certain kind of person, encouraging a certain kind of person to be a teacher, who isn't defensive. I then asked Piercy if she thought nondefensiveness was an important quality to have: I think it is. Many qualities are needed to make a good 144 _teacher, but I think that I would have to say one of them would be non-defensiveness. I'd even go to say that the people that I've met that are really competent are not defending themselves, they are asking about themselves. To not be defensive is not realistic. But to know your own defenses, to understand them, is how you grow. Some people say that defenses are not good, what you don't do is ever deface a person or make them feel bad. I guess what I would argue is that sometimes you want to take the risk, to be honest enough with the person. Sometimes it doesn't hurt to get a defense routine going. You can't do it with everybody though. I feel good when I get to the point where I can say, "I don't like what you did there" where they can accept it. Then we can talk from that point. Maybe that's not defense routines at all, maybe that's getting to a level of trust. Piercy saw defensiveness as natural for human beings, and being introspective about one's own defensiveness as important. She stated that she wanted to be able to get to the point with someone where she could be honest with them. As she spoke, she decided that perhaps it was trust that she was talking about. She went on to say how the students often developed certain dispositions in ED 277 such as feeling empowered as a teacher and valuing group work: They come in thinking of themselves as a cog in a big machine, and they really can't do too much. Some of I them I don't think get too much further than that. want them to think about that issue of who they are in the larger system. What I talk to them about is how much power they do have. Gaining respect in the community, when you are a really good teacher and you care about kids. That's a type of power. hierarchy, on the surface you might not think you do [have power) but you do have power. I want to help them feel empowered. I want to help them feel that teaching is a real empowering·role. That is what I get my jollies from, getting the group to see that teaching can be empowering and that they can make a difference. That yeah, they want a job and money, but they are doing something really important. With me, it is real In a 145 important at this age to ask themselves, "Ok what do I really want that will make me happy and successful? What is it that really moves me inside, and [how does that compare with] what my parents want me to be? What am I going to make money at? They question at that point of life. It makes it fun for me because it's interesting to them, really meaningful to them. That was a real kernel issue: Who will I be and how will I affect the world? That's the fun of teaching. Piercy herself felt empowered and powerful as a teacher. She knew that she could make a difference in people's lives. She wanted the same for her students. So part of her purpose for ED 277 was to help them see themselves as "change agents." Piercy wanted to create a community in her classroom, where students come to value their peers• ideas and help. She created multiple opportunities for students to work together. She used the Jigsaw technique consistently so that the students would collaborate. I want the students to learn to value working with each other. No one knew about Jigsaw. They have never worked in groups, [they don't see the value in] working with somebody. I don't think I really get there with them until I work with them in methods because then they go out and teach kids and talk about kids, just like we are doing (referring to her and my working together). Then all of a sudden, it is really good to work with someone else, teaming when they observe. If I thought of something that was most lacking, is value working with each other more. They like it but I don't know if they value it. Piercy saw ED 277 as fulfilling certain purposes that went beyond the content. There were process and attitudinal purposes also. The nebulous purposes of feeling empowered and collegial were very important to Piercy as well as the emphasis on being able to "read the word and the world" (Freire and Macedo, 1988). 146 The Purposes of IP 277 and Risky Business In the context of a small liberal arts college where teaching was valued and a private school where the students paid large amounts to attend, teaching about issues of equity and oppression was never without risk; and these issues created fear and loathing in some. students who were immersed in privilege and unearned domination (see McIntosh, 1988) might or might not embrace issues of equity and oppression (see Anyon, 1981). Piercy said during the first week of the semester that the students are "usually kind of naive and come from small farming communities." As Piercy reported to me during the first week of the semester, most of the students loved the diversity that they experienced in the schools of Morrison. "They feel so good that they see things that they have never seen before." She told of one wealthy student who came from a very small town and was working with Morrison children who were poor. This woman during the foundations class was not open to the issues Piercy presented, yet ended up saying, "I now understand issues that I never understood before." Piercy said she was "really impressed with the change in her thinking. She saw the value of the challenge I offered her and she said she valued complexity." Many students, according to Piercy, were willing to 147 struggle and grapple with issues of diversity once they encountered children out in the schools. Some, however, were not. Piercy told of a student who was in her last year of the program when Piercy first came to Atwood. Piercy said this student did really well in the units she taught kids. But it was just her unacceptance of these really diverse kids. I had to confront her on this. Here she was in her last year. do I tell them? Partly out of self-interest and partly out of interest for them, I want to let them know that is unacceptable. about what this program is about. I'm thinking, do I let·this slide by? Or I might as well send message early Piercy saw a discrepancy between what most students were willing to wrestle with out in the field and in the foundations course. Why was it that in the foundations course these very privileged White students seemed to reject the need for learning about issues of equity, diversity, and oppression? Was it just that they did not see the urgent need for learning about the children's reality since they did not have these children in front of them? or was it more complicated than that? Did they feel accused of being racist, sexist, or classist when they themselves felt that they wanted to do well by All children?43 Or was it that without actual children in front of them, they needed to examine how equity, diversity, and oppression played out in their mm lives? Did the issues of social justice challenge their·very way of being in the world? 43 J>aus Caaipbell ..,..._ daia to - after a diacuuion be bad widi l!liat Siapr about die IIUdeala at Micbipa Slare Uaiwnily aad lbeir Nluc:tanoe to delve ialo ~ of equity and divenity. 148 The class that I studied was different than other ED 277s Piercy had taught at Atwood. In the past there had been African American students in her class and in the previous year she had a lesbian student who was •out.• In this class there was only one person of color, Tasha, who was half Filipina and half White. There were only three people who (seemingly) were not monied: Dan, who worked at the automobile factory to support his education; Emily, who worked in a homeless shelter for children full-time as she went to school; and Keith, who was middle-class but did not come from a wealthy background. Dan and Emily were older than the average undergraduate, Keith was nineteen. In the past, Piercy had students who on their own confronted the racism and elitism of their peers. This was not the case during this semester because of the relatively homogeneous class composition. As Paley (1989) forewarns us, "It is often hard to learn from people who are just like you. Too much is taken for granted ••• in the classroom it diminishes the curiosity that ignites discovery• (p. 56). Ellesworth (1989) attests to the significance of class composition for the teacher educator: The terms in which I can and will assert and unsettle "difference• and unlearn my positions of privilege in future classroom practices are wholly dependent on Others/others whose presence--with their concrete experiences of privileges and oppressions, and subjugated or oppressive knowledges--I am responding to and acting with in any given classroom ••• I am trying to unsettle received definitions of pedagogy by multiplying the ways in which I am able to act on and in the university both as the Inappropriate/d Other and 149 as the privileged speaking/making subject trying to unlearn that privilege. (p. 323) Although the students knew from reading the syllabus that issues of race, class, gender, and ethnicity would be discussed, the context of this class was a general foundations course instead of a specialized anti-bias course where students knew specifically w~at the focus was. For example, the mixed-gender class that Lewis (1990) wrote about was similar to Piercy•s in that it was a group of young women and men in an education class; however the class was different than Piercy•s in the sense that Lewis' title of the class was "Seminar in Social Class, Gender and Race in Education." In Lewis' class there was self-selection going on, as the students knew what they would be dealing with in the classroom on some level. In Piercy's class they knew it fulfilled a gender requirement, and yet what that meant to students varied. The level of notification about the nature of the content of the course was very different in Lewis' class as compared to Piercy•s. Some students in Piercy's class ended up saying that they wanted what I call a "warning label" on the course, stipulating that students would be dealing with sexism. Piercy•s son was a student at Atwood and told his mother that she had a reputation as a "flaming feminist" with the students. Keith, a student in her class, said that he would not consider her a "rabid feminist" or a "raving feminist," but a feminist nonetheless. In his interview he said: 150 I mean, she's, she's not like a rabid feminist. But, I mean, she definitely, she knows that women can, I dunno, can support themselves and all of that. to use the word "rabid," but "raving," maybe, if that's better. Yeah, like raving feminists. I hate What the difference between a "flaming," a "rabid," and a "raving" feminist is, I am not sure. But the issue of labels is interesting, especially in the time of "backlash." What did the students think they would be getting? Some students assumed that Educational Foundations would be dealing with the "how to's" of teaching and that was what some wanted, certainly not "flaming," "raving," or "rabid," or even ordinary feminism. As Ellen stated: Well, this is my first education course. It's not really what I expected. I guess I expected more of a just, "This is how you deal with the kids," and going through, um, you know, like learning how to make a homework assignment or just learning more hands-on sort of a thing. And this is, it's a lot different, learning about, uh. learning about so much with the gender and the tracking. I mean, I didn't even know what tracking really was. So it's different from what I expected. I mean, I still am learning a lot, but I guess, maybe, as I take more classes, it'll be more hands-on. But this class was really wide I guess. I didn't realize we were gonna be Although Ellen did not suggest that Piercy was a particular brand of feminist in this excerpt, she did say there was a dysjunction between what she thought she would get and "so much about gender and tracking." Students• concerns about the course added to the potential risk Piercy faced as a faculty member at Atwood. The administration placed a lot of value on what students 151 said about their professors. During Piercy•s interim review--half way to tenure--the committee had used the previous years' student assessment forms to ask her questions about them in relation to her teaching. Because ~tudents had a lot of power there and Piercy was untenured, if the students did not like her, her future at Atwood could have been tenuous. At one point Piercy was called into the Provost's office because a parent requested that he talk to her. This parent was concerned because his daughter had plagiarized, and therefore she might not be able to get into the elementary education program. Piercy explained to the Provost that with the student's low grade point she would not be able to enter the program because she did not meet the grade point requirement. Piercy said the second week of the semester, "I look back on my experience at my last teacher education position and I haven't ever been as careful, or as monitoring of myself. I've never done things that were unfair, and I'm thoughtful, but there are students like that [who plagiarized] who force you to be on guard." The president of Atwood was a Methodist minister and Atwood was a conservative bastion in many ways. For example, in their bylaws, the administration fought to keep sexual identity--"homosexuality•--unmentioned in their policy of anti-discrimination. Darcy, the one woman who came to speak to Piercy•s class about lesbian and gay issues, did not •come out• until she received tenure. Yet, 152 despite the layer of conservatism, Piercy talked about the collegial relationships, the intellectual stimulation, and the emphasis on good teaching as facets of Atwood that she highly valued. She felt that morality was a valued topic by colleagues at the college because it was part of the school mission. She believed that the mission at Atwood was to help students develop intellectually, psychologically, and ethically and to become socially responsible citizens, and that this belief was shared by faculty who came to Atwood. Along with the purpose of students becoming critical thinkers and self-reflective on critical issues in education, another purpose of ED 277 was that it screened out those students who really weren't interested in education. Piercy deliberately planned for students to do a lot of work in this course. For her the teaching profession entailed a lot of work and her students needed to be prepared for this. Piercy thought of work not only in the literal sense of reading and writing papers, but also the hard work of being reflective, introspective, and willing to engage in dialogue with peers around critical issues in education. Piercy expressed her concern about one student who she felt was not sincere and direct. Piercy worried that she would not have what it took to be a teacher. Toward the end of the course Piercy stated: For a 200 level course there is a lot of work to do. But in a way it is a good screener for the kids who really aren't that interested in education. Getting out and doing these things, thinking about education, 153 reading about it and writing about it, are good ways to help them and me to know [whether they should be in education]. how much work it is, then the ones [who don't want to work] don't take it. The old history of the course was that you didn't have to come and you didn't [have to work hard]. I think the word gets out on the street of She was a hard grader (students• perceptions) and this in turn could cause some animosity (although she let them rewrite their papers). She also had the rule during this semester that all assignments had to be handed in on time to receive· full credit.~ She took off one grade point per day until it was handed in (Syllabus, p. 6). Sometimes students were not pleased with the low grades that they received from her, or her late policy. It did cross Piercy•s mind that she could be denied tenure if the students complained about her, and from her statements about a month before the end of the semester, it was clear her job was extremely important to her: They are not used to having their papers graded this hard, but it's important to develop careful thinking and writing in teachers. tenure--! think I would just die. What would I ever do? I think if I ever got denied Beyond the purpose of gatekeeping, ultimately Piercy•s purpose was to develop a community of people who were honest and open, and willing to take risks with one another. This was unusual for many students (who expressed that in some other classes they did not even know who their classmates ~ Piere)' told me 1bat in Ibo pa• lbe bad IWI illlo lhe dilemma of IIUdellla baDdinf in all !heir papen at Ibo end of lbe aemuter wbieh a.de it marl)' impolllible for her to pt her pdm, done OD time. Piere)', however, wu Wldenundm, of people wbo - ill or bad anoebor le,mmate excuae for not bem, a.,le to pt !heir papen in OD time. 154 were)--for classrooms in many student's conceptions were places where one "sits and gits" information, not where honesty and openness were part of the pedagogical requirements. Students were not necessarily used to this way of being in a classroom and not necessarily receptive to it. ordinary, Tran■gre■■ ive, an4 Political courage Piercy tried to create a community with her students that was different from what they were used to. As Peck (1987) states, it takes "some·brave soul ••• to start" (p. 233) an unconventional kind of interaction. Creating an authentic community takes courage, and, I believe, different kinds of courage. Courage is often seen to be a generic construct and yet, as I saw Piercy move in the world of teaching and her peers, I realized that for a woman teacher educator with feminist imagination there was no such thing as a generic construct. It was very much situated in gender, race, class, and sexual identity. It seemed in Piercy•s case, the operative social construct was gender. She was an untenured woman who was trying to usurp the status quo in rich White young people who do not necessarily see any problems (as they state, these issues were an earlier generation's problem, it wasn't a problem in theirs) and she was trying to create relationships that entailed new kinds of connections between a teacher educator and her students. 155 Rogers (1993) has delineated courage in girls and women. Rogers states: Courage may be in fact dangerous at times--when knowledge is new and fragile: when reaching out for a desired connection may lead to a painful repudiation: when speaking without any real possibility of being heard may lead to betrayal or abandonment. But the ways girls and women, and women of different generations, negotiate these difficult issues together mark the fate of female courage in families and schools, and in the culture at large. (p. 281) Rogers outlined two of the three kinds of courage that I think operated as Piercy interacted with her class.~ There was "ordinary courage" as Rogers describes it: In 1300, courage was also linked very closely with speaking. One definition of courage was "to speak one's mind by telling one's heart" (Simpson and Weiner, 1989, as cited in Rogers, 1993, p. 271). At this time, the definition of courage drew speaking into relation with heart and mind, intellect and love. (p. 271) Ordinary courage means to speak one's mind by telling one's heart. Heart and mind, intellect and love go together. There is not the mind/body split--the passions dissected from the intellect. Instead it is courageously telling what one knows on multiple levels. This Piercy did. She spoke what she felt was true and right and within a context of uncertainty, about her future and about how much opposition ~ One of die nuom I 1m dillill,uilbina between Ibo kinda of courap that it -y tab ia bocaua of ncolll cliacuuioa I - • involved in about what it toot for Ibo K-12 toacbon to do tbia kind of liberator)' and critical pcdaJOIY. I ll&atod tbat I tbouaht it toot ordinary counp, to ■peak one'• mind by tcllin& one', heart. Joan Hunauh wu lkeptical about the notion of eourap for ■he felt that dealiq with children did not ■eem neeeuarily to tab courap in tho clauroom. She diltinpiabod between dealiq with iuue1 of equity and oppreuion with your llUderu and then with your collequca and peen. She ■ulJOIIOII tbat -ybo it took a political counp with collequc■ and peen. I tbint in Ibo cue of Pion:y bom, at Alwood that it did taba tbl90 diffenal kinda of courap: ordinary courap, tnna,"rnlive courap, and Joan'• coaecpt of political counp. 156 she would face from her students in regard to issues of equity and diversity. There were times in the classroom where it seemed that Piercy•s was the lone voice saying- "Really believe me there are inequities--there are biases- there are problems--trust me on this." And so this ordinary courage in a context of risk was no small feat. She could have taken the safe route and taught her class without the "hot issues" associated with equity and oppression. But as Piercy said, _she did not feel that was teaching. We had been talking two weeks into the semester about how complicated and complex these issues were, that we had so few models in teacher education of how to teach these issues, that in many ways we were making this up as we went along. 46 I really mean I think teaching is meaningless without getting I'll never teach without hot issues. that. I don't think that's at some controversial issues. teaching, I really don•t. I think that's just talking, that's what that is. I don't think that's getting them to really think. In order to get people to think and to learn, I think you've got to hit at what's core to them. Don't you think that's what teaching is all about? I guess I'm really self-interested I don't want to be meaningless and I do it because I like the challenges. So to be honest I do it because it's good for students but also because it's good for me. I don't think that's wrong, it's critical. Teaching about these "hot issues" required courage. However, ordinary courage does not describe all that was necessary. Piercy had authority in the classroom because 46 When I clicl an equity worbbop in Siappoce, Pegy Mclnlolh aid IIOIDllbia, to - !bat a.de a lot of - aaw all 1111111lia, wilb lbeae ialN in educatioaal eavinnmilnll, "We'n nmia, dlil up u - bow - IIO moclela. ro lalt lboul ao aloa,. • Tben aaw 157 she was the teacher. However, since the students had quite a lot of power at Atwood, what Piercy did required what Rogers (1993) calls transgressive courage. "Transgressive courage involves going beyond the strictures of forbidden knowledge of relationships, including cultural conspiracies of silence that surround women's knowledge" (Rogers, 1993, p. 275). Transgressive courage is different from ordinary courage in that there is a daring quality involved. As Rogers states, it involves what is "unspeakable and unspoken in the public world" (p. 275), speaking of things that may not be commonly spoken of. Piercy spoke of subjects, and sought the kind of relationship with her students, that were not the norm within a teacher education classroom. But courage does not end with these two kinds, ordinary and transgressive. For Piercy interacted within a context of peers. Piercy reported that her chairperson was both openly and resolutely hostile and passively aggressively hostile toward her. So with her peers her work required a political courage, for there were work-related political ramifications, to speaking one's mind by telling one's heart in her context. Piercy was candid, frank, outspoken, truthful, and spontaneous. Therefore, it took political courage when untenured and students could react badly to the conflict they might experience and witness. Although all three kinds of courage are integrally linked, they remain contextual and complex in their own 158 unique ways. All three tell of the ways in which the personal, the pedagogical, and the political merge. Piercy•s courage in part grew out of a "realistic optimism" about the possibility for change within a system. Piercy remained realistically optimistic yet honest about her dealings with her peers and those who were her supervisors. At a dinner for the candidate for Provost Piercy told the her about the realities at Atwood. Piercy stated toward the end of the semester: I was honest with her about the problems, but I also said there is real potential, real possibility here. She could get some support if she really wanted it. I I don't don't know, maybe I am being pie in the sky. know. I think there is a time where there is controversy, and then people come to some kind of consensus on an issue and that's maybe when change I don't think things will happens. change drastically but there are times when there is more likelihood that things will happen. I don't know. This excerpt indicates the kind of disposition to realistic optimism that Piercy had. She recognized the problems, was honest about them, but saw the potential and possibility. She could be courageous in the face of problems because she could envision the potential and possibility for growth and change. courage, Strength, an4 Bapoweraent--the Tension Withins What Door ■ are Opene4 But What Win4ow■ are Clo ■ e4? As we reach for words, women will do well to scrutinize synonyms for courageous. Brewsters will find fitting the adjective brave, which is derived form the Old Italian and Old Spanish bravo, meaning wild. Another word describing the Bravery of Wild women is dauntless. The import of this word is suggested by the verb daunt, 159 which is derived form the Latin domitare, meaning to tame, and which means "to sap the courage of and subdue through fear." Refusing to be tamed, sapped, or subdued, Undaunted women become Dauntless and Undauntable. Valuing be-ing, women are Valorous/ Valiant. As Amazons women are Audacious. As Phoenixes we are Intrepid, Fearless, rising from the fires that were meant to destroy, entering the Fire that we mean to enjoy. (Daly, 1984, pp. 284-285) Along with the context-specific courage, Piercy was also willing to show her rejection.of someone's ways of thinking even if the person was powerful. In many ways she was fearless. She told me a story about three months into the semester of being at a function that the dean of her spouse's college gave. The dean was outraged at a recent animal·rights action that had destroyed data dealing with animal experimentation. While Piercy talked about him she was laughing. Her amusement about how others like this dean seemed to be taken aback by her showed her irreverence about other people's power, although she was aware that her actions could cost her. His wife said he called it a terrorist event and I rolled my eyes at that. He just looked at me. I thought, "People lose their lives in terrorist activities, some guy lost his data." and he knew what I was thinking. The guy gave me very little eye contact the rest of the night. He was very guarded, I really didn't mean to be so oppressive. But I thought give me a fucking break. When dessert came I said, "I don't eat dessert." He said "We need some fat guys, those skinny guys think too much," and he looked at me. The whole night was awful. Talk about fucking male White power (laughing) I mean, give me a break. I'm transparent Piercy did not hesitate to be irreverent and take risks in multiple contexts. These qualities of courage, irreverence, and risk-taking came out in her teaching. The personal is 160 pedagogical. For example, Piercy•s irreverence helped her to be critical of anyone and all written texts. It also affected the way that others perceived her, in favorable and unfavorable ways. Piercy suggested that she had been oppressive in this instance with her spouse's dean. A disposition that Piercy had was that she was willing to look at herself and admit that she could be domineering. She used oppression slightly differently than I would. She saw her way of being as similar to the ways in which oppressors would behave- mimicking their oppressive ways. That is, the rolling of the eyes, dismissing another. I think of the word oppression more as Frye (1983) uses it. According to Frye, those who do not have the power in a particular society (for example, White women in relation to White men) cannot oppress those with power. 47 They can be dominating and obnoxious, but Piercy•s use of oppressive in this context would.not quite fit the way that Frye·explains it. The person that she was speaking to had more power than she did; therefore, she did not have the coercive or legitimate power to be able to be oppressive to him. Yet, the subversiveness that Piercy showed is important in and of itself. Her actions were an example of Piercy•s irreverence to authority. And her description of her own 47 Coatcxt, bow-, ii an iq,ortanl iaa. iD all of lhia. For example, ,iven a Jroup of White women and women of color, tbe .,_.. of c:olor c:an be oppnued by the Wbi1c women. 161 oppressiveness is important for this in part speaks to the way that Piercy saw herself as being empowered, as having power, and being able to act in oppressive ways. This was ' her reality. Therefore, in some ways she saw what she did and how she acted as possible and attainable by other women, including her women students. It was seemingly effortless for her to speak up and out. Therefore, she believed it was possible for all women. This courage was a wonderful attribute that Piercy possessed, and was part of her unique character. However, in what ways did her own strength and courage blind her to other women's situations that militated against courage and strength? What windows were shut into other people's realities? courage an4 "Whitelin•••" Piercy's courage was an essential part of who she was as a woman, as a teacher educator, and as a feminist. This courage opened up her imagination to the power that women could seize for themselves. But Piercy had a particular history and set of circumstances that made this courage conceivable for her. Piercy was White. Although from a working class background, she was well off financially. Piercy was heterosexual. And Piercy was well educated, with a history of success in school and work relationships. All these circumstances helped her to envisage her own power and efficacy. Other women may have histories or circumstances 162 that make seizing courage and/or power inconceivable to them. Any discussion of courage needs to be situated. How much is the concept of courage, empowerment, and risk-taking connected to "white privilege" (McIntosh, 1989) and "whiteliness" (Frye, 1983-1992)? Both McIntosh and Frye are referring to the ways in which being White affords not only conferred dominance but implies a way of being in the world and a way of seeing oneself in relation to the world. Frye explains her conception of whiteliness: I am tempted to recommend the neologism We need a term in the realm of race and racism whose grammar is analogous to the grammar of the term 'masculinity•. 'albosity• for this honor, but I'm afraid it is too strange to catch on. 'whiteliness• as terms whose grammar is analogous to that of 'masculine' and 'masculinity•. Being white skinned (like being male) is a matter of physical traits presumed to be physically determined; being whitely (like being masculine) I conceive as a deeply ingrained way of being in the world. (1983-1992, p. 151) so I will introduce 'whitely' and As I speak of courage, risk taking, and irreverence, I think that these constructs have different meanings and outcomes for women as opposed to men. They have different meanings and outcomes for White people and people of color. 41 They have different meanings and outcomes for the rich and the poor. Piercy was able to be courageous, a 41 Mclntolb (I 911) wrote Ibo ___.,, of her White privilep: I wmbered lhe fnqueat cbupa from -n of color !hat white - whom Ibey IDCOUlller an opplNlive. I bepn to undenland why we an juldy - oune1vea tbal way. A1 Ibo very lout, oblMOUIMu of one'■ privilepd . . le cu make a peraon or ,roup irritatina to be wilb. I bepn to couat Ibo way■ in which I enjoy umamed wn privilep and have been coodilioned um oblivion about it■ exiuoce, unable to - 111, or tbal it could or ■houJd be chu!pd. (p. 4) !hat it put me "lbeacl" in any way, or put my people lbead, overrewudinJ111 and yet a1■o paradoxically cla-,ui, u oppreaaive, even when we don't - 163 risk-taker, and irreverent in part because she was White and privileged. Also, as I write about Piercy and how I perceived her, the constructs that I use to describe her are situated within my whiteliness, my gender, and my class. I have doors that I can open with the keys I have. But there are windows that I cannot open nor even see through. She and I were sealed within the confines of our identities. Yet we stretched and tried to reach beyond them. Piercy told of what she knew, given who she was, and the experiences she has had. I tell of what I know, given who I am and the experiences I have had. Although I recognize that the very constructs I use to describe Piercy are undergirded and informed by whiteliness, by gender, by class, and sexual identity, I am still left with words such as: intrepid, fearless, dauntless, indomitable, bold, and brave. Therefore, the question remains, How do I tease out those descriptors that are Piercy in and of herself--a clear and true portrait of her divorced from my interpretation? The answer, there is no such portrait. I see what I see, I know what I know, I describe what I describe, all the while realizing that some windows are sealed and some doors are closed. This is how the personal is pedagogical and how the personal is political. Th• Per ■onal i ■ Pe4agogical: About Piercy an4 Unezpecte4ly About Johnny 164 [An] ••• increasingly common practice among researchers, including feminist researchers, involves naming one's social location--one•s gender, race, or ethnicity, social class, and (sometimes) one's sexual orientation --and the social location of the research participants, and saying little more. withheld in social science research far too long, to the detriment of knowing anything at all about researchers or the participants in their research. But naming of social location in a given society or culture, though important information, does not begin to replace the details of subjective experience. The individual voices of researchers and participants reveal the complexity of inner life when it is not (Rogers, 1993, pp. robbed of its own subjectivity. 267-268) such information has been ·Who Piercy was, her history and her experiences affected the way she taught and how she saw her students. The personal is much more than her social location. Her identity has to do with what she has subjectively experienced, for example, that she was married, and she was the mother of a college age son, Johnny. Johnny at the time of this study was the same age as the young men she was teaching in this mixed-gender class. The young men in the class, after the first session, sat together in a clump on the side of the room with the windows on it. Did it have anything to do with the study that Piercy and I were conducting? In our talks and during the class to the students, Piercy laughingly referred to that section of the room as "maletown." Right from the beginning of the semester I noticed the affection with which Piercy spoke about these young men. In part, this seemed to 165 come from her ability to connect with them because of her own experience with her son. This was something I could not identify with. The young men (as well as the young women) immediately received her "good faith." She gave them the benefit of the doubt and thought about their learning deeply. She never dismissed them as young White male oppressors. I wondered about her immediate affiliation with what some feminists might see as the oppressors, rich White privileged men. Piercy and I wrestled with the ways in which we viewed the world and I began to see clearly how all that had shaped us shaped our pedagogical stances. Out of our lives we did make theories, and our identities shaped our theories. There were no neutral theories, there were no neutral constructs. There were no neutral pedagogies. Critical theorists and feminist theorists have been asserting this for a long time. As Namenwirth states, "Scientists [and social scientists] firmly believe that as long as they are not conscious of any bias or political agenda, they are neutral and objective, when in fact they are only unconscious" (as cited in Lather, 1991, p. 106). However, as Ellesworth (1989) alludes to, even critical theorists are not digging deeply enough into the personal realities of critical teachers for implications to the pedagogical. What occurs then is just a variation on the theme of the universal and generic male. 166 When educational researchers writing about critical pedagogy fail to examine the implications for the gendered, raced, and classed teacher and students for the theory of critical pedagogy, they reproduce by default, the category of generic "critical teacher"- a specific form of the generic human that underlies classical liberal thought. Like the generic human, the generic critical teacher is not, of course, generic at all. Rather, the term defines a discursive category predicated on the current mythical norm, namely: young, White, Christian, middle-class, heterosexual, able bodied, thin, rational man. Gender, race, class, and other differences become only variations on or additions to the generic human--"underneath we are all the same." (Ellesworth, 1989, p. 310) In speaking about life, learning, and teaching extensively with Piercy, I saw how the roles we had and the identities we embodied impacted our pedagogy. Two and a half months into the semester, I told Piercy about the "frat boys" I had overheard registering for classes. I told her about the sexist and derogatory things they were saying about women. I then told her about a couple of "nice clean cut" fraternity boys, wearing their fraternity emblems, who I saw in a store one day. The two young men were deriding each other by calling each other "dirty after-births, cunts, slashes" and every other demeaning word used about women. I was disgusted and dismayed. I told this to Piercy and after she spoke I realized how our life histories affected our stance toward young men--"frat boys." I had no patience for these kind of men. They were "write-offs" as far as I was concerned and I expressed my nausea to Piercy. I could not be patient nor understanding of them. Corinna: I hear these "nice clean cut frat boys" (with facetiousness and disgust in my voice) talking and they do not care who is listening. 167 Piercy: You have to understand where I am situated, I have a son who is a frat boy. I hope that even frat boys have more complexity to them. Piercy•s son might not have used the words to describe women like the ones I heard, and yet he was still one of the group. Piercy knew that her son was affiliated with the fraternity boys and she loved her son. This allowed her to extend her understanding out and to be more tolerant of them. I was (and still am) intolerant of language and attitudes like that and tended to dismiss the people along with the attitudes. She did not dismiss people and her connection to her son allowed her to feel a certain connection to those young men that I did not have. It was a critical difference between us--a difference that shaped and affected our pedagogies. Piercy helped me to think more deeply about my own tendency to dismiss people rather than just their ways of behaving. Piercy•s relentless faith in the ability of young men to think about issues deeply and the fact that they themselves were complex human beings she had in part learned because she had a son who was college age. When Piercy spoke about gender relations and pedagogical relations she often talked about not excluding men, about caring for them. Piercy•s sentiments, for example, as she expressed the first day of class to me, "It's very self-defeating to exclude men and not to care for them" reflect Gordon's sentiments: 168 I know that to encourage a son to break the molds is to encourage him to give up privilege, ease, a certain easily accessible pleasure. And every mother wants life to be easy for her children; motherhood makes most of us sickingly bourgeoise •••• I have to want my son to give up willingly the privilege that could be his. life free of the sin of domination, free from the corruption of turning an equal into a servant, of taking what someone else ough~ not to be required to give •••• So I must want for my son to want not what is easy for him but what is just. In return for what? A In thinking this way, I have developed enormous sympathy for the men in the world who are decent and struggling, and instead of seeing them as sports and freaks ••• ! feel less and less easy with practices and categories that exclude men or that write them off. Because it is my son they are writing off. He is one of them, but he is mine. It would be unrealistically romantic to conclude by saying that I no longer have trouble understanding men, that I am no longer tempted to find their behavior unforgivable. This has not happened. What has happened is that I have given up the idea that men are less vulnerable than women, than myself. The nuances of their needs and fears have become real to me, as have the possibilities of their goodness and their sweetness. Most important, for the first time in my life I see them as the same species as myself. (Gordon, 1986, p. 179 and pp. 186-187) As Piercy said: "I have good success with those guys because I argue the male perspective with them. I sincerely like those kids." Yet one of the things that I did not sense from Piercy was that she did what many women do, that is, exonerate their men from responsibility. That is, their men are different. Piercy did not exonerate the men in her life from the sexism they displayed. One of the ways that she reported that she tried to "raise their consciousness" was by teasing them about their actions. She saw humor as a way of countering sexism. 169 A Woman Teacher B4ucator With P-iniat Xmagination When I think of Piercy as a teacher educator who was a feminist, I realize that I have to talk about a woman teacher educator who was a feminist who had many identities and roles, all of which affected her. She was not a feminist teacher educator, for that levels who she was to a singular monolithic feminism. I would even go a step further, she was a teacher educator with feminist imagination. Imagination suggests fluidity and a dynamic quality that takes into account the historicity she carried in her gendered, White, heterosexual, and privileged being. Piercy operated in life and in teaching as a woman, as an experienced teacher and teacher educator, as a heterosexual and the spouse of a successful man, as a mother of a son, as a White privileged woman, as an Italian Irish woman educated in Catholic schools in her early years--through and between all this she had feminist imagination that affected all these other aspects of her being, as they did her imagination. In addition to there not being generic constructs, there can be no generic feminist pedagogical strategies discovered or recounted after watching a teacher educator who has feminist imagination. We teach all that we are. Piercy used all her experiences, including her personal life, to understand her pedagogical life. Teacher educators who have feminist imaginations are much more than their 170 identities, but identities do shape and impact who they are pedagogically. Piercy felt that who she was allowed her to speak to the mainstream: "I think I hit a pretty good chord with the mainstream," she said. Part of her ability to do this and not to dismiss the mainstream was because she was part of the mainstream. Yet, in other ways she was not part of the mainstream. That is, her commitment to usurping the status quo and challenging pre-service teachers to fight oppression and empower their own students set her apart. Piercy•s identities impacted her teaching, however, it is important to remember that our identities are constantly "constituted and reconstituted relationally" (Scott, as cited in Lather, 1991, p. 118). Since there is no "arrival" to one's identity, there can be no static and ultimate feminist. Are there minimal criteria by which someone can be called a feminist? How does this apparent relativism square with a feminist critique of privilege, including heterosexual privilege? And are there connections between feminists who are radically different from one another in terms of their relationships that help maintain a feminist group affiliation? Jgini1t1 an4 Pemini••• and shape-shifting Theory As the history of revolutionary movements in this century has shown, and as the most recent developments in feminist theory confirm beyond a doubt (developments that have been prompted by the writings of women of color, Jewish women, and lesbians, and that can be sustained only by a serious, critical, and self- 171 critical attention to the issues they raise), consciousness is not the result but the term of a process. Consciousness of ·self, like class consciousness or race consciousness (e.g., my consciousness of being White), is a particular configuration of subjectivity, or subjective limits, produced at an intersection of meaning with experience •••• Self and identity, in other words, are always grasped and understood within particular discursive configurations. Consciousness, therefore, is never fixed, never attained once and for all, because discursive boundaries change with historical conditions. In this perspective, the very notion of identity undergoes a shift: identity is not the goal but rather the point of departure of the process of self-consciousness, a process by which one begins to know that and how the personal is political, that and how the subject is specifically and materially en gendered in its social conditions and possibilities for existence. (de Lauretis, 1986, pp. 8-9) Feminists are dynamic and ever changing; therefore, feminism is dynamic and ever changing. And context changes everything. Perhaps the common connection between those with feminist imaginations is that oppression is wrong and social justice is right. How that is achieved or even conceived of has so much to do with our individual (personal) and collective (group affiliations) identities. However, these identities change and develop, and evolve, but not to an ultimate point. Remember the house that shape-shifts? If feminisms really are grounded in lives, then Piercy•s life, my life, your life and all our lives are part of the grounded theory, and they are constantly shifting and being reconstituted. our lives and identities ground the feminist imaginations we have, but just as the house shape-shifts, so too must our theories. 172 Our language, our descriptors of people, context, and reality are so bound by the constraints we face that it is sometimes difficult to even retain the semblance of dynamism. But the task for the researcher is to paint a picture that acknowledges the limited nature of the portrait. Piercy and I were specially situated to open some doors, look through some windows, and use some keys. Yet, I never forget that for each door that was opened another remained locked, for each window that was clear another was opaque, and for every key that fit another was miscut. That is what makes learning and teaching and scholarship so intricate as to be almost labyrinthine. You can get locked in the labyrinth thinking that you have "arrived"--when really all you are is lost in a theory that has no capacity to shape-shift. And so when you read my interpretation of Piercy•s presence, remember that by the time you read the words on this page, identity has once again been reconstituted and renegotiated, and her presence and mine are not static. Although these words freeze a moment in time, she and I are not frozen in time. She moves on and through time to become someone different again. I do the same. In this chapter I have located Piercy•s feminist imagination in context. I have told of the kinds of courage Piercy displayed given the context she was in. I have characterized the ways in which the personal was 173 pedagogical. I have examined how Piercy•s identities in part affected her teaching, and suggested that identities are shifting and changing constantly. In the next chapter I continue to tell about Piercy, and consequently about myself, exploring the kind of presence that Piercy manifested and my own struggles to make sense of what I apprehended. CHAPTER V PIBRCY SUD: LOVIBG PRBSDCB ''What i• ••••ntial i■ Invi■ U,le to the Bye11 1 Bpiphanie■ , Arrogant Pr•••nc• an4 Loving Pr•••nc• "And now here is my secret, a "Goodbye," said the fox. very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." "What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would remember. (Saint Exupery, The Little Prince, 1943, p. 70) In this chapter I will examine arrogant and loving presence. I will delve into some of the manifestations of arrogant presence, such as, competition, intellectual rigor, and deep disregard. I will also explore how loving presence manifests itself through patience, puzzling through instead of judging, dialogue with humility, self-disclosure, passion, caring, and compassion. Ever since the beginning of watching Piercy teach and speaking with her, I puzzled over something. In her way of speaking about students there was something I could not put my finger on. She spoke in such a relational way, a way that suggested a powerful need to connect with her students. It went beyond the usual rhetoric of caring about students, getting to know your students,· or having a relationship with students. There was a commitment and passion there to connect on some deep and meaningful level. I pondered and mulled over what her stance could be, but still found it enigmatic. I came to understand that it was because she and I were 174 175 so different in our conceptions of relationships with students that when she spoke about her students, I found her discourse difficult to make sense of. Piercy was outside of my frame of reference in terms of how she saw her students. Remember those windows. Those are windows into others'/Others' realities. Seeing something so different from what I knew, I found the image through the window blurry. The inability to make sense out of the image says much about the image I was looking at but also about myself. That which I could not see tells me about that which I did see. Sometimes we only see images of ourselves reflected back to us through others, or images of the ideal projected onto what we see. As I revisited my feminist readings I re-read Marilyn Frye's (1983) chapters on the "Arrogant Eye" and "Loving Eye" (arrogant and loving perception). Epiphany! I exclaimed to myself, "That's it!" that's what was so elusive in trying to capture what was different about Piercy. The difference was becoming clearer. She did not have arrogant perception: [A]rrogant eyes ••• organize· everything with reference to themselves and their own interests. The arrogating perceiver is a teleologist, a believer that everything exists and happens for some purpose, and he tends to animate things, imagining attitudes toward himself as the animating motives. Everything is either "for me" or "against me." ... The arrogant perceiver does not countenance the possibility that the Other is independent, indifferent •••• How one sees another and how one expects the other to behave are in tight interdependence, and how one expects another to behave is a large factor in determining how the other does behave. (Frye, 1983, p. 67) 176 Frye uses the arrogant eye to speak about how many men regard women. Yet the concept can be extended. I believe, as Frye does, that many men use arrogant eyes when perceiving women. I think that this in part has to do with power. Those in power perceive the world and others in it differently than those who have less or no power. And that arrogant perception is in part a feature of social and political structures. Those who have power, or those who are learning to be in power, are trained to perceive arrogantly •. Institutions of higher learning are places where people are being trained to be in power and these are one of the places where we learn to perceive arrogantly. I believe what Morales (1983) states, that "class and color and sex do not define people [and] do not define politics" (p. 92-93). I would further this by saying that gender, race, class, culture, religious identity, and sexual identity also do not guarantee or militate against arrogant perception. Women are capable of becoming arrogant perceivers, trying to coerce and annex another into the reality that one imagines and creates (see Lugones, 1987; Lugones and Spelman, 1984). Even those with feminist imaginations, who are committed to hearing "all" voices, can be and act like arrogant perceivers. I have both personally and pedagogically seen others with my own arrogant perception and that is in part why I did not recognize the 177 "loving perception" (Frye, 1983) when I encountered it. Frye's "loving eye" seemed to explain how Piercy saw the world and those in it: The loving eye is a contrary of the arrogant eye. The loving eye knows the independence of the other •••• It is the eye of one who knows that to know the seen, one must consult something other than one's own will and interests and fears and imagination. One must look at the thing. One must look and listen and check and question. The loving eye is one that pays a certain sort of attention. This attention can require a discipline but not a self-denial. The discipline is one of self knowledge, knowledge of the scope and boundary of the self. What is required is that one know what are one's interests, desires and loathings, one's projects, hungers, fears and wishes, and that one know what is and what is not determined by these. is a matter of being able to tell one's own interests from those of others and of knowing where one's self leaves off and another begins. (Frye, 1983, p. 75) In particular, it The loving eye does not ••• try to assimilate [the object of perception], does not reduce it to the size of the seer's desire, fear and imagination, and hence does not have to simplify. It knows the complexity of the other as something which will forever present new things to be known. The science of the loving eye would favor The Complexity Theory of Truth and presuppose the Endless Interestingness of the Universe. The loving eye seems generous to its object, though it means neither to give nor to take, for not being-invaded, not being-coerced, not being annexed must be felt in a world such as ours as a great gift. (Frye, 1983, p. 76) I was thrilled. I could now explain what it was that was unique and special about Piercy. There was so much in the description of the loving eye that seemed ideal to describe Piercy•s stance toward life, learning and teaching. For example, the loving eye "presuppose[s] the Endless Interestingness of the Universe." This was Piercy exactly. She was always intrigued and magnificently interested in the 178 complexity of all she encountered. She was thoroughly interested in her students, in her peers, and in the wider scholarly community. This loving eye captured the wonder with which Piercy encountered the world. The idea then, as I saw it, was to create what Anzaldua (1983) calls a "network of kindred spirits" (p. 209) and what I have identified as a community of critical friends developed by loving perception. I use the term of critical friend as someone who is crucial and significant, and also critical in the sense of being analytical and discerning, evaluating and judging. But the friend is not critical in the sense of being disparaging, contemptuous, disapproving, derogatory, fault-finding, or belittling. A critical friend is essential and important to one's learning and growth. But then as life and scholarship would have it, just when you think you have "got it" of course you do not. "It" slips out of that shape-shifting house of theory. I asked myself, was perception enough--wasn' t it more than that?49 ... I let Piercy•s way of being somersault around in my mind. I reminded myself that when I talked about Piercy I talked about heart and soul, mind and intellect. Vision and perception were somehow limiting. Something more than perception--vision--sight--was in order. The soul, the heart, which are invisible to the eye are so essential. I 49 I am ,...t\al to Lynn Paine who encourapd mo to tbiak beyond perception. had to harness the tone of Piercy•s teaching into words. 179 What are Arrogant Presence an4 Loving Presence? Frye's work gave me indispensable concepts to begin to fashion broader ones for my own work. I ruminated on the ideas until I had a concept which seemed more encompassing. The concept that I found was presence. This included perception, body, heart, soul, imagination, consciousness. In hindsight, perception also seemed more passive than I wanted. I asked myself, What does presence denote and connote? I looked it up in dictionaries and found that the definitions were inadequate. presence b: the quality of poise or effectiveness that enables a performer to achieve a close relationship with his audience. Webster's Ninth New collegiate Dictionary. 1984, p. 930) presences. a person's bearing, personality, or appearance (McKechnie, Webster's New Universal unabridged Dictionary. 1983, p. 1423) The definitions only vaguely suggested what I intended. So in the true spirit of feminist imagination (see Daly and Caputi, 1987), I defined presence in my own terms. Presence is a stance and posture that one takes within a context. It means the way one acts, interacts, and reacts in a given situation. The notion of presence also implies that it is something nebulous--something that can't be measured and quantified. It is a way of Be-ing in the world. It implies inclusion of the heart, soul, body, and mind. So presence includes all that Frye is suggesting with 180 her arrogant and loving eyes, but it pushes the edges of perception to entail more. I came to know these new concepts in studying Piercy (and consequently other feminists and myself in new ways). These concepts are about Piercy, and are more than about Piercy. They speak to what one person can be or what an entire community can be. At times we cannot be all that we aspire to be and reality is infinitely smaller than possibility. However, to start carving out what loving presence replacing arrogant presence could be like would make dwelling in a house that feminist imagination is building delightful. What is Arrogant Pr•••na•J All of us ••• we were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Har poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams were usad--to silence our nightmares. And she lat us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in ~e fantasy of our strength. And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but wall behaved ••• [we] hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth •••• (Toni Morrison, 1970, p. 159) Toni Morrison speaks to what I consider the spirit of arrogant presence. She poetically captures what I feel is at the core of so many of our ways of being with one another 181 in "communities." It is the spirit of one person being "up" by another person being "down." It is driven by the need to "win lest you lose" (McIntosh, 1983, 1990). And the more losers there are the more likely you are a winner. This presence pervades many aspects of life. Arrogant presence exists within all realms, including teacher education. For example, the criticalness I learned (especially in graduate school) had a violent tone to it, a shredding, tearing, negating, and dismissing tone--keeping the other down--myself up. I was taught that it was just the argument I was shredding, but in actuality it was often the person that ended up being shredded in the spirit of "argument." "Survival of the fittest," and "might makes right," pervaded even my intellectual "conversations" and "dialogues." Criticism was permeated with the hierarchical notion of "the stronger the better." There was not the sense, even in the criticism of one another's work and ideas, that what we wanted was "the decent survival of all" (McIntosh, 1983, 1990). Arrogant presence does not have a generous spirit; instead it hones in on another's weaknesses and exploits them. It is full of derision and contempt. It allows the perceiver to feel puffed up and better. "If others are down then I must be up." Trina Paulus (1972), in her allegorical book Hope for the Flowers, tells of the caterpillars' climb to the top of the caterpillar 182 pillar. One caterpillar, stripe, has learned to climb better than the rest: Stripe didn't seem just "disciplined" to others--he seemed ruthless. Even among climbers he was special. "Don't blame u if you don't succeed! It's a tough life. Just make up your mind," he would have said had any caterpillar complained.. Then one day he was near his goal. Stripe had done well but when light finally filtered down from the top, he was close to exhaustion. At this height there was almo~t no movement. All held their positions with every skill a lifetime of climbing had·taught them. Every small move counted terribly. There was no communication. Only the outsides touched. They were like cocoons to one another. Then one day Stripe heard a crawler above him saying, "None of us can get any higher without getting rid of .thn-" (pp. 89-92) Look around, how often do you hear and see what Stripe does on his caterpillar pillar in the rush to compete? What are the costs in the fight to succeed? People are unable to connect for fear of being out-climbed. So only the exteriors meet. In a classroom, how much connection is lost because of the rush to get the grade? To score the points? To win the argument? How much arrogance is learned because one cannot win without thinking of the other as the loser? How much contempt has to be inculcated so that others are less than, and therefore worthy of defeat? "You have to have contempt for your opponent."~ We learn this "climb or be climbed" (Paulus, 1972, p. 25) so early, and much of it in the classroom: ~ Tlaia &. wu taba from Searchipg for Bobby FIICbe[. (1993) ~ Jlicluna, Rudin/ Mirap productiaa. Scrwiplay by ..,_ Zailian. Bued oa lbl boot by Fnd Wailma. 'l1lil ii a film about lbl waya iD wbicb wry )'CIUIII eluldna an 1a1p1 to feel lbl "wia INl JOU ao.• value 11111 eCllllampt for dleir oppODIIIII. However, lbl )'CIUIII PflMIOIDII of lbl film rejecta lbl DOlioa of eCllllampt tbr Ilia fellow playen. ll ii a woaderfw c:elebnlioa of •deceal IIIIYival of al.■ (Mc:lntolh, 1913, 1990). 183 At a tender age, children learn not to be tender. A dozen years of schooling often do nothing to promote generosity or commitment to the welfare of others. To the contrary, students are graduated to think that being smart means looking out for number one. 1991 p. 498) (Kohn, Last year the whole class had laughed at a boy who couldn't fill out a form because he didn't know his father's name. The teacher sighed, exasperated, and was very sarcastic, "Don't you notice things? What does your mother .call him?" she said. The class laughed at how dumb he was not to notice things. "She calls him father of me," he said. Even we laughed, although we knew that his mother did not call his father by a name, and a son does not know his father's name. We laughed and were relieved that our parents had had the foresight to tell us some names we could give the teachers. (Kingston, 1989, p. 177) cap•tition Arrogant presence is in part borne out of a culture(s) of competition--where the "goodies" seem, and are made to seem, scarce. Kohn (1991, 1986) tells us of the spirit of competition that is so well internalized that we do not even recognize its omnipresence: Life for us has become an endless succession of contests. From the moment the alarm clock rings until sleep overtakes us again, from the time we are toddlers until the day we die, we are busy struggling to outdo others. This is our posture at work and at school, on the playing field and back at home. It is the common denominator of American life. Precisely because we are so immersed in it, competition can easily escape our notice. A fish does not reflect on the nature of water, Walker Percy once remarked, "he cannot imagine its absence, so he cannot consider its presence." (Kohn, 1986, p. 1) Arrogant presence is all around us, in our classrooms at all levels, but especially the "higher" one goes. Teacher education is housed in academia. Teacher education 184 has struggled to achieve a legitimacy in the hierarchical structure of the university. Carr and Kemmis (1988) state that curriculum theorizing was identified as a "mongrel discipline" (p. 15). The same could be said of teacher education in general. It is not a "proper" discipline, rather it is a field of study. Eble (1983) states, Within colleges and universities, arrogance ••• underlies the pecking order among academic departments •••• Such arrogance is particularly devastating to teaching, for colleges of education have been clearly assigned to an irremediable inferiority. (p. 106) In the attempt to legitimize itself, the press has been to create a knowledge and research base that follows closely the natural sciences. Teacher education has followed in the "expert" model of presenting knowledge and this expertise is often imbued with arrogant presence (see Eble, 1983 for his discussion of three common kinds of academic arrogance). Those who have the high status knowledge, the ability to win, have the currency to succeed--to win out over the other/Other. Arrogant presence is insidious for it gets cast as smartness, acuity, sharpness, and intelligence. Instead, it is as Toni Morrison suggests, the hollow shallow facsimile of intellect and truth, "We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth ••• " (1970, p. 159). Rich (1973-74) states that the university we have presently "is a man-centered university, a breeding ground 185 not of humanism, but of masculine privilege" (p.127), one that metaphorically promotes defending, attacking, combat, status, banking, duel[ing), power, making it ••• not the passion for 'learning for its own sake' or the sense of an intellectual community, but the dominance of the masculine ideal, the race of men against one another" (p. 129-130) • .Sl This ethos creates the win lest you lose mentality and it affects the teacher education community as it does all the other communities housed in the university. It is also not just masculine privilege which is at work, but also the class privilege of the academy (not to mention privilege conveyed on the basis of race and heterosexuality): The democratic ethos of American schooling, equality of opportunity leading to social mobility based on achieved rather than ascribed characteristics, belies the actual commitments of the upper and middle classes to retain their class status and the functions of the schools in support of their privilege. (Grumet, 1988, p. 21) 51 Veblea wrote about lbe way, in which univenitie■ wore hollile to women in 1903-manywould uy women have pimcl acceu, yet tbe old holtility remain■ in many illllibdiom of -aiiper• leuaioa: The aailude of lbe ■cbooll and of lbe learned c:u towanh lbe oduc:ation of women NrYN to lbc,a, in what w and to wbat exteat 1euainJ hu depaded from it■ anc:ieal alioD of prieldy and lei■ure-c:u prm,pliw, and it indicate■ allo wbat approac:b hu been made by the truly leamed to tbe modem. ec:oaomic: or indu■ttial, maa.er-of-fllc:t lt.lOdpoim. The hiper ■c:hooll and lbe learned profellioaal■ wore umil rec:emly tabu to women. 1'belo Ulal>lie......,,, were from the outNt, and have in put meuure c:oncimied to be, devoted to the edlacation of lbe priully and leilure c:lul. The women, u hu been lhown elaewbere, were lbe oriplal IUb■erviem c:lul, and to .,... exreat. eapec:ially 10 far u repnb their nominal or c:eremoaial po■itioa, Ibey have remaiaed in that relatioa down to lbe preeeal. 1bere hu prevailed a lb'olli ■en■e that the admiuion of women to the privilep■ of the hiper learnioa (u to lbt Eleulinilo myurie1) would be deroptory to the di,aity of the leamed c:raft.... 1be 1eue of c:u worthima, lbat ii to •Y of DIUI, of. honorific: differeoliation of the NDI ac:c:ordioa to • diltinc:tion between ■uperior and inferior iJllcUec:tual dipity, auvive1 in a viaorou■ form in lbeN c:orponliolll of lbe arilloc:rac:y of loamina- (Veblea, 1199/1994, p. 230) Intellectual Rigor 186 Piercy had a reflective and intellectual presence that was caring and not arrogant. She implicitly directed me to think of new ways of casting intellectual activity that had ordinarily been labelled "intellectual rigor." I now believe that arrogant presence comes under many names; one such name is sometimes "intellectual rigor. 1152 In the name of intellectual rigor, human caring gets left by the wayside. I want to reshape what is often called intellectual rigor (and is actually intellectual abuse in many cases) in teacher education and label it intellectual vigor, zest, or intensity undergirded by intellectual compassion. To make this transformation loving presence needs to be established so that errors, fallacies, and foibles are allowed, and intellectual risk is possible. There has to be a spirit of community, but that community has to be one of critical friends, one that is developed by loving presence. Ironically, academicians have used the concept of "intellectual rigor" to shut down the intellectual risk that is hopefully part of it. That is, it has been used to exclude, to dismiss, to negate thinkers who do not pursue scholarly thought within the approved confines of the established research community. Intellectual rigor has been 52 O'Reilley (1993) poinll out that there are two kinda of people moll conecmed with what tboy are doma hem, •auf&ieady rlf0"0"6. ■ teac:bon and motticilm (p. SO). 187 used against feminist scholars and many others who think and act differently, unusually, or uniquely, those who move against the grain of tradition. Labels such as anti intellectual, not rigorous enough, and deficient are used to diminish and undermine those who step outside the norms of what "counts" as research and scholarship. Intellectual rigor is used in much the same way as Wong (1993) states literary merit is used by anti-multiculturalists, it "reifies historically constructed standards and obscures its consensual, power-imbued nature" (p. 114). It was when I·analyzed Piercy•s stance toward learning and teaching, and the language that she used to describe what she valued, that I began to envision concepts that suggested the kind of intellectual energy and zest that those committed to co-creating a community of critical friends could perhaps be comfortable with. About three months into the semester Piercy talked about the notion of "scholarly intensity." She felt that the students that were participating in the study didn't seem to have the same scholarly intensity as those in the fall, a trait that she felt was important. When she talked about the group not having as much scholarly intensity it did not seem pejorative, as the sense of "intellectual rigor" would. Scholarly intensity and scholarly vigor, intellectual intensity and intellectual vigor are concepts that replace the often oppressive "intellectual rigor" that is used 188 against people (to measure them, size them up, or compete with them). These phrases suggest loving presence, as opposed to arrogant presence. Piercy talked about the intellectual violence that is done to people in conversations--in the classroom and with peers. It destroys co-generative dialogue and destroys community. Two weeks into the semester Piercy talked about Nathan, a student in her class. Nathan was a White, privileged male who was quite vocal and verbal in class. There were times when he would dominate the conversation and would speak out of turn when someone else was called on. One time in particular when Piercy asked Tricia to clarify something she had said, Nathan interrupted and explained what Tricia was saying. Piercy stated: Even though Nathan is quite insightful about all of this I think that he could be really offended that I see his domination as a bit oppressive to women. More than a bit. In a way another form of, I don't know if I would use the word violence, but it has a tinge of violence. Maybe violence is too strong a word. It is not a physical violence, but it is like an intellectual violence, that's going on there. Piercy wanted to soften her words. However, intellectual violence is a theme (although not in those words) that has been developed by many feminists in relation to women in universities (see Rich 1973-1974, 1977, 1978, 1984; Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule, 1986). During this conversation we both agreed that we could not use these kind of words--"intellectual violence"-- with the undergraduates themselves. They would think we were being 189 melodramatic. Yet, as I reflect on our hesitancy, I ask myself if we existed in a truly equitable culture and institution, a phrase like "intellectual violence" would be something that was deliberated over and considered important enough to be a topic of conversation in many classrooms, especially teacher education classrooms where learning is the subject matter as well as the process. Piercy was committed to a ~a-generative dialogue as a way for students to learn and to teach, and for teachers to learn and to teach. This co-generative dialogue was situated within a structure of challenge, but there could be no intellectual or emotional violence done to those who participated. There had to be support. Piercy created an ethos in her class where she encouraged students to listen and respond to one another as critical friends and not to batter one another intellectually or emotionally (see Lugones and Spelman, 1984). Piercy used words that gave me a new language to counter what is called intellectual rigor but is sometimes actually intellectual violence. P•n oisreqaro Arrogant presence has an air of smugness about it. The person who has an arrogant presence is often smug about his or her perceptions. The students in Piercy•s class, like Nathan, displayed this at times. It was not something that was done out of maliciousness. "He didn't think he was 190 against anybody. He was just doing what he had to do i~ he was to get to the top" (Paulus,1972, p.89). Instead, it was a learned way of Being in the world. There is a comfort and sense of superiority on the part of people who have an arrogant presence. The students were often comfortable with their ways of Being without being self-critical. This self-satisfaction closes down learning. It is often demonstrated as a deep disregard for those who do not think as you do. This arrogant presence is also historically bound, that is, at certain historical times it seems particularly easy to deeply disregard those who do not think as you do. In the 1990s it is called being "politically correct" or •radically right." Remember too that this is feminist imagination in the time of "backlash." Schwab (1976) identified this trend in earlier decades, "Community is threatened with extinction in American. our work involves others, but the others, on the whole, are felt as competitors or henchmen, superiors or subordinates, not as fellow human beings" (p. 238). I see it as even more dramatic in the 1990s. True dialogue and conversation is lost because of arrogant presence that creates a smugness within people, labeling all those who see differently as "competitors, henchmen, superiors or subordinates." And one's own historicity contributes to the development of arrogant presence. It can be played out in a deep inattention to those things that do not seem pertinent 191 to one's own life or reality. For example, some of the students were deeply inattentive to issues of inequity because they felt that it was not an issue that was applicable to their generation. These students felt that inequity as a concept was a "dinosaur" (Lather, 1991) because their generation was equal now. As Tricia stated, "Gender problems aren't really an issue with my generation, and I don't think it's as big as a problem within my generation. You know--just all people my age and say here, at college, I don't think it's as much as a problem." Piercy stated that some of the students were not "awake." Others however, those who had a deep disregard for issues of equity were often "totally awake and totally aware and (yet] have no consciousness, [they are] totally in the midst of it all but never come to think about [it deeply]." During the first month of class, Piercy confronted the students after they watched A Class Diyided and said that issues of discrimination were problems of the past." She said to the students, "I get the sense from all of you, 'We're so much better now, we're nineties• people, that was the sixties.'" The students were displaying arrogant presence--a deep disregard--which obfuscated the way they encountered the world and learning. 53 A fmetlim pro,ram aired on wrvs in Detroit, bolted by Judy Woodnaff. 1bil ii an oxporience lbat Jano Ellioa, die teac:bor, did wilb ber lbinl plClen where lho divided lbom idO ,roup• of llladoala with 9blue oyn• and "brown eyn, • where one ,roup received privilepa and die odaer did not, merely on lbe buil of oyo color. 192 Arrogant Presence •PO the cnPPIPJ'ity of ,,aching and Learning Being a teacher is not only a role, but a way of Being. To often as teachers we fall into the trap of stating those who do not "get it" are either misinformed, unintelligent, resistant, or wrong. For example, at the "Multicultural Perspectives in Teaching and Teacher Education," Fireside Chat session at the American Educational Research Association Meeting in San Francisco, California, in 1992, a participant said that she "fails students who do not have the right attitude." This arrogant presence has to do with a fundamental belief in dichotomies and with either-or realities, "a world which has only two alternatives: yes/no; right/wrong; top/bottom; win/lose; self/other; success/failure" (McIntosh, 1985, p. 11). Putnam and Burke (1992) state, "We do not learn from sameness but from the differences around us. The contrasts, the differences, and even oppositions ••• can be understood as a positive resource" (p. 40). Yet, I wonder how, when we are taught to cultivate arrogant presence, we can truly learn from difference? Loving presence means more than just acknowledging that differences can be learning opportunities. It implies looking into those mirrors that others hold up for us, especially those who are different from us--even when they oppose us intellectually, philosophically, or emotionally. It means seeing those others/Others who see the world very differently than us as critical friends. 193 Piercy saw others as critical friends who could help her think about her life, her learning, and her teaching, as evidenced by her stance toward her male students. Even those she shared little common ground with, "opponents," she entered into dialogue with them and took them seriously. D•t i■ Loving Pr•••PP•7 [T]he difference between love that is genuine ("Love, thick and dark as Alaga syrup ••• I could smell it- taste it ••• everywhere in that house") and "fraudulent love," the idealized love that is, she observes, "the best hiding place" for cruelty and violence. (Morrison, as cited in Gilligan, 1989, p. 2) Each moment we recall the vision of love we commit an act o~ resistance against the oppressor. (Tijerina, 1990, p. 173, emphasis in original) In a community which is fashioned by loving presence no one is the enemy; a teacher can't have the enemy in her classroom, dismissing someone because they don't come along. This arrogant idea of you are "either for me or against me" was something I never felt from Piercy. There was a tenacity and a patience to her way of Being that I have come to call "loving presence." Piercy went beyond the "Orwellian despair" (Giroux and Freire, 1988, p. x, in Weiler, 1988) that afflicts some critical pedagogues. She was full of dauntless hope. She was realistically optimistic. She was patient with her students and also tried to teach them that as future teachers patience and tenacity were important. Although love is not a word used in teacher education, 194 many feminists, like hooks (1989), write about the need for love, declaring that it is that which allows us to talk across our differences and be the empowering force that helps us stay whole. Embedded in the commitment to feminist revolution is the challenge to love. Love can be and is an important source of empowerment when we struggle to confront issues of sex, race, and class. Working together to identify and face our differences--to face the ways we dominate and are dominated--to change our actions, we need a mediating force that can sustain us so that we are not broken in this process so that we do not despair. (p. 26 emphasis added) Patience Piercy wanted her students to be collaborative and open to one another in the community. Some students seemed to feel that the class was a community, for example one person on their midterm feedback stated, "It's nice to be involved in a class this cooperative and supportive of all its members." However, another person said, "People have closed minds in class." Piercy could have dismissed the people who were "closed-minded" but instead she used these comments one and a half months into the semester as a teachable moment to talk implicitly about patience, her•s and their's, and about not giving up. Piercy asked the class what closed-minded meant. One student replied that it meant "Probably just set in their vays." Piercy asked the students, "What do we do with people who are set in their ways? How would we get them to 195 think more with us rather than just shutting people out?" Piercy and the students talked more about what it meant to be closed-minded. One student said that it meant "Not willing to listen to opinions and take them seriously just being like, you are wrong and shut up." Piercy responded with "Yeah, not taking people seriously. I think that's an important thing to think about. If somebody is not taking you seriously how can you get them to?" A student replied with "Somehow try to back up your information with more evidence and more convincing evidence." Piercy then prodded them to think about "What if they close you out? How could you do it in a non-threatening way in a classroom like this, if you saw someone shutting down and closing you out. What would you do?" The students and Piercy suggested different ways of drawing someone into a dialogue. Matt then related the story of how when Tatiana said that "capitalism was a dirty word" when she was growing up in East Germany, he got defensive, but then let himself be open to the interesting things she was saying, and because of that he had learned a lot. Piercy responded with: This is fascinating because all that I read about what really makes people learn is when they can get beyond their defense routines. What you are saying is that immediately you put up a defense routine, and say, "no no no no no." But when you let go, you let all of her information and the knowledge that she had from living in a whole other part of the world come to you, that's a critical piece. If you aren't getting people's defense routines up and challenging them then I am not sure you are teaching them anything. A student then challenged Piercy: 196 Yes, but isn't that up to individual person whether or not they are going to let that down? Like you can't make someone like listen or anything, they are going to listen if they want to. They can just pretend and just go along with it so you don't know look at them anymore. Piercy responded to the student with, "And when you are a teacher and you see that happening it's like, 'God this person didn't learn a thing in my class and it really becomes ••• '" Before she could finish, a student interjected with "That is their problem." To which Piercy replied: Yeah, but I think as a teacher you can say to them, once we have had this discussion, you, "Sally I think your defense routines are up. You blocked me." So you know that it's not that I am being angry at you. I am saying, "I want your learning to happen, that's important." That is why we are having this discussion so when you see each other's defense routines come up, you can say that to each other. I am going to say to A student then posed the idea of not only talking at the person who is being defensive, but also acknowledging that "Maybe I am completely off base, you know I need to find out where they are coming. from." Piercy went on to say that·that was a critical point "because when we get defensive that is usually when we learn, so it's not that you don't want to be defensive, it is that you want to check your defenses." At no point during this discussion did Piercy dismiss a comment a student made. She kept trying to help them see the necessity of staying with the dialogue as a teacher, that their responsibility was to try and help others go beyond defense routines so that learning could take place. 197 Even when the student suggested at one point "that's their problem," Piercy patiently spoke to the issue of patience, albeit implicitly, but nonetheless, she modeled what she wanted her students to learn. b111ing Through Instead of Judging Piercy suggested in action and in words that teaching about issues of equity and justice was an adventure, and that as long as she kept on plugging away she would make a difference. Near the end of the semester, Piercy spoke about a dinner that was at Atwood and about her talking to a woman math professor. Piercy related how this woman stereotyped her daughter and herself as flighty: I was telling her about (Carol) She hasn't been involved [in.the women's study group) and she teases the "femmes"--but there isn't a mean bone in this woman's body--she is just funny. She said,"Oh I remember when my daughter was in fifth and sixth grade because she had such a hard time." I said "Marlene that is the exactly the time- there are books and books written that's the ·time when girls do lose their voice." Gilligan's work. [She said] "Oh no, I think she was just flighty like me." It was so funny because she was projecting the same stereotypes on herself. She isn't flighty. She just knew what was going on, that was her way of avoiding it. I met her daughter, she is really bright. So it just gets really complicated. She is an older woman, who is single, was divorced, had a really bad marriage. I think there are some people who learn not to see and to be kind of flip and removed. And that's the way they exist. I don't know, it's so funny because on the other side of me here's this woman who I admire who is the honorary male who buys into all this. It was just a really interesting puzzling night. Piercy did not dismiss this woman as not getting it, being resistant to ideas of her own oppression, having a "false 198 consciousness,"~ or needing to be enlightened. She did not put down the woman who had stereotyped herself and her own daughter. Instead, she tried to understand where the woman was coming from. She did not reject her, as someone with arrogant presence might have. She did not harshly criticize her as being unaware, instead she cast it as an "interesting puzzling night." This approach to the math professor parallels the way that Piercy worked with her students. She did not reject them as not "getting it" or being "racist," "sexist," "classist," or "homophobic." Instead, she thought about how she could understand where they were coming from and help them develop and grow from that point. Piercy stated during the first month of class that it was important for her to figure out where her students• "heads are at": I was thinking after you asked me about my goals, I think I am assessing them all the way up to this point do think that I am listening to them in the class. and trying to figure out where their heads are at, trying to find common patterns that I've seen before, and differences that I haven't seen. Trying to identify where they are coming from, all those kinds of things. I She saw it as her role to try to understand what would help them flourish as learners. For example, in the first month after the class had ~ Feinboq and Sobia (1985) explain falle c:omcioumeu in lbe folk,,wm, way: Memben of lbe lllbonlinlte clue wbo expreu lbe poial of view and lbare lhe values of lhe clominut clue exhibit falle c:omcioumeu. Tnae c:omcioumeu of your own clau ia impeded by your acceptulCe of lhe valuel of lbe domineat clau. Wben lhe clominut clau ii IIICCelltbl in ... blilbina ita own mode of tbinkilta amoa, IIIIOll memben of the IUbonlinate clau, it ii uid IO bave .-.blilbed bepmoay over the IUbordinate clau. (p. 50) 199 watched the videotape A Class Divided, Piercy was concerned that the students had not noticed the linguistic bias that was apparent in the 1970's segment. For example, Jane Elliot used the phrase "We are all brothers." But when Piercy talked about the students, she did not deride them for not noticing. She did not conclude they were "blind," "unaware," or afflicted with "false consciousness." Instead, Piercy puzzled through what could have been done. She asked me, "Were there places where you would have challenged them in different ways?" Then she went on to explain herself, "I don't want to accuse them because I don't really feel accusatory." Piercy stated that she wanted to say to them, "Hey, look at this, we're not too different" from the people in the video who were willing to discriminate so easily. She reflected and stated "Maybe that's what I need to do." She then went on to talk about the ways in which they didn't seem to be able to notice the gender dynamics in their own classroom, for example the men speaking more than the women (given the ratio of men to women). Piercy asked: Why is it that this group seems to be able to articulate ideas but not understand the power and the effect? Why is it they can articulate all this but they can't see it happening to themselves? I guess that's not unusual, but you know, when you tell them it's happening to them, they're saying it is not that big of a deal. Piercy kept questioning, rather than judging. This stance left her open to figuring out what to do to best help her students become aware to the power issues that they were in 200 the midst of. Dialogue &D4 Bwlility Among the reasons that a community is humble and hence realistic is that it is contemplative. It examines itself. It is self-ware. It knows itself. thyself" is a sure rule for humility. (Peck, 1987, p. 65) "Know Piercy was seeking to create a community that had a certain humility and self-awareness. This was part of loving presence. Piercy wanted her students to engage in contemplation--contemplation of themselves and themselves within the community. Within a community that seeks to learn about social justice there needs to be the recognition of the oppressive forces of institutions. However, this does not suggest taking the posture of a hero "in here" and oppressors "out there."" The community needs to be humble and self-aware enough to realize how much we All have internalized oppressive forces and perpetuate them unwittingly at times. It is important to struggle with the dialectical and reflexive nature of the human agent within the structure. It is also important to realize how much our analysis of heroics and oppression has to do with our own situatedness and location in the world. Piercy was not the kind of teacher educator who saw "a 55 ID a penooal leuer, Pew Mclalolb helped me lhint tbroup tbe DOlioo ofwe are all put of what we need lo chap. Sbo wrote, •1 have aid for a 10111 time we are put of what we are tryin, lo cbaup. So tbe dichotomy of 'popular and uapopular' politiom poim loo IDICb lo a "blob• •out there• and loo nmcb of a hero 'in here ... (9127/93) 201 hero in here." She was willing to look at herself critically and look at her own assumptions. She indicated through what she said that she was aware that she was part of all that needed to be changed. She encouraged her students to help her confront her own sexism. She encouraged them to challenge her--to identify the times she was being domineering and controlling. The idea of a hero in here and oppressors out there is part of arrogant presence: "you are either for me or against me." Loving presence recognizes that we are all part of what we need to change. We need to critically examine our complicity and our internalizations of the ways in which oppression and privilege are meted out and recognize that there is no arrival. Freire in his early writings was able to identify the difference between what I have labelled arrogant presence and loving presence. Loving presence needs to have humility to see others as partners: [D]ialogue cannot exist without humility. The naming of the world, through which men constantly re-create that world, cannot be an act of arrogance •••• How can I dialogue if I always project ignorance onto others and never perceive my own? How can I dialogue if I regard myself as a case apart from other men--mere "its" in whom I cannot recognize other "I"s? How can I dialogue if I consider myself a member of the in-group of "pure" men, the owners of truth and knowledge ••• How can I dialogue if I am closed to--and even offended by--the contribution of others? How can I dialogue if I am afraid of being displaced, the mere possibility causing me torment and weakness? ••• Men who lack humility (or have lost it) cannot come to the people, cannot be their partners in naming the world. (Freire, 1968/1985, pp.78-79) 202 Freire is unlike many other critical theorists, who say we need to be critical (e.g., Carr and Kemmis, 1988), but do not tell us what kind of criticalness it is. Freire does. He suggests a tentativeness in our views about the world and that we name the world together honors those we learn and work with. That kind of criticalness does not have the arrogant edge. However, unintentionally Freire has created a criticalness (in this early writing) that is geared toward male theorists. His language and his images are male. Teacher educators with feminist imaginations need to use his ideas, but move beyond them, to fashion a criticalness that is undergirded with women in mind. A further irony is that often those critical theorists who embrace what Freire states embrace the criticalness with an arrogant presence, and teacher educators with feminist imaginations need to guard against this (see hooks, 1994 for a further discussion of followers of Freire). Loving presence is no small feat. It was what distinguished Piercy not only from other teachers, but also what distinguished her from other feminists who teach. In many ways feminists who teach, myself included, have internalized arrogant presence. It affects the tone we use with our students and with our peers, even if we are committed to inclusivity, diversity, and equity. It can let us act with "cruelty and violence" even when we are committed to equity and diversity. 203 Loving presence is part of what I learned from Piercy. She was committed to building a community in her classroom, and in the wider professional community. It was this loving presence that helped her envision a community of critical friends. The community that she was trying to develop was different than the learning community which is talked about in educational literature. This was a place where the relationship between teacher educator and students, and students and students, was governed by loving presence. This was a place, a safe place, yet not the kind of place where conflict was avoided. Instead, it was a place where conflict and struggle were human connectors. Conflict was embraced as helping connect humans in an educational enterprise. So much of what I have come to call loving presence had to do with my studying Piercy. Yet it went beyond studying her. It had to do with seeing myself in the mirror she held up (seeing what arrogant presence was like in myself and therefore making the leap to what. loving presence could be like). It was also studying her students and seeing that the young adults were already well versed in arrogant presence. It was also studying other feminists•, profeminists•, and anti-feminists• writings that I conceptualized what loving presence needs to be to fight arrogant presence. self-disclosure 204 Another part of loving presence is self-disclosure. There were many instances where Piercy linked her personal life, her history, to the pedagogical issues being discussed. She considered herself "uninhibited" and this manifested itself in her willingness to share her life with her students when it furthered the issue at hand. During the second week of the semester, Piercy was talking about race and class with the students. Students were talking about the schools that they were observing in. Piercy pointed out that people were not talking about color. It seemed like people were being "color blind," which she went on to say was problematic. Piercy stated, "I think teachers are afraid to talk about being different." Students then proceeded to talk about their experiences growing up in the towns they came from in regard to race. Keith told of the intense hatred against Blacks that existed in his all White town. He talked about his uncle Fred who considered all African Americans "niggers." Piercy then told about her own extended family and the prejudice that existed within it. She heard the word "nigger" also. She said "I worry about my own prejudices. Color does make a difference." Piercy disclosed a piece of her personal life that made a difference in her pedagogical life. She tried to show the students that the messages they received growing up made a difference in the way they approached diversity. Piercy 205 explained to me that she had certain purposes for engaging in self-revelation. She stated that one "purpose of self disclosure is to build community." She also stated that she wanted to "give them views and vantage points" that they would not ordinarily get from a professor at Atwood. It was important for her to "be their ally" and that if she were open about herself it would help them feel comfortable about being open also. This was evident after she revealed her own family history after Keith revealed his. He did not seem uncomfortable, but she seemed to be encouraging self disclosure by affirming and validating his by uncovering a piece of her own family's history. However, Piercy stated that she "didn't disclose some things" because she wanted to make sure there was a "political purpose" to what she was disclosing. She did not engage in self-revelation for its own sake. Even though Piercy used self-disclosure for political purposes, her stance was antithetical to much of the positivistic and detached scholarship and pedagogy that is revered in academia. Self-disclosure shatters the notion of the infallible professor, the all-knowing expert who has everything figured out, and instead makes the professor vulnerable. By Piercy telling her students that she was still worried about prejudices that lay buried within her, she allowed herself human fallibilities and removed herself symbolically from the pristine ivory tower. 206 Torton Beck (1983) speaks to the issue of self- disclosure in the academy: According to patriarchal concepts, anything personal in the classroom would have to be considered self disclosure •••• (p. 286) Surprisingly, I have decided that what is most important is not necessarily the act of disclosing, but the state of being ready to self disclose: to be in a frame of mind where self disclosure is possible, when it seems to be most beneficial; to know that it is always in your power to decide when and what to disclose. That kind of readiness means an internal integration and a willingness to take risks that allows for the unexpected in the teaching process, including the possibility of self-disclosing. stance toward ourselves, our students, and the material we teach creates a powerful synthesis where the point is not self-disclosure for its own sake, or for the sake of political correctness, but because telling seems important at a given moment when it is most congruent with, and most organic to the teaching act. Spending so much time with self-disclosure has also helped me to know something I have always believed: out of our lives, we make theories; according to our theories, we live our lives. And I do not know which comes first. (p. 291, emphasis added) I think that such a Those that reside in the traditional ivory tower are often silent about their Selves. Yet, to build trust and to build a community of critical friends requires that one is willing to engage in self-disclosure and to be vulnerable. "[T]here can be no community without vulnerability; and there can be no peace--ultimately no life--without community" (Peck, 1987, p. 233). I would alter what Peck states slightly, stating that there can be no community without "spirited vulnerability."~ This spirited vulnerability is the ability to allow oneself to open up and ~ I wilb to lbult Jou Huaault for JiviDa me lbia term "apirited vulnerability.• 207 to take risks both emotionally and intellectually. Vulnerability on its own, without spiritedness, suggests meekness and passivity. A spirited vulnerability is active and interactive, a willingness to be generous of Self. Piercy was willing to take risks in the classroom. She was honest towards others and about herself to others. This was where the personal met the pedagogical and the pedagogical met the personal. We teach our Selves and that the personal is an integral and important piece of the pedagogical. Piercy self-disclosed to her students when it was appropriate, so that her relationship with them went "deeper than the masks of composure" (Peck, 1987, p. 59) that teacher educators and students usually function behind. In our culture of rugged individualism--in which we gene~ally feel that we dare not be honest about ourselves ••• If we are going to use the word [community] meaningfully we must restrict it to a group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure •••• (p. 59) Passion Passion is an important piece of loving presence- passion for living, and learning, and teaching. I use passion the way that it is traditionally conceived of: a compelling intense feeling or emotion; love, ardent affection; violent agitation of mind; ardor; an avid desire; a display of deep feeling; a pursuit to which one is devoted; the subject of an engrossing pursuit {The International Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1975) And also the way that Daly (1984) conceives of it: 208 I have chosen the word passion rather than the more modern term, emotion, to Name the movements within the soul that express deep Fire/Desire •••• (Daly, 1984, pp. 197-198) Piercy made it clear to her students that she believed passion was an essential part of school reform; as she told them during the first month of class when they were discussing the hidden curriculum, "We're talking about really reforming schools so that they are not passionless places, boring, and with a lack of emotion." In academia as in all other professions, the love of "work" is not always there; however, for Piercy it was. Much of her language is infused with passion. Her pronouncements were bold when she spoke about the importance of her work, her own learning, and the teaching of her preservice teachers. As she said, "The most important thing in my life is teaching teachers to teach" (Sept. 16, 1993).n This was a committed stance, a strong stance in terms of her priorities. Piercy put an enormous amount of intellectual and emotional time in trying to think about her students individually and as a community. Therefore, the way her students responded to her was central for her. One and a half months into the semester, Piercy told the students that she appreciated that they acknowledged on the midterm feedback forms the considerable amount work that she put into the class: n Allboqb Ibis particular quote wu aaid after lbe time of our •wo-eoarcb, • I IN it u a quinr.ellomial llalemlal on ber part. 209 I think about you hours before this class and I really work hard at trying to see how I can help understand your thinking and push your thinking. I really appreciate that you see the time and work that goes into the class because it is really important to me. Piercy used the word love unabashedly to talk about how she felt about/for others. Passion is something that is not often seen or written about as an important educational disposition in traditional educational theories (except for Schwab, 1978). However, passion is often talked about in feminist scholarship and thinking. I have come to see it as a necessary part of a teacher educator with loving presence (see hooks, 1994). This loving presence that emotes passion was something that I sensed (saw and heard and intuited) 51 from Piercy. Passion embodied itself as a love of students as learners, as ideas being delightful, and discussions and issues as fun and exciting. Piercy took pride in what she did. She herself loved to learn. She attended many faculty lectures and guest lectures. She belonged to the gender and the ethnicity task forces. She was devoted to developing the disposition in her students to love learning and to develop a scholarly intensity. 51 Belenty et al., (1986) write about ialUitioa and tbe way dial it bu beea nprded: ll ii libly lbat lhe commoaly acceptecl llereotype of women'• lbinkilw u emocioaal, inluilive, and pe..,...livd bu COlllributecl ID lhe devaluation of women'• mind■ and COlllributiom, padicularly in Weum tecbnolop:ally orienled cuburN, wbicb value nlioaa1ilm and objectivity (Samplon 1978). 11 ii pnenlly uauned lbat inluitive bowledp ii more primitive, therefore !ell valual,le, lban ao-caUed objective model of knowina- (p .6) Since tbia lbldy ii in many way■ about "breakioa 1be ru1e■• and bem, "umuly" it matea aeme ID i1Dit IOIDelbioa about lbe penoa lhat oae bu lbldied for IUCb an illleme period of lime. I am allo of tbe belief lbat if one bad heart and mind, body and IOUI meJdecl in a poeitive way, iDluition would be I valued and valuable way of knowina- 210 When she spoke about students it was in a passionately connected way. She paid attention to each student and talked at length about trying to help them grow, learn, and develop. She pondered and puzzled over individual students in her class, and devoted much intellectual and emotional time to speaking about them with me and thinking about them on her own. Even the "mere" fact that she agreed to be part of this study, so as to get better at teaching preservice teachers about issues of equity and oppression, was a testimony to her commitment. Piercy•s passion for her work manifested itself simply as she made herself available to her students more than others might--she had official office hours which were Monday through Friday for an hour each day, and then any other time by appointment (Syllabus, p. 1). She would stay and speak to students after the class as long as they wanted. She would arrive early because it was important for her to be there just to "connect with them" as they came in. Piercy saw the strengths and the ways her students could and did grow--rather than a deficit model of what they did not know and what they were "resisting." It was similar to what Kohl (1984) states about loving students as learners: Faith in the learner leads some teachers to find strengths where others see nothing but weakness and failure. Such faith ••• is a form of what I call the love for students as learners. It is important to pause over the idea of loving students as learners, which is not the same as simply loving students ••• (it 211 comes from a] love of learning and (a] pride in teaching ••• a job-related affection. (pp. 64-66, emphasis in original) But for Piercy it was more than this; this loving students as learners was reversed, for it was also loving students as teachers. For Piercy it was also about how students could help her grow and learn. Therefore, it was developing a loving presence where all members of the community hold each other in esteem, have faith in their own and the other's ability to grow, learn, and develop. car• ano coapassion The "ethic of care" that Noddings (1984) speaks of is a component of loving presence. Noddings describes what she means by caring: "The power Caring involves ••• a "feeling with" the other. We might want to call this relationship "empathy," but we should think about what we mean by this term •••• of projecting one's personality into, and so fully understanding, the object of contemplation." That is, perhaps, a peculiarly rational, western, masculine way of looking at "feeling with." The notion of "feeling with" ••• does not involve projection but reception. have called it "engrossment.• the other's shoes," so to speak, by analyzing his reality as objective data and then asking, "How would I feel in such a situation?" on the contrary, I set aside my temptation to analyze and to plan. project; I receive the other into myself, and I see and feel with the other •••• I am not thus caused to see or to feel--that is, for I am committed to the receptivity that permits me to see and to feel in this way. (p. 30) I do not "put myself in I do not I caring, however, is not enough, not passionate or active enough. Perhaps the active quality of passion in compassion is what is needed. Compassion. It is important also to 212 note that the prefix com means "with, together, thoroughly" (Webster's Ninth New collegiate Dictionary, 1984, p. 262). With passion. Thoroughly passionate. A joining together in passion. Piercy experienced and demonstrated the whole range of emotions, including compassion. Yet, she told me of an incident that speaks to what the ethps of the academy does to compassionate responses. She read out of a newspaper article, to a previous ED 277 class, about a young Black girl who had made it out of poverty. She had been accepted to a prestigious college with scholarships. Her boyfriend wanted to show her off to his friends because she was "so pretty." They went to a party at the end of her senior year and she was accidently shot and killed while she was there. Piercy talked of her reaction: I broke down and cried. [feeling) very vulnerable. felt so embarrassed that I cried. little kids. When I read a book like Charlotte's Web or anything sad, I am crying. It is an aura of the public kind of connectedness. I never read it again, I I often cry with I was new at it too and Piercy then talked about "how precious it is to have those kind of classrooms with that kind of feeling inside it." Piercy was compassionate, and felt deeply. She wanted her contexts to allow the whole range of emotion, yet she felt embarrassed by showing compassion, crying, in the academic environment. Is it because the tradition in the academy is for the head to rule, not the heart, unleashing messy passions? Piercy felt no compunction about crying in front 213 of young children, but did when the learners were older and housed in the university. What happens to the ability to be fully human as we engage with adult learners? This calls out the "potted passions" we seem to promote with adult learners in teacher education. These passions, Daly says, are "real" in the sense (like a bonsai tree or canned orange juice) but they are less than they should be and therefore dysfunctional •••• They are incomplete, and, like lies which are partial truth parading as the whole, they are substitutes for genuine a-motions, deceiving their subjects and those with whom they are connected/disconnected in this deceptive way. (1984, pp. 206-207) When I listened to Piercy talk of "breaking down," I asked, Why is deeply felt human emotion called "breaking down?" By casting it in the language of "being broken" it suggests being less than, and relegates the emotion into something to be embarrassed about. Yet it is this capacity to feel deeply, to cry, that shows us that we are connected to the world, to other beings, and to our heart. Yet somehow the higher yp we go in education the less acceptable it is. I know I have felt the same embarrassment as Piercy did when I have cried in front of adult learners. However, if we are trying to teach about social justice and equity, is it not important to make our students and ourselves more humane? Perhaps the teacher educator with feminist imagination has to unlearn her own embarrassment at being fully human, and help students to do the same. It means that the students connect to one another and to 214 themselves, exalting in the human capacity to feel deeply, rejecting potted passions, and feeling passion and compassion. As Macy (1992) explains: It isn't some private craziness ••• We suffer with our world--that is the literal meaning of compassion. increasingly it is being recognized that a compassionate response is neither craziness or a dodge. It is the opposite; it is a signal of our own evolution, a measure of our humanity. We are capable of suffering with our world, and that is the true meaning of compassion. It enables us to recognize our profound interconnectedness with all beings. Don't ever apologize for crying for the trees burning in the Amazon or over the waters polluted from mines in the Rockies. Don't apologize for the sorrow, grief, and rage you feel. It is a measure of your humanity and your maturity. It is a measure of your open heart, and as your heart breaks open there will be room for the world to heal. That is what is happening as we see people honestly confronting the sorrows of our time. And it is an adaptive response. (p. 266, emphasis added) Caring may not be enough in teacher education, for caring as an important part of education is bandied about quite regularly, yet teacher educators and students do not seem to see injustice much clearer. Compassion has a more interactive quality to it, the underlying tenet being our interconnectedness with all beings. Compassion is that aspect of loving presence that needs to be cultivated. Compassion is described in the dictionary in terms of pity and sympathy (see McKechnie, webster•s New Universal unabridged Dictionary. 1979).· However, these are not the central features to the ethic for me. The definition also includes the notions of fellow feeling, kindness, and tenderness. These are the components that somehow need to 215 undergird the concept, a person stretching to understand the other/Other, who is separate in so many ways, often ideologically, intellectually, psychologically, emotionally, and certainly physically. Stretching to speak with, to listen to, to have fellow feeling for and with another, is what a teacher educator needs to foster. I saw Piercy try with all her might to understand what her students thought, did, and felt. Teacher educators with feminist imaginations can allow our own compassion and passion to be part of the text of the classroom, not giving in to those feelings of embarrassment at our human responses. Human compassionate response is what needs to be promoted inside and outside of classrooms. The room that I am painting is full of all the passion and compassion that humans can garner. Yet those kind of responses takes courage to express with adult learners, for they are not the norm. In this chapter we have examined arrogant and loving presence. We have explored some of the manifestations of arrogant presence, such as competition, intellectual rigor, and deep disregard. Loving presence manifests itself in many other ways, such as, patience, puzzling through instead of judging, dialogue and humility, self-disclosure, passion, caring, and compassion. Loving presence has implications for the way in which we behold students, teacher educators, teaching, and 216 learning. It has implications for the kind of metaphors we use as teacher educators with feminist imaginations. To examine the metaphors that we use is an important task, for metaphors suggest the possibilities we envision for the educational structure. We have been inside the house, but I now explore what one dramatic metaphorical step backwards in the garden offers. We do not start with planting seeds, but rather tilling the soil. In the next chapter I survey the garden. CHAPTER VI PXBRCY SUD: LOVXBG PRBSDICB TXLLXBG THB SOXL Teacher•• Tiller of the Soil9 : or one naportant Metaphorical step BacJtwarda in the Garden I talk about how I did not plant the seeds too deeply, how it was the fault of the earth, the land ••• I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year. This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live. we are wrong, of course •••• {Toni Morrison, 1970, p. 160) In this chapter I explore the metaphors and the language surrounding consciousness because I believe they influence the ways in which one envisions teaching and learning about oppression and privilege. I believe employing metaphors that suggest the complex, dynamic nature of teaching and learning is essential. These metaphors should not suggest arrogant presence. Arrogant presence takes many innocuous forms. It is all around us that we do not even recognize the multifarious manifestations. After having worked with Piercy, I think differently about a metaphor I have often used, she and I 59 Akboup for 10111e lbe imap of lbe til1or evoba I male pcnoaa, and that of I lonely endeavor (emeqm, perbapa from 1 Biblical imap), in many coumriel lbe lillm, of tho land ii dom by rm . ID lbe Woum world it ii often padered do lbe lillm, oflbe IOil in farmiaa. However, in developiaaCOUlllrioa it ii often women'■ labor. MI labor, that ii, - concoived of lhia metaphor I did not IOO I male imqe, DOI' a lap field, but ralhor a WOIIIUI lillm, the 10iJ U lbe prdom. Tboae doacriptiom of tillina, lill, and til1or ll'O Ibo literal meaniap: T.W., ii roally I way of maaa,ioa IOil ao plam can bo more ouily atartecl, powo and barvated. (Bowlea, 1990, p.66) Tbe bolt way to improve roow,a in compacted IOill ii to iDcroue lbe poroeity by tillap ... (Daaioll, 1990, p. 69) lill: to wort by plowini, IOMD.I, and l'UIUJI crop1: cullivate (Web1ter'1 N"mda Now CoUoJiate Dictioaary, 1914, p.1234) tiller: one that lilla: cultivalor (Wobllcr'1 Ninth New Collopte Dictionary, 1984, p.1234) 217 218 have used, and I have heard critical theorists, feminist and profeminists use. This is the metaphor of planting seeds.~ The idea goes: as teachers we plant seeds, that is all we can really do. we scatter around the seeds (ideas) and they either take hold or not. Within this metaphor is an embedded assumption that the seeds are the right seeds, the teacher has the right way of scattering the seeds and it may just be that they have not been able to germinate in some people, because in the right people they take hold and flower and come to fruition. In the wrong people, no matter how good the seeds, they will not take hold. Some people, like some soil, are not deep enough. Not.rich enough. Poor. Infertile. Bad. To me this now sounds hauntingly like "blaming the victim" (Ryan, 1976). Haberman (1987) states that "picking the right people rather than changing the wrong ones" (as cited in Melnick and Zeichner, 1994, p. 8) is the reform that is needed in teacher education. HaJ:>erman recommends selection screens before students arrive in teacher education programs, so that the right kind of person is selected and the right kind of dispositions can subsequently be developed. ~ 'l1len la • ICJIII biltory of !be ua of the Pnleaiaa lllllapbor iD educacioa. llemy (1919) iD lier c:bapter .a.ild Oanlaailra: Tbo T-aua, of YOUIII a.ildren iD Aa.rieall Scbooll• aya: · Frildricb Froobol, the Gorman educator who faUllded the finl tiaderprloa ia 1137, wu iafk....-1 by Peltalm:zi, a QOII model IChool be bad IIIUdied ud lived. Froebel'1 pedaao,y wu an idiolyllllnlic: bload of Gorman pieliam, idealilm, ud aatunlillic pbilolapby, m1 callal lllllapbor, Iba& of !be child U plaal ud the IChool U a pnlea, WU Olpllic, ud be eaviliomd education U a proc:ea of powlb bued OD aa1UnJ !awl o f~ . {p. 69) 219 It was only after going back to the conversations that Piercy and I had, and thinking deeply about our use of the metaphor of planting seeds, that something made me uncomfortable. I would not have recognized this discomfort had I not heard Piercy time and time again talk about the growth and development of people who others would have labelled "the wrong kind." It was not only that, it was also her faith that given the opportunity we all could grow and learn. Piercy was the kind of teacher that was realistically optimistic (something she wanted to teach her own students). She would not rigidly determine that certain students were the "wrong kind" but rather through loving presence she was willing to have faith in•them and give them the benefit of the doubt. She was willing to persevere, even in the face of hostility and arrogant presence. She was collllllitted to trying to develop a collllllunity of critical friends and develop certain dispositions toward equity and diversity. It is valid to conclude that young teacher candidates who are "culturally encapsulated" (see Melnick and Zeichner, 1994, p. 7) may not be eager, may not see the need for thinking deeply and critically and then acting upon issues of equity and diversity. However, the promise of education is that the "wrong" people may actually change, move, and transform. People may move in ways that we "approve" of or not; nonetheless, movement occurs. Through any kind of 220 interaction, something takes place--perhaps not what we would hope for or even welcome, nonetheless change occurs. Piercy hoped that the students would transform in ways that made them deeper thinkers about issues of equity and diversity. Piercy used pieces of text that she hoped would challenge her students• conceptions of people of color. For example, three months into the semester they read a poem called "What Should I Tell My Children Who Are Black" by Margaret Burroughs. 61 This poem, in part, represents Piercy•s own stance of acknowledging the complexity of the structural factors of oppression that the individual faces, yet the fervor and determination of the individual to fight that oppression (see Appendix C). This poem reflects the human agent within an oppressive structure. It lays out the overt and subtle racism against African Americans, and yet creates a rich voice of strength and survival in protest to that racism. Piercy talked about issues like this consistently, trying to get students to question their own assumptions about the teacher's role in creating opportunities for students. Piercy tried to cultivate the students• propensities to think deeply about race and class issues. In many classes she tried to get students to see the 61 Olbor citation information ia umvailable. 221 complexity in opening up opportunities for children in a White dominating culture, all the while valuing the cultures that the students come from. One month into the semester, Piercy had been discussing the Functionalist perspective about the purposes of schooling. Emily stated that educating poor people was important so that "they won't live in poverty." To which Keith, playing devil's advocate, countered with "we don't want a society filled with doctors and lawyers, that wouldn't be good. We need garbage collectors otherwise we would have a lot of unhappy rich people." Piercy then raised the question about "whose society is it, when we say 'a' society?" Implicit in her question of whose society is it when they say "a" society was the desire to have the students see that there are many societies within the United states society, and many cultures within the United States culture, and to question how they talk about "a" society. Piercy tried to till the soil and unpack the hardened assumptions about whose society, whose culture gets to define the United States. In this discussion, as others, she allowed many ideas to surface and be considered. She had created a community where seeds she valued were able to be considered along with others. 222 :Instance ■ of tbe "Wrong Kin4" of People Piercy•s curriculum included films and texts which would address issues of privilege and oppression. For example, Piercy showed the students the film A Class Diyided to help them explore the concept of discrimination. In this film, the adults (who had been in Jane Elliot's third-grade class) returned and gave testimony about the enormous lifelong impact this experience had on them. As Piercy•s students heard the adults in the film use "incorrect grammar," they began to make fun of their speech patterns. Matt said in a facetious tone, that he had a "question about their speaking skills," and then stated, "They weren't able to speak." Piercy confronted him and the other students stating that she perceived they were "laughing in a condescending way" at the people in the film. They proceeded to talk about their attitudes toward the issue of "correct" language usage. Later in our discussion at Daly's, Piercy reported that it "is real common [that they make fun of people who are not formally educated], I have had that happen a lot. They will laugh at people, low income people. They won't explore their own assumptions about their own privilege" and not take a "self-critical stance." Piercy tried to cultivate the students• insights and reflectiveness about oppression and privilege. Piercy believed that students could change and grow, even 223 judgmental ones. Being judgmental was a disposition in a preservice teacher that Piercy believed severely harmed interactions with children. Piercy was concerned about Joanne, a White, privileged student who appeared detached and removed, almost hostile in Piercy•s classroom. (Joanne declined to be interviewed for this study and so I could not ask her what she felt or thought about the class.) Joanne wrote a paper entitled "Disadvantaged Minority Students in Education" that Piercy was shocked by. Piercy indicated she felt Joanne was negative, judgmental, and had the predilection to stereotype people of color. Joanne wrote: Besides not having these types of stimulating materials [books and educational games) in their homes, the minority students• attitudes affect their learning capabilities. They come to school with a poor attitude and teachers try to correct them. The student pays no attention to the teacher because he or she does not see the teacher as an authority figure. The teacher is often seen this way because students in lower classes are often abused in order to get them to behave. Being constantly yelled at and abused at home has caused them to become misbehaved and rowdy. When the students are made to behave in school they show no respect and become resistant. The obedience that minorities are often taught is derived from violence. Minorities become more resistant toward the teacher and to learning because they are being forced to do something that they are unaccustomed to doing, and that is learning. (pp. 3-4)G I might have determined that Joanne was the "wrong kind" of future teacher to be working with a diverse student population. Yet, Joanne was fairly typical of students who Q I added a.. ipCIIINpbi .ttar "IIUdenla" aailuda, that ii die oaly edilias of Jmw'1 IUl that wu doae. 224 had been taught that "White is right" and who are "taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow 'them• to be more like 'us'" (McIntosh, 1988, p. 4). It would have been easy for Piercy to dismiss Joanne or Matt because they did not demonstrate dispositions that Piercy valued. Joanne's paper was written towards the end of the term, after Piercy had many times explicitly talked with the class about White middle class people's tendency to see their lives as normative. However, Joanne was unable to see the problems inherent in seeing White middle class reality as the norm that all Others should be measured against, and Matt could not see how classist laughing at Others• language usage was. It seemed that the seeds that Piercy planted about equity and anti-bias teaching did not take hold. Yet, Piercy did not write off Joanne or Matt. She kept pushing Joanne in her paper to cite the evidence for the claims she was.making and to explain her comments. Piercy wrote in her response to Joanne that her comments about "minorities" sounded stereotypical. She also required Joanne to rewrite the paper. In Matt's case she challenged him to confront his own classism. Piercy did not come out and state, "That is a classist attitude." Instead, she began a conversation with the class about the laughter she heard and what she perceived as their assumptions. 225 At no time did I get the sense from Piercy that Joanne or Matt were hopeless causes. She did not suggest in any way that they could not learn and change. She also did not stipulate that they had to "arrive" at the same point determined by Piercy. Before the end of the third month of class, Piercy told of Joanne's roommate, with whom she had worked, and indicated that the same transformation could happen in Joanne: Joanne has been real negative. Her roommate I have as a junior. I worked with her roommate on being judgmental and negative for almost a year. I told her, "This is not good. You are not going to be successful as a teacher." She was abrupt, almost crude in how she would talk about kids. She was so quick with judgments about kids. Her journals were always very poor because they would be these whole ream of judgements without any reflection. if she is this judgmental with parents. She didn't pass the writing competency test. The writing was really affected by the thinking. But she really grew and did fabulous work with the kids. She had real presence. So once she toned down and became more reflective it really got to be a nice balance. I thought she'll be dead in the water And during our conversation, after Matt made fun of the people on the video, Piercy commented that she thought Matt "took the challenge well." Piercy went on to say: I didn't think that be was hurt by [my challenge]. don't think he was offended by it. Matt has done that a couple of times though. be made some real conservative kind of comment, and I challenged him on it--gently. I remember the first classes I We went on to talk about how this challenge was firmer and necessary. It was when I listened to the tapes of our 226 conversations that I realized our own use of the metaphor of seeds was ill conceived, because Piercy was actualizing a different metaphor in her teaching. Her concern and commitment with developing the kind of community where trust was built, risk was taken, ideas were challenged, and all the while self-criticalness was being promoted was somehow one step back from the planting of seeds. I started to get the image in my mind of Piercy trying to till the soil. That is, she was trying to develop a community that could be honest with one another, open to ideas, and reflective, so that all sorts of seeds could be spread, not just hers, but others as well. The seeds were not good seeds or bad seeds, the soil was not good soil or bad soil. Instead it was the tiller that helped to create a soil that was receptive enough so that all the seeds could be considered. This was not a solitary endeavor. Rather as the teacher educator she needed to prepare the community. She had the responsibility for cultivating the soil, but the community worked together with the ideas. Although we do not know at the end of this study whether Joanne or Matt changed, we do know that Piercy had faith that they could change into future teachers who would think deeply about race, class, and·gender issues. A rigid dichotomy of right and wrong kinds of people fits into arrogant presence and positivistic paradigms of growth. Piercy got frustrated at times, even concluded that 227 perhaps certain students should not be teachers, but she did not dismiss her students. Selecting tbe "Right" Kind of student ■ ? Piercy had the responsibility to decide who to let into the elementary education program after they took the foundations course. Piercy raised the issue of whether certain people should not be accepted into a teacher education program, for they do not have the right dispositions toward equity and diversity. Three weeks before the end of the semester, we had been talking about Dan (the older White student who worked at the factory to support his education). He was pro-capitalism and pro "American" in an overt way. This was displayed especially in a discussion that Tatiana (the former East German exchange student) initiated about the "evils" of capitalism. Piercy had been puzzling over where to go next with him. This was at the end of the course and we had been talking about his reactions to certain things. For example, when Darcy (a professor at Atwood) came to talk about her experiences as a lesbian and how teachers need to be aware of gay and lesbian issues, he had sat through the entire class with his body rigid and arms folded. He was detached and showed no emotion. He made no eye contact with Darcy, Piercy, or myself. This was completely unlike Dan who was 228 usually very engaged and lively in class. His stance was so uncharacteristic that I knew he was extremely uncomfortable with the topic of lesbian and gay issues (his interview proved this). His behavior was in stark contrast to the way the other students responded, with openness and genuine interest in what Darcy had to say. Piercy and I spoke at length about Dan. Piercy said: I Where to go next is what I think will be interesting. If I were to put Dan on the continuum, put him on the absolutist side, I think we are moving him slightly. think he would be absolutist in saying that he is not absolutist. But I was really proud of them [the other students]. I have seen growth, I saw openness, I saw genuineness, I saw sincerity, enthusiasm, commitment as teachers. The questions that they asked were excellent. Emily you can't help but love that woman. God she is good. She just always amazes me how thoughtful she is. Yeah, I felt really good about their responses. we are helping to grow, then at the back on my mind I am asking will Dan grow during his student teaching or will his growth be arrested? it will be arrested. He will make some change but will it be the amount of change that needs to be made in one semester? Has that [one semester] been enough to give a forward propelling? propensity or the tendency to do that. So what do you do? How do you create teacher education programs that develop that, or screen out people? Again that {screening out) gets all into excluding people, when we are talking about nonexclusion. (emphasis added) I am just thinking about the teachers I don't know if he has the I can't help worry that I would maintain that many of us, those who are fighting for equity and social justice, were not always the "right" people, but instead, if we are honest, could even have been glaringly "wrong," and somehow learned and grew, even reinventing ourselves. This seems to indicate that others too can change. Piercy certainly believed this. She seemed to have the stick with-it-ness of a teacher, and I 229 mean that term in the sense that she saw herself as teaching, as making the environment possible so that others grow and change and develop. Piercy did not believe there were "wrong" people. Instead, she thought that given the time and energy, she could make a difference, and she had lots of evidence of students growing and changing. Transformation of the Inten4e4 an4 Uninten4e4 Kin4 If one creates an image of teacher as tiller of the soil, tilling a community, making it possible for critical friendship to occur, then the conception of both teacher and students learning and growing is possible. Piercy was very conscientious and determined to create an environment with loving presence. So much of the feminist literature talks about raising consciousness and making students aware. The implicit assumption is that the seeds of the correct ideas can be scattered and take hold in the right consciousness. Besides that being positivistic, that is not enough. It is positivistic to assume that the ideas you throw out will just germinate where and when you want them to, or at least ultimately because they are the right ideas and therefore should take hold eventually. It is not enough because as we know, the seeds we think we are planting may germinate into something entirely different than we had anticipated. There 230 is certainly not a one-to-one correspondence. 63 Trans formation takes many shapes and forms. Piercy told of her own experiences being educated in Catholic schools. From her experience there was no one-to one correspondence between what schooling intended and what the outcome was. The nuns wanted to plant certain seeds; however, those seeds took hold in unanticipated and unexpected ways. The interesting paradox in Piercy•s life is that Catholic education provided a disposition for critical thinking in Piercy. She talked about this the first month of the semester: You learn in Catholic school to shut up and not say anything. You get pissed off and smolder because they do teach you to think and be reflective, but you are not supposed to question authority. I think of the oppressive catholic environment. But in a way they did train you to be critical thinkers. They wanted you to be a true believer, so they were always critiquing the world and making you more critical, thoughtful about your values. Little did they know we were using it against their arguments. Piercy said that her Catholic education helped her take a critical stance. This was an unintended outcome as Piercy saw it because she said she was taught to be reflective about the world--yet the nuns didn't want her to question authority. As a teacher, you never really know if any of the ideas will take hold. What you can do is create the environment that makes what you believe in, what you cherish, what you 63 Suaua Melnick talbcl about pla of a teacher education pro,ram and tbo impact on pl'0-90fVice teac:ben not beina a oae-to om comapondeace in a clall that I waa in in 1989 and it bu cOdinied IQ riot true for me. 231 see as important for pre-service teachers to know, be possibilities they consider. That is, what you have "control" over is thinking hard and deep about what kind of community you are developing, how you are developing it, and what you can do to have your students genuinely engage and engage genuinely in the community with you. It is not a "simple" planting.of seeds and watching them germinate. Instead, it seems the one metaphorical step back has to be creating the kind of community where consciousness is challenged and sight/perception is questioned, not in an environment of blame and condemnation for not having the right attitude. The teacher as tiller of the soil churns up the soil and therefore conflict sometimes occurs. But this conflict is good for it allows the soil, the community, to be open and penetrable for inquiry and for the questioning of assumptions. Piercy wanted to break up hardened soil. After years of building up walls and defenses it is hard for a genuine community to develop, for "defense routines" have formed for years. People become closed to the realities of others (for example, Joanne who considered "minorities" so different from Whites that she easily stereotyped them); it takes a tiller to break up that tightly packed soil so that common ground can be found--breaking up the hard ground, so that it can be receptive to seeds. Perhaps, perhaps then seeds that you have scattered, the ideas you value, may get 232 internalized. But there are no guarantees. The best you can do is try to create an environment, a community that is committed to inquiry and equity within it, one that establishes (or at least begins to develop) a community of critical friends. This tilling of the soil metaphor is very different from "All that we can hope is to get one person to think about something they've never thought about before and that really is all you can ask for. It is planting seeds, that is all it can be. And if it is just one little seed •••• " I said this to Piercy when we met two months after the semester was over and she seemed dismayed by what she perceived as the students not having grappled with issues of equity and diversity in important ways. There was a certain egocentrism in my statement: this sense that I as a teacher plant that one so important idea in the student's consciousness. That is part of what needs to be taken a step back from. Piercy drew my attention to this. Piercy talked about laughing at our own egocentrism two weeks into the course: [Teachers] are not aware of what they could be doing and by the same token I think we exaggerate our importance just as well. of laughing at your own egocentrism. Yet taking yourself seriously enough to be careful about what you do. I think it's always that kind Language that better describes the process is tilling the soil, that the teacher educator as a member of the community, a community that takes itself seriously enough to 233 want to grow and develop, creates an environment that allows co-generative and critical dialogue to occur. Piercy believed that people can learn to be critical thinkers. Yet she was aware of the interdependence within a community. She could try to develop the community of critical friends, but the students had to agree to participate and do the "work" necessary. Piercy talked about Reid about one month before the end of the semester. Reid was a White privileged student who was a physical education major. Piercy was fond of him, in part because earlier in the term he shared a story about his alcoholic father and was willing to make himself vulnerable in front of Piercy and his peers. Piercy had initiated a conversation surrounding stand and Deliyer (a movie they had watched) and they were talking about the lack of parental support being portrayed for the students• school work. Piercy asked whether they could see this lack of parental support in the community of Atwood. Piercy called on Reid. He shared his own struggles growing up with the lack of support for his homework from his alcoholic father. Reid stated that his father did not value school work and forced him to do so many chores on the farm that he went to school with only four hours of sleep every day. As Piercy and I walked out of class, Piercy stated, "I could've just kissed Reid." When I asked Piercy why she said that, she replied: 234 He's just such a decent human being. His open honesty about the connections he was making. His difficulties with his dad. To have a football player, I know I'm stereotyping, but to have this big football player, who sits with the "maletown," to say those really sensitive things was, I thought, truly special. And to connect it with what he was seeing and analyzing [in Stand and Deliver]. The connection of his life work [teaching) analytically to what I was asking them to look at. I think I was responding to him as a human being. He's just such a lovable [kid], I just love the kid. That was just my first response, give him a big hug, especially since I called on him and put him on the spot. contribute. They know I am going to call on them. They know I want to hear from all of them. touched by what he said I guess. I do that so that eventually they all start to I was just However, Piercy was concerned that Reid was not putting in the kind of work that was necessary to hone his own thinking skills. I think the ability to be analytic to think sharply can be taught. I think he [Reid] has to do the work though. I can set it up and show him, but that's what I am worried about I don't think he is doing the work in terms of putting the effort into the readings. (He's not doing) the readings and grappling with the issues. He is not putting in the thinking he has to put into it. I think he has defined David and Josh as just brighter than he is, his self-definition may be part of it. people who don't think they are bright, so they don't become bright because they don't challenge their own thinking. I don't know, I really think there are a lot of Piercy showed that she thought challenging one's own thinking helps one to become bright. This is very different than just judging a student as bright or not, intelligent or not. She also located his self-image of his own intelligence in relation to two other male students in class. Both these students were quite verbal and offered insightful comments in class. 235 Piercy, even as she was thinking about one student, saw him in relation to other students. She consistently saw people as located within a community, and her analysis of Reid was in part based on how she perceived he saw himself in relation to others. She kept her mind's eye on tilling the soil and what she could do to make it happen and she constantly asked herself, "Where to go from here?" The tilling of the community was also being done within a long legacy of competition and individualism in education. The win lest you lose climate in classrooms militates against tilling the soil. McIntosh (1989) uncovers in her greenhouse metaphor the ways in which evaluation has helped create an "on trial" ethos in education: I open the door and smell! (A] quirky old greenhouse. It's the smell of earth and of growing things. Here, it is all growth and development. These plants don't feel like they're on trial. Here they are all bodies in the body of the world. The foliage is diverse and green, and has its seasons. The greenhouse helps me to explain to me what I do dislike about grading in education. My aim as caretaker here is not to put plants in competition with each other. Quite the reverse; in gardening, to help each plant fulfill the potential which its seed contained, you reduce competition. That is what I try to do in education. the greenhouse I feel authentic helping differing plants to thrive as themselves and trying to create (p. 10) conditions for that. In This metaphor of the greenhouse has many of the elements that I wish to use with tiller of the soil, trying to create an environment in which students come into their own without the harsh and biting competition that has a long history in education and the United States society. 236 Within the idea of tilling the soil is the idea of readiness. No one is willing to accept something they are not ready_to hear. People will not listen to ideas until a certain tilling has taken place. This tilling is done within, and with, a community of critical friends. Often the ideas that the tiller wants to have planted will not take hold for any number of reasons. The teacher with feminist imagination needs to come to grips with this reality. This does not mean that she stops trying to develop the community--instead it means that there were no guarantees in a profession like teaching. This tilling of the soil, allows learning to be mutual, that is, for the teacher educator and her students. It is not a one-way learning endeavor. Instead, both learn and their thinking and imaginations are stretched in a community of critical friends, for the students-offer their own seeds also. The seeds that Piercy valued were seeds such as openness, honesty, self-disclosure, a critical stance, trust, and reflectiveness. There were also equity seeds such as anti-bias teaching, gender, race, class, and sexual identity. These seeds were some of the possibilities within ED 277. But there were also many other seeds being offered in the community by the students, and even perhaps unintentionally by Piercy. What her goals for her students 237 were may have produced unanticipated results. For example, she wanted her students, especially her women students, to speak up and out. She sometimes gently, sometimes persistently, pushed the women students to do so. Her intention was that they learn how to articulate their thoughts within a community of peers. Were they learning to open up or to shut down? Piercy (and other teachers) often do not know what kind of growth or change will happen. Tilling the soil, Ra4ically •-oving Arrogant Presence In my own teaching I have often assumed that by sheer force of my will, students would see what I see, know what I know. I thought that if they just read what I had read (which I provided), engaged in the activities that I had (which I provided), then they would see what I saw and know what I knew. Did I desire they mimic me? Was I trying to shape them in my own image? I would label that now as arrogant presence. With arrogant presence I forgot that students come into the classroom with their independent selves and their own constructions of the world. That independence can create a dynamic and interesting community of critical friends. Piercy did not seem to forget this. She often said that she did not want her students to mimic her thoughts, but rather challenge her and challenge each other. For example, during the first month of class as she told them about Jeannie Oakes' (1985) Keeping Track; How 238 Schools structure Inequality. she asked her students to "read with a critical eye" and to help her disagree with Oakes. She said, "It is hard for me to disagree with her because I like what she says. But I want you to help me to disagree with what she says." She tried to have the students help her push her own thinking. While Piercy taught undergraduates she also worked in a Professional Development School with the university that she graduated from. We talked often about her experiences with these fourth graders and the links between education on all levels. It was during one of these conversations toward the end of the semester that she linked what she thought about them to the undergraduates that she taught: The opposite of the child depravity theory is that all kids are wonderful. Hey, they're not. That is what is powerful it is not just that the teacher is drawing something out, but it is two human beings coming together and something more comes out of it and the same thing that I think about this age level (undergrads] too. You don't know if it was always there, the things they are thinking. I guess it's reciprocity, their reflections of what you are saying, helps you see things from their point of view. You [the teacher] come out thinking differently about what goes on also. She believed in the co-construction of meaning and knowledge in a classroom and that she could learn much from her students. She also believed that her students could help her be a better teacher. For example, during the class where Piercy was going over their feedback of her, she stated that she wanted the students to help her check her interpretations of what they had said and went on to say: 239 I think this is an important class because we can make some adjustments, we can make some changes. And I can understand better what you are getting out of this class. learning to be a teacher because one of the important things that you want to do is to be able to interact with your students to get their feedback on what they are learning. I think it is also to me real important in your Piercy wanted to make sure she was interpreting what her students were saying. She also wanted to understand what they were learning in the class. Piercy also saw each challenge and conflict as an opportunity to be self reflective and self-critical, two goals and values she held high. This is part of loving presence. When a teacher educator rejects that she is the one who draws something out or raises consciousness, and she sees how reciprocal and dialectical the nature of teaching and learning is, she is in part rejecting arrogant presence. The teacher educator is the primary tiller of the soil, but not the only one, for there is interdependence in a community. The teacher educator also has the ability to cultivate certain seeds that she deems important, her role allows her to privilege ideas that she is most concerned with. Yet, what transformations occur within her students and within herself is a communal process. This notion of the tiller of the soil is not common from my readings of critical and feminist theory and pedagogy. Instead, there is a pervasive image of the teacher planting the right ideas (seeds) and thereby 240 altering lives. For example, Henry makes an impassioned and eloquent statement in her desire to transform consciousness: I teach because I desire, hope, expect to change lives. I believe in the political power of pedagogy, as David Lusted (1986) explicates, to transform consciousness. In my life/work, I have made a conscious political commitment to destabilize existing power relations. As a teacher educator, I stress helping my students come to understand and challenge sexism and sexist domination. (This is often the main emphasis among mainstream feminist educators)~ More importantly, I aim to assist their critique of the multifaceted dimensions of domination in-all its forms under what bell hooks (1992) calls "White supremacist capitalist patriarchy." (Henry, 1993-94, p. 3) I did say many of the same things as Henry in my original proposal. Yet after studying Piercy I am left with questions that I had not been inclined to ask before, that Piercy explicitly and implicitly urged me to ask myself. Is this emphasis on the "I" not an egocentric stance and perhaps part of arrogant presence? It seems the metaphorical step backwards has not been taken in Henry's analysis of what she does. In similar ways, I had overlooked the dialectical and reflexive nature of teaching and learning about oppression and privilege. If we believe in the co-construction of meaning and knowledge then the planting of seeds metaphor is not enough. Where is the community of critical friends that works together to till the soil? And where is the recognition that there will be many seeds, seeds that the teacher will not necessarily like or want, but nonetheless are part of the community's array of possibilities? Where is the loving 241 presence that realizes the separate and unannexed other/Other? Perhaps the image of the teacher educator as the lone transformer of consciousness is ill-conceived. hooks states that the work of a teacher committed to the full realization·of students is fundamentally radical. The work of any teacher committed to the full self realization of students was necessarily and fundamentally radical, that ideas were not neutral, that to teach in a way that liberates, that expands consciousness, that awakens, is to challenge domination at it very core. (hooks, 1989, p. 50) Radical means to the root. Tilling the soil allows an even quality of soil to be created, breaks up hard and compact soil, lets the seeds set down in the necessary depth, enables the seeds to take hold, allows the young roots to grow and thrive. Without the tilling, without taking care of the community, liberatory education is not going to the root, is not fundamentally radical. Perhaps the root of any liberatory education has to be working on creating the kind of community where ideas are allowed to be placed in fertile soil. The important act is the creation of an environment where people are open and ready to hear various points of view and not reject them outright, instead, listening as critical friends to one another with challenge and support. Helping students awaken to new possibilities, to new ideas, by creating a community of critical friends is radical, for it assumes the position that students are independent and that they have the ability and right to work on their own consciousness. As Frye (1983) suggests with 242 her loving eye, it is the teacher educator knowing and accepting that as a teacher she has interests of her own, but so do the students. It is the acceptance of separate selves and this means separate desires, wishes, needs, and agendas. The teacher educator with loving presence wants the community to cohere and grow in positive ways, knowing that her students are separate and autonomous beings, making autonomous decisions. Walling Through the Trap Door: Rai ■ ing Con■ ciouaneaa, Beco■ing conscious, or Double conaciouaness--Ar• There Subtle but I■portant Difference ■ ? Raising consciou1n••• Consciousness-raising comes from the Chinese idea of "speaking bitterness" (Mitchell, 1971). This has been and still is an extremely important concept to feminist theory. Its introduction to feminist movement (hooks, 1989) was one of the major tools to help women (albeit White, middle class, heterosexual) come to see that their own particular personal reality is part of the larger political reality for women. It later became the tool where lower caste men, and women of all classes, colors, and sexual identities could see that the oppression they face (or the privilege they experience if they are White, middle class, heterosexual women) in their private spheres is part of the systemic and interlocking reality of oppression and privilege in the public sphere. Consciousness-raising has had significance 243 for many teacher educators who consider themselves feminist (or critical) teachers. Juliet Mitchell (1971) offers a classic feminist definition: Many liberationists see consciousness-raising as one of the most important contributions of the movement to a new politics •••• The process of transforming the hidden, individual fears of women into a shared awareness of the meaning of them as social problems, the release of anger, anxiety, the struggle of proclaiming the painful and transforming it into the political--this process is consciousness-raising ••• the concept of 'consciousness-raising' is the reinterpretation of a Chinese revolutionary practice of 'speaking bitterness•--a reinterpretation made by middle-class women in place of Chinese peasants •••• The first symptom of oppression is the repression of words; the state of suffering is so total and so assumed that it is not known to be there. 'Speaking bitterness• is the bringing to consciousness of the virtual unconscious oppression; one person's realization of an injustice brings to mind other injustices for the whole group •••• In having been given for so long their own sphere, their 'other• world, women's oppression is hidden far from consciousness (this dilemma is expressed as 'women don't want liberating'); it is the acceptance of a situation as 'natural', or a misery as 'personal' that has first to be overcome. 'Consciousness-raising' is speaking the unspoken.(p. 61-62) Although consciousness-raising has been indispensable to feminist movement, for teacher educators (at the very least) it is messy, perturbing, and perplexing in its implications, especially for developing a community of critical friends. It assumes a truth bearer in the form of an "expert" (the "expert" is often the teacher, yet this need not be so) and a naive and ignorant audience. Consciousness-raising does not assume a reciprocity in learning and teaching, nor does it assume that the "expert" may be ill informed, or just plain wrong. It also does not 244 honor the notion of coming to know multiple representations of truth within a community. Who speaks for whom is answered implicitly in consciousness-raising--the intellectual (often the teacher) is speaking for the less informed (often the students). This way of being is part of arrogant presence. The raising of consciousness implies that there is an ultimate place where the consciousness is raised to. There -are also by implication those who know where that place is. "Raising consciousness" assumes an arrogant presence, yet, it is such an easy trap to fall into, because what one person considers reality, she expects, wants, hopes other will accept. This desire for the others to accept the same reality sometimes becomes annexation and coercion. This is when education becomes a "dogma eat dogma" (unknown author) enterprise. The seductiveness of wanting to raise the others'/Others• consciousness should not be underestimated. Hendrix (1990) articulates why it is so appealing: "We like to believe that the way we see the world is the way the world is. When (others] disagree with us, it is tempting to think that they are ill-informed or have a distorted point of view. How else could they be so wrong?" (p. 132). In many feminist writings, including feminist teacher educators, the idea of "raising consciousness" is seen as a powerful tool in their interactions with students. For example, Henry (1993-1994) states, "I remind students that 245 our goal is to raise consciousness. Our aim must never be to judge one another" ( pp. 3-4). And Lewis (1989) states: Tension [that exists because) consciousness raising (is being) done in the context of the embodied presence of the oppressor. Defining the social parameters in the feminist classroom requires a level of self reflectivity seldom welcomed by those benefitting from the present social arrangements. As a feature of classroom dynamics the unpacking and uncovering of deeply submerged social practices of domination/ entitlement experienced as subordination/oppression which we carry in and on our gendered bodies, in our verbal expressions, in the privilege (or lack of it) of having choice can become either a powerful force for change or a deeply destructive experience ultimately resulting in reactionary responses. (p. 5) Raising consciousness or Becoming conscious? One of Piercy•s main goals was that students develop a stance of questioning their own assumptions. During a number of classes during the semester she had people tally up when men talked and when women talked to get a sense of the patterns of interaction. The students were annoyed by this, claiming that Piercy was making something out of nothing. During the class where Piercy discussed their midterm feedback, this topic came up. The students claimed that gender issues and feminist issues were what ED 277 was all about. Piercy mentioned raising the students• consciousness during the class when the conflict occurred. You are telling me that I am raising your consciousness on gender issues, but that's different than saying that's been the focus of this course. And I would say, that's exactly what I am hoping I am doing. Making you more conscious about who (is talking in the class), "When am I listening and when am I talking? When I have given women the floor when I have given men the 246 floor." That's what I am hoping that I have developed as a consciousness. But I want you to separate out in your minds a consciousness, versus that is all we have talked about. And then if I do go overboard call me on it please. But I hope you will continue to be conscious, because I think you have become more conscious. I have seen a difference. Piercy said that she wanted to raise their consciousness at one point in her talk to them. But then she talked about making them more conscious and that they have become more conscious. There seems to be a subtle difference here. Piercy•s stating that they have become more conscious of the kind of floor time they take, and the patterns of interaction that the men and women have had in the class, seems slightly different than raising consciousness. Piercy rarely used the idea of "raising consciousness." However, she did talk a lot about having them become more conscious of what they say and do, having them become more aware of what they see and hear. This seems to be a slight step away from the notion of her raising their consciousness. Her use of "raising consciousness" at the beginning of this excerpt may seem to be a discrepant piece of evidence to what I have been saying about Piercy seeing what they do together as co constructing meaning and knowledge. However, she asked her students to call her on her own sexism, and she also made it clear that she had struggled with these issues for a long time. For example, during the third month of class Piercy and the students were talking about Sadker and Sadker being featured on television, 247 examining teachers• classrooms for gender bias. David couldn't understand, how, if the teachers knew they were being watched, why they weren't being equitable to the girls and boys. Emily stated that the teachers were not aware of what they were doing. At that point Piercy stated, "I did it for twenty years," telling them that she wasn't aware of gender issues for a long time, just like the teachers in the video. Vanessa then asked Piercy, "Did you not teach gender issues?" To which Piercy replied, "I read about them, but I did not ~eep track of them in here." Vanessa then stated, "So this is new for you too." By Piercy being willing to acknowledge her own struggles with gender equity, she seemed to indicate that she did not see herself as the "master of truth and justice" (Lather, 1991, p. 164)--the one who raises their consciousness. Although Piercy used the term "raising consciousness," in relation to gender issues, and another time when she talked about her son and spouse, this occurred only twice in my data collection. Perhaps there was a reason that Piercy did not use consciousness-raising often to describe what she did or hoped for. Consciousness-raising is an inherently problematic term, and Piercy seemed to know this tacitly. Bredo and Feinberg (1982) ask and answer: "Can an approach that is based on the critique of ideology itself become ideological? The answer is of course it can ••• " (cited in Lather, 1991, p. 79). Piercy veered away from any one 248 ideology and although she considered herself a feminist, her irreverence helped her accomplish this. Tacitly she seemed to know that consciousness-raising is ideological in nature for teacher educators and their students. Consciousness-raising is seen as political action which can create change. Consciousness-raising uncovers the ways in which personal experiences reflect a structure of oppression. Piercy wanted this kind of verbal self examination, and she and her students were engaged in bridging the personal, the political, and the theoretical in the context of the classroom. However, consciousness raising as a teaching device did not seem to honor participants together uncovering the meanings of social experiences they have had as gendered beings (see Humm, 1990). Piercy based so much of her teaching on all of them coming to know things together. She was in many realms more experienced than her students, and knew about some things more deeply and broadly because of her experience, but raising consciousness implicitly assumed a hierarchy, rather than a reciprocal learning community. There is a certain amount of arrogant presence that imbues the notion of raising consciousness. There is the unexpressed, and nowadays denied, implication of false consciousness within raising consciousness. Although very few feminist and critical teachers would verbalize that they believe their students are suffering from "false 249 consciousness," however, just because they do not label it as such does not mean they don't use a version of it. They may call their students naive, ill-informed, not well educated, blind, and so on. It is also important to acknowledge that thinking that someone is afflicted by false consciousness is compelling and seductive. False consciousness makes sense in a knowledge system that tells us there is an either-or reality, that things are right or wrong, good or bad, up or down. It then becomes a matter of the students resisting the right information, the right attitude, the right seeds. Lather (1991) addresses the problematic nature of raising consciousness, which concomitantly implies resistance. "'Reasons for resistance• implied that we are right and had an elitist, dogmatic ring to it" (Luedke, 1985, as cited in Lather, p. 134). To see students as resisters to a particular truth is problematic if the theory of knowledge we ascribe to is the co-construction of knowledge, and therefore truth. To buy into resistance presupposes that the naive and ill-informed students are the resisters to the truth bearer, the teacher educator, who dispenses the TRUTH. The teacher with feminist imagination needs to battle this dogmatic and elitist tendency within herself constantly because the concepts of false consciousness and resistance are so powerfully enticing. 250 Double conaciou■n••• Another approach to helping students and the teacher educator come to new understandings of oppression and privilege is that the educator tries to work with the notion of double consciousness (Du Bois, 1979; McIntosh, 1985) and double vision (McIntosh, 1985, 1989). These notions help us examine our own vision and consciousness and the deep assumptions we hold, sometimes so deep that they seem not like assumptions at all. The concept of double consciousness addresses implicitly the perplexing, complex, and sometimes confusing nature of consciousness. When we are disenfranchised, we are a part of the society but in essential ways we are not "of" it. Therefore, there is a double consciousness that we can access. It is not a raising--it is not a getting rid of false consciousness--but rather it is a coming to know a double consciousness. It means helping others to see that the ways we experience the world is not the same way they do, that privilege and oppression create a different way of being "of the world." It means we have a kind of double consciousness or double vision •••• if you think only in terms used at the top, you're not likely to have a well-developed "double vision": you really won't have seen everything from within the lateral world. Your account of it will be that of a person who has looked down at the surface of the water in the Caribbean rather than snorkeling in it. The life underneath can't be guessed from the surface. (McIntosh, 1985, p. 15) This double consciousness is available to many of us, 251 but often we are trapped within seeing merely through the ways others have observed, interpreted and named for us. That is why we fall into the trap of finding "false consciousness," "raising consciousness," and "resistance" reasonable. Although we may not buy into a positivistic paradigm, "the lust for absolutes" (Lather, 1991, p. 6) lingers. Therefore, ultimate truth about oppression and privilege remain, and those who do not agree are seen as resisting the truth. Although Piercy did not label what she did as developing a double consciousness, it is what I believe Piercy was reaching for. She never used this term. I never used this term when we spoke together. Yet, when I hear the ways that she talked about women, the ways in which she suggested they have the power within them to create their own lives, double consciousness makes sense. For example, after the first day of class at Daly's we talked about the tensions between the way society places demands on women to be young and beautiful and the ways in which this hurts women to think of themselves as valuable in other ways, including intellectually:M M See Stoimm'• (1992) cliac:llllion of tho-ya in which womonjudp tho-iv.a. The followina quote by Abboy, (1966/1994) "How 10 Pkk a Woman" - 10 me 10 bo tho kind of auitudca lbat put p.-re OD-· Abboy ..... : '1811 beauty in woman, which hara them OD in ondJoa punuit. mad and bolploa u any Giber anilml, '1'1111 wbic:h - ia not Mmlllduna abllrac:t or idioeync:ratie or in lbe eye of tho beholder only, but nlber Mr appanlll readima for nproductioa ••. What. lben, doN feminine beauty CODlilt off (1) Youlb: botw- fifteen and thirty-ideal cbiJdboarina .,...ad moat naturally found in coqjunction wilb •••• (2) Good beallb .•• (3) Genelic filneu ••• A "plain" or "u1ty• woman, on the olber band, ia one wbOIO appearance nsveala lbat lbe would probably 252 Corinna: The point I'm trying to make, you and I can be hard on women in terms of them seeing themselves uni dimensionally, as a toy or as gaining power through their looks, but the reality of the situation is that is how they do get power in a society that values that so much. youth and beauty. In the final analysis what really counts is Piercy: They devalue themselves in the service of that value. Corinna: They are complicit in it and that's where I hold women accountable. But they are not at fault and that's a distinction I make. messages I got. I just recall the In the end you are going to devalue yourself Piercy: That's where education comes in. You educate women. because you buy in, you give up your time and your energy to those goals which in the end because you naturally get older spend all your time looking younger. will make a contribution in different ways, you will be valuing yourself in different ways, for who you are and what you contribute. If instead, you spend time with things that Piercy seemed to consistently focus on the positive, rather than the negative. I am reminded of Nieto (1992) who in her case studies on students focuses on the success stories, and suggests we pay attention to success rather than always focusing on failures. Piercy tried to shift her thinking from a failure model of gender relations to a success model, to help her students figure out what could not produce IOUlld cbildren--cbia baled on man'• inllinctivo and correct uaaq,tioa thal 111c of'l'lpriaa will lead to NNllll>lo 111c parem. For example, lho woman ii too lbiJI or fat or bad-complexioned (mdic:aaivo of poor boakb), ot cocera; or Ibo ii too old, put the ideal childbeann, a1e, lhi■ revealed in thoee ■ymptoma to "beauty": wrinlclod atin, lultodeu bair, dull or watery eye■, a flabby or NIHiown body, ■aam, breuta, wide and ■loppy buaocb, et cocera. And lhua - - tho pathetic apoctacle, in all culturea whore •Bina ii DOI accepted, of woman lr)ina to cluporately to preaerve her youth (for in that ii her -nce)-aad faiJina-in an allompl to deceive by imitaliDJ with utificial aicla the aimulacra of the female youa,: She dyea her hair; lhe paillll, treat■, llrelCbea her akin; ■be cap• her INlb; ■he darlcena her oyelicla to make her eye■ -m briptcr; ■be exercise■; ■he inflatea or implanla with foreip object■ her old, worn-out and uaeleu breull-a trqic and futile coalention with the relentlea, ineaillible, irrevcniblo proceu oCbiolo,y, of qina ... oflhat which we call, limply, lime •••• Man eqjoya a ... Jl'Oll advutqe u -11: Since ho dominatea lho world, coalrolt ill power and wealth, he ii al10 able to dominate, codrol, and buy women ••.• (pp. 102- 103) 253 and should be done to change the status quo. She wanted to figure out the elements of success, and build on those. Toward the end of the third month of the semester she stated: [I want to] turn to the women in a positive sense [and say] have there been any men that you have really listened to you and you have noticed that they have heard your voice when you have said something? First of all try to get them to talk about what has happened to them as woman, and get them to encourage the men who are attempting to change their ways of being. Piercy wanted her women students to begin to access the double consciousness that they have, and also reinforce the positive around them in order to create change. Th• Teacher Bducator, th• student ■, "A co-unity Cla■■," and th• Knowledge Thay Co•• to Together Piercy tried to go to where her students were and help them reassess their ideas, look at their assumptions, and monitor their own arguments. She watched intently where her students were at in their thinking and then tried to figure out individually what they needed and what she could help them with. She tried to see what they saw--and understand and respect where they were coming from, yet all the while being active versus passive in attempting to get them to examine what they said and saw. This way of approaching students fits into double consciousness. Piercy also wanted her students to think about other's/Other's realities. Gary was shy, self-conscious, and had a learning disability (self described). He found it 254 hard to speak in classes; however, he stated that he felt comfortable in Piercy•s class, in part, because of the way the men and women related: Gary: She puts us in groups, female/male oriented. That's helped me quite a bit. Corinna: O.K. When you say the male/female relationship is that because she makes sure there is men and women in every group? Gary: Yes. I think because of the opinions from the feminist approach and the male approach. Right from the start of class I've seen that. Corinna: What do you think about that? Gary: I like it. -It's all right with me. it. I'm all for Corinna: Can you tell me what you think or feel about the class? I realized that I'd never associated Gary: I enjoy it. with a lot of those people from that class and I've gotten to know them. And it is not a class I get bored in because there is so much discussion. And a wide range of discussion, it's not just one particular topic. It varies and keeps you in focus and interested. Corinna: Is there anything about the class that you don't find very important, like the things that you talk about in there? Gary: I really don•t. Everyone's opinion is important. It is kind of a community class. Everyone says something and believes it is really important and it should stand as a statement. It seemed that Gary appreciated the different opinions expressed in the class and learned from them. He stated that it was "kind of a community class." Piercy wanted the class to be a place where various ideas were offered up, and where students thought deeply about their own arguments and 255 listened to and learned from the perspectives of their peers. Piercy wanted her students to begin to forge critical friendships so that they could hear others'/Others• realities. She believed listening and accepting others helped the listener begin to see the complexity of location and identity within a structure. Lather (1991) examines the notion of consciousness and clearly delineates that it is not something being done to students or happening to students, but rather as she says pedagogy is "the transformation of consciousness that takes place in the intersection of three agencies--the teacher, the learner, and the knowledge that they together produce" (Lusted as cited in Lather, p. 15). This begins to get at the dialectical and reflexive nature that is a classroom. It is not one person doing something to the other and the other resisting this thing being done to them. It is the histories of the teacher and learner and the evolution of the knowledge that can help develop double consciousness and double vision when all merge in the context of the classroom. This is especially possible in a community of critical friends developed by loving presence. Planting seeds suggests that the teacher is the dispenser of the truth--her seeds. Tilling the soil however, shows the power that the teacher educator has in facilitating a community of critical friends, where ideas are listened to and seriously thought about. Developing a 256 double consciousness suggests the dynamic and fluid nature of what can occur in a classroom, the simultaneous awareness of privilege and oppression, and one's own location in institutional structures. In this chapter I examined the metaphors and the language surrounding consciousness. They influence the ways in which one envisions teaching and learning about oppression and privilege. To get to the kind of paradox that exists, that is, consciousness being the "most stubborn substance in the cosmos, and the most fluid" (Starhawk, 1993, p. 153) one needs metaphors and language that suggest the complexity and the dynamic nature that exists when one is dealing with a teacher educator's and students• consciousness. In delving into Piercy•s practice I saw someone who tilled the soil, working toward developing double consciousness in herself and in her students. However, we are left with a dilemma that keeps recurring. Implicit in the recognition and validation of autonomous and separate selves within a classroom, and the critique of consciousness-raising, we return to the dilemma of relativism. How is a balance struck between not trying to annex the other, and yet working toward a non relativistic and coherent vision of justice and equity? Is this possible? In the next chapter I continue to look at Piercy•s practice, investigating the connection of loving presence to the development of critical friendship. 257 CHAPTER VII PIBRCY SUD: LOVIBG PRBSDCB DBVBLOPIBG A COIOIUlfITY OP CRITICAL PRIDDS A strong woman is woman who craves love like oxygen or she turns blue choking. A strong woman is a woman who loves strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong in words, in action, in connection, in feeling; she is not strong as stone but as a wolf suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she enacts it as the wind fills a sail. In rain, the clouds disperse. What comforts her is others loving her equally for the strength and for the weakness from which it issues, lightning from a cloud. Lightning stuns. Only water of connection remains, flowing through us. Strong is what we make each other. Until we are all strong together, a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid. (These two stanzas are from a longer poem by Marge Piercy, "For Strong Women," as cited in Murdock, 1990, p.71, emphasis added) In this chapter I explore how significant the theme of community was for Piercy. For Piercy it was a community that pursued social justice issues. This community was inhabited by critical friends defined by central features such as love, faith, and esteem. Critical friendship requires honesty, deep listening, and creating a "world" within one's classroom that goes against the tradition of "protective postures" (Putnam & Burke, 1992) and "defensive teaching and learning" (McNeil, 1986)~ Listening to the themes that Piercy unearthed, listening to the themes the students uncovered, I have become a themester: 258 259 A themester is one who labors at a theme, or one can be themeless, without a theme, and then a theme-maker furnishes a theme or subject •••• we are all, fundamentally, themesters. Listening to themes allows us to hear differences in voices. For example, the plainsong of care--its themes of connection and response to others •••• (Gilligan, Rogers, and Brown, 1990, p. 321) As I themester I heard the theme of friendship from the students and I heard the theme of love from Piercy. Connected, the two themes are more than the plainsong of care. They become the theme of loving presence developing a community of critical friends. In this chapter I explore what it means to create a community of critical friends with loving presence. Loving presence and critical friendship are intimately entwined. One cannot be a critical friend with arrogant presence. That would involve too much of the contemptuous and disparaging forms of "critical." It is friendship that mediates this kind of critical stance. I first heard the concept of being a "critical friend" from Jan Perry in 1993 over the National Education Association School Renewal computer network. 65 It struck me 65 Receady (September 1994) I c:ame upon an article wriaea by Sap (1991) when be laJb about "c:ritical friend," UIUlmi teacben in 50 ec:boola in WubiJJp,a oa project LEARN, belpina them reaan:b the amwen to their own queetioaa about t.eac:bint and Jeamma. He delineatea wbat the pidelinea for critic:al frieodl an for projec:t LEARN: A c:ritic:al friend ii c:boleo ac:cordiui to the DNda and duina of the project puticipanu. The critic:al friend will not bold a "ab" or "ownenbip" in the problem beinaaddreuedor in tbe outcome if the projectualela IUCb ii puacl by the participanu. o A critic:al friend ii a poaitive friend, whole primary apnda ii to ulill lhe project toward IUCCela. o A critic:al friend may bave a penoaa1 apDda complemomuy to die project'•· The crilic:al friend will lbare with tbe participam bil or ber mocivelfullellla at lbe time of the tint ialenctioo. o A critical friend ia a vililOr and participatea only at tbe c:ominuecl invitation of the project. o A critical friend will reapoad and act boaady It ,,vory juac1ure. o ll ii the c:ritical friend'• obliptioa to declare any c:oaflic:t of inrerNt or conflict of valuu wilb die projec:t foc:ua or mctbocb. o A critic:al friend will uaume lbat tbe project'• mnctiom, wort, and findinae an confidenlia1 ualeu the project dilectl ocherwiN. ' 260 as an interesting term, but it did not jolt me into an understanding of anything new or different. It was when I began to analyze the conversations that Piercy and I had, regarding life and love, teaching and learning, students and teachers, and watched her in the classroom, a new understanding developed. Although Piercy never used this term, it was what I interpret she was yearning for in her communities. Among these communities are her classroom, her colleagues, the wider scholarly community, and her relationship with me. Piercy craved authentic relationships where people could take critical stances with one another but with a generous spirit, a spirit of friendship. Ergo communities of critical friends. I knew there was something uniquely relational in her teaching tone that I could not quite discern. It was evident that she was trying to create a community, for she said that constantly. But it was a community unlike any I had read of or had seen in operation. It was an easy analytical move to identify her as a community builder, but her posture toward her community was different in kind somehow, and that was what stumped me. It was when I went back and listened to how Piercy talked about community, and what she talked about as the o 1be project padicipallla are expected to auill tbe critical friend by ftdly ialormiDa bim or ber of all qendu prior to each COIIIUltatioa. (p. 7) Thia clucripcioa overlap1 wilb miae iD tbe NIIN tbat it l&ipulalel a politive &ieacbbip tbat worb toward 1111:Cea of tbe project. It alao explicitly llllel tbat tbe critical friend will reapoad aad ac:t boantly at all limn. However, 1bit clucripcioa of a critical friend ii diuimilar to mine iD that it doe■ not ■eem u dialectical u tbe kind that I am aua,eawi,. Saaor'• critical friend INIDI lite a friendly outaider, who enablea tbe teacher to pt a frub penpoctive on their rueudl problema or teachiltl. I am IUge■lina a more connocted inaider/outaider role iD tenm of what Piercy aad I bad. 261 characteristics of her community, that I realized she was trying to create a community of critical friends with loving presence. There are educational theorists who have explained that community goes much further than just a gathering of people for a common purpose. For example, Schwab (1976) described "'community• [as) a state or condition of persons, a set of internalized propensities, of tendencies to feel and act in certain ways with other people" (p. 241). He states that in a communal enterprise we figure out our joint needs and wants and work together to achieve those. Schwab maintains that community can be learned. Schwab's (1976) explanation begins to illuminate the kind of community that Piercy was speaking of. However, for a teacher educator who has feminist imagination there are specific tensions, dilemmas, and propensities that are different than for another educator trying to create a community. Piercy•• xotif of co-unity The motif of community wove itself throughout Piercy•s descriptions of what she wanted for her students and what she was trying to achieve in her class. During the second month of the class she stated: I like the contributions that they are making. They were getting at issues that I thought were important to I was pleased when we them as well as important to me. talked about the peer counseling, again unwittingly, getting into this notion of school as a community, this trust building, seeing school as social as well as 262 cognitive. Those kind of issues seem to be important to them and picking up on them in the text. You know each classroom develops a theme, that runs through it. I always try to talk about community but they seem to be picking up on it more than others. I know we have talked about the teacher's role in developing communities and ways for people to learn, that kind of discussion has surfaced a couple of times. There are a couple of ways in which [our being a community] converges [with what we are dealing with in the curriculum]. We talk about it and it is specifically addressed in one of the chapters on curriculum reform. And we see videos too of cooperative groups. It [our developing sense of what a community is] also starts happening when we write our own philosophies, it begins to surface as an issue. I tell them that community is part of my philosophy and I think that they address it in different ways. They know that [in the philosophy paper] they are not supposed to mimic mine but I think I hear the same sort of themes coming through [in theirs]. Piercy saw community and relatedness even in the fiction that she read, where others might not identify it as such. I had given her a copy of May Sarton•s (1990) ~ Education of Harriet Hatfield. This is a story of an older woman who has recently lost her love~ (a woman) and opens a bookstore. I was fascinated with Piercy•s analysis of Harriet's bookstore as a classroom and that it was Harriet's need to connect to other people that really intrigued her. During the third month of the semester she said: Reading Hatfield, I felt like her bookstore was her classroom, she was building her community. It was her way of opening up, getting rid of that oppressive hierarchy. Even though people came in with their baggage, it was really special. She wanted that (community] so bad, I could really relate to her need to do that. This theme of community pervaded all that Piercy thought about in her teaching and more broadly in her 263 construction of concepts and principles. Piercy•s understanding of human agency located each individual within community. She rejected the notion of the "rugged individual" and instead believed that who we were as people and what we did had to be seen within the context of the communities in which we existed. We were not isolated beings that acted and reacted. Instead we were intricately webbed within a system of communities which affect us and we them. This notion of the interdependence of the individual and community governed her teaching in many ways. For Piercy teaching, learning, and being were always seen as the "self-in-relation" (McIntosh, 1985, p. 9). Piercy tried to counter the glorification of individualism and instead wanted to situate the self within the community. For Piercy, even a concept like self-esteem, usually a very individualistic psychological construct, was hooked into community. She critiqued notions of the self as individualistic and stationed people within systems- sex/gender, race, class, and other power hierarchies. Three months into the class we had been talking about Gloria Steinem's (1992) Revolution From Within; A Book of Self Esteem. In this book Steinem links the personal sense of self within a political reality, and then also links the political reality people (especially women) face to the personal self. She flipped the phrase "the personal is political" (Hanisch as cited in Humm, 1990, p. 162) and 264 coined the phrase "the political is personal" (Steinem, 1992, p. 17). We had been talking about the notion of feeling incompetent: It really is more situational. Self-esteem always I think I guess I balk at the idea of self-esteem because it is community esteem. Self-esteem just seems too self to me. seems like this global concept that you have. we are talking about political esteem, how you see yourself fitting in with this group of people, thinking about these hierarchical strata of who is on bottom and who is on top. Self-esteem to me just seems very self indulgent and very self-focused. And if we see ourselves in relation with people that to me isn't self-esteem, it's different. of competence are so much colored by who you are with, and how you are received, and how you see yourself with people. It is about being in relation with people who rely on you that see you are important, who give you a certain level of trust, a certain level of intellectual respect. It isn't even anything about what they say overtly. It can be the sharing of information and how people fit you into the community. How they treat you as part of the community. Do they see you as lower, somebody they wouldn't respect to trust with an issue? I think your own feelings Piercy talked about her being in the Atwood College's community, saying that she felt a compatibility with her peers, yet she was not sure that others felt the same way. "In professional groups, I feel a real fit here at Atwood, but I don't know that other people see it." Piercy consistently located herself as an individual within community. She tried to see how different individuals, including herself, fit into the workings of the communities they were a part of. Piercy was constantly vigilant about the ways in which the political esteem (as she called it) affected the individual's sense of self. She made sense of the 265 individual specifically located and situated within a context, a context defined in part by hierarchy and a system of unequal power relations. We talked during the semester about the despair that many teachers who have feminist imagination feel. I told Piercy about a woman who I had lunch with, who said to me that if students didn't hear about feminist issues from her they wouldn't hear about them anywhere. Piercy emphatically replied: That sounds self-serving and egocentric. Well, but, I guess it's buying into this individualistic "I'll be better than other people because I can be this wonderful missionary." They have bought into the norm (of individualism] rather than really seeing themselves as part of this community, making a contribution, figuring out who they are in the community and work from that. community] is a different way of thinking about who you are and what effect you can have and what your mission is. And the control you have is that you pick what you think you can do and where you can make a change. [Thinking of yourself as a member of a Here is the idea of a community of critical friends working for social justice in some way, each enacting it perhaps differently, but nonetheless working as a member of a community. For Piercy community needed to be oriented towards justice. Through her curriculum and through her pedagogy she explicitly stressed the need for teachers to be empowered change agents. What••• This community Like? What was it that one saw and heard within a community that a teacher educator who has feminist imagination was 266 part of? During the first month of class Piercy was talking about stereotypes. She asked Gary, if she were to label him a "jock," how he would respond. He said he wouldn't mind. Piercy was surprised and asked, "That's acceptable?" Gary went on to explain, "It's like a family in this class.M I feel comfortable in this class not like in some others." Gary seemed to be saying that joking around, even stereotyping was okay because he felt the class was like a family. When I asked Gary in an interview, "What sort of things are really important about the class for you?" He replied: Well, I guess Dr. Sand because she is so personable. The teachers I remember most in high school are the ones who opened up to me. Who listened to problems, where I could go up there and I feel I can do that with her, you know. She's willing to help. She's not just an educator but a friend. (emphasis added) Gary also said that he was learning to speak up in Piercy•s class and therefore in others also: "The thing that I have learned most is how to speak in front of a class." And when asked why, he replied: She [Piercy Sand] makes it a comfortable environment. She interacts with us all. She puts us in groups, female/male oriented. That's helped me quite a bit. In other classes too I find it easier [now after M Thia metaphor of a family ii a vory illterellina one. Tbere ii lbc Ulllmplioo lbat all ii •pat• witbia a family, daoro ii inevitably cloloneaa and connection. R..D. Laina (1971) ba■ wriaa an.......,, boot Olllidod ]be Politic• oflbe Family; And Olber fee.,,. Ho llalel: Wo ■peat of familioa u lhaup we all knew what familiea aro. Wo ~fy. u familiea, aetworb of pooplo wbo live tosetbor ovor poriodl of limo, wbo bavo tic■ of marria,e and tin■bip to one anocbor. Tbo more oao IIUdiea family dynamic■, lhc more unclear one becomea u to the way■ jamlty dynamic■ compare and coa1ra• wilb lbc dynamic■ of other JIOUPI not called familiea, let alone lbc way■ familie■ them■elve■ differ. M with dynamica, 10 with IIIUcture (pattem■, more .. ble and eadurm, than Olben): apin, comparilon■ and pnonlizatioa■ mu• be very tealalivo. (p.3, oq,lwia in oripnal) 267 talking in this class]. The heart beat gets going really fast but it comes out. Emily talked about the ethos that Piercy created in the class by her strategies and techniques and presence: I love the atmosphere in the class, I believe it is one of the few classes I've ever had in college that, you know, sits in a circle and are very open. When I see those students on campus, there are always "Hi, Emily." Very, very comfortable. about the class. I think that is a definite bonus. I really like that When I asked Emily whether she felt she had a voice in the class she responded with: Well, that is one of her [Piercy's] expectations. It's different than other classes. That's what she wants. She wants us to have a voice. She wants to hear what we say. She has helped us feel that not only is it important to her, but it is important and necessary for all the other students in the class. It is kind of funny because a few students who have said they've never spoken in other classes, find themselves talking in here and then, they'll, a couple of them have said to me, "I can't believe I just talked for ten minutes in here. I never do that." It is that Dr. Sand has helped create that atmosphere in the classroom. You know, with the very first thing of the physical appearance of the classroom. We weren't in those rows, we were in a semi-circle, all looking at one another. We were closer together and then the small group activities that we do also helped. And, you know, learning everyone's name at the first class and then having people hook up for rides to get their observation assignments and all those things combined really helped everyone to feel comfortable. As the students said, Piercy helped develop a community of critical friends, where the students felt they had voices and felt comfortable. Piercy was a critical friend to them, and they acknowledged her as such. There are authors who have talked about this kind of relationships between colleagues. For example, 268 Fenstermacher (1992) talks about the critical discourse and dialogical communication that the teacher and "the other" can engage in about practice. This alludes in part to what I am suggesting by critical friendship, but my notion of critical friendship captures.love in ways that other educational theorists do not broach. Friendship is often seen as an intimate and private enterprise. However, I believe it can be expanded and incorporated into wanting to know the other/Other, connecting with another in a way that creates a mutual desire to know, to find meaning, and to make sense of what one is learning about. The critical friendship may not last forever--but the commitment is there as long as the participants are together trying to make sense out of the educational enterprise. rri1n01hip ano Lou Friendship and love are intimately linked, as Daly (1978) points out: It is ••• important to re-call that the word friend is derived form an Old English term meaning to love, and ••• is akin to its roots to an Old English word meaning free ••• loving our own freedom, loving/encouraging the freedom of the other, the friend, and therefore loving freely •••• we are re calling it, re-claiming it as our heritage. The identity named by the Old World friend is from our own Background. It names our Presence to each other on the Journey. (p. 367) Friendship and loving presence are intimately linked. Friendship does not mean to bind the other to oneself or 269 make the other into the image of oneself. Instead, it is "loving our own freedom, loving/encouraging the freedom of the other, the friend ••• " (p.336) enough and loving enough to allow the other to grow in the ways she or he needs to grow. In some contexts, like teacher education classes, we are often connected to people because of an arranged reason, seldom designed with our input or consent. c. s. Lewis (1960) writes that friendship is a unique love because it is a chosen relationship. However, that is not the kind of friendship I am speaking of. I believe critical friendship can flourish in arranged relationships. Regardless of whether the relationship is by choice or not, friendship means allowing the other/Other the freedom to be all that they can be. It is fighting the tendency to arrogantly perceive the other and not recognize that the friend is independent and has needs, desires, expectations of her/his own. For example, Piercy fought the tendency to arrogantly perceive and dismiss Joanne or Matt when they made racist or classist statements, but instead tried to understand them and help them rethink some of their assumptions. Paith ano Batea The dictionary• definition is also appropriate in the discussion of critical friendship: friend ( ••• OE freon to love, rreo free] 1 a: one attached to another by affection or esteem •••• 270 (Webster's Ninth New collegiate Dictionary. 1984, p. 493) The notion of esteem is important. We may not always feel affection for a student or a colleague that we interact with. However, esteem for the other as a learner, as a person capable of growth and change can be the connection that builds the critical friendship. It is a faith in the infinite capacity for other human beings, as well as ourselves, to reinvent and reconstruct ourselves. And this stance of critical friendship and loving presence rejects the notion that there are "wrong" people/students/ colleagues and "right" people/students/colleagues and, instead, suggests that we all can learn from one another within a community of critical friends. Piercy illustrated this esteem for and faith in others through her interactions with students, myself, and colleagues in general. She tried to figure out where her students were intellectually, emotionally, developmentally, and psychologically. She then tried to help them grow from that point. In her interactions with me, although we experienced tensions and conflicts of pedagogical, political, and personal kinds; there was always a positive regard that she maintained for me as a learner and as a teacher. She struggled to understand what I was thinking and feeling and to make sense of my reality compared to hers. With her other colleagues she maintained the stance that they could teach her something even if they were very 271 different from her personally, pedagogically, or politically. Piercy loved to learn with others. In all her interactions she wanted critical friendship to help her examine matters of the intellect, heart, and soul. She was "driven" to develop a community of critical friends with loving presence. She held the conviction that as human beings ultimately we are all in this together, connected on some fundamental level "on the same side in the struggle"; whether we see each other as oppressors, oppressed, subjugators, or subjugated. This is not to negate the differences, for differences are crucial. But on some level, especially in teacher education classrooms this is especially important for we are teaching those who will go out and teach the other/Other. Therefore, to see the connections amongst themselves to one another, and to the other/Other is fundamental in the teaching and learning process. To see another as "alien" and incomprehensible creates insurmountable barriers. In teacher education we can come to see that we can be allies to one another, even when we disagree and even when we have conflicts. It is how we engage in conflict, it is what we make of conflict, and how we regard one another during conflict, that creates either a community of critical friends or a "psuedocommunity" (Peck, 1987). I am not suggesting that this friendship is a lifetime 272 connection. Students and teachers move on and leave that community of critical friends behind. However, what remains is the change that was encouraged by that critical friendship. It is during that time when students and teachers, or colleagues are together that critical friendship can be entered into. "Passionate regard" (Weaver and Henke, 1992, p. vii) and "learning in good company" (Featherstone, Pfeiffer, & Smith, 1993) are central features of this kind of critical friendship. Honesty Within this critical friendship is a sincerity and genuineness that promotes honesty with others and with oneself. There were many instances in which I found Piercy surprisingly honest. I emphasize m surprise. Remember those mirrors. Piercy attempted a new and different kind of relationship with her students. She was honest and connected in a way that few teacher _educators manage, one that I seldom managed. Her honesty took me aback, because I am not used to teachers, myself included, being that honest. For example, when Piercy gave my proposal to the students, my first instinct was to go "No, we can't do that." Then I asked myself why. It was my fear that if they were informed of the nature of the study in detail, they might not want to participate. Yet, if we really respected our participants, the right thing to do was make sure they were fully 273 informed. It was the honest thing to do. I had mixed feelings nonetheless. What her actions pointed out for me in the long run, though, was the openness with which Piercy approached her students. The tenor in their classroom communicated that "we are all in this together." This was one instance where she was developing community and trust. We spoke about it after the first day of class: Corinna: There is a part of me that is a little worried about us having given out the proposal. When we did it, when you suggested it, I thought this is a great idea, it's really about informed consent. It's educative as well as informed consent. Yet there is another part of me that knowing when these students look at this paper they go "Who the fuck is this feminist man-hater. "67 Piercy: I don't think so, my initial read, that one kid is going to eat it up, Keith. He's already hooked in. We're going to find quieter kids who are hooked in. Guys over on the side ["maletown"], Reid is a phys. ed. major, he's insightful. Originally I might have had low expectations and I know that's my stereotype. That group of men that sat together are going to come from a very different perspective than Keith. They are going to read it and not know what the hell it is and be a little threatened by it. But it's going to be great 67 Theft ia a precedeat Nt for lbia •fear." Tbe foltowm, ia a poem I wrote after a profeuional npedeace wheN I felt quite bopelela about die ability of people to ..,..t acroaa clifferencea. Tbe foUowint lillea an wbat people bave aid to me, OI' about me, in l9lalioa to die WOik lbat I do: ll'• ■o -■y •.. : Reftectiom oa beq a Wbisc middle c:lau woman ••• ju■l a man-baq feminilt Stic:b and lkJDel will broat my boau but name■ will never hurt me ... Sbe lllllll be a dyb Stic:b and 11oae1 will broat my boau but Daa1H will mvor hurt me ... BINdina heart libonl Stic:b and 11one1 will broat my boau but name■ will never hurt 1111 ... Sbe'1 alway■ taJtin, about feminilt ilalea Sbe'• alway, taJtin, about raci■m, •xilm, clauiam, homophobia ... Sbe llllllt bavo bad bad experiencu with mm Sbe illl't even claq a Naliv• Americ:an or a Black man That'■ UI am,pllt thin, to aay- you White middle-clau WOIIIIII you Tbat'I aa ouy thin, for you to aay- you Wbisc middle-clau woman you Actually-none of it'• -■y for 1111 to aay-not ouy at all ll would be au:11 oalier to aay aolhina at all. 274 Josh is bright, because I'm going to encourage them. I he wrote a good introductory paper [to the college]. don't know the others •••• But it will be interesting to hear what they have to say about that proposal, some won't bother to read it. Some who find it too complex and won't bother to read it since they are not getting graded on it. be a problem. critical piece. but to tell them how important it is for me [to be a part of this study]. I'm not worried that there is going to I think how I handle it will be a I don't want to put pressure on them Another example of Piercy•s being open and honest with them had to do with taking a gender count in their classroo~, noting when the men spoke and when the women spoke. Piercy could have done it covertly, to prove a point, that in terms of male to female ratio, the men tended to dominate the discussions. However, she was unwilling to do it surreptitiously. We were discussing this strategy and I asked, "I want to know, I think I know your answer, but why didn't you do it covertly? Why didn't you just have someone document it? Piercy replied: I don't want them Because I think trust is important. I've done it to think that [I am deceiving them]. before that way, and said, "Well, here you are." I just think that I don't want to play that role with them, I don't want to play "I'm going to catch you." That's not what I want to be with them because it kind of makes me the smart one and shows them that they need me. Not only do I feel uncomfortable, it is not consistent with what I am saying. about it, and then to ask them, again, when we talked before, I thought if I'm really sincere about this, maybe they are right and maybe, in fact, things are getting better. But we don't know [that], and together we could figure that out and know if we are getting better, if together we gather evidence. So that is why I asked them today to give me some evidence that things were better. To kind of say, "Okay I'll go with your thinking but let's figure it out." so, to tell them Piercy chose to use the power that she had to push for 275 a relationship that went beyond superficial interaction, a relationship of critical friendship. She pushed for her students to be honest with her and with each other about what they are thought, felt, and assumed about teaching and learning, and life. She pushed them to be honest by being honest with them herself. She was sincere about learning from them, being open to their belief that gender speech dynamics had changed in university classrooms, that there was equitable participation by the women and the men. She was willing to acknowledge that they could be right, instead of insisting they were naive. Piercy was not using power over her students. Instead, she used her power to help change the teacher educator-student relationship. As hooks (1989) explains: To have a revolutionary feminist pedagogy we must first focus on the teacher-student relationship and the issue of power. How do we as feminist teachers use power in a way that is not coercive, dominating? Many women have had difficulty in asserting power in the feminist classroom for fear that to do so would be to exercise domination. Yet we must acknowledge that our role as teacher is a position of power over others. We can use that power in ways that diminish or in ways that enrich and it is this choice that should distinguish feminist pedagogy from ways of teaching that reinforce domination. (p. 52) Frye (1990, private communication) states that honesty is one of the most difficult of all the virtues. To be honest with others also requires an honesty with oneself. This means being able to see oneself reflected in the mirrors that others hold up and figure out what the image really means. It means being ethical enough to tell the truth about oneself so that one can be truthful with others. 276 Deep Listening In critical friendship there's a certain patience and a generosity of spirit with oneself and others that needs to be cultivated. It means taking others seriously enough to push a critical friend's thinking (see Rich, 1978) and helping one another stretch across the sometimes great divides that separate us. The differences which can divide us can also connect us if we learn from dissimilarities. Critical friendship requires deep listening, listening as Daly (1985) suggests with one's Inner ear to the silences as well as the spoken words. Piercy, during the first month of the semester, talked about what she wasn't "hearing," wasn't sensing from her students. She said that she didn't sense a passion from them about the need to make things better for the disenfranchised: There's no feeling that things are, need to be different. There's no outrage and that we need to do something different. Well, maybe in attempting, I don't know, I was going to say attempting to stir up, that in fact they are trying to placate. Piercy listened to the tone and nuance of the class and its silences. She was disturbed by their lack of outrage, but then she asked herself whether this may stem from their desire to smooth things over, make inequity seem less egregious. She struggled to make sense of the differences between her urgency and outrage and their seeming lack of these feelings. 277 When I listened to the students, I heard the concept of friendship being used to describe the relationship that Piercy and the students had. One student, David, used the concept of friendship on the final feedback form. I found this startling when I first read it. Yet, after analyzing the data, it made sense. Piercy wanted to create a community of critical friends, a "world" in which a teacher educator and students could enter into friendship. The fact that a student saw her as a friend is congruent with her wish for a certain kind of community construction. The final feedback questionnaire was designed so that it would help move students to a collegial way of seeing the class they had participated in. The following is an excerpt from David's questionnaire: Piercy Sand is thinking about redesigning ED 277. You are a colleague of hers on the planning committee. could you please give her advice on the following: Teacher-student relations This was perhaps my funnest and most exciting class I've taken since I've been to Atwood.· I felt like I could talk with you about issues that are very sensitive. between you & I helped me be able to enjoy the class and appreciate it. (emphasis added) I feel that the openness and friendship Student-student relations I feel the class fostered good relations between us and I feel a lot of us grew closer over the course of the semester, this may be due to our openness in discussion. 68 278 Through dialogue, deep listening, and connection Piercy attempted to reach out and draw others into her •world" of critical friends. rr11n01hip ano 'wor10•-trav111ing When I use "world" I use it the way that Lugones (1987) uses it to talk about "playfully 'world'-travelling." This is the kind of stance one needs to take in talking across differences. Lugones talks about loving perception and playfully world travelling between White women and women of color, but the way that she uses the notion of world also applies to a world constructed within a classroom. "[A] 'world' can also be a ••• non-dominant construction ••• or it can be ••• an idiosyncratic construction" (p. 10). A world of critical friendship can be created in teacher education. It requires the development of a "world" that challenges the norms, where people can talk authentically and across their differences. Piercy illustrated "playfully 'world' travelling" when she asked Darcy, who was lesbian, to come and talk to the class about heterosexism and homophobia. This was an invitation for Piercy•s students and herself to explore issues of homophobia and heterosexism--to come face to-face with the "Other" and to stretch themselves to learn 68 I have cornc:tod 1pellm, in David'• feedback reapome but no ocber cclum, of Ibo text waa done. 279 about what it means for someone to feel Other in the educational system. That day a "world" was created where the "Other" was able to tell of her reality and connect across the differences with future teachers. In this chapter we have explored how significant the theme of community was for Piercy. It was a community pursuing social justice issues. This community was inhabited by critical friends. Critical friendship has central features such as love, faith, and esteem. It also requires honesty, deep listening, and creating a "world" within one's classroom where members can "playfully travel." Critical friendship also means that one does nQt engage in the kind of criticism that is belittling, disparaging, or contemptuous. The emphasis is on criticism that attends to helping the friend grow and learn, and moves the entire community of critical friends forward in constructive ways. Defying Norms This construction of a classroom as a "world" of critical friends is unusual and defies norms. Being defended is often the norm in classroom contexts, and many undergraduates have had almost two decades of practice in being defended. McNeil (1986) has called it defensive teaching. McNeil talks about how defensive simplification of content, "knowledge control" (p.188) and pedagogy that tries to maintain control have de-skilled both teachers and 280 students. "Tired, bored, and rushed to cover content, teachers and students meet in a path of least resistance" (p. 176). I argue that, in addition, students and teachers have also been de-skilled in their ability to have meaningful relationships with one another within the context of the classroom. Putnam and Burke (1992) describe this defensive learning and teaching as "a web of protective postures" (p. 14) within classrooms. This legacy of protective postures and defensive teaching and learning makes genuine and authentic relationships between teachers and students unconventional in many ways. Attempting to break through the defended postures is no mean feat. It may be a daunting task to help others lower their defenses, and it may seem unconventional to try to do so in an education class, yet this was Piercy•s vision. She wanted students and teachers to be open, honest, and direct. She wanted them to be critical friends. It takes an adventurous spirit to be able to go beyond the strictures of what the norm is between students and the teacher educator. To be able to maintain a "spirited vulnerability" while flying in the face of convention takes an adventurous teacher educator. In the next chapter we will examine what it means to be an adventurous teacher educator with feminist imagination. CHAPTER VIII PIBRCY SUD: TBACBBR BDUCATOR WITH All ADVDJTUROUS PBIIIKIST IKAGIDTIOK Community-building is an adventure, a going into the unknown. People are routinely terrified of the emptiness of the unknown. {Peck, 1987, p. 95) Efforts to make teaching more adventurous, spontaneous, and exciting run directly counter to ••• conservative tendencies in instructional practice •••• {Cohen, 1988, Abstract). It appears that college and university instruction has changed little for generations. {Cohen, 1988, p. 21) In this chapter I will inquire into what adventurous teaching means for a teacher educator with feminist imagination. If we want to be thoughtful about adventurous teaching, I believe it needs to be context-specific. That l is, adventurous teaching means different things to, and has different outcomes for, teacher educators who are women who are trying to teach and learn about issues of oppression and privilege, than it does for teacher educators who are men or women and are not trying to teach and learn about these same issues. I delve into the complexity of the unteaching and unlearning which must take place surrounding these issues and what impact this has on the construct of adventurous teaching. I will also examine how the very constructs Piercy and I used to describe our work were undergirded and informed by "whiteliness" and privilege. I will explore a case of adventurous teaching, a case of stretching beyond sexual privilege. As a precursor to the next chapter, at 281 282 the end of this one I talk about why in any account of a teacher teaching one needs to talk of students learning. When I listened to Piercy I heard that teaching was an adventure for her, exciting and full of intellectual and emotional risk. Cohen (1988) talks about adventurous teaching and also states that the norm in content and pedagogy runs counter to the adventurous spirit in teachers and teaching. Although Cohen does not focus on post secondary education, he does link the conservatism in public schools to the conservatism in universities. He provides many helpful features and outcomes of adventurous teaching and provides a framework which helps us think about what adventurous teaching could mean for teacher education. Cohen states that "Adventurous instruction ••• opens up uncertainty by advancing a view of knowledge as a developing human construction and of academic discourse as a process in which uncertainty and dispute play central parts" (p. 37). In interacting with her students as she did, taking the stance that knowledge was constructed, Piercy entered into uncertainty. Piercy, as Cohen suggests, wanted students "to be intellectual explorers, to share their ideas, arguments, and intuitions with classmates and teachers" (p. 39). She invited her students to challenge her and each other. The students were not used to this kind of classroom ethos and interaction. As Cohen states, "This ordinarily increases the difficulty of ••• [teachers') work, in part, because so many students seem allergic to it, at least initially" (p. 283 39). To illustrate this "allergic reaction," consider a class which occurred two months into the semester. Piercy asked them for their opinions on classroom interaction. Emily said to Piercy, "I was uncomfortable giving you what you wanted. I wanted you [Piercy] to say, 'This is what I wanted.'" Piercy then asked the class, "Does anyone else feel that I should give you the final answer?" Tricia replied, "You've had more teaching experience." Piercy then said to them, "I've tried to pick questions that don't have easy answers." She then tried to assure them that she was not trying to keep answers from them: "My goal is not to withhold from you." Piercy wanted a community where issues were genuinely up for discussion. Still the students saw her as the authority that had the final answer. Cohen seems to speak of the way in which this new self-reliance may make students uncomfortable: When teachers embark on an adventurous approach to pedagogy, then, they open up an entire new regime, one in which students have more autonomy in thought and expression, and much more authority as intellectuals. But such autonomy and authority are difficult for many students and their teachers. They find it unfamiliar at least, unsettling, and even threatening. (p. 40) Cohen identifies that the teacher depends on the students and the teacher must make herself more vulnerable. This new vulnerability opens up the possibility that students may injure the teacher: 284 Another feature of adventurous instruction, therefore, is that teachers must depend on their students much more visibly and acutely •••• Teachers must find ways to extend their own dependence on students, which implies relinquishing many central instruments of their influence in the classroom. Teachers must make themselves more vulnerable, offering students opportunities to fail them, and even inflict painful wounds, in order to help them become more powerful thinkers. Such work can be exhilarating and rewarding, but it is not easy. (pp.40-41, emphasis added) The ways in which Piercy set up the classroom community, where Piercy was open to their critiques of her and her pedagogy, made her more vulnerable. Yet she did this to make them more powerful thinkers, thinkers who could "read the word and the world" (Freire and Macedo, 1988). Cohen recognizes the vulnerability and the interdependence required in trying to create a community of inquirers. He has even included intuition as a way of knowing that students could share with one another. He talks about the intellectual adventure and taxing lessons (p. 29) and how difficult such work can be. Yet what Piercy helps us do is flesh out what this might look and feel like within a teacher education classroom guided by feminist imagination. She also helps us contextualize it. Cohen indicates that adventurous pedagogy is difficult. Yet, the risk factors may be different for people who are not White, privileged, heterosexual, and male. As Henry (1993-1994) makes it poignantly clear, her teacher education pedagogy is dramatically affected by the fact that she is an African American woman. Adventurous teaching may mean 285 something very different for women and men, White teachers and teachers of color, heterosexual and lesbian and gay teachers. Piercy illuminates how adventurous teaching might be different depending on who is doing the teaching, where the teaching is taking place, and what kind of controversial issues may complicate the desire for and actualization of adventurous teaching and learning. She provides us with insights about the added difficulties associated with adventurous teaching and learning. From studying Piercy we are able to think about some specifics--that is, what teacher education with feminist imagination looks like for a middle class, White woman teaching an Educational Foundations course. Contazt-spacific Adventurous Teaching As I write about the educational concept of adventurous teaching to describe Piercy•s teaching, I am acutely aware that this term needs to be contextualized. Personal history and context changes everything. Who Piercy was, where she was located, and what she taught affected her capacity to be adventurous. Adventurous teaching can be useful to teacher educators with feminist imaginations, especially if we situate and locate it within a context that deals with the issues we are concerned with. The kind of vulnerability that is implied for women teacher educators with feminist imaginations may be 286 different than the kind of vulnerability that Cohen alludes to. For example, Piercy was teaching privileged White students about issues of oppression and privilege that they might not·have necessarily welcomed. She was creating an ethos in her classroom that urged them to engage in real and authentic relationships, with her and with each other (not being defensive) that challenged their norms of what it meant to be a student. The students had a lot of power at Atwood and their evaluations of her were crucial in determining whether she received tenure or not. If they did not like her it could cost her her job. Her "spirited vulnerability" allowed her to be adventurous, even if there was much risk involved. However, the wounds that could be inflicted (as Cohen suggests) were perhaps more severe in a context such as Atwood, with a majority of White privileged students, who might not welcome seeing themselves as part of the problem of oppression (as well as the solution). Adventurous teaching may also be more problematic when issues of race, class, gender, social justice, and oppression are foci of the class. If students are allergic to uncertainty when the teacher tries to "open up varied conceptions of knowledge," how·much more allergic do they become if the teacher is trying to unteach and help the students unlearn? Allergic reactions may be all the more dramatic and the work all the more difficult if the teacher hopes students unlearn conceptions of the world that they 287 are absolutely certain about. Le Guin (1986) writes about unlearning and unteaching: our schools and colleges, institutions of the patriarchy, generally teach us to listen to people in power, men or women speaking the father tongue; and so they teach us not to listen to the mother tongue, to what the powerless say, poor men, women, children: not to hear that as valid discourse. I am trying to unlearn these lessons, along with other lessons I was taught ab~ut my society, particularly lessons concerning the minds, work, works, and being of women. (p. 151) Many preservice teachers have learned these lessons well, but sometimes they don't see the need to unlearn them. A haunting comment comes back to me, "I didn't know that I didn't know, and I didn't know that I didn't care." 69 What was especially important and quite dismaying to Piercy and myself about the new preservice teachers--the postfeminist group of young people being "groomed" to become teachers--is that they believed that all that "stuff" about oppression and inequality was something not of their generation. They believed that they were liberated and aware young people and that things were equal now. As Michelle stated in her interview: I think that women are treated pretty fairly in today's society so I don't think it is necessary for somebody to point out the differences or similarities because there will always be differences between men and women. I think it is being made a bigger deal of than needs to be because I think we are fairly equal. is always going to be a difference, there are just certain things that men can do that women can't do, I think there 69 I fint beard dua comment from Molly MacGrepr in (I 991, July) at a pruemation lbe made at SEED (Seetm, Bduc:atioGl1 Equity and Divenity) Worbbop, Palo Alto, California. 288 strength wise. It is just the way we're made. For Michelle, even if things were "fairly equal" and not completely equal, it had more to do with innate differences between women and men and not with oppression and privilege. Teachers who struggle to be unteachers need a great deal of ordinary, transgressive, and political courage to try to grapple with the lessons that they and their students had been exposed to and may have learned well. So for Piercy, as others like her trying to unlearn and unteach, adventurous teaching may mean serious consequences at times, and courage all the time. Uncertainty may also be perceived differently when women professors display it as opposed to men professors. In an academy where certainty is the desire and the knowledge claims need to be certain, uncertainty and ambiguity are perceived as weak and not "intellectually rigorous" by both students and colleagues. McIntosh (1985, 1989) speaks of feelings of fraudulence that many women in hierarchical institutions experience. Uncertainty may create the discomfort of feeling out of place in an academy that seeks and demands certainty. McIntosh (1989), concentrating primarily on women academics, suggests, "The trick is to trust the very feelings of discomfort that are giving us the most trouble and try to follow them where they may lead" (p.1). Those feelings of discomfort often let us see that something is 289 not quite right--that the definitions, the constructs, the ways of Being have to be redefined for teacher educators with feminist imaginations. An added layer to adventurous teaching is that teacher educators with feminist imaginations must unlearn the old constructs that they themselves have learned. There is much to unlearn, peeling away the layers of domination from own minds in an attempt to be "unteachers" for our students. We are unlearning the lessons that cloud our vision--that blind us to truly seeing--that deafen us to truly hearing the voices of those who are often silenced and silent. We need to stretch the concept of adventurous teaching to make room for the students• and the teachers• own unlearning. This entails a different kind of adventure, producing a different kind of risk. There are no neutral concepts--even the dictionary alerts us to the ways in which constructs are gender specific. I looked up "adventure" in the dictionary and found an interesting gender twist to it.~ This is what I found: adventure 1 a: an undertaking involving danger and unknown risks b: the encountering of risks 2: an exciting or remarkable experience. adventurer 1: one that adventures: as a a: soldier of 70 In MarpNl Bucbmana'■ 1989 c .... ·Conceplual Foundation■ or Teacher Bdu'1alion· ■be oacourqed III to ...Uy ■IUdy tbe word■ that - wen aaemptioa to a.b NDN of. I bad not u■ecl • dictionary'■ dofinilion ■ince hip ■chool, ., du■ wu an WUlllll tut that I wu being ubd to coq,lele. Yet, I ■ooa came to undenllnd bow uaefial du■ can be. E■pecially in 1 COlllbUctivilt and critical pandi,at or knowint, it ■oeml to a.b - wordl and phnaea. It ia ■llo • woaderfid way to ■oe bow ,ender ■pecific cerllia wordl an and have become. to create ■omo common pound for 1be uae or cerllia 290 fortune b: one that engages in risky commercial enterprises for profit 2: one who seeks unmerited wealth or positions esp. by playing on the credulity or prejudice of others. adventuresome: inclined to take risks: venturesome. adventuress: a female adventurer; esp: a woman who seeks position or livelihood by questionable means. (Webster's Ninth New collegiate Dictionary. 1984, p. 59) The last entry is interesting because it gets at what gender issues are all about. This special category of adventuress alludes to a woman in sexual terms, i.e., prostitution (see Spender, 1985; Mills 1989). And it suggests all the other definitions referred only to men. Adventure for women only has sexual meaning or at least is defined for the adventures of men. Language is not neutral. It is laden with generations of a sex/gender, race, and class system. Therefore, the constructs within the language cannot help but be also. And so it is important that as teacher educators with feminist imaginations we make constructs context-specific. Too Spirite4? Adventurous teaching requires a spirited attitude. However, a spirited attitude can be part of arrogant presence. That is, adventurous teaching can be so spirited that it is ruthless. 71 A teacher educator with ruthless 71 Jlllt u Joan Hunault provided 11111 with die concept of •1piritecl wJnenbility• lhc a1ao . . led that there wu a book that lbe read that WU IO lpiritecl it WU natblola. 291 spiritedness pulls and drags the students on an adventure to the place she wants them to be. This is a danger that a teacher educator with feminist imagination needs to be careful of. To really "honor the life in front of you" (Hunault, 1994, private communication) means that you do not try to annex the other and make them come with you to the place xgy have deemed best. At the end of the first month of the course, Piercy talked about trying to get students to move to a constructivist theory of knowledge. She seemed to be equivocating, worried that she was pulling them, trying to change them, yet concluding that she believed it was important for teachers to see knowledge as constructed. When I think of moving people's minds, I do think about I shouldn't moving them to this constructivist view. see it as moving people, changing people and all that, but I can't help it. I do think it is a better way of thinking about knowledge. way to think about teaching. I do think it is a better I try to be open. Her equivocation may also be that the way in which she was approaching this theory of knowledge with the students was more in the spirit of consciousness-raising. And although she did not use that term here, reading between the lines, that is what it may have been and it was creating a discomfort for her. For Piercy it was essential that the future teachers in her class, especially the quiet women, learn to speak up and out. She felt passionate about this. Piercy talked about Ellen, a student whom she had urged to speak up in class. Ellen was absent after the class in which she was prodded to speak. Piercy said to me: 292 I mean, that's I think I tried to be supportive, She'll never make it through if she's worried about my confrontation. It would be good if she did drop out because this is called the way we live, "I want to know from you and I want your challenges." just something I can't live without. How can I develop their thinking if we're not [challenging each other]? That's what I try to do in that class is signal them what I am all about. to let her know that I wasn't going to be mean to her, but let her know I wanted to hear from her. And she's going to want to talk. If she's seeing that as a negative then, all of her life, her family was quiet and this is the way it should be, "I don't want to change." Okay, I don't think I would change myself if I thought people were good teachers, could function not having a voice, not speaking out in groups, not being a part of it. I don't see her as a contributing part of the community at this point. I don't, to me that is an important thing, an important part of being a beginning teacher. Now maybe there are other roles she'd do more successfully. I'm not pretending that it is objective at all, but again, I think a lot of this is subjective. One can hear how important it was for Piercy that students entered the community conversation, where they were contributing and challenging one another. However, for some of the students this may have seemed a little too spirited. Piercy•s passion and spiritedness was seen by a couple of the young women as pulling and dragging them to speak when they were not ready or willing to. For the adventurous teacher educator with feminist imagination there are always tensions between her goals and the needs and desires of the students in front of her. "lfhiteliness," Privilege an4 A4venturous Teaching In exploring the concept of adventurous teaching it is vital to try to tease out the ways in which our particular 293 social constructions affected this concept. For example, what did being White women have to do with our notion of adventurous teaching? In so many ways Piercy and I dwelled in a White house. We attempted to stretch ourselves to see beyond the walls of our own imagination, and yet within this study we had a White woman teaching mostly White students in a privileged college's teacher education classroom studied by a White woman. Piercy strove to teach her students to think about "Otherness," equity, diversity, and oppression, asking them to leave their White house for a time, to think about their race, their class, their gender, and their sexual identity. Ellesworth {1989) states: I cannot unproblematically bring subjugated knowledges to light when I am not free of my own learned racism, fat oppression, classism, ableism, or sexism. No teacher is free of these learned and internalized oppressions. Nor are accounts for one group's suffering and struggle immune from reproducing narratives oppressive to another•s--the racism of the Womens's Movement in the United States is one example. (p. 308) Part of being an adventurous teacher educator for Piercy meant grappling with how not to be blinded by the privileges of race, class, and sexuality, all the while sealed within race, class, and sexual identity privilege. She struggled with how not to see the world from a narrow, privileged stance and how to imaginatively "world-travel" as Lugones (1987) suggests. She wanted to help her students unlearn the messages they received about dominance. The 294 tension was that as a White, privileged, heterosexual teacher she realized her perspectives were bounded by what McIntosh (1988) calls White privilege: My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. myself as an individual whose moral state depended on .her individual moral will •••• (p. 4) I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my [White] group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth ••• the obliviousness of White advantage ••• is kept strongly enculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy. (p. 18-19) I was taught to see When White advantage is not addressed in teacher education classes we create teachers who are complicit in perpetuating the myth of meritocracy. Or we create teachers (like Joanne who wrote about "Disadvantaged Minority students in Education") who think that White is the norm against which everything else is measured and found wanting. So the task of the adventurous teacher educator who is battling the myths that permeate this culture means learning about White privilege and "whiteliness." Although a teacher may have certain privileges, this does not mean that she is blind to issues of oppression. Because Piercy was similar in some ways to the students, she could reach them. However, Piercy, like any teacher who came with privilege on multiple levels, was in a peculiar position of trying to stretch beyond what she knew, and how she knew it, locked within her social constructions. As Ellesworth (1989) explains, there is little in the 295 literature on feminist or critical pedagogy that gives much insight into the various constraints the teacher educator experiences as she attempts to teach and unteach oppression and domination: The concept of critical pedagogy assumes a commitment on the part of the professor/teacher toward ending the student's oppression. Yet the literature offers no sustained attempt to problematize this stance and confront the likelihood that the professor brings to social movements (including critical pedagogy) interests of her or his own race, class, ethnicity, gender, and other positions. S/he does not play the role of the disinterested mediator on the side of the oppressed group. (p. 309) The FUlcrwa of our "lfhitelin•••" ano Priyileq• To investigate seriously what it means to be adventurous in our teaching means to disclose how the very ways in which we are privileged affect the ways in which we view adventurous teaching and our ability to engage in it. Sealed in our white skins, our class, our heterosexuality, and our visions of the world made what Piercy and I said, and what I write, "ethnospecific"72 and particularistic, including all the constructs we used. We could not speak for all women or even for all women who are White. We could not speak for all feminists, we could not speak for all feminist teachers, nor could we speak for all teacher educators with feminist imaginations. Piercy and I could only speak for ourselves, I to a greater degree than she 72 Mclnlolb, 1990, private coaummicalioa. 296 within the pages of this study. I can illuminate what I have come to know about us as teacher educators who have feminist imaginations. Perhaps the most poignant way that I see how we were sealed in our privilege is that when we spoke of gender, when we spoke of women and men, the images in our heads were often White women and men, middle-class women and men, heterosexual women and men. For example, Piercy and I were pondering over what it must be like for men to somehow be aware that their gender will not hinder them. I stated during the second week of the semester: There must be something stimulating about knowing that on an unconscious level that you can be president, that you are never hindered by your gender, you are mostly rewarded by it. Power, I think is a very seductive drug. 73 I did not tease out the ways in which gender intersected with race, class, and sexual identity. I did not qualify what I was saying, adding that lower caste men, or women of color, or poor women were even less likely to be able to conceive of attaining the status of president in the United States. I had a White, middle class, privileged, and heterosexual man in my head, contrasting him with the same 73 Woolf (1919) llalU lbat w-. are - u beiDa able to ealarp the man in bil own mind'• eye: Women have •rved all lhue cealllriN as lootina-1luln poue11in, Ibo map aad delicioua power of Nfleclin, Ille fipre of man at twice ill nalllral me .... Thal ia wby Napoleon aad MUIIOlini bolb imilt ao empbatically upon the inferiority ofwomon, for iftbey were not inferior, they would cca1e to enlarsc. That NrvN to explain iD part the aeceuity that women 10 often are to men .... [l]f abc bc,im to tell the trutb, the &pre in the lootina-1lau llbrinb; bil filmll for life ia 4iminilbed How ia be to ao on sivin, juclpmem, civililina natives, matin, laws, writioc boob, bimNlf at dinner at .... twice the me be Nally ia? (pp. .._.,, up aad apeecbifyin, at banqueu, unleu be can - 35-36) kind of woman. 297 Both Piercy and I seemed to fall into this trap of "whiteliness." For example, Piercy and I talked during the second week of the course about male elementary teachers being recruited into elementary teaching. She felt that male recruitment benefitted education, since elementary teaching had been "genderized." I.challenged this blanket recruitment idea, rejecting the notion of male elementary teachers being recruited simply because they were male. I wanted males who were sensitive, caring, and had other nurturing qualities.~ Piercy stated: I think there is still something valuable about crossing gender lines in careers, women crossing lines and saying "I can do it." favor the men. elementary education, maybe four or five. I try not to [favor them]. Most of them have not been the typical I had one that was typical, (saying] "I want [kind]. to be a principal." I haven't had that many men in I watch myself, that I don't Again, during this discussion we did not appraise the ways in which careers are open and closed to women of color, lower caste men, or those whose class, and sexual identity are "Other." This is not to say that we did not concern ourselves with women and men of color, or poor women and men, or lesbians and gays. It means that the fulcrum of our "whiteliness" and privilege created images that were White, and middle class, and heterosexual. Like the male image 74 Thia railet tbe ilme of wbelher tbele are dilpOlitiom that we can teach u part of the Coa&elll of teacher education. 298 that is created in both the speaker and the receiver when the generic "he," "man," "mankind" and so on are spoken (Hamilton, 1988; Spender, 1985; Miller and Swift, 1988), the generic woman and man in our heads were created in our own image. This was a limitation to our visions, imaginations, and this study. I keenly hear the title All The Women are White. all the Blacks are Men, But some of us are Brave,,, (Hull, G., Scott, P.B., and Smith,· B, 1982) ringing in my ears. Part of this constrained imagination has to do with how we were schooled to think of ourselves and others/Other's as "women and minorities." The phrase is ubiquitous and reminds me of the.ways in which we were educated in racism and sexism in seemingly innocuous ways. on a radio talk show "Like It Is," McIntosh (August 10, 1990) stated: Since women are half of every cultural group--The logic of [the] phrase (women and minorities] boggles the mind. The phrase is racist and sexist. First of all, "women and minorities" implies that women are white and minorities don't include women. So it's racism on one hand and sexism on the other hand to even use the phrase. And I've been trying to think of a parallel to it. And I think here's a parallel. You would talk about "parents and men": completely illogical •••• or, let's say you talked about "Chinese and men." Right away, you'd have a colossal uproar. Half of China is male. And we need to have this kind of uproar about the phrase "women and minorities." Women are half of every cultural group; half of all groups that, in the u.s., have been called minorities are female. (pp. 2- 3) Not only did the terms we heard and use soak into our psyches and create these images, but our own positionality constrained what we could see and imagine. 299 A Discrepant case or co1or-ru11na11 The place where we did not seem to be limited in our conceptualization of color was in regard to children. Piercy was teaching fourth grade once a week in a Professional Development School associated with the Big Ten University she graduated from (she was still linked to a research project on literacy). I had recently co-taught in a fifth grade classroom in a Professional Development School. We talked often about the children whom we respectively taught. Piercy told about her own assumptions and how reading Feinberg and Soltis' (1985) School and society helped her to think differently about the children she was teaching. For example, at the end of the third month of the semester, Piercy told a vignette about a little Black girl and a little White girl in the class she was a part of: In fourth grade we have an editorial board, they ask somebody who isn't their close friend to get feedback. A little girl whose name was Ashley, was voted on the editorial board. Ashley is a little very thin blond little girl who is always dressed up with her little lacy dresses. Her mother remarried a Protestant minister, they have always lived on the poor side on town. And this little Black girl who is interesting physically because she is so different. She is a little Black, stocky little girl, who always wears sweatsuits, and has almost a stoic silence about her, fascinating. And Betsy came to her with her story and it was all about her friend whose name was also Ashley. And it was all about how she went to Ashley's house to play, that she loved to be with Ashley, and they were great friends. Well Ashley asked Betsy to color the faces in brown in her pictures. It was just funny to see because Betsy just went and did it without ever asking why, and just colored them in brown. We are now interviewing the kids to see what they think of the 300 scenario, how they interpret it. I like to do with students is basically ask them to say what do you think happened there? And use functionalist, conflict and the interpretist perspectives. Maybe she thought her skin was beautiful, maybe there is a class struggle embedded. It shows how you need to be careful that you don't always see racial issues in kids cause maybe they don't have the same [interpretations]. It brings it so close to home your immediate impression, "Oh yeah it was racism." But you don't know what kid's motives are. Instead of asking the kid to construct the meaning, asking the kid to make some sense of what they did, and not overlaying our own constructions is really powerful. And to be honest I never thought about it until I taught this course, until I started reading (Feinberg and] Soltis and trying to be analytic about my own perspective. When I first saw it I thought "There's racism here" then when I started thinking about it, really started to say, "wait a minute." This is one example of Piercy having seen living gender, race, and class in her elementary classroom. She described these children vividly; there was no generic gender, race, or class used by Piercy in this description. She was able to see the living social constructions in this context by having other experiences to reflect on (for example, the Feinberg and Soltis book). She tried to be reflective about her way of interpretation, jumping to conclusions about racism, from an adult point of view. She did not want to overgeneralize and perhaps erroneously assume that there was racism in this incident, when per~aps for the children something else was going on. I also spoke often about the children that I was co teaching, being very specific in terms of race, class, and gender. With children we did not seem to have a generic White gendered image in our heads; instead, there was a 301 rainbow of images in our heads. Why that distinction? Could part of it be that when we looked out into the room of ED 277 that there was a mass of White faces, and that was imprinted in our mind as we spoke of gender? That was not true when we spoke of our respective elementary classes, where there were children of color within our gaze. This is part of the answer. However, this is too easy an answer. The more "difficult" answer is that we had been well trained to think of the world as "WHITE JUST LIKE US" and so we did not push ourselves to see the world more color-fully when we did not "have" to. A4venturou■ Teaching an4 th• struggle Again■t scapegoating an4 Inauthenticity Adventurous teaching, as Cohen states, "opens up uncertainty" by asserting that knowledge is co-constructed and that uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity are inherent in-any academic discourse. These features add difficulty for the teacher educator trying not to overgeneralize or undergeneralize issues of oppression, privilege, and responsibility. When Piercy and I spoke about race, class, and gender, there were times when we overgeneralized about the issues, students, and teaching and learning. Yet, Piercy struggled (harder than I) not to overgeneralize and yet be clear about the times when generalization might need to be invoked. Yet she was aware that there was always a danger of over- 302 generalizing. In the conversation at the end of the third month of the semester, I told Piercy about Maria-Yolanda, a Mexican American girl in my fifth-grade class who was called "Mexican burrito" in class and I confronted the White boy who did it; I intervened and called it out as a racist incident. We had been talking about teachers interpreting children's actions in adult ways, sometimes erroneously. I admitted that I had perhaps overlaid my racist interpretation of an event, and yet what was interesting for me was that Maria-Yolanda in an interview afterwards talked about how much my intervening meant to her. Piercy responded to my comments by stating: Well but you see, I think you have an important point there. I think teachers do know from being with kids, knowing histories. I have a history of knowledge about Dan [the older student who worked in the factory] for I think you can use the history to pigeonhole example. a kid or you can use it to know the appropriate time to surface an issue with them. And I would bet you were probably right on, given what you said about knowing this class, listening to these kids and understanding where they were at, to me that intervention was probably very appropriate. teachers, it is to teach them to intervene appropriately, in the right ways in the right time, given the right signals, not to overgeneralize, but to generalize. hard, really gets tricky, because the things that bad teachers do are also important things that good teachers do. intervening, but knowing when and being careful with it, that's really a hard thing to teach. And when do you have enough data, enough evidence, when do you trust your gut and when do you trust your mind, and do all that. It's really an important issue. And it can be very oppressive to kids or it can be very opening and encouraging and enlightening to kids. I think that is where it is really, really I think we steer away too much from In the art of educating Piercy was sensitive to the balance of generalizing but not 303 overgeneralizing, and how grappling with this was important and also difficult. Piercy stopped herself short from overgeneralizing and yet saw the need for some generalizing. Piercy pushed both of us to grapple with the issues of overinclusiveness and underinclusiveness. She kept reminding both of us not to be reductionist, and to take all the complexities into account. She pushed her students to do the same. At the beginning of the second month of the semester, the class was talking about the notion of cultural congruence and Black vernacular. There was a debate going on about whether Black vernacular should be acceptable in its own right in schools.~ Reid stated that as teachers "we should try to correct them." Keith responded to this by saying that the standard that has been created should be recognized as a "White middle class" standard. He then questioned whether White people were trying to make people of color like them, "Do we want to make them White?" After class, Piercy and I were talking about Keith and although Piercy recognized that Keith was often politically astute about race and class analyses, she was concerned about his tendency to be reductionist: I think that Keith sometimes has a quick simplistic analysis. He's done it a couple of times, class assumptions. of quick simple classification of something like that. I guess I don't really advocate that sort 75 See boob' (1994) c:bapter •1.aopap: Toac:biaa aew worldl/aew wonta• for a cliac:uaaioo oflbo way, ia wbic:b Black VoraKWII' wu 11111 ii 1111d u a form of reaillaac:e. 304 I think that I'm looking for something more complex. is sort of feeding into the same sort of thinking getting into regular (socioeconomic] class assumptions, just sort of labeling something that way. I think that it is much deeper than that, [the analysis] is much more complex, and I think that is where the issue is at, rather than saying that is White middle class assumptions. I just think there is so much more packed in there than we are talking about. I guess I don't want them to walk away with some simple cliche's, "Those are White middle class assumptions." That isn't what I am after with any class. That lets them off the hook too much in terms of being thoughtful and self-critical. With Keith there's a smugness in responses like that, there's a smugness and the lack of kind of critical thought. I just think that there is so much more. Piercy wanted to be sure that the students did not walk away with easy and trite explanations that come from superficial analyses. I did not have the language to explain adequately what the teacher educator in p context of uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity struggles with in trying to not over generalize or undergeneralize. It was when I read an article on environmental values that I came upon a piece of text that illuminated this dilemma for me. Piercy wanted to steer students and herself away from being reductionist and engaging in what I now call "scapegoating" or "inauthenticity." Scapegoating can be thought of in terms of overinclusiveness. Simplistic analyses target all men, all capitalists, all whites, and all Westerners, for example, to an equal degree when in fact certain subclasses of these identified classes are far more responsible for ecolfical destruction than others. Not only that but significant minorities of these classes can be actively engaged in opposing the interests of both the dominant culture of their class and those members of their class most responsible for ecological 305 destruction. Inauthenticity, on the other hand, can be thought of in terms of underinclusiveness. Simplistic analyses are inauthentic.in that they lead to a complete denial of responsibility when at least particular responsibility for ecological destruction should be accepted. Such theorizing conveniently disguised the extent to which (at least a subset of) the simplistically identified oppressed group (e.g., women or the working class) also benefits from, and colludes with, those most responsible for ecological destruction •••• (Fox, 1989, p. 16) Although Fox is talking about responsibility for environmental destruction, it can be broadened to other areas of inquiry. Fox• identifying overinclusiveness (scapegoating) and underinclusiveness (inauthenticity) was extremely helpful for my sorting out how issues of responsibility get reduced and simplified, and the danger that lies within that, both politically and pedagogically. It is with ease that we fall into the trap of being either overinclusive or underinclusive. This applies to responsibility in general areas, as well as the pedagogical. For example, all White privileged men are the oppressors inside and outside the classroom. While privileged White men often have been trained to be the oppressors, context changes much and so do the individual histories of the privileged White men. some are allies. Some are critical friends. Some are profeminists. Others are oppressive. It becomes a matter of trying to build a community of critical friends not on the specious basis of skin color, gender, class, or sexual identity, but rather on them being kindred spirits (based on their willingness to engage in dialogue 306 and action surrounding social justice issues). The adventurous teacher educator struggles to discern when scapegoating and when inauthenticity are taking place, guarding against a broadly cast net of "you are either for me or against me." The tension then becomes how does one analyze with constructs that make sense and maintain the complexity, since constructs inherently tend to reduce things to manageable ways of knowing? Piercy wanted her students to "make responsible and responsive decisions" (Susan Melnick, 1994, private communication). She wanted these future teachers to question their own assumptions. She wanted them to avoid easy and facile comments that suggested easy and facile analyses. She wanted them to be self-critical and not indulge in scapegoating or in inauthentic classifications. Perhaps for the adventurous teacher educator the practice of constantly questioning one's own assumptions is a way to avoid getting locked into reductionist and simplistic evaluations. Patience The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. (Lindberg, 1906/1975, p. 17) All the while Piercy•s students struggled to make responsible and responsive decisions about teaching and 307 learning, Piercy was patient. She talked about pace and how there was a development that needed to occur in their thinking. She was able to think about their learning over time and see their learning as stages in a process. During the first month of the course we pondered over whether the students' chronological age was a factor in their difficulty with some of these issues. I commented to Piercy, "What struck me so profoundly is when Keith told me he was 19 years old. Nineteen years old is very young." Piercy agreed and added that they lack experiences: When I think of my own son, I think, you know, he just found where we keep the toilet paper. I mean, they are babies. They haven't experienced much of the world at all. We put them in these enclaves called high schools and grade school. I came away from many of our discussions questioning whether or not the issue was the students• developmental stage, their youth making it difficult for them to readily see social justice issues in their own classroom and in the world. In many ways Tatiana (the exchange student from former East Germany) challenged this conjecture on my part. She claimed it had to do with experience that they had not had, and the privilege they did, not chronological age. Regardless of the reasons for their not readily seeing issues of oppression, I found Piercy patient in her thinking about how to help her students make sense of issues of equity, diversity, and oppression. This patience struck me in part because I was impatient with people surrounding 308 issues of equity and oppression. I concluded that adventurous teaching seemed to require patience to struggle through the uncertainties, ambiguities, and complexities of pedagogical; political, and personal issues with your students. However, I was compelled to go one step further and ask, "How much is patience undergirded by privilege?" Piercy and I talked often about the need for patience. However, I think our understanding of patience reached new depths when we connected it to our "whiteliness." About two months after the study was over, Piercy and I met to talk about the students' feedback. We were talking about being true to ourselves and what this meant in terms of teaching about issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, and culture. We were struggling with the competing purposes of the teacher educator who has feminist imagination and the purposes that students bring to the classroom. Piercy talked about the dynamic that was needed when working with undergraduates. She talked about her reactions to Tricia, being impatient with her because she seemed to be saying stereotypic things about gender: I think it is the issue of being outspoken when a student really crosses what you think and telling them that. Versus, I think with Tricia, I think there was a lack of patience on my part, I disagreed so strongly with so many things she said. really go through her argument, because when students go through their argument it turns on them usually, they begin to see things especially with a little I nudging and a little pushing at certain points. think with her I used a sledgehammer, rather than trying to listen and be reflective about what she was saying. I was coming out with my own beliefs and my I didn't allow her to 309 own issues maybe a little too quickly. The dynamic wasn't quite right. Now that's not to say that I wouldn't be honest with her when I disagree, but the way I disagree with her, [that's the issue], she is a very vulnerable person too. I think I learned to try to let students talk through a point. I think you have to think of the context [these are] sheltered undergraduates. There is a different dynamic that really helps an undergraduate grapple with these issues. their thinking rather than pound them in the head. I think I like to talk to them and work things through. There's just certain times when I just don't do it well I think. The idea is to hit a chord with them. I like working with undergraduates, to nurture Here Piercy was talking about tilling the soil. That is, she was trying to create a community in which she patiently "nurtured their thinking," versus "pound[ed] them in the head." We continued to talk about patience and then I stated: Yet as I am talking, patience is such a White middle class bullshit thing. To tell you the truth we can sit around and wait until these people come to some sense of justice and yet hare are people dying on the fringes, you know. - To which Piercy replied: You know I get upset. Am I supposed to be patient because I am a short little petite woman, and they are used to their elementary teachers being patient? A culture of patience that is ridiculous, we have an emergency situation here. What we enjoy in life is unbelievable, to think that we are just going to be comfortable about it, is that really all you can ask for? During this discussion, we acutely felt the tension within adventurous feminist imagination. There is a need to be patient while the teacher educator helps the students develop new understandings of injustice, privilege, and oppression. However, while the teacher educator and her 310 students sit around patiently "coming to this understanding," there is a very real emergency situation inside and outside of the schools. People are literally and figuratively dying along the margins and at the fringes. Is this patience just another feature of White privilege, theirs and ours? I suspect it is. When I read hooks (1989) and Henry (1993-1994) I hear the urgency in their words. Both are African American women who teach and are feminists. Their words do not convey the "Patience, patience, patience ••• Patience and faith" (Lindberg, 1906/1975, p. 17), that some White privileged teachers have come to value, like Piercy and myself. And so I return to the need to reexamine all the constructs that seem generic, for they are not. They are "ethnospecific" and particularistic. McIntosh (1988) spoke of the ways in which White people carry around unearned dominance and privilege that people of color do not have. Yet, she did not speak to the ways in which the very concepts we use are saturated with privilege. so, patience is required for the adventurous teacher, but it is an urgent patience. It is a patience that honors students• pace, yet declares loudly for recognition of the injustice and inequity which exists for "Others." People are being killed. Constructs and themes are not universal and not generic. Often they are just mirror reflections of those 311 who construct and use them. Woo (1983) provokes us to remember, "the ••• White voice that says, 'I am writing about and looking for themes that are "universal". [I reply] 'Well most of the time when "universal" is used, it is just a euphemism for "White": White themes, White significance, White culture •••• " (p. 144) How we view and employ the constructs of patience and urgency has to do with our situatedness. Those generic constructs, like patience in teaching, can only be constructed by us because we have the time to wait. We are not dying in the streets, not literally, not symbolically. But people are and their voices are grave. "We fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying" (Lorde, as cited by Hurtado, 1989, pp. 853-854). Urgent voices remind us that there are those who do not have time to wait: I'm marked by the color of my skin. The bullets are discrete and designed to kill slowly. They are aiming at my children. These are facts. Let me show you my wounds: my stwnbling mind, my "excuse me" tongue, and this nagging preoccupation with the feeling of not being good enough. These bullets bury deeper than logic. outside my door there is a real enemy who hates me ••• Every day I am deluged with reminders that this is not my land and this is my land 312 I do not believe in the war between races but in this country there is war (Cervantes, 1990, p. 5) The adventurous teacher educator, then, has an ironic tension within her pedagogy--how to be urgently patient. How to let students see the symbolic bullets that they have a hand in forging. "The bullets are discrete and designed to kill slowly. They are aiming at my children." How to also remind them of the literal bullets, the very real and deadly bullets that some children face in their neighborhoods and schools every day. our political, personal, and pedagogical task, as adventurous teacher educators in a community of critical friends that extends beyond the classroom, is to stretch beyond the privileges that insulate us. Adventurous teaching is about stretching beyond ourselves, all the while aware of our Selves. A case of Adventurou■ Teaching, stretching Beyond the Wall ■ of Sezual Identity Privilege BOIIOPBOBIA she started When I came out to her calling me you people. (Jane Barnes, 1988, p. 6) As an adventurous teacher educator, Piercy tried to reach beyond the walls and barriers of her own social constructs. This is a difficult exercise for a teacher 313 educator. Rarely are teacher educators trained to overcome those barriers. How much more complex, ambiguous, and uncertain does this make adventurous teaching? Piercy admitted that she knew little about lesbian and gay issues, yet she was willing to tackle the issue of homophobia and heterosexism in her classroom. She was privileged in her heterosexuality and it would have be easy to ignore this topic altogether. However, she did not do this. Instead, she invited a lesbian professor, Darcy, to speak to the class during the fourth month of the semester. What was important about this is that Piercy attempted to stretch beyond her privilege to help her and her students understand the "Other." Piercy knew that she was not equipped personally to talk about gay and lesbian issues. So she sought out someone who would be able to speak from personal experience. This was an example of adventurous teaching. Not only because she was entering into "content" that she was unfamiliar with, but also she could not anticipate or "regulate" how her students would react. If they became offended with the "subject matter" that was being discussed in Piercy•s class, they could complain about hfll:. Given the conservative nature of Atwood, there could have been ramifications to broaching this topic in the classroom. Darcy was a science professor at Atwood. She was only able to "come out" after she received tenure. Darcy spoke 314 about homophobia and heterosexism and identified these as a "unique set of discriminations," which are "particularly connected to sexism." She made a point to relate homophobia to the "hierarchical society" of the United states. Darcy spoke about her own personal experiences, the loss of family and friends, the loss of jobs, the ostracism. She also spoke about high suicide rate among gay youth, and that these issues were "life and death issues," particularly relevant to teachers. The students in the class on the whole, except for Dan (as stated previously), seemed strikingly comfortable with Darcy and the issues of homophobia and heterosexism. They were attentive and seemed engaged by asking many questions of Darcy and participating in the discussion. Piercy and I spoke afterward about how it went. Piercy said that in debriefing with them she would talk about her own discomfort with gay and lesbian issues. I was curious about her discomfort and on some level I thought she was exaggerating her own discomfort as a pedagogical tool, using herself as an example to help her students access their own discomfort. I asked, "Were you that uncomfortable? I think you need to be honest. If you were really uncomfortable then I think it would be really good to talk about it, but if you weren't, it's almost like putting the idea in their heads." She responded with vigor, "Oh no I wouldn't lie to them. You know I don't lie to them." I asked her to explain how she was uncomfortable. She replied: 315 It isn't completely uncomfortable, I am just much more comfortable talking about other things. This is one time where I am really afraid I am going be narrow in my thinking because I probably am, it's an area that I haven't thought much about. This is one issue that I have thought about [the least] and I feel least knowledgeable. So therefore I feel less comfortable addressing [these issues]. When she talked about violence toward women, I saw the hackles coming out- "So we are going to get into male-bashing." I think we are beyond that, I still want to be sure, that isn't male-bashing. My concern is, I don't want to hear women-bashing, I don't want to hear male-bashing. I want to move away from that, to situate in teachers• minds that this is a societal issue. It is not a gender war. It's a cultural social problem and to help them to think about it that way, men against women. To not jump into "Oh, it's bashing," it is violence against men as well as against women. When we think about what's happening to people I think it's always important to situate it that way. I don't think they are used to thinking that way. to move it away from Piercy admitted that she was worried at certain points in Darcy's presentation that the students were going to perceive what Darcy was saying as "male-bashing." Darcy was speaking about the U.S. society's attitudes toward violence against women. Piercy seemed to want her students to see that gay and lesbian issues, and violence against women, were societal issues, human issues. In this time of backlash, Piercy was aware that attempts to talk about inequity and oppression often result in people stating that women are "male-bashing." There seems to be an unstated norm that men dominating women and violence against women- homophobia and heterosexism are unproblematic, and when these issues become problematized, the declaration is of male-bashing and man-hating. 316 Piercy in her discussions seemed to be echoing what McIntosh (1983) writes about, that those who are the oppressors are damaged also. However, it seems to me that the victims/survivors, as contrasted with the perpetrators, experience the damage very differently: Beginning at fourteen, this identity within a world that hated and feared lesbians led me to live a life of invisibility where I showed the world only a small portion of who I was, and even that portion was a lie, an alienated piece of self that indicated to the world that I did not live with intimate, social connections. out of fear of loss, I chose a double life, a fragmented self for sixteen years •••• I had to put one large part of myself in exile. The cost was enormous. I could not have authentic friendships because I could not talk about my life. Hy life could not be shared with my family which in turn necessitated superficial relationships. The stress of maintaining vigilance over the lies I had to create for safety made me never able to relax. Perhaps worst of all was the damage to my sense of self, my sense of integrity. As a woman ••• with deeply held and mostly unexamined values of courage and honesty, I had to view myself as a woman who lied because of fear. (Pharr, 1988, pp. xii-xiv, emphasis added) - - From reading Pharr•s (1988) explanation of her damaged Self and from hearing Darcy speak, the cost to survivors is enormous. A lesbian or a gay man who is not out cannot be honest or authentic in many of the relationships she or he has. Those who do the oppressing, that is, those who are homophobic and heterosexist may experience damage, that is they are shutting other human beings out, or participating in a damaged culture (McIntosh, 1983), but their damage is not as grave as gays and lesbians experience. For example, they do not experience hate crimes because of their sexual identity. 76 317 In our discussion about Darcy, Piercy brought up the strain on human relationships that being "closeted" would create. It was sad listening to Darcy. It [homophobia] is so different, it is not like gender, it is not like race. It sets off this uneasy trust, uneasy honesty, and uneasy relationships. And it is probably why it is in my mind so much more complicated to think about and to talk about then all the other -isms. There is just something about it, there is more tension for me. Seeing heterosexism and homophobia as an issue of hurting relationships was one more example of how Piercy saw the world relationally. Piercy•s way of seeing others in the world has to do with relationships. Her morality, her way of thinking about oppression, has to do with the cost to human relationships. I am reminded of Gilligan's (1982) discussion of the ways in which many women define their morality in terms of relationships. Gilligan writes: (S]eeing a world comprised of relationships rather than of people standing alone, a world that coheres through human connection rather than through systems of rules (p. 29) •••• The reinterpretation of women's experience in terms of their own imagery of relationships thus clarifies that experience and also provides a nonhierarchical vision of human connection. Since relationships, when cast in the image of hierarchy, appear inherently unstable and morally problematic, their transposition into the image of web changes an order of inequality into a structure of interconnection (p. 62) •••• A consciousness of the dynamics of human relationships then becomes central to moral 76 •a.ya an lbe IDOll frequem victiml of bale crimes in tbe United Slatea, accordina to lbe U.S. Departmeat of Jllllic:e• (Lipkin. 1992, p. 25). See Project 10 Handbook~ Addreaioa Leabian and Gay i..... in our Scbooll: A ruoun:e clitectory for taachon, ,uidance COUDNlon and pareau. Friendl of Project 10, Inc.: 7850 Molroae Ave.; Loe Aoala, CA 90046. 318 understanding, joining the heart and the eye in an ethic that ties the activity of thought to the activity of care. (1982, p. 149) Piercy seemed to have a strong sense of the "structure of interconnection." Her moral understanding was embedded in an "ethic of care" and an ethic of compassion. Her whole way of seeing the world, injustice, teaching, and learning had to do with community building or community dissolution. Her morality and desire for justice and equity were housed in a structure of care and compassion, whether it be a one to-one relationship or a group relationship. For Piercy, heterosexim and homophobia separated people. Although she did not know much about lesbian and gay reality, she did know that the way society was currently structured hurt the relationships that lesbians and gays were able to establish and maintain, and hurt the heterosexuals who shut them out and oppressed them. It is also important to emphasize that many teacher educators do not seek out knowledge about gay and lesbian reality. Yet they need to stretch. Piercy did so and tried to bring this reality into her classroom so that her students were also aware of this form of oppression. She wanted them to understand the damage that was done both literally in the hate crimes of gay bashing, and in the psychic and spiritual death of being "invisible" (Rich, 1984; Pharr, 1988). Piercy sought out knowledge of Others so that she did not lock Others out. Piercy realized that 319 she was part of all that needed to change to create a more understanding and more equitable world. This is part of what is "required" of an adventurous teacher who is working towards social justice. Adventurous teaching is thus about entering into the uncharted terrain of Otherness, something that teacher educators are not often trained to do. In this chapter we considered what adventurous teaching means for a teacher educator with feminist imagination. We saw that if we want to take adventurous teaching seriously, it needs to be context-specific. Adventurous teaching means different things to, and has different outcomes for, teacher educators who are not White, male, privileged, and heterosexual. Uncertainty is also exacerbated when controversial issues are explored in the teacher educator's classroom. Adventurous teaching is more complex when unteaching and unlearning takes place. Unpacking what adventurous teaching means also helps us see that the very constructs we use to describe our work (such as patience) are undergirded and informed by "whiteliness" and privilege. We looked at a case of adventurous teaching stretching beyond sexual privilege and began to see the intensified elements of uncertainty, risk, complexity, and ambiguity. Piercy helps us think more deeply about adventurous teaching. But what of her students? How do their voices figure into this study? 320 OD• cannot Talk of Teacher ■ Teaching Without Talk of student ■ Learning We have met Piercy and have learned about what she desired and hoped for. From Piercy•s interactions, from her curriculum, from her way being, we can see what she wished for her students and herself. Piercy was committed to relationships and wrote in her journal about her students and herself, "we see things together--! wouldn't see without them and they wouldn't see without me." This line comes from a much longer stream of consciousness journal entry in which she wrote about racist/sexist stances and what she wanted for her students: There are racist words Racist acts Racist distances but maybe most racist way of being for a teacher is a racist stance.--Add sexist for each of the racist above Racist stance is a way of feeling certain about your own way of knowing, your own existent knowledge. Your own turn away from others knowledge frames--makes cogeneration impossible. Opposite of racist stance? Open stance sounds like golf. What is it? Critical stance sounds uncomfortable. I would like this stance to be curious, questioning hoping for something better--searching, exploring stance--insight driven stance. I think it is a different way of living, a different way of viewing learning and teaching. word fun--connotes self-indulgence without purpose- this is maybe "having meaning" rather than "having fun"? I don't like the I'm not sure of a metaphor yet. reading "A Journey to the Center of the Earth." When I keep thinking about 321 you said journeyn it brought back to mind a picture of people climbing together and they kept finding beautiful places with walls that were full of color and shine: I think I take my students to this place but I don't think we are on a journey. I take them there and then they need to see things--we see things together--! wouldn't see without them and they wouldn't see without I remember when I read the book how exciting me. almost mystical it felt to read those pages--the movie didn't do it for me. historical texts in my undergraduate days and having the same insight and feeling, like the world makes sense as you read the page and you leave the page ready to look for more--I need to leave my students with more wonder, more questions--especially as they go out to look in classrooms •••• Maybe what I find attractive in men and women--humor but seriousness--self-invested concern--(undated, Sunday, 9:30 a.m.) I remember reading some old Her journal shows how she saw teaching and learning as dialectical and reflexive. Lather states (1991) "[O]ne cannot talk of students learning without talk of teachers teaching" (Lather, 1991, p.1). The reverse is also true, one cannot talk of teachers teaching without talk of students learning. Whatever a teacher educator perceives about teaching and the classroom is in part constructed by the way the students act, react, and interact in her classroom. Piercy wanted to leave her students "with more wonder, more questions--especially as they go out to look in classrooms," than when they went in. She wanted her students to become critical friends with each other and with her. Some students echoed what she seemed to hope for. For example, Emily stated, "I think it is a fantastic course. And not n Tho title of my propoeal wu 9Tbo journey of a teacher educator with a feminill penpective. • 322 only for education majors because just the whole atmosphere of the course is different, the climate in the classroom." After being asked what the class was like, Debra said that sometimes what was being discussed was confusing, but it was also fun. When asked about why it was confusing she stated: Because sometimes you don't know what people are getting at and you just don't get the point clearly. And maybe it needs to be defined a little more clearly or maybe in just more simple terms for people to understand a little better. Some people may not pick it up as easily as others. And fun. I probed for what she meant when she said fun and she explained: Because it's like, it's kind of like you are talking with a bunch of your friends or something. You know, it is really easy going and it's just, you know, you want to get your point across and you are really, and a lot of these things are interesting to talk about, so it is not like you are just pushing yourself to think of things to say and, then, I mean, there's just a lot of interesting topics and a lot of the people in there, you know, are really easy going, you know, really nice people and they are all like, well-mannered, I guess, they are not going to do anything that is really going to disturb you. Debra mentioned that the ethos of the class was easy going, even if what was being discussed was confusing or hard to understand. Implicit in Debra's discussion is that she did not feel she would be put down by other students or the teacher for not understanding. It is significant that Debra felt she was among friends, for that was precisely what Piercy wanted for her students and herself. When Debra said that the students would not say anything that would really "disturb" one another, I believe she was referring to the 323 way they spoke to, and behaved with, one another. They engaged in pushing and challenging one another's ideas, but not in putting one another down. As Piercy said to her class six weeks into the semester, "I won't allow you to hurt each other and be rude but I would like you to be direct." Piercy recognized the reflexive and dialectical nature of teaching and learning; what her students made of what was happening in the classroom was essential to her. During the second week of the semester Piercy talked to me about the ways in which a teacher never knows how students will respond to issues of equity and oppression. According to her, what is crucial is that openness to students as co generators and co-constructors of meaning and knowledge. Piercy wanted the students to become informants about their own realities: Something very different could happen but if we are ready for this then we've thought through it and we can go on from there. We are new at that. You don't know what to expect from your students. The responses that you and they get from the knowledge and the thinking that you are giving them. as trying to help them and you tell them that you don't know about all the ways to help them, then this may be helpful. Then they become informants about their own learning and that's real helpful to you. Sara [Piercy•s closest mentor] talks about the two most important things a teacher does is challenge and support, that you challenge them--but you are there to build that safety net. If you think about yourself Students co-construct meaning and knowledge and therefore need to have their voices prominently featured. Perhaps the students do not hold "half a key" in the same 324 way that I might to explain what Piercy•s feminist presence was like, for they did not have the opportunity to speak with Piercy as extensively as I had. Yet their perspectives and perceptions open doors and windows that help Piercy and all of us see teaching and learning in new ways. Since Piercy described herself relationally and wanted to learn what her students thought and felt and experienced, their voices were vital. There was so much that occurred during the semester in ED 277, yet I only focus on a few aspects of the classroom. This was a room where conflict and laughter occurred. Piercy invited her students into a community of critical friends. some of the students took up the invitation, others did not. Sedlak, Wheeler, Pullin, and CUsick (1986) talk about surrogate learning in secondary classrooms. I push the edges of this notion further and believe that surrogate connection and surrogate community occurs in many classrooms as well; Piercy labeled it pseudocommunity (Peck, 1987). Whether it is because the teachers and the students "bargain" to get along and therefore do not risk conflict, or whether it is because teachers and students do not know how to create an authentic connection and community, or it is because teachers and students just want to "get through" the class with as little investment as possible. The result is the same--hollow relationships. Piercy wanted her students to develop real and 325 authentic connections to others/Others, entailing the full range of human emotions, including conflict. For Piercy, conflict was a way to confront psuedocommunity and to be connected in genuine ways. Piercy "(co]-designed classroom culture" (Hunault, 1994, private communication) as a place where conflict could occur. We already know that Piercy had faith in her students• ability to learn and grow. She also had faith in the ways that connections could be strengthened by conflict, and that "the best conflicts are those that lead to more and better connection rather than to disconnection" (Miller, 1986, p. 140). In the next chapter we will concentrate on Piercy explicitly in relation to her students. It is during this class that what we have learned about Piercy is evident in her interactions with students. It is during this class that we also hear what students thought and felt about what Piercy was attempting to do in her classroom. This "case of conflict" explores the difficulty and the possibility of teaching with feminist imagination. _... r·-, I llliilff lillim1 3 1293 01409 4753 :, , .LIBRARY Michigan State University I PLACE It RETURN BOX to Nmote thla checkout from YfM NCOrd. TO AVOID FINES l'lllum on orbafcndaledue. DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE MSU le All Affirmative ActlanlEqual OpporlUnlly I~ c.',d,rtttsta~I THE HOUSE THAT FEMINIST IMAGINATION BUILDS: LOVING PRESENCE DEVELOPING A COMMUNITY OF CRITICAL FRIENDS IN TEACHER EDUCATION Volume II By Corinna s. Hasbach A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Teacher Education 1995 P:IDCY SUD ZB RBLA'l'ZOB WZ'l'B 8'1'1JDJD1'1'8: A CASB OW CODLZC'l' CHAPTER IX "What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day •••• "Does it mean having things that buzz inside of you and a stick out handle?" "Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt." "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?" "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." (Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit, 1922, pp. 16-17) In this chapter I will explore Piercy in relation with her students. The students' voices will be brought more to the fore as compared to the previous chapters which highlighted Piercy. Regardless of who is being featured, whether Piercy recedes slightly to the background and the students move slightly to the foreground, or whether Piercy comes to the foreground and the students recede slightly, the students and Piercy are present--the relationship is at the center. I will be presenting the case, three phases of one conflict, as "critical incidents" (Newman, 1986) that occurred during one class session. I have chosen this particular case because it best illustrates how Piercy was 326 327 in relation to her students. She defined her teaching relationally and there was no better opportunity to analyze what relational meant but during a time of conflict and struggle. I have chosen to concentrate on this one piece of practice because it is multi-layered and is a microcosm of many of the struggles which occurred throughout the life of the course. The case begins to unveil the complexities and difficulties of teaching with feminist imagination in teacher education. Piercy had an ambitious sense of what she wanted to accomplish in her foundations class. She wanted her students to be engaged in real relationships with her and with one another. Real relationships meant engaging in loving presence, "being willing to be hurt, not breaking easily, not having sharp edges, and not having to be carefully kept" (Williams, 1922, p.17). Piercy chose to unearth conflict that teemed under the surface of her class because it reflected Piercy's goal for a genuine community of critical friends. This case vividly shows Piercy•s tenacity and loving presence in the face of arrogant presence and hostility. This particular class session most clearly unpacks how difficult "teaching against the grain" (Cochran-smith, 1991, p. 279) is when trying to develop a community of critical friends. It also seemed to be a turning point for the class as a community. It raises many issues, one being the unequal power relations between a teacher educator and the 328 students. In this chapter, I will be walking the reader through this complex episode. This chapter is almost like slowing down a film to examine it frame by frame, so that the event and the actions can be seen fully. The way in which statements were made and the number of times certain phrases were said is important. For example, the repetition of "too much" feminism is important to hear. I also believe that the words Piercy used are important to hear. I have interpreted the kind of tones that were used when people said what they said. I have interpreted what people seemed to be trying to achieve in their discourse and actions. And I have interpreted the "texture" of the phases of the conflict. Not until the next chapter will I draw on other data to help inform the analysis of factors which contributed to the conflict. One of the reasons that I wait until the next chapter for a deeper analysis is because I believe this is the kind of case that will evoke multiple interpretations from those who read it. The multiple ways in which people account for the conflict is a rich opportunity for dialogue. The case of conflict is an event, but it is also a symbol of what it means to be "real" within the context of a teacher education classroom, to enter into the foray of all that is human. 329 AD Blltryway to conflict Piercy bad decided that on February 27, 1992, she would talk about the feedback the students bad given her at midterm. Her plans for the day were outlined on the agenda: 1. Forward View 2. Interpretations [of feedback) 3. Video-"Sbortcbanging Girls, Shortchanging America" 78 I regard the class as being divided into three separate but connected incidents, each incident illustrating its own theme or themes of conflict. The class was a little under two hours in duration. The class started at 4:10 p.m. and for about an hour and a half Piercy talked with the students about the feedback forms that they had filled out. This time frame included phase one and phase two of the class. Phase one I identify as Piercy going over the feedback forms with the students and at one point trying to challenge them on their conceptions of facts and opinions. The second phase of the class is the discussion of "too much feminism" in the course. At approximately 5:20 p.m. the students took a break. Ten minutes later they began to watch the video "Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America.• The video lasted about fifteen minutes. The next fifteen minutes were spent in discussion. I see the discussion after the 7I . . . . _ Uld ......... 4,r ._ 'Video ie II fbllowe: v1111o, lbedebemrinr