Re-engaging Past Teacher Education: Contemplating (Un)necessary Violence in Critical Pedagogies
Mark T. S. Currie
Starting in May 2020, news headlines became flooded with stories of systemic and individual racist violence across Canada. As part of an active response, public calls for antiracist changes at all levels and in all areas of society are now prominent in forums of discussion and knowledge dissemination, making the resistance against continued systemic racism seem louder than it’s ever been; unfortunately it’s actually nothing new. Education is one system for which restructuring has long been at least a strongly worded suggestion, if not an outright demand, but systemic change is slow, often placing the onus on individual educators to challenge the system from within. Teacher Education programs are framed as platforms for guiding future educators to engage issues of injustice through their own teaching development. I know that when I’ve taught courses to Teacher Candidates, my emphasis on antiracism is so strong that some students (read white students) plead for me to stop asking them to identify the racisms in current education curriculum and practices. This is a plea I do not acquiesce. However, addressing racisms, as well as other forms of injustice, requires an understanding of who makes up the audience. In recalling Lisa Taylor’s 2011 article, Feeling in crisis: Vicissitudes of response in experiments with Global Justice Education, and thinking about her commentary in relation to today’s sociopolitical context, I was moved to contemplate which teacher candidates we’re really addressing when we ask them to deconstruct and position themselves in relation to the crises of discrimination unfolding.
In her article, Taylor reflects on her student’s responses to Global Justice Education, which addresses the divides and ensuing injustices between the global North and South. She states that a challenge she faces and that she aims for her students to face as well is in “apprehending the horrific suffering and injustice not only consequent of, but also necessary to, the sociopolitical and material resources I enjoy as a citizen of the global North. These resources have accrued over five centuries of slavery, colonization, genocide, underdevelopment and transnational capitalism” (p. 19–20). She continues on to posit that “There is a violence implicit in the call of this understanding, implicit both in my freedom to turn away in indifference and in the overwhelming sense of responsibility I might feel, for my good fortune, toward the Other” (p. 20). To conclude, Taylor suggests that the aim of social justice education is to “render students [teacher candidates] susceptible to the lives of those rendered unrecognizable […] and to support students in their attempt to symbolize this susceptibility, to bring it into the realm of ethical thought as a relation of ethical implication and social responsibility” (p. 57). Summed up, Taylor asks teacher candidates to critically examine their privileged selves and understand their responsibilities to address and disrupt social injustices, but she recognizes the challenges one can face in admitting that some positive lived experiences are made possible only through harm put upon others. The aim of having teacher candidates critically examine themselves, as I understand it, is so that the teacher candidates position themselves not only in relation to the wider world, but also to the diversity of students who will populate their classrooms. While there is certainly value in this approach, there seems to be an under-acknowledged assumption that all teacher candidates view themselves at distanced connection to social injustices.
The factors Taylor lists as creating an international divide between the global North and South are also factors perpetuating intra-national divides found in our classrooms. The recent news headlines and protests attest to discrimination and exploitation being not just of the global South, but also part of society in our backyards. A disproportionate number of teacher candidates are white people who should indeed unpack their white privilege and make themselves “susceptible to the lives of those rendered unrecognizable,” as Taylor says; however, there are also teacher candidates who are the victims, not benefactors, of the (generational) trauma caused by the institutional actions of slavery, colonization, and genocide within Canada. There is violence, to use Taylor’s terms, in some teacher candidates’ recognition of their privileges, causing them to uncomfortably deconstruct who they know themselves to be, but there is also violence — perhaps more so — in asking teacher candidates of marginalized identities to recall the oppression they face every day in a society dominated by Whiteness, patriarchy, and heteronormativity. I make these points not to criticize Taylor for what she did not include, because her points are still important. Rather, her work triggers consideration of assumptions we make about the identities of teacher candidates while we design activities to enact our critical pedagogies. Not every class of students is the same, but we can count on every student coming to class with both positive and negative lived experiences that will shape their views and understandings as they engage (or not) with the ideas we introduce. I implore you, never let up on the goal of showing teacher candidates how education can be a tool for fighting injustice, but don’t forget that some of your students will be those whose lives have been “rendered unrecognizable” through the webs of sociohistorical discrimination. They don’t need to relive the trauma so that others can uncover their privilege.
References
Taylor, L. (2011). Feeling in crisis: Vicissitudes of response in experiments with Global Justice Education. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 9(1), 6–65.
