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Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Freire and Google

I've started reading Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I'm sure many people would agree that it’s a dense book to get through, with many long, wordy sentences. I was so excited when I got through chapter one to see that I had already read chapter two for a previous class.

I took Theatre of the Oppressed with UNCA professor Lise Kloeppel last year. Theatre of the Oppressed is a form of theatre that deals with various real-life issues of oppression and finds ways to deal with them. One of the main forms I remember was called forum theatre. In forum theatre, some sort of action is played through. When the action is played through, members of the audience are invited to step into the role of one of the characters in order to try and change the outcome. Here's an example.


After this, one of the members of the audience steps into the role of either the student or the teacher (I can't remember which) and speaks directly to the principal.

To discover the beginning ideas for Augusto Boal's new form of theatre, we read chapter two of Freire's book. At the time, I skimmed through the reading and got minimal information from it due to the fact that the more I tried to read word for word, the more confused I felt. A year later, that information came rushing back to my memory with more clarity than ever.

The confused feeling I had was common with the one I had while reading the first chapter. And I discovered the same sort of clarity afterwards when I tried to explain the concept of the book to my boyfriend. I ranted to him about how confusing the reading was and explained everything that was said in the first chapter. His response? "Sounds like you understand it pretty well to me." Now, a few days later, I do understand. I may not be able to repeat Freire’s concepts with his terminology, but I can at least explain it to someone who's never heard of Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

According to Freire, oppression takes place through the dehumanization of a group of people by another group of people (who, in turn, are dehumanized because they are dehumanizing). It makes sense that the oppressed exist because of the oppressors. What many may forget is that the oppressors only exist because of the oppressed. In order to stop the cycle of oppression, the oppressed must realize that they are oppressed and work together to find how to end the cycle. They cannot end the cycle of oppression by becoming oppressors, however.


Then we jump to chapter two, which is about education. The banking method, which is mainly what is employed in the US's public schools, is the idea that the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing. The teacher's job is pour information and knowledge into the student's head and the student's job is to accept the information as fact. There is no encouragement to learn on your own. The picture above is one from Waiting for Superman, a documentary about the education system in the US. This film is yet another medium expressing why our education system isn't doing so well.

Fortunately, today, we have the internet. I can go online and search for practically anything. It’s no wonder students get frustrated when they can learn more from the internet than they can sitting in a classroom. If the education system would recognize this, perhaps something would change for the better.

For example, if a student were to read Freire and want more understanding before they spoke to someone about it, they could simply go to a search engine, like Google, and type in "Freire." With the technology we have today, Google can give suggestions of what else to put in the search engine. When I typed it in, I found that they offered Freire quotes, Freire summary, and Freire Charter School. Curious, I clicked on the charter school.

This school is located in the inner city of Philadelphia. It uses a lottery system, which is best explained in Waiting for Superman, in order to insure a fair admissions process. Looking around, it seems like this school has taken on some of Paulo Freire's concepts for education. The video on the website makes this school seem like it truly incorporates learning in a way that benefits the students in more ways than just test scores.

Thanks to the Google search engine, I can also find other blogs and such that discuss people's reactions to different materials. When I typed in "oppression," I found a blog by someone I've never met (and probably never will) that discusses the same exact kinds of topics we've been delving into in my senior colloquium class. Click here to check it out. 

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Identity

As someone who is going to graduate in exactly 72 days, and being the first person in my entire family to graduate, it's definitely a huge life change to face. And for the past half a year, it seems my entire person keeps changing around. At first, I thought I was just a late bloomer to figure out who I am. Fortunately, Tatum's book "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" offers welcome comfort about the process of defining an identity. According to Tatum, the process of defining one's identity goes through multiple phases. Sometimes, people go through these phases multiple times throughout their lives.

One of the aspects of identity that many come into contact with is that of race. I never really thought about my race. Part of that is because of the way I grew up.

Growing up, my dad's side of the family never really got together or talked about anything serious when they did, so I won't talk about them much. My mother's mother's side of the family was about as racist as they come without actually shooting colored people. They threw around the "n-word" like it was nothing and could tell racist jokes all day long. That was until one of my cousins married a black man. I'm not sure if they started being afraid to say anything racist or if they suddenly became aware of how wrong many of their stereotypes were.

Now, my mother's father's side of the family was the opposite. One of my favorite stories is about my great-grandfather, who founded a church in Concord, NC. When he opened the church, a man offered him a lot of money to turn black people away from the church. He refused. So, growing up in that church until I was about 17 years old meant I was around both black and white people all the time. While I might have seen color, it was more a matter of thinking that it was cool that people had different skin tones. After all, if everyone looked the same, people would be boring to look at.

I did wonder in high school why there weren't many colored teenagers. Part of that was the fact that not many colored people lived within my school district. Most of them lived out in Spencer, NC, which was what I knew as "the bad part of town." Looking back, I didn't know why it was bad. I knew that there were some "bad" people out that way, but never really connected it with race. I'm sure if I knew more about housing prices, I could see that it was cheaper to live out there.

 It wasn't until I started my first "real" job in fast food that I actually thought about being white. One night, I was the only white worker in the store. The rest were black. They were all people I had worked with for many weeks at this point, so I felt comfortable around them. One man came up to me, though, and said  something along the lines of, "How does it feel being the only white person here? Now you know how we feel." It was the first time I had felt awkward about my whiteness. I didn't say much the rest of my shift. The people I had been perfectly comfortable with turned into people that I didn't know how to act around because my whiteness had been thrown in my face.

This week was the first time I'd thought about my race identity. I continue still to not think about it as often as I think about, say, my religious identity or my age identity or even how I fit into my family and coworkers. I must say, I feel I have a long way to go before I figure myself out - not to mention before I figure out how my upbringing reflects on how I view the world and start to tweak it if need be.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Happy Valentine's Day, Everyone!

 Last week, I finished tutoring early at the I Have A Dream Foundation; usually I would just go home to fix dinner, but instead I decided to go upstairs and look around. One of the girls took me into a room and started working on an art project. The assignment was to draw/color a poster board, including sticky notes with either quotes or descriptions, to represent a book. In the process, she invited me to make a Valentine's Day card. These children had been making cards to take to the children's ward in Mission hospital.

This takes me to remember elementary school on Valentine's Day. Does anyone else remember turning milk cartons and shoe boxes into "mail boxes" to receive the little cards all the parents would buy in various grocery stores and tell us children to make sure we gave everybody one?

When did going to school become about writing papers and learning the tests and, as one girl said in my class this morning, "playing the system," and even as many people refer to it as "bullshitting"? Think really hard about the last time you were given an assignment that actually related to real life or was enjoyable in any way.

I know most teachers/professors will give any excuse for assigning papers, including that it will improve students' communication skills. Excuse the bluntness, but I find that to be a load of crap. If writing improved our communication skills, people would actually be able to, well, communicate. Instead of communication, what we have is everyone talking at once, nobody listening, and everyone wondering why nothing is getting done.
This is what I feel academic discourse has come to. Everyone learns how to write. It does NOT lead to being able to communicate. Communication requires for one person to talk while the other person/people actively listen. Then the roles switch. Its something we've all learned since our early childhood development years.

When academic discussion turns into "Everybody talk, nobody listen," nothing is achieved other than people's patience being worn extremely thin. This is what happened last week. What was supposed to be an academic discussion among peers turned into an interruption-filled argument. When people spoke, some tried to actively listen to what they were saying and really understand where they were coming from. Yet others seemed intent on only arguing their point and not allowing anyone else to finish what they were saying. Not only does this make a conversation extremely difficult to follow as a bystander, but even harder for those trying to follow the conversation to jump in with their own opinions.

To complicate the matter of academic discussion even more, you must take into consideration personality differences. When you simply assume that those who aren't speaking either haven't read the material being discussed or don't understand the material being discussed and take action against this assumption by saying that they should talk (but then leave no silent space for them to start speaking), it singles out people who may just be an introvert rather than an extrovert. 
Introverts will typically have a difficult time joining in a conversation among many people if they feel they can't even start a sentence without being interrupted. 

While I don't consider myself an introvert, I do find it difficult to put my thoughts into spoken comprehensible words. I also find myself very easily frustrated when I am trying to speak and being constantly interrupted. Just ask my boyfriend how many arguments we've had or come close to having in this area of life. Or ask my family why I don't try to have conversations with them; most of them will most likely have no clue (my father is the exception, since he is an introvert among my family of extroverts).

This is where blogging comes in handy. People (like me) are able to complete their thoughts on a topic without being interrupted. They are able to move logically from one topic of discussion to another. And they don't have to deal with everyone trying to talk over each other while no one listens.

How does this tie into fun school projects? Well, if the people in charge of the educational system will actually think and listen instead of just arguing, they may begin to figure out a way to change schools for the better. And if teachers will realize that while some students love to write and communicate their ideas effectively that way, other students may be able to communicate in more creative manners, such as drawing and coloring on the poster board.

And on that note, Happy Valentine's Day!

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

What is art? And who does it belong to?

Growing up in a small-town dance studio, I was rarely exposed to anyone with a disability, much less a dancer with a disability. There was one small boy at the church I grew up in that was later diagnosed with autism, but I don't know that he did any sort of art. There was a teenage boy I went to high school that I knew was different, but wasn't sure what was "wrong" with him. My mother speculated that he had asperger's syndrome, which I didn't know existed until later in my school career. 

The only dancer I came in contact with who had any sort of obvious disability was a young girl I taught my last two years at my home dance studio. I'm not sure whether she had some sort of syndrome or was in an accident, but she had braces on her legs. It took her some time to get her shoes on and off over the braces, and she couldn't move as easily as the others. For a long time, I felt sorry for her; I didn't know how to relate to her. Now, I look back and remember how sweet she always was, how hard she tried, and how her spirit soared every time she came into the studio. She would smile at me as she showed me a step she had made up and practiced at home. Most of the time, it didn't seem very "dance-ish," a concept that has changed drastically for me since my dance career started at UNC Asheville. One of my dance professors challenged me multiple times with the question "What is dance?" (She once gave an example of a man giving a dance performance in which he sat onstage and ate an apple - that was the entire routine). 

The next time I was exposed to a dancer with disability was the summer after my sophomore year of college. I came home after work one day and sat down to watch an early audition episode of So You Think You Can Dance and saw this:


Every time I go back and watch that, I can't help but have a huge smile on my face. Later that same season, they featured a duet from a dance company called AXIS. AXIS is a company that incorporates dancers both with and without disabilities. It was founded by Judith Smith after she decided to discover how she could move with disability after she broke her neck in a car accident. 



I didn't give arts within the disabled community much thought again until I watched ARTS: A Film About Possibilities, Disabilities, and the Arts, a documentary focusing on how people with disabilities use the arts to communicate, as well as the discourse around the terms "disability" and "art." 

People who have various disabilities use art in order to communicate to the world around them. One lady with autism used painting to mourn for her husband who had passed. Another used painting to figure out and work through whatever emotions she was feeling. 

A question most people ask is whether or not these paintings, songs, dances, etc. that the disabled create are truly art. To these people, I want to pose the question of how this art is any different from the art I may create. Most times, when I am choreographing, there is some emotion spurring my creativity. There are days when I can find no other release from the anxiety or anger I'm feeling other than to dance. Most will consider that art. So how is this different from the art created from people with disability working through an emotion? To me, there is no difference at all. The disabled artists I saw in the documentary even said that they see themselves first and foremost as an artist, then as a disabled person. 

The word "disabled," when applied to many examples leaves me questioning why these people are considered  disabled. They can usually create more beautiful and/or amazing pieces of work than most "normal" people. While they may be disabled in the way the normal people see them, they certainly are enhanced in other areas of their lives. Stephen Wiltshire, a young man with autism, is a prime example of someone considered to be disabled, while being enhanced in his own way. People call him the human camera; at age 10 or 11, he drew pictures of London accurately from memory. One of his most recent endeavors was drawing Brisbane, Australia from memory after seeing it for only a few minutes.
Another similarity between art from so-called "normal" people and people with "disabilities" is the issue that Kwame Anthony Appiah talks about in his book Cosmopolitanism. Who does this art belong  to? Does it belong to the people who create it, the state or nation in which it is created, the people who purchase it, a museum? Or does it belong to all of humankind? If all art were to contribute to a global community, would the world be better off? Would people find ways to communicate and understand each other through art despite cultural and language differences?

This is the issue presented in Cosmopolitanism. The idea of cosmopolitanism itself is to communicate and understand cultures other than our own. It is not to decide who or what is right or wrong. It is to understand the different ways different cultures give to various similar or different practices. One of the examples he gives is that of female circumcision. Because it is foreign to my mind and I see it as a mutilation of the female body does not mean they see it as the same way. And my logic may not make sense to whoever is an advocate for it. The point is not to come to a consensus of what is right and wrong; the point is, in simplistic terms, to agree to disagree.

In order to agree to disagree, some sort of communication must take place so that people are able to know how the others feel on certain topics. Just as people with various disabilities learn to use art to communicate, people could very well use art to communicate through different communication difficulties. It has already worked in the past: just see what all we have learned about other civilizations due to art found in archaeological digs.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

A little bit of this and a little bit of that

Since I didn't really put a full-length blog up this past Monday, I figure I should probably do so now. (Yes, I feel better rested at this point . . . in case anyone was wondering).

Last week, I watched Waiting for Superman. Some of the ideas mentioned in this movie reminded me of my own school experience:
 I remember sitting with a high school guidance counselor close to the end of the eighth grade discussing what path I was going to take. I could either take the college/university route in high school or a career route. She basically looked at my grades and asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. I told her I wanted to be a dancer (by this point, I had been dancing for eight years and absolutely loved it). She glanced up at me, then down to the folder holding my grades, then back up at me, then asked something along the lines of, "Are you sure you don't want to be a doctor or a lawyer?" Even being young, I was highly offended that this lady who didn't know anything about me would assume that, just because I had really good grades, I would want to be a doctor or lawyer. I was even more offended that she treated dancing as a repulsive career choice.
During that session, we decided that I would take the college/university route. There were no options for kids like me in the career route. The choices ran along the lines of carpenter, mechanic, etc. When I came to UNC Asheville, I found it so strange that so many people seemed so much more prepared than I did. I found it strange that the school system made a huge deal out of the few of us going to college. I used to jokingly tell my friends that it seemed like our schools didn't expect anyone to go to a community college, much less a university. Now, it makes sense. If our school systems still use the same system as it did in the 50's, how do we expect to supply an ample work force in future generations? The approach it seems this country has taken seems to be standardized testing. 
Notice the kids' faces. Does anyone else remember the stress level of the school on the week of standardized testing? Does anyone else remember not learning the skills that were applicable to solve all sorts of problems because it wouldn't be on the test? Or having homework marked off on because we didn't do it the way the teacher told us to, even though our own reasoning skills got us the right answer consistently?

Its not wonder those of us growing up today don't know how to take care of things in the real world. Some of us may have learned problem-solving skills in school, but many of the children coming through school today aren't learning those necessary skills. I know the standardized tests mean well, but they've done as much, if not more, harm than good. I know a young girl who can read, but she can't "comprehend" the material . . . which, in my eyes, boils down to the point that she can read, but she can't answer standardized test questions correctly. She may "comprehend" just fine if the pressure for reading for comprehension is taken away and she could just read for fun. 

These children, as well as their parents and teachers, may spend days or weeks worrying about the standardized tests instead of actually teaching and learning. Part of learning requires for whoever is learning to feel safe. This often involves the condition of the schools as well as a relationship with the teacher (which can only happen when there is a decent ratio of students to teachers - a ratio that does not exist in many public schools). 

The unsafe and impersonal environment goes against Martha Nussbaum's central capabilities.
She has ten very specific central capabilities that she believes all people should have:

Life
Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length; not dying prematurely,
 or before one's life is so reduced as to be not worth living.

Bodily health
Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; to be adequately
nourished; to have adequate shelter.

Bodily integrity
Being able to move freely from place to place; to be secure against violent assault,
including sexual assault and domestic violence; having
opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction.

Senses, imagination, and thought
Being able to use the senses, to imagine, think, and reason - and to do these
things in a "truly human" way, a way informed and cultivated by an
adequate education, including, but by no means limited to, literacy and basic
mathematical and scientific training. Being able to use imagination and thought
in connection with experiencing and producing works and events of one's own choice,
religious, literary, musical, and so forth. Being able to use one's mind in ways
protected by guarantees of freedom of expression with respect to both political
and artistic speech, and freedom of religious exercise. Being able to have
pleasurable experiences and to avoid nonbeneficial pain.

Emotions
Being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves; to
love those who love and care for us, to grieve at their absence; in general,
to love, to grieve, to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger. Not having
one's emotional development blighted by fear and anxiety.

Practical reason
Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical 
reflection about the planning of one's life.

Affiliation
(A) Being able to live with and towards others, to recognize and show concern for
other human beings, to engage in various forms of social interaction; to
be able to imagine the situation of another.
(B) Having the social bases of self-respect and nonhumiliation; being able
to be treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others. This
entails provisions of nondiscrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual
orientation, ethnicity, caste, religion, and national origin.

Other species
Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the
world of nature.

Play
Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities.

Control over one's environment
(A) Political. Being able to participate effectively in political choices that
govern one's life; having the right of political participation, protections
of free speech and association.
(B) Material. Being able to hold property (both land and movable goods), and
having property rights on an equal basis with others; having the right to seek
employment on an equal basis with others; having the freedom from unwarrented
search and seizure. In work, being able to work as a human being, exercising
practical reason and entering into meaningful relationships of mutual
recognition with other workers.


In my time with the I Have a Dream foundation, I've found that many of these children seem to have many of these capabilities. They have the option to live a life of normal human length. The only reason that may be threatened is because of the neighborhood in which they live. Here is a story of a four-year-old boy who was killed by his mother's boyfriend in the Pisgah View Apartments. Since the families of these children are often in poverty, they have access to government health care, which means they have the capability to be healthy. Imagination is another big one they may have access to. However, I have no way of actually knowing to what extent they have the capability of imagination, since much of this occurs at home. These children are very capable of emotion; however, depending on the child, they may be fearful because of where they live. 

The only two of Nussbaum's central capabilites that I feel these children do not have access to (and if they do, its most likely very limited access) are bodily integrity and control over one's environment. I feel that their bodily integrity could very much be in danger due to the community environment, where drugs and domestic violence are a norm to the point that police patrol through the apartment complex every 30 minutes. It may be argued that the children are too young to have control over their environment politically (I at least don't remember learning about politics until late high school, and still have trouble understanding them) and too young to own their own property. But I would argue back that their parents are old enough, yet because they live in poverty, this is not an accessible capability.
If the adults could have control over the environment, the children, I believe, would be much safer all around.