Radical Pedagogy (2016) Volume 13 Number 1 ISSN: 1524-6345
Czank.pdf
Humanities 101: What I Have Learned From It... What I am Still Learning
James M. Czank Faculty of Education
Lakehead University, Canada E-mail: jmczank@lakeheadu.ca
Abstract
Humanities 101 is a program discursively constructed around a belief in the beneficence of an entry-level education in the humanities for low-income and otherwise marginalized learners. It uses education to counter marginalizing social forces, the literature surrounding it often equating a university-level educational experience to power, privilege, and success. “Humanities 101: What I have learned from it... what I am still learning” is an account of the author’s observations of one such program, and the conclusions he drew regarding what a legitimate educational experience is about, and the complex social networks and discursive spaces such a program entails.
Keywords: education, Humanities 101, power, discursive space, non- traditional adult learner, transformative learning, radical humanities
students identified and articulated the perception that the program was not engaging in a meaningful examination of their reality and their needs.
The story for the Humanities 101 program, at a small university in Ontario, is much the same as it is for many similar programs across Canada. It was made up of people managing themselves within the shared and encompassing space of a classroom. This classroom took place in the larger and more encompassing space of the university and the socio-political-cultural realities of life in a Canadian city. It had as its inspiration the humanities program offered at University of British Columbia, and was founded on the idea imparted by Earl Shorris’ Clemente Course, which got its start in 1995 in New York City. One night a week, over the course of a semester, adult students from the community arrived on campus to take part in a university-level educational experience. Despite the Humanities 101 name, this particular program did not limit itself to a Humanities focus, but offered an expanded course content that has included professional and social science fields like social work, sociology, education, aboriginal education, political science, law, and nursing. The topic, along with the instructor, changed every week.
The students in this program, and other programs like it, are often termed non-traditional. For the purpose of this paper and my study, I use “non-traditional” in much the same way as Groen and Hyland-Russell (2009) have used it, to refer to people from socially or educationally disadvantaged segments of the population, people from poor and working class backgrounds, ethnic minorities, and
immigrants. Indeed, many of these non-traditional learners I have come to know through Humanities 101 have experienced a plethora of barriers to learning that includes poverty, addiction, homelessness, illness, and discrimination. One of the instructors that I interviewed described the students of Humanities 101 as
“interesting people... who have faced significant challenges in their lives.” He did so purposefully, to avoid using what he referred to as “superficial adjectives and labels that dehumanize the people he [is] trying to describe.” The program, as it is with many programs across the country, provided the materials required of the course, transit fare, and a meal. The cost of child care was covered for those who needed it. This is in keeping with this particular program’s stated mission, which is to remove financial barriers to allow community members to participate in
Humanities 101. The vision guiding this program is to serve and enrich the
Humanities 101 belongs to an approach in adult education that is discursively constructed around a belief in the beneficence of an entry-level education in the humanities for low-income and otherwise marginalized learners (Groen & Hyland-Russell, 2010b, 2007; van Barneveld, 2007; Groen, 2005;
Shorris, 2000). Groen and Hyland-Russell (2010a, p.224) have called the approach in its Canadian context, including one of the programs I have experience with, “Radical Humanities” in order to demonstrate not only its “rootedness in the humanities” but also “the radical nature of [its] educational goals to counter marginalizing social forces through the access of postsecondary institutions.” Framing it within Mezirow’s (2003) account of transformative learning, i.e. “learning that transforms problematic frames of reference” (p.58), they add the qualification that Humanities 101 needs to be contextually based and needs to address all the domains of a person’s life (Groen and Hyland-Russell, 2008, n.p.). The reasoning is that...
[A student’s] educational journey cannot be disentangled from the rest of [his or her life], both past and present. Over and over again students connected past life experiences with their past and current capacities to learn. (n.p.)
Humanities 101 represents a discursive space of an institutionally generated discourse, typified in the treatment of students as socially or educationally
disadvantaged and marginalized beings (Groen and Hyland-Russell, 2010b, p.10), and the university as a “setting that is rich with symbolic power associated with the elite in our society” (Groen and Hyland-Russell, 2007, p.261).
My Observations
Humanities 101 uses education to counter marginalizing social forces, and the literature surrounding it often equates a university-level educational experience to power, privilege, and success. So it came as little surprise when, in the first class of the semester, the instructor, a person with a lot of experience lecturing in
Humanities 101, started equating success with education and with university and college enrollment. Despite what some may think or say about the approach, it is not hard to understand why. It was Shorris (2000) who maintained that university-level studies (topics like grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, logic, and philosophy) – topics commonly reserved for the rich and powerful, could provide
equated the university-level educational experience of Humanities 101 with a fundamental change in how learners understand themselves and the world. So this instructor was simply ‘toeing the line’ (so to speak) when she started lecturing on “claiming your mind and ideas through post-secondary level education.”
The message rang a little hollow with me, as it did with some of the
students. The idea of imparting upon someone the ability to claim his or her own mind is a dubious proposition. The students started transfiguring the topic and the message to mean “challenge your norms” – one might refer to it as challenging the “discursive spaces of their everyday,” delivered through examples more in tune with their lives and experiences. They were giving voice to the socio-economic hurdles they faced, and in at least a couple of examples, a discussion of their dealings with the police. But the topic, the message, and the space were quickly reclaimed the instructor.
A Marxist may treat the above event as a situation of the powerless facing off against the powerful, or as the under-privileged confronting privilege, but given the context and situation this seems both an imperfect explanation and a difficult thesis to maintain. It simply isn’t a sufficient account of what was going on.
Treating the event as a multiplicity of voices and perspectives seems a much more accurate and defendable thesis. And in this space, and on this occasion, the
students used their voices.
meaningful examination of their own needs (Ayers, 2011). Here was an example of someone attempting to engage with issues of marginalization and empower the learners through doing so, but the “learners” were not obliging.
Another night, and this time I was the instructor. My topic was Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” During the discussion, the meaning Plato intended took a back seat to the student’s own interpretations of the allegory. It took on a more contemporary hue, giving way to Pink Floyd’s “wall” and “The Matrix.” Students responded in their own terms and with their own examples, and understanding developed for some as the conversation carried on. A few university and college professors were invited to sit in on this particular class. They confessed to being confused by a situation that blurred the roles of power and perception. They tried to maintain a separate space and role from the students in the room. They identified themselves relative to the students, while the students were busy working at
understanding the complexities and relevance of Plato’s allegory and how it related to their lives. The visitors used terms like “power,” “member of the establishment,” and “position” in reference to themselves. It was their impression that the students in the classroom viewed them much the same way they viewed themselves. In a manner reminding me of Hegel’s Lord-Bondsman dialectic, the visitors identified themselves in relation to these non-traditional students, codified by the
complicated social mechanisms of higher education that situated them juxtaposed against the disparate, seemingly antithetical positions of their other. The class demonstrated to me just how discursively bound both the dynamics of power and perception, and the relationship between students and educators really are.
The next week started with a look at how words move us, and the power of words, and moved on to the theme of power and chaotic violence as told through a poem about colonization. A student asked the instructor: “Why this poem and theme and why now?” A little ironically, his question was quelled. A different week and a different instructor, and this time it was a lecture on scholarship and the church, choirs and the choral, and the theme of music within organized and sacred spaces, that failed to make a connection with the students. How does one counter marginalizing social forces or transform problematic frames of reference through postsecondary education? Apparently, it is not through churches, choirs, and sacred spaces, nor even through oppression and colonization. When thinking of my Humanities experience(s) I often think back to something Foucault (1972) said, that beneath the visible and official discourse there often reigns other
stems from a certain set of experiences and a certain sort of knowledge. It seems an especially relevant insight, given the context of Humanities 101.
Not all the classes operated the same way; one class started out with a few students sharing their own stories. They showed a lot of courage that day, and their stories were very well received. It was all very genuine, and it came across as very relevant. Here were a couple of people sharing their accounts of the hurdles they faced in their everyday existence, not anything as scholarly as Plato and
philosophy. What it provided could perhaps best be called an education of a different, or perhaps specific, sort. It is another example of the politico-epistemic framing of meaning I mentioned earlier. These non-traditional students were confirming themselves through their own particular values, ideologies, and experiences. Perhaps this is what “contextually based within the domains of the students’ lives” has to mean.
Making Sense of It All
At one point I turned to D. A. Yon’s book “Elusive Culture” (2000) to help make sense of what I was experiencing in Humanities 101. He portrays classrooms and schools as “diasporic spaces” where the individual subjectivities of the
students are forged not only through relationships with one another, but also through the multiple place associations they invoke. The idea is that individual identities, histories, and experiences provide the ground for a diaspora within the space where the students find themselves. In the case of my research, this space would be the Humanities 101 program I observed and took part in, and the
individual subjectivities of the people involved. But “diasporic space” didn’t seem to fit with what I observed and had come to know, although there are always a litany of experiences and histories among the individuals involved. What I had been observing was different. So I went another route.
The play of an individuals’ thought, in a given disciplinary context, takes place in a space with a structure defined by a system of rules more
fundamental than the assertions of the individuals thinking in the space. Delineating the structures of this space gives a more fundamental
understanding than do standard histories centered on the individual subject. (Gutting, 2003, p.10)
The above quote is about Foucault, the work of whom is especially useful for thinking about how structures are defined by systems of fundamental rules.
structure possibilities and perspectives, and how what counts as ‘true’ comes to exist in a circular relation with the systems that produce and sustain it. This, in turn, induces and extends these same systems. In other words, the very basis of Humanities education for non-traditional adult learners, and more specifically the Humanities 101 program covered in this paper, sets a context to the approach and delineates the programs and the people’s position and views on the program and approach and field.
Subsequent research confirmed the ‘fit’ of Foucauldian theory in
understanding Humanities 101. I interviewed a group of instructors as part of my research, and most of them spoke of the value of the program in terms of what it needed to do for the students, maintaining all the while that it is not meant as a recruitment tool for the university. Yet attending university, and the presumed value of university or academic education, remained at the forefront of their
accounts. One of the instructors I interviewed spoke of “university life,” another of “opening doors to the university.” A seasoned lecturer of Humanities 101
mentioned the “benefit of being in a university setting,” and her counterpart in another class described Humanities 101 as an “interaction with the world in a complex way” and made it synonymous with academics and university education. Others talked of the “university learning experience,” and one person defined Humanities 101 as a “university enrichment course,” and defined possibilities for the students according to it.
The approach and the programs I researched all entail the same supposition, that an entry-level post-secondary experience benefits low-income and otherwise marginalized learners. Working within the paradigm is the norm for humanities programs for non-traditional learners. It is its unconscious prisoner. But there is a very real distinction between the students’ values, domains, and beliefs, and the university experience privileged by the instructors and the approach. The
difference is between academia and the context and domains of their lives. It even seems likely that the disjuncture I experienced stems from this distinction. If this is indeed the case, it is applicable to all programs, as they all have as their basis a discursive construction citing a belief in the beneficence of an entry-level
humanities education. What I witnessed in Humanities 101 was individuals shifting in relation to practice, situations, and perspectives, all the while formulating
I believe there is a lesson here as to the true nature of education – and what it needs to be. There is a discourse informing Humanities 101, and in my experience the discourse is “we.” We need to be helping these poor and underprivileged people along with an educational system that worked for us. We need to be
introducing them to worthwhile culture, experience, and education. We need to be addressing their needs. We need to be allowing subaltern voices to assert
themselves. It is little more than a continual privileging by the privileged. We have the answers because we have the degrees, but the people we are speaking about are finding answers in being who they are. The ever shifting reality of power and perspective within the classroom becomes quite noticeable when the most profound moments of the class stemmed from the students being truthful about who they were, and having the courage to share that information with the rest of us. It was the privileging of a different set of experiences and a different – and sometimes contradictory – sort of knowledge. It is an example of experience juxtaposed with the academic and the abstract. A few of the topics in the program did elicit a lot of interest, but being able to relate was always key. Gauged from the student’s engagement, a meaningful education is one about them, as few of them were going to be visiting churches in Europe anytime soon, and the topic isn’t as abstract and patronizing as being instructed to “claim your mind.” I think it
interesting and important to note that not one of the students enrolled in the class I observed, or any of those I interviewed, referred to him or herself as marginalized. Nor did any of them use the word “oppressed,” outside of the class that had
oppression as its topic. I don’t have all the answers yet, and my research is only partially complete, but what I am learning from my experience with Humanities 101 is just how entwined a worthwhile education is with the people involved. What I have learned is that a worthwhile education is often less about the academics, and more about the people that take up the seats in the classroom. As for Groen and Hyland-Russell’s (2008, n.p.) qualification that Humanities 101 needs to be “contextually based and needs to address all the domains of a person’s life,” I am still figuring out what that means and how to address it within the context of Humanities 101.
Theoretical Underpinnings of My Research
defines the various positions people occupy as subjects. It is what structures possibilities for thinking and talking, and provides the conceptual framework and classificatory models for understanding the world around one self. Discourse shapes how people think, and how they produce knowledge. It can facilitate shared understandings and engagement, or do just the opposite. The focal point of
“discursive space” is knowledge, and how it is produced and legitimated. In “The Archaeology of Knowledge” (1972), Foucault refers to the “discursive” in the following way:
Whenever one can describe, between a number of statements, a system of dispersion, whenever, between objects, types of statements, concepts, or thematic choices, one can define regularity (an order, correlation, position and functioning, transformation), we will say… that we are dealing with [the discursive] – thus avoiding words that are already over-laden with conditions and consequences, and in any case inadequate to the task of designating such a [thing], such as science, ideology, theory, or domain of objectivity. (p.38)
“Discursive space” suggests that a site, position, perspective, approach, or standpoint cannot be divorced from the larger social context of which it is part. More than the acknowledgment that external ideologies and structures of power are reproduced from within, the notion of “discursive space” implicates the site(s) in relations and/or systems of power. Foucault equates it to a boundary for our statements, a regulating practice, and as the general domain for our statements. Discursive space is a network of meaning rather than the projection of a particular situation or representation, it is a presupposition rather than a subject’s
manipulation of his or her situation, and it is the distribution of meaning rather than the linguistic rules we abide by.
What I am reasonably sure about, with regards to Humanities 101, is that it isn’t about an ordered and structured nature of power, as it seems to extend beyond the dichotomies that mark the radical and critical approaches of Orthodox
Marxism. Nor is it disaporic. Rather than individuals and dominant agents and the relationship between the dominant and the dominated, my experience with
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