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27 April
Structural Violence, Critical Literacy, and Spirituality in Education
Since the 9/11 tragedy, people in the world have realized, again, that their shared globe is plagued with seeds of violence that are making brutal acts surface right in their faces. Violence that causes deaths and other forms of destruction around the world has become more conspicuous than before. Typically, we define or regard wars in Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, Iraq, and Sudan as examples of violence and only physical violence, such as wars, rape, murder or massacre, street crimes, and so on that have perceptible destructive effects are regarded as violence against which people counteract. However, violence is multifaceted and a lot needs to be done to unmask it before proper and preemptive actions can be taken to alleviate or prevent its effects.
Structural violence is seldom mentioned in education, but has been discussed mostly by scholars in psychology. It is different from other types of violence in that the power relations within it are less noticeable and are embedded in different forms within different contexts. As Du Nan Winter and Leighton (1999) put, “structural violence…is almost always invisible, embedded in ubiquitous social structures, normalized by stable institutions and regular experience.” Therefore, it is not often seen as an imminent threat or usually made to look as normal at least in the eyes of the people within the circle where it takes place. Du Nan Winter and Leighton also raise the case of structured inequalities as major causes of structural violence, citing Johan Galtung (1986) who originally framed the term to refer to any constraint on human potential due to economic and political structure. In particular, Du Nan Winter and Leighton regard unequal access to resources, political power, education, health care, or legal standing as forms of structural violence. Structural violence, therefore, occurs when, for instance, gays or lesbians are fired because of their sexual orientation; children starve to death because of the unfair distribution of income within the society; etc. There are many more examples of structural violence, and more will be discussed later.
If we believe in the role of education in fighting to make the world a less violent and less oppressive place, we must ask at least the following critical questions? How do people in education view and deal with violence? How has critical literacy been framed in light of violence issues? Where are the gaps? And what is left for educators to do in regard to these previous issues? This paper is intended to show a perspective in response to these compelling questions?
Violence and its relationship with education
Traditionally education was seen as neutral and non-political, and it remains so in many parts of the world. In the Eastern world, for example, education was associated with religious practices, as versus to state missions that were run principally by the people in power. The state seldom intervened with the business in the temples or the monasteries, and the Buddhist monks, as in Thailand and neighboring countries, would not get involved in politics. Religious leaders thus were seen as neutral, moral, and trustworthy in virtually all aspects. Parents undoubtedly handed over their children to the arms of the spiritual and intellectual teachers in hope that their children will become a full person and a good members of the society. However, education is no longer seen as non-politic or neutral nowadays. In fact, it has been seen by many Western scholars as a culprit in the form of an essential tool employed by the status quo in generating classes, widening gaps in societies, and therefore serves to maintain or reproduce the status quo; however, these scholars may not necessarily match what we do or fail to do in education with violence per se.
Philosophers in search of a better world have questioned the status quo and offered ideas about their envisioned, or ideal, society since a long time ago. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Swiss-French thinker during the early 18th century, for example, in his renowned book A Discourse on Inequality (translated version, 1984) shows how the growth of civilization corrupts human beings’ natural happiness and freedom by inventing inequalities of wealth, power and social privilege. As society becomes more complex and surrounded by such inequalities, the strongest and the most intelligent members of the society would gain an unnatural advantage over the weaker ones. Rousseau also believes that the constitutions that are set up to rectify the unjust systems and to promote a peaceful, equal society usually work to perpetuate such the said inequalities. An analysis like this by Rousseau reflects the fact that structural violence was detected long time ago.
Educators also started to be aware of the need to unpack sociopolitical issues and reveal the unjust systems in the wider context around education. John Dewey, a psychologist and educator in the early 19th century, was among the earlier educators who questioned the power relations between the teacher and the students and argued that schools were not designed to transform societies [for democratic, just conditions], but rather to reproduce the unfair status quo (1896). Many scholars or educators in the 20th and 21st centuries have followed the same path that leads to critical examination of sociopolitical and socioeconomic factors. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) also saw the need to move education beyond the school fences. He strongly believed that education should succeed in the following tasks: disciplined thinking; creation of a cultivated outlook; enhancement of civilization; and imparting moral rectitude, although he wrote that the society during his time was far from seeing education serve to promote moral rectitude (Kanz, 1993). And in this paper I would like to revisit the notion of education for moral rectitude, or in my term, spirituality in education, in the later section.
Among the later scholars who care about relating education to problems within and beyond the school fences, Paolo Freire is arguably the most talked about educational author. Regarded as the Father of Critical Pedagogy, Freire emphasizes the role of education in transforming individual and society through critical reflections and social actions, or praxis. Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1973, 2002), his classic book widely read around the world nowadays, sets up the goal for education as a tool for humanizing through praxis, scaffolded by the dialogic approach in which the teachers and the learners hold mutual respect as co-learners. The term conscienticizao, which he uses to explain praxis, refers to “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality” (Freire, 2002, 35; see also pages 87-124 for elaboration of the term). Freire clearly pushes us toward seeing the most subtle aspect of structural violence-- words. He believes in the power of words in positioning oneself and others, and thus he encourages examining them in order to unpack the subtlety of factors within the status quo, to conscientize and finally transform ourselves to be the subject or agent of change. Other influential authors in this field nowadays include Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, and Ira Shor.
Along with Freire, many would put Vygotsky as another educator who advocates efforts to look at education as a phenomenon within the sociopolitical contexts, over which teachers do not have much control (Wink, 1997). In fact, Vyogotsky’s contributions in education include three major areas: sociocultural learning (meaning making or knowledge construction in social contexts, which becomes foundation for constructivism); the zone of proximal development (the amount of learning that is enhanced through social scaffolding); and the crucial relationship between words and ideas used in the social contexts and how that affects learning). However, Vygotsky does not advocate any radical approaches to unpacking the oppressive society as Freire does.
The notions that lead teachers and learners to be more sensitive about violence can also be found in the resonance by Gee (1996); Lankshear (1997); Luke & Freebody (1997) who see that the certain discourse we choose to use does in one way or another affect others because it positions ourselves and others in either advantageous or disadvantageous situation.
Scholars from several other camps also center their dialogs around social justices, which in one way or another deal with structural violence. Critical literacy, emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Green 2001), refers to many things practiced by many groups of people and appear in various dimensions. Green further suggests that “The notions of text, literacy as social practice, and discourse, which have been discussed within cultural literacy, are…integral to critical literacy” (2001, 7), but that there are other stances and the distinction is not clear. Harste (2002), likewise, defines critical literacy as "a moving target" that generally involves efforts in "disrupting the taken for granted, interrogating dominant perspectives, exposing the political in what was thought to be innocent, and promoting social justice in all kinds of forms" (Harste, L750 Course Syllabus, Fall 2002, Indiana University), which is similar to Lankshear’s observation that critical literacy is a “contested educational ideal” with “no final orthodox” (1994, p. 4). Wink (1997) argues that critical literacy is one name among the many similar views from around the world, which can be linked to the real education world via critical pedagogy, or radical pedagogy.
Freire’s version of being critical is essentially the prototype that gave birth to the practices of critical literacy, increasingly inspiring educators and scholars worldwide to strive forward under approaches with different names, such as critical thinking, feminism, multicultural education, and, a most recent one, critical media literacy, although these fields did not necessarily originally start from the same school of thoughts. For instance, critical thinking is a different branch, having its own leading thinkers, target audience, and organizations created to explore and experiment ‘critical thinking’. However, the work of Paul and Elder (2002) has shown that the critical thinking camp has shifted away from being of hardcore epistemology toward being more sociopolitical. In their recent book, Paul and Elder has most succinctly elaborated the subtle threats that face the present world in light of technological and other changes at the global level that in turn call for us, consumers of information, to be critical and to maintain “fair-mindedness.”
Meanwhile, Freire’s influences have given birth to the work of so many education thinkers, including Nieto, whose interest is on multicultural education. In her recent book, The Light in Their Eyes, Nieto (1999) argues that typical schooling system supports, rather than challenges, the status quo. She implies that school is a place to tame students who think or behave differently from the way the institutions, which are influenced by the community, expect. Essentially, Nieto defines multicultural education in a very comprehensive scope, but ultimately following Freire’s views.
Multicultural education is a process of comprehensive school reform and basic education for all students. It challenges and rejects racism and other forms of discrimination in school and society accepts and affirms the pluralism (ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, economic, and gender, among others) that students, their communities, and teachers represent. Multicultural education permeates the curriculum and instructional strategies used in schools, as well as the interactions among teachers, students, and parents, and the very way that schools conceptualize the nature of teaching and learning. Because it uses critical pedagogy as its underlying philosophy and focuses on knowledge, reflection, and action (praxis) as the basis for social change, multicultural education promotes the democratic principles of social justice (Nieto, 1999, 3).
As we can see, if all the above ideologies can be grouped and renamed as critical literacy, critical literacy has its fundamental goal of unpacking the systems within the status quo, and therefore, it has a lot of potential in dealing with structural violence. If we try to detect the works by “critical literacy” authors, we can see that they include notions such as educational reform, equal access and opportunity, gender equality, respect for students’ backgrounds as learners, identity and esteem building, diversity tolerance, generally speaking promotion of social justice of all sorts, and unmasking the systems of oppression at all levels. What are the pedagogical mechanisms or methods that critical educators have used to reach their goals, then?
Critical literacy, to me, is more like a goal rather than a method of teaching. However, one may consider it an approach because we can identify loosely what people under this umbrella have done to reach the “goals”. Indeed, there are no written rules or consensus about this approach. Freire’s ideas, I would say, have been interpreted in many ways and thus people do several different things in class. For instance, some allow the students the freedom to free inquiry without any imposed or rigid prescribed details of what to learn and how to learn. In a sense, multiple ways of learning and knowing, or semiotics, become a part here. Some would also go on to promote the dialogic approach, in which the students are given the space to be themselves and to realize about themselves within the layers of contexts around them with teachers as co-learners. Others may allow the students to reflect, learn, unlearn and transform themselves through reading and writing words critically. These first three reflect the fight against the “Banking education” notion.
The focus or the agenda for teaching and learning under critical literacy can also be varied. Feministic educators are working zealously to unpack gender issues; school reformers would draw attention of the learners and the teachers to ways things within the school context work for or against certain groups of people and how to improve them. Hidden within or behind all these different practices are also the different kinds of learners that educators are dealing with, i.e. young pupils, adolescents, adult learners or teacher trainees. Therefore, the picture of how critical literacy is practiced may still be rather blurry.
The clearest picture, however, has been sketched by Leland & Harste (2002). In their efforts to select the best children’s story books that promote critical literacy, Leland and Harste identify the following themes: stories that help students understand differences that make a difference; stories that give voice to “the indignant ones” that are historically unheard; stories that promote social actions; stories that help students understand how systems of meaning in society position; and stories that examine distance, difference and otherness. The picture has been further refined by Harste (2002) as four dimensions: (1) Disrupting the taken for granted; (2) Interrogating dominant perspectives; (3) Exposing the political in what was thought to be innocent (4) Promoting social justice in all forms. An unpublished account of why these four dimensions should be promoted and how to do so in EFL contexts are available at http://www.thinsan.com/nf/cl/ITMELT.htm.
More about structural violence
Since the term “structural violence” has not been used among the critical literacy scholars deliberately or extensively, if any, it is important that we bring structural violence to our attention more closely. Structural violence can be divided into several types. Zaru (2003) shows some examples based on her experience in Palestine as follows:
Economic Structural Violence, which includes
• Restrictions by Israel, e.g. road blocks, closure, control of roads, house curfew
• Unemployment & impoverishment
• Economic marginalization and exclusion
• Exploitation of water, land, people's work
• Destruction of civil society & infrastructure
• No protection
Political Structural Violence
• Military occupation
• Settlements
• Denial of self-determination, sovereignty, right of return
• Closures
• Siege
• Encagement
• Fragmentation
Cultural Structural Violence
• Stereotyping of Palestinians, Arabs, women in the media, education, language
• Anti-Arabism
• Discrimination of women
• Imposition of other cultures and their value systems (e.g. patriarchal culture, Western culture)
• Authoritarianism and glorification of militarism/the violence of the state and direct violence
• Destruction/shelling of cultural heritage sites, both archeological and architectural
Religious Structural Violence
• Language (choseness)
• Disunity among the churches
• Christian Zionism
• Fundamentalisms
• Demonization of Islam
• Negation of Arab and Middle Eastern Christians (e.g. pilgrimages without contact with local Christians, missionary movements)
Environmental Structural Violence
• Confiscation & destruction of agricultural land
• Uprooting of trees
• Piroting & diversion of water resources
• Restrictions on water well drilling & water capture
• Dumping of solid & toxic waste in OPT
• Settlement sewage onto village lands
• Restrictions on movement & settler violence prevent farmers access to their lands
• Damaged infrastructure leads to public health problems such as no clean water and no refrigeration for vaccines
The reason I bring Zaru’s list here is to show that there are many kinds of structural violence, and they are now both showing and hiding behind the face of direct violence, as in the case of the tensions between Israel and Palestine. In addition, while in the discourse of education in the U.S. and developed countries have the specific local agendas, there are also other issues out there that deserve our attention as members of the same globe, and these stances of structural violence did not come to life in the vacuum. That is, the U.S. and some European countries also had some part in it at some point in time and should continue to be in the process of restoring peace.
Arguably, all countries in the world should consider using critical literacy to educate their citizens about these fundamental problems that exist in common or in specific zone, because they all often violate basic human rights. Critical literacy will not solve all these problems, but I believe it will open a door that will stretch both intellectual and spiritual horizons among human. Only through a profound understanding of the intellectual and spiritual lessons from the above and other similar scenarios of structural violence can human beings learn to understand the value of peaceful coexistence and the justification of social justice. The next section will identify spiritual gaps that I consider as the major barrier against critical literacy promotion. That is, without spiritual understanding as basis, people can talk about social justice and all the buzz words, but little will come out of it. This is a bold statement that needs clarification and substantiation.
Critical questions about spirituality gaps
To start the spiritual aspect of this paper, I wish to draw on the dilemma that Sandel (1982, 1988) presents as the world is striving toward a liberal society. He sees the tension between the need to have principles of justice to govern the society in which the citizens are allowed to be as free as possible to choose their own values and ends. The question is how the principles can work without presupposing any particular vision of the good life. He elaborates:
Liberalism teaches respect for the distance of self and ends, and when this distance is lost, we are submerged in a circumstance that ceases to be ours. But by seeking to secure his distance too completely, liberalism undermines its own insight. By putting the self beyond the reach of politics, it makes human agency an article of faith rather than an object of continuing attention and concern, a premise of politics rather than its precarious achievement. This misses the pathos of politics and also its most inspiring possibilities. It overlooks the danger that when politics goes badly, not only disappointments but also dislocations are likely to result. And if it forgets the possibility that when politics goes well, we can know a good in common that we cannot know alone. (183)
Although Sandel does not state clearly that the citizens must be ethically and morally good in order for the justice systems to work without disturbing the distance of self and ends, we can see that the invented societal principles and the goodness in the people must go together. In my opinion, what we talk so much about in the circles of dialogs under the critical literacy umbrella, i.e. social justice, diversity, mutual respect, inclusive policies, human rights, and so on, have gone without realizing that our standards in this globe are varied and that our contexts also are different. How, for example, then can the U.S. educators talk about social justice to people in Iraq when what the U.S. government has been doing has crossed the moral lines despite its moral rationale? How can the U.S. claim its best at tolerating diversity when its government is condemning the other parts of the world as being savage or uncivilized for having their women hide their faces according to their religious teaching? How can the first world countries impose some punitive measures on the country that violates human rights because of the poverty in the country that is a result of the unjust free trade policies, in which the strongest can easily take advantage of the weak? How can the first world condemn prostitution in the third world when the divorce rate and adultery are the norm in their home lands and some men from the rich first world also take advantage of the stronger currency and bathe their excessive lust with the sexual lubricant of those poor prostitutes? My intention here is not to put all the blame on the richer, structurally oppressive countries, but to point out that we are facing serious moral problems and inevitable dilemmas. Social justices are based on moral decisions, and moral decisions are not based on laws or policies alone, but on what people carry in their hearts.
Of course, the oppressors are found at all levels and they are all to be blamed. Parents selling their daughters into prostitution are committing violence. The government that allows prostitution or fails to do anything to counteract it also supports structural violence. The corruptive government officers who accept bribes from transnational corporate on the expense of the environment and detrimental subsequence effects on the people are also committing structural violence crime, and so are the transnational corporate delegates. Why do we have this list that can go on and on and on if we stop to think about other structurally violent acts?
Ending notes
Critical literacy, as a supposed universal term that governs the sorts of practices highlighted at the beginning of this paper, does have a potential in unpacking the subtle stacks of structurally violent systems at all levels-- individual, societal, national, regional, and global. However, there seem to be some gaps in the ways problems are identified, viewed, and resolved. Some questions remain. Do we have what it takes? Do we educators know these gaps and how to fill them? I did not intend to provide the answers, because it would be much beyond the scope of this paper, but I do wish to problematize critical literacy practices. What more can we do to really achieve the ultimate goals ornamented by so many positive buzz words?
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