Changing Literacy Programs to Take Account of Violence - Brief Notes
Jenny Horsman

Introduction to thinking about discourse

Discourses about education and violence shape what is seen as legitimate literacy work, and so make it hard to change education to recognize the extent of violence and the effects of violence on learning. Seeing our language and practices as discourse offers a tool to get outside a focus on what is 'right' and draws attention to examining how certain discourses open and close possibilities for re-conceptualizing adult literacy work to support learning for all.

Discourses about Violence

Silence

Discourses about violence silence talk, it is seen as 'wiser' not to talk, it 'serves no purpose.' Literacy workers have to learn to create a space that names the presence of violence in many women's lives, without the talk feeling threatening to survivors of violence.

Can of worms - violence issues are seen as too difficult, too specialized an area, not to show the need for training, but to suggest that the field can not take it on.

This isn't violence - the widespread nature of violence, leads to a sense that 'this is just the way it is' or this is acceptable amongst this or that ethnic or religious group, so nothing can be done.

Silence is not neutral - the suggestion that it is wiser not to open up talk about violence operates on the assumption that doing nothing is safer.  But silence gives a message of complicity with the dominant messages of society that condone violence. Posters, pamphlets, reading materials for students and teachers, workshops, ground rules about violence, and responding clearly to violence and to the pressure to 'get over it' can all break the silence.

Naming violence is not disclosing - there is often fear that naming violence will open up detailed stories of violence, but when there is acceptance that violence is present, counselling supports are available, and students realize they would find it hard to hear accounts of violence from each other, most students prefer to limit what they share.

Medicalizing Violence

The aftermath of violence is spoken about primarily in medical terms. This sets the scene for an approach to issues of violence in education that is clearly focussed on diagnosing who has a problem and referring them for 'help.' This approach leads to a focus on the diagnosis of an ailment, and a frame that 'normal' students can cope with the education system, those who cannot, must have something wrong with them. They need to change, but the education system can remain the same.

'Dealt with' - there is pressure for workers to have 'dealt with' whatever violence they have experienced, which parallels pressure on learners to go away and heal if violence is getting in the way of their learning. This makes it unacceptable for workers to be 'triggered,' and so encourages them to avoid opening issues of violence for fear of raising their own issues.

I'm not a therapist - reminds literacy workers that there is a clear divide between literacy and therapy and that emotional and violence issues belong on the therapy side of the divide.

Living beside - taking part in a literacy program can be a place to explore possibilities of living beside trauma, but if literacy workers have learned the medicalizing discourses well, then workers and learners will seek to show they have left violence and its impacts behind or risk the judgement they are not 'ready' to be there.

Canaries in the mine - those who have experienced violence are like the canaries, offering a warning that the levels of violence in society are toxic to us all. It is not they who must return to 'normal' and accept future possibilities of violence, but society which must change. With this understanding, survivors, whether learners or teachers, can honour their experience of trauma and impacts on the self, rather than seek to deny and hide them.