In educational spaces, how can the language of safety be made more inclusive and enabling as opposed to exclusionary and protectionist?
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By sensitizing the general public especially all members of our Educational institutions students,trainee,and administrators as well as members of research and training centres should take responsibility for promoting respectful and secure environment for all and they must take action against those whose behavors and undesirable actions create uncomfortable environments.
There should be a continuous dialogue about issues that are faced by women everyday. Women are fighting a constant battle that not only threatens their sense of security, invades their dignity but also restricts their opportunities in the world, all of which is not even acknowledged or known to other people. So in order to raise awareness about the differences that exist in the lives of men and women, a proper understand of these issues is required which will inculcate a greater sense of empathy and responsibility amongst men and change its perception from being excessively protectionist to a collaborative effort to make this world a better place for everyone.
I think it is pertinent that language is tuned to ensure that it isn’t merely tokenistic. Which is to say, it isn’t about putting she before he, but more specifically acknowledging and being cognizant of gendered pronouns and terms. Specifically, multiple talks, seminars and lectures that I have been a part of refer to women as chairmen, spokesman etc. It’s important to start acknowledging women as women.
The language of safety can be made more inclusive and enabling by inviting the participation of a diverse student body to define what safety means to them instead of having a top-down approach wherein policymakers determine what safety means. The construct of safety is influenced by how people experience their gender identity, sexual orientation, caste, class, ethnicity, body image, religious identity, linguistic identity, (dis)ability, and more.
I too agree with Chintan. It is important to give spaces to such multiple experiences which then can inform policymaking and define practices. Maybe, we can collectively explore using such portals as potential spaces to bring out the diversity of voices, ideas, and experiences. It acts as a data collection site. This repository can further help the university/college decision makers to navigate through differential experiences and guide their policies and practices. Just wondering!
I agree with Chintan. I would also say that the language of safety can be made more inclusive if it includes the voices of those whose safety is being provided for.
There is a need to promote approaches to education founded on an acknowledgement of virtue. This implies, among other things, that the pursuit of knowledge be oriented towards intellectually and practically useful ends. Inculcating respect for other human beings is one such end that will make our campuses more inclusive.
I think we need to look at the language of safety from an intersectional lens. Some of my colleagues and I are working to create a safe space at school for young people and co-workers from different parts of the world. For many of our students, English is their second language. When we identify students and plan differentiated instruction, we are mindful of labelling students based on their language abilities. For example, our language policy refers to terms such as native or native-like proficiency in English. Since there are many forms and kinds of English, we replaced the word native with proficient and fluent. Also, a few students have asked me, what can I do to change my accent? In a workshop on teaching at the intersections — creating a compassionate and inclusive classroom space, I reminded my co-workers that it is important for us to be more culturally responsive in an international school setting. So, when I teach a lesson on media and advertisement, I normalise identities through a selection of resources. I introduced Malala’s speech to teach persuasive techniques so that students understand that the accent should not define our ability to speak a language. It is so important to create visibility of queer identities in our everyday teaching. When I taught a unit on advertisement and media, I showed a commercial of two African American fathers getting their daughters ready for school. Unfortunately, in a school that is dominantly white, black kids and Asian kids don’t see themselves in the books and resources that they use. Our drama teacher produced the high school musical Grease. The musical is set in 50s America which was racially segregated and even though they purchased the junior script, I can only imagine how triggering the language of the play must have been for many of our students and staff members. The dialogues are openly homophobic and misogynistic and the songs perpetuate rape culture. The plays we perform, the songs we sing at school, our everyday language of boys/girls stems from a cis-heteropatriarchal culture. While the school is open to making a cultural shift, it is important for teachers to identify social justice standards and embed these into their curriculum framework to plan lessons that are age and context-appropriate. For example, in Indian schools, we do not talk about caste and caste privilege. These concepts need to be unpacked in the classrooms for us to see a visible change.
I found a resource on Red Elephant Foundation on non-violent communication. Be facilitated an activity in homeroom with grade 8s to address problems of segregation, exclusion, and repeated occurrences of targeted bullying, and found these to be quite valuable. Thank you so much, Kirthi!
As some others (Chintan and Kirthi) have argued, one of the best ways to make the language of safety non-exclusionary/patronising/moralistic is to ensure that the student body – especially women, Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi students, and queer folks – have a voice in framing the policies that will govern their campuses and institutions. Another way to do this would be to alter the way these policies are implemented. In many universities and colleges, policies that are established to ensure safety and non-discrimination are prohibitory and penal in nature i.e. they lay down the kinds of behaviours that they seek to censure and punishments for those who violate these rules in any way. Instead of this, taking a broader approach to safety by laying down a code of conduct that describes the kinds of values and behaviours (hopefully formulated by the student body) the institution wishes to foster to ensure more safety for students from all backgrounds and instituting student-led committees to oversee their implementation in both formal and informal spaces within the university will go a long way in ensuring that the language of safety is inclusive and enabling. Also, in my limited experience, I’ve found that having collectives or closed student groups for people from vulnerable or marginalized backgrounds really helps because of the safe space it provides for students to articulate their concerns and have them be heard in a really way. If university administrations were to consult these kinds of bodies and groups while framing any policies or codes for safety, that would be ideal.
Thank you Shrinidhi! Your point on closed groups is well taken. However, it will be interesting to critically understand what triggers a sense of ‘safety’ within these smaller groups as compared to open dialogues – it is such a sense of intimacy or reassurance of confidentially or is it much more than that!?
I think the language simply needs to be directed to different people. We’re always hearing about women’s safety and initiatives to prevent harassment, but we hear very little about sensitisation of the harassers to sexual and violent issues. And there are many people who fall through the cracks here: transgenders are often victims of crimes, but very little is done to promote their safety and security. So perhaps our method should change from “let’s make public transport free for women” to “let’s improve security, penalise harassers adequately, and promote gender equality from a basic level where respect for other people comes naturally, and need not be forced.”
When I approach this question I have to begin with a few pertinent questions: what is an educational space?
Are there uniform rules that govern such spaces? If we are talking about a college as an institution we have to scrutinize the philosophy that defines the institution.
“What is the institutionality of the institution?”
Who has come to define it and why so?
Then the more pertinent question: who or what constitutes the said institution? is it simply space cordoned off or organised around notions of privilege – what is the spatiality of the educational experience?
Then who are the people who constitute the space – the students and the teachers, along with the academic staff, non teaching staff and unorganised labour who have been awarded contracts; this opens up a larger question of affiliative relation that has been establised within such spaces.
Is a teacher or a student more privileged? teacher or non academic staff? Accounts or Admin? Contractual labour or Permanent staff — and how some of these categories are intersectional. Some of these categories re-enforce descriminations of gender, caste etc. Some of these categories are empowering.
And all this one can gather from observing the species of human interactions in the many corners of an institution. If we agree that an institution is not just a building within building within walls but rather shaped by human experiences, visions, aspirations and the many frailties that have come to define humanity then we could open the nature of this debate about exclusionary versus inclusionary tendencies.
Another way of addressing this question is by addressing specific cases – and the irony of that process is that it will render any “formalised” procedureinadequate.
If we insist on a formalised norm/policy then we must agree that it is going to fall short- and that the process of sensitising is a process that we must contitnue to work on through constant engagement and review.