Comfortable spaces for disenfranchised urban youth in all schools (Wishart, p. 64).
The Ginger cat is sitting in the easy chair in the sunroom. This is not her space but from this chair she can watch the sparrows flit in their courtship and gathering antics through the big windows that look out onto the backyard. As she tracks their jerky fluttering, she squeaks her concern in little staccato mews. Totally immersed in a hunter’s possibilities, she can’t wait to get at them.
Casey, the Giant Schnauzer, is now at the patio door wanting out. She hears the squeaky meows and is concerned. This sunroom was always her space and now she feels uncertain of the security of her door rug. She looks to me for guidance and reassurance that she is not going to be attacked just for being there. But the balance of power will shift as soon as Ginger vacates the relative height and safety of the easy chair. Neither wants to demonstrate their vulnerability. Neither wants to back down, yet neither is totally comfortable in this Rhineland of unease.
Yet it was in this very same demilitarized buffer zone just last weekend that my husband witnessed a strange and wonderful event. Casey and Ginger: eye-to-eye, nose-to-nose in a gesture of détente. No provocative body language, no defensive trash talk. The peace talks were beginning.
Likewise in Chapter Two, Wishart drives home one fundamental creed borne of her conversations with urban youth: respect for oneself and for each other is both the beginning and the end-simultaneously a strategy and an outcome. She sees comfort as a result of achieving respect and acceptance. But an upsetting of the balance precedes this comfort, through a willingness to go where all are uncomfortable.
Critical pedagogy brings everyone into the discussion where notions of integration, segregation, poverty, identity, lived experiences, and history are revealed. Her conclusions are not about the merits of an integrated or a segregated practice, but rather about comfort for disenfranchised youth.
And while Ginger and Casey will never curl up on the rug together in a pastoral picture of passivity, they have established a critical neutral space where mutual respect can be experienced.
And as Wishart observes, while the process is uncomfortable, it is better than exclusion.
No comments:
Post a Comment