SHARED
JOURNEYS AND BORDER CROSSINGS:
WHEN
'THEY' BECOMES 'WE'
Gerald
Pillsbury[1]
Assistant
Professor,
Education
and Professional Development
Western
Michigan University
Ph.
(616) 387-2979
Fax
(616) 387-2882
Email:
Pillsbury@wmich.edu
and
Carolyn
M. Shields
Associate
Professor
Educational
Studies
The
University of British Columbia
Ph.
(604) 594-6769
Fax
(604) 822-6381
Email:
Carolyn.shields@ubc.ca
Running
Head: When “They” Becomes “We” ...
Whether meant metaphorically or more literally, in the last quarter
of the 20th Century, “community” has proven to be a compelling idea for
social scientists.Educators looking
to reform current educational practices (Greene, 1995; Kerr, 1996; Lave
and Wenger, 1991) have been turning with increasing frequency to the work
of those who have written eloquently about the socially constructed nature
of our lives (Bruner, 1990; Bryk & Driscoll, 1988; Gergen, 1991; Greenfield,
1975; MacIntyre, 1985; Wertsch, 1991) and to those who posit the need for
educational organizations to become communities of learners (Beck, 1994;
Fullan 1993, Noddings 1992, Sergiovanni, 1994).But
like any concept that gains political currency, community has acquired
multiple layers of meanings, so much so that the term may now hide more
than it reveals.
In
their articles, both Furman (1996) and Beck and Kratzer (1995) have carefully
reviewed the extant literature and delineated some of most commonly accepted
characteristics of community.They
found that most writers rely heavily on the concept which Sergiovanni (1994)
describes as “centers of values, sentiments, and beliefs that provide the
needed conditions for creating a sense of we from a collection of
Is” (p. 27).He, like many others,
bases his work, in part, on the work of Tonnies (1971) which contrasted
gesellschaft, “the modern formal organization [in which] relationships
are formal and distant,” with gemeinschaft, that community of kinship,
place or mind which binds people together in “webs of meaning ... by creating
a sense of belonging and a common identity” (Sergiovanni, p. 219).
An
alternative, more encompassing, and in our opinion more compelling, conception
of community has recently emerged, one based not on similarity and shared
beliefs and values, but on the notion of difference (Carr, 1986; Shields
& Seltzer, 1997; Tierney, 1993) or otherness (Furman, 1998; Kristeva,
1991).Although the concept has not
always been made explicit, the new understanding of community requires,
as some have done (Bryk, Lee, & Holland, 1993; Coleman & Hofer,
1987; Peshkin, 1986) that proponents pay serious attention to the phenomenon
of boundary creation.
The
notion of boundaries as the “dark side of community” was identified by
Noddings (1996).However, the mechanisms
by which boundaries are erected and maintained to the detriment of a more
inclusive sense of community or by which such boundaries might become permeable
remain relatively unexplored.Anderson
(1990) urged researchers to find ways to study the “invisible and unobtrusive
forms of control that are exercised in schools and school districts” (p.
39), to elicit stories from respondents, and to submit these stories to
close narrative analysis in order to help to understand how respondents
make “sense of and give meaning to their experiences” (Mischler, cited
in Anderson, p. 51).
Our
goal in this paper is to use several stories and activities drawn from
various ethnographic studies in which we have been involved, as a starting
point for considering how communities of otherness might actually develop
in school settings.Thus, the paper
is not an empirical study, but is a preliminary exploration and examination
of common school practices that might encourage or discourage the construction
of a community in which differences are recognized and respected rather
than constituted as barriers.Because
we subscribe to the constructivist understanding that “social reality is
constructed out of ongoing social interaction” (Anderson, 1990, p. 40),
we examine how respondents’ descriptions of interaction in schools create
a sense of self and community.The
created understanding may appear either rigid, exclusive, and exclusionary
or it may be one which is more fluid, allowing at least temporarily inclusion
of “otherness” into one’s definitions of self and community.
One
avenue into this exploration of the meaning of otherness in community is
language, particularly careful study of the use of personal pronouns.Indeed,
an approach to self through semiotics is the one pioneered by James (1890)
and Mead (1932), and more recently favored by such disparate writers as
Crapanzano (1982, 1990), Ochs (1990), Ricouer (1992) and Shaw (1994).Giroux
(1997) suggests that “how we understand and come to know ourselves cannot
be separated from how we are represented and how we imagine ourselves”
(p.15).Thus, we extend the examination
of our data beyond explicit use of personal pronouns to reflect constructions
that imply such pronouns in order to better understand how self and other
are represented.
While
difference is often constituted in terms of 'we' versus 'they', at certain
times, under certain conditions, consciously or unconsciously, we move
between self and other: 'we' becomes 'they' or 'they' 'we' (Crapanzano,
1982, 1990).The authors of this
paper recognize that there are times when the social construction of both
categories may be potentially beneficial; indeed, we believe that occasional
or temporary consideration of another person or group as the other is not
the real source of social disruptions such as injustices, inequalities,
and indifference.Rather, we posit
that barriers to community are constructed when movement between self and
other, between 'we' and 'they,' is obstructed.In
other words, borders are not the difficulty; it is the inflexibility and
tenacity with which they are created and asserted that creates problems.We
suggest that the beneficial qualities often associated with community may
actually arise only when the boundaries of community allow, and other forces
encourage, members’ unhindered movement between self and other.Expanding
upon Buber's (1958) inclusive I and Thou which stipulates that community
can only exist if persons mutually and unconditionally care for one another,
and the familiar self-reflection, "There but for the grace of God go I,"
we argue that community becomes dynamic and inclusive (and hence, perhaps
more desirable) when it encourages every member to find the self in the
other and the other in the self.
We
first present some examples of how language has been used in a number of
school situations to represent and sometimes to create what we are calling
‘we-they’ situations.In some of
these, the situations have been constructed as barriers that present difficulties
for those wishing to negotiate a border crossing and to move into a new
sense of community; in other instances, the participants appear to have
opened the borders between ‘we’ and ‘they’ and invited others into a community
of difference.The examples used
to illustrate rigidity or movement between 'we' and 'they' are culled from
field notes, interview transcripts, surveys, documents, and observations
compiled during five ethnographic studies in which we have been engaged
separately during the past six years.One
of these investigations examined college basketball teams over two seasons.Another
looked at first graders' participation in various school and social groups.A
third studied, over six years, schools serving predominantly Native American
students.The last two identified
school practices which helped to involve students in an empowering manner
in learning and school life.Each
of the examples chosen for this paper raises issues of borders related
to race and ethnicity.We thus ignore
many other types of borders that exist and indeed, are constructed, within
our educational institutions.Following
the presentation of a series of examples, we examine some forces that either
facilitate and enhance, or obstruct and distort, the possibility of movement
between ‘we’ and ‘they’, i.e., between the communal self and the communal
other – movement we affirm is necessary for the development of a sense
of community in which difference is acknowledged and respected.
Rigidity:
Creating Barriers Between Self and Others
One
of the most graphic examples of creating a barrier between one group of
people and another came from a teacher in a small school serving predominantly
Navajo students.The staff had spent
the afternoon engaged in a workshop with the stated purpose of trying to
discover why students, despite several years of concerted effort on the
part of teachers to help them to be ‘successful”[2]
were still achieving below the 10th
percentile on a nationally-normed standardized achievement test.Following
the workshop, one of the teachers commented, “These students are just not
hungry enough.We prepare a smorgasbord
for them but they just don’t eat.”When
one author suggested that perhaps the food was not appetizing or that it
might not be food that was desired by these patrons, the respondent persisted,
“No, the food is fine; they are just not hungry.”The
teacher continued, “I don’t need to change.What
I do is fine; they just do not want to learn.”Less
than 10 minutes later, the teacher tended his resignation to his principal.Acknowledging
that he had long been struggling to gain student respect and to have them
attain academic success, he indicated that he no longer wanted to struggle
against the odds and remain in teaching.In
his comments, the use of the pronouns ‘I,’ ‘we,’ and ‘they’ appears to
be a way of erecting an impermeable or unalterable border, one that denies
teacher responsibility for student learning and which relegates blame totally
to the students perceived as recalcitrant and unmotivated.
Another
instance in which such separation may be perceived as a form of racism
comes from an incident that occurred between a teacher with over fifteen
years of experience and her first grade class.The
teacher halted the afternoon lesson and called an unscheduled recess, leading
the class (in which approximately 40% of the students were African American)
out the back door to the playground.Here,
she instructed four “misbehaving” African American boys not to talk among
themselves, but rather to watch from a bench while the others played their
various games.If one projects oneself
into the boys' position, it is hard not to construct the experience as
'we' (the 'bad' ones, the selected four) vs. 'they' (the 'good' ones, the
others).Further, given the deliberate
nature of the act, it is difficult not to think this 'we' vs. 'they' construction
was the overt intention of the teacher who subsequently explained her actions
as teaching them to realize the consequences of their misbehavior.
Another instance in which a 'we' vs. 'they' construction was clearly established comes from the data on one Canadian secondary school.In that community, changing area demographics had resulted in a rapid shift in the student population from one which was predominantly Caucasian to one which was about 50% Asian.There, both teachers and students talked about how the student body divided along racial lines.One teacher stated:
Many of the recent arrivals from Asia seem to come from money and what you get is the segregated cafeteria and segregated parking, so it’s the Asian students who park along [the front] and the Caucasian students who park along [the side].So there’s an interesting segregation there; and of course the wealthier cars tend to be [at the front].
Students’
statements supported the perception of divisions: “If you walk down the
hall at lunch you see the Orientals sitting in one place and the white
people sitting in another and in the classroom, in my math class, two rows
on the right hand side are all white and the rest are all Oriental.”Respondents
also told us that since the Asian students ate and studied in the cafeteria,
the Caucasian students tended to eat lunch sitting in the halls and did
not have a place to study.Many of
the extra-curricular activities tended to be divided along racial lines;
and there were even two informal smoking areas, one for Asians, the other
for whites.While these respondents
tended to enact the pronouns ‘we’ and ‘they’ rather than verbalize them,
the separation of groups created barriers that inhibited the development
of a sense of community within the school.
The
construct of 'we' and 'they' surfaced in other situations with the potential
to have a direct impact on student learning.An
African American parent participating in one of our studies affirmed unequivocally
that teachers in her neighborhood school both talk about and treat her
daughter differently from her Caucasian classmates.In
another school, designated as “inner city," teachers often stated that
students in their classes were from ‘at-risk' home cultures characterized
by divorce, poverty, or abuse, and hence that they were unable to learn
or keep up to those with more advantageous home situations. “We can’t teach
them anything until they develop some self-esteem,” said one teacher.
Such
exclusive 'we'-'they' oppositions were not limited to perceptions of students
in this school; our teachers often so objectified parents.One
spoke about having ordered new couches for the school foyer to attract
parents, because “if they don’t have a place where they can feel comfortable,
they won’t come.”Later, the school
principal described an unstructured evening event, a dinner that was provided
by the teachers for the parents.He
reported that following the dinner, he had thought he might introduce all
of the teachers, but then had decided that introductions would not work
because he had been convinced no one would listen.His
explanation was that “the school is unstructured because you can’t superimpose
structure, because they [the parents] don’t understand it.”
We
found a similar attitude, characterized by what might be termed learned
helplessness on the part of students at that same school, reflected in
the perception that because 'we' are poor, we need care by a richer ‘they.’One
sixth grade girl reflected on equity issues, arguing that most people should
help the poorer schools improve.“If
I was a big government person who worked for all the schools, that’s what
I’d do.I’d say, ‘well you’ve got
so much and they’ve got so little; maybe the kids aren’t as smart there
as the ones here but they still need a better area to be around.’”
One
further example suggests that separations such as we have been presenting
may become well-entrenched habits of selective vision.Brian,
the captain and only black player on his basketball team, described walking
into a Sizzler restaurant in Atlanta with his teammates.
I
walk in and I go, ‘You guys notice anything different?’They're
like ... they look around.They go,
‘No.’I go ’You notice the fact
that all the black people are sitting on one side of this restaurant and
all the whites are sitting on another.’They
go, ‘Yeah, you're right.’So I go,
‘Don't these things click into you?’I
mean for me it was automatic.
The
illustrations above are but a few of the many examples we found of ‘we’
constructs constituting barriers to border crossing or community.Indeed,
although we found considerably more examples of these than of the opposite,
we move now to describe some examples of times when there was movement
between the sense of ‘we’ and ‘they’ or at least potential for such movement,
as suggested by Brian’s attempt to educate his teammates to recognize separations
of ‘we’ from ‘they.’
Finding
Self in the Other and the Other in Self
Many
of our examples of movement between self and others are somewhat tentative,
perhaps to some extent even unconscious efforts on the part of students
and teachers.Yet, we believe that
they contain clues about how to encourage conscious and explicit movement
from uncompromising ‘we’-’they’ distinctions to those which are fluid and
temporary in nature, distinctions which may have the potential to create
more educative and democratic[3]
communities.
In
the following examples, we find evidence that some students attempt to
understand the socially constructed barriers they encounter on a regular
basis.Consider the statements of
a group of students from the Canadian secondary school whose divisions
along ethnic lines were described earlier.Some
comments from a discussion about whether all students should be obliged
to speak English provide evidence that, while some could explain the separation,
they also wanted the barrier to be overcome in order for a heightened sense
of community to develop.A First
Nations student[4]
stated (somewhat poignantly) that if she could speak the language of her
band, she would want to do so at school too.A
Caucasian student commented that when you go to “the cafeteria and there’s
a lot more Asian people there together, it’s understandable that when you
go to another country you would want to talk to people who are from your
country.”A third student acknowledged
cultural obstructions to border crossing:
In this school are immigrants from Asia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, where you go to school to learn and nothing more than that.You go to class, shut up, write everything down, memorize, do the test, then leave school.... They do what they did before and we can’t explain it because it’s a different culture.
Some
students seemed to encounter greater difficulties in understanding the
behavior of the ‘others.’A few,
for example, argued that speaking a home language was only acceptable if
one could not also speak fluent English.Other
comments, perhaps slightly more sympathetic, still revealed the difficulty
of expanding the concept of self.Talking
about the presence of English as a Second Language (ESL) classes within
the school, one girl asserted, “I love the fact that we have it here and
it’s offered and I just think that if the kids could have some kind of
stronghold that makes them intertwine with all the others ... It just needs
a bit of work to make students fully understand our culture and our country.”While
in this statement she clearly wants to understand and accept the other,
she envisages primarily a one-way change, a kind of assimilation of the
other into her culture.Yet the intertwining
metaphor she uses holds potential for increasing understanding in both
directions.Her comment recognizes
a need for students to see interaction as important if school is to become
a place where vital social understanding and border crossing occurs.
Using
the ‘we’ vs. ‘they’ construction of discourse that has framed our discussion,
one boy described an experiment he and some friends conducted on some Asian
students from this secondary school.“We
tried this thing in science where we went up to Asian girls and asked if
we could borrow a pen and they had all these clear bags so you could see
that they had a million pens; but they all said, 'No, I don’t have one.'I
couldn’t understand it.I have Asian
friends and I like them a lot.”Here,
the exercise served to highlight the extent of the rigidity of the social
barriers, although the student finished his comment with a kind of transposition
of his own, in which he affirmed an occasional social and emotional affiliation
with the ‘other.’
An
activity in the inner city elementary school appears to provide an example
of the kind of interaction that was sought by the students from the secondary
school, for although it was designed to help one group of students to feel
a sense of belonging within the school, it in fact led disparate groups
of students to “intertwine.”First
Nations students constitute almost half of this small school’s student
population of approximately 240 students.Many,
however, had been experiencing difficulty with school -- attendance was
poor, students were often late, and a number were not achieving well academically.During
the 1994-1995 school year, in an attempt to address the needs of these
students, the faculty introduced Cree drumming into the school.Under
the guidance of one of the teachers, students would actually sit in the
front foyer and drum other students into school during the first 15 minutes
of the school day.
In
this specific cultural situation, although originally conceived as a way
of increasing on-time arrival at classes, drumming helped to reduce the
boundaries between 'we' and 'they'.Students
who chose to participate, largely, but not exclusively, First Nations students,
began the instructional day with eight students at a time gathered around
the large Cree drum, holding drumsticks and singing and chanting loudly
and enthusiastically while the teacher used hand signals to have them soften
or slow their drumming or to increase the beat.Asian
and Caucasian students joined with First Nations students in the chanting
and drumming.
One
evening the school sponsored a pow-wow at which professional drummers drummed
uninterrupted in the gym throughout the evening.The
master of ceremonies invited the audience, students and adults from this
school community and from a visiting suburban school, to participate.Although
those who actually danced were primarily First Nations students, occasionally
some from other ethnic groups also joined in.Thus,
the infectious power of the drumming (cf. Pillsbury, 1996) served to invite,
at least temporarily, those who had been outsiders into a more encompassing
'we.'A comment from a Vietnamese
parent provides evidence.She stated
that when she saw how carefully the school attended to the needs of the
First Nations students through drumming, she could “be confident that it
would also treat the culture and needs of [her] daughter with respect.”
An
interview segment from a college basketball study serves as our final example
of an occasion when ‘we’ becomes broad enough to include ‘they.’Consider
the response of Julia, a co-captain, when asked about her reactions immediately
following her team’s loss to its arch rival.After
mentioning that she had encouraged a teammate, she continued:
I don't think I talked to anybody ... I talked to a lot of the Jeff U. players, to the Jeff U. Coach at the reception.I almost went to Jeff U. ... Yeah, so I know Coach Wilson pretty well and a couple of players and a couple of players who graduated and so I … went in and had a chat with Coach Wilson and talked to her for awhile.It's kind of interesting when they come.I think, "Well, what if it had been the other way around.What if I had been playing for them and we had been playing Huntington, but I actually never regretted the decision to be at the University.
What happens in the brevity of these words is significant.Julia tentatively tries on membership in the rival group, making them into her hypothetical ‘we,’ thus converting her present team to a hypothetical ‘they.’Her imaginative and hypothetical reversal of the situation provides the impetus for her to wonder what the situation might be should the roles be reversed – a situation that appears to stimulate some introspection and self-reflection.
Although
we have been presenting situations in which barriers have been examined,
and in part, reduced or eliminated, not all separations are undesirable.Rather
than spotlight and thereby diminish an “out” group, teachers can use a
temporary separation to generate the distance needed to adopt a critical
perspective on the “in” group, the implied 'we'.One
incident exemplifies the potentially productive effect of such a separation
that may in fact lead to an increased respect for difference.A
kindergarten teacher asked for examples of non-living things.One
boy responded, "Indians."Here, the
teacher used the separation of groups implied in the student response to
create a gently critical perspective."No,”
she replied, "Stacy [a student in the class] is part Native-American.They
are still alive.Sometimes we think
they lived a long time ago."Momentarily
separating Stacy and Native-Americans from the community of the classroom
did not so much create an out-group as it encouraged the students to look
a bit more critically at themselves as a group and their misconceptions.
Developing
Meaning and Understanding from the Vignettes
The
vignettes presented so far have demonstrated a range of conceptions of
self and other, from rigidity and exclusivity to fluidity and interchange.In
this section, we begin to examine some of the conditions that enable and
promote the movement inherent in the latter and discuss their implications
for educators wanting to foster the development of schools as communities
of difference.We return to the
account of Julia as a starting point for uncovering how movement in representations
of self and others may occur.
When
Julia reflects on what it might have been like if her situation had been
reversed and she had played ball for the other team, she opens the possibility
of reforming boundaries and of situating herself alternatively; her group
boundaries of 'we' and 'they' are not discarded; rather, she continues
to form and reform them.These boundaries
are now fluid and the limits they create appear temporary and thus not
as obstructive as they had been.Similarly,
the non-First Nation participants in the Cree drumming or pow-wow dancing
may have temporarily increased their own self-awareness by extending themselves
into an activity of the other.We
note the absence of such flexibility and permeability in the previously
noted educators’ conceptions of the inner city 'at-risk' parent group at
the small elementary school, in the action of the first grade teacher requiring
the four little boys to sit out the contrived recess experience, or in
the smorgasbord teacher’s conception of his students.
In
contrast to such unyielding stances, Julia’s ability to exchange perspectives
is all the more remarkable given the intensity of emotions she and her
teammates expressed in this contest.The
previous year, her Huntington team had had to share the conference championship
with Jefferson University.As a
result, Huntington had come to define the Jeff U team as their arch rivals
and many of the preparations during the season had been specifically designed
to help win the two games against this team.Prior
to describing the game, Julia spoke of the Jeff U team, repeatedly referring
both to the team and its location as ‘other’:
[We've]
never beaten them there and it's very difficult to beat them there.The
refs are very bad there and the fans are real obnoxious.... It would be
a big deal to me to beat them there, ... but I check myself because ...well,
I don't want to let the whole thing depend upon whether we beat Jeff U
at Jeff U because so many things go into that.... There's a lot of things
that I can't control...
Julia's
anxiety about that team colors her characterizations of the entire community.Her
frequent use of the locator "there" actively and forcefully distances herself
from that group and community.The
referees are "bad" and the fans "obnoxious." Her
feelings are so strong and compelling that she must restrain herself from
allowing these feelings to consume her and hanging the worth of the season
on the outcome of just these two games.She
installs the separation between herself and other so vehemently that we
might expect her to be firmly anchored in the team's 'we'.Yet,
within moments of saying those words, Julia is able to effect the translocation
of self we saw in the earlier quote.
What
qualities in Julia, in others, or in the situations themselves enable such
a switch in perspectives?Several
characteristics of the vignettes we have presented offer clues about the
forces at work that both enable and constrain the respondents’ ability
to see through the eyes of the other.We
note the potential impact of what might be termed “social constraints”
on the ability of the participants in our vignettes to engage in movement
between self and other.Loyalty may
be just one of many attributes which constrain movement and erect barriers
to the respect and understanding necessary for a community of difference
to exist.For example, in the case
of the Canadian secondary school described earlier, social constraints
seemed to be expressed in the form of appearing to have the correct group
allegiance, particularly with respect to use of language or place.Yet,
some respondents expressed concern over students who persisted in speaking
Mandarin in front of them even though they had been in school together
since early elementary school.“You
know they can speak English better than you can, they get better marks
than you and they’re speaking Mandarin; it really makes me angry.”In
fact, it was the perception that language was being used in order to erect
social barriers that angered the Caucasian students.
Julia,
before admitting to talking to members of the opposing team, says, “I don’t
think I talked to anybody” but goes on to claim she “talked with a lot
of “ the Jeff U players and the coach.Perhaps
we should caution against reading too much into this comment.A
critic might say the statement is not a knowledge claim of any sort, but
rather a conversation filler while she arrives at a more substantive train
of thought.Or perhaps the denial
results from interpreting the question as “Who on your team did
you talk to?The comment seems to
reflect a focus of attention temporarily limited to her team so that immediately
after a game only teammates are possible 'anybodies'.Yet,
one further alternative is informative because it highlights the social
constraints that may color transposition of perspective between self and
other.The denial may well represent
a hesitancy to admit to talking to these ‘others.’Part
of our folk understanding of self is that it takes time to switch mental
gears.Certainly Julia might portray
herself in an unseemly light if, without a proper transition period, she
were immediately able to converse with the opponents.
Despite
the power of social constraints, we have identified several factors that
seem to encourage movement between ‘we’ and ‘they.’Notice
first the hypothetical nature of some of the efforts.Julia
endeavors, albeit for a very short period of time, to switch mental and
emotional perspectives from self to other: "I think, well, what if it had
been the other way around.What
if I had been playing for them and we had been playing Huntington?”Students
in several of the earlier vignettes who moved towards switching perspectives
demonstrated the same ability to engage in hypothetical reflection.Recall
the students who attempted to understand the perspective of Asian students:“If
I were in their place....” in a foreign country, what would I want?Likewise,
the sixth grade student wanting to improve the lot of her school, actually
moved the hypothetical further into the realm of the imaginary.As
we saw above, she imagines what she would say were she an important politician.In
these instances, it may be that the hypothetical nature of the reflection
provides a degree of safety that permits the tentative movement towards
an ‘other.’
Brian,
the African American basketball player who called into question the vision
of his teammates as they entered a restaurant, wanted in that instance
to enlarge or transpose their vision; in another instance, his hypothetical
reflection involved a transposition, not of others, but of self.Later
in his interview, he recalled seeing the only two black players from an
opposing team.These two had not
played during the game and afterwards sat quite apart from their teammates:
All
I could think of was, ‘Why on earth were they at this school?’ Because
of all the [conference] schools they could have gone to... they could have
went [sic] to a program that was more suited for them.I
mean and now I'm totally stereotyping and guess they were from the inner
city environment and they probably played a more up tempo style of basketball
and I was thinking, if I had gone to [their school], I could have got my
education at Huntington and played anywhere.
Here
it is important to note that shared ethnicity was not sufficient to create,
either linguistically or symbolically, a sense of community with these
players.Indeed Brian continues to
hold the players from an opposing team as a separated 'they'.Rather
than serving as a way to enter into their world, Brian's rhetorical question,
"Why on earth were they at this school?" serves as a form of criticism
that reinforces a separation from them that he acknowledges when he admits
to stereotyping them.
Brian’s
failure to establish community, even on a hypothetical level, may indicate
that movement between ‘we’ and ‘they’ is an inherently risky activity which
requires a considerable level of security – a level that perhaps Brian
does not feel with his teammates.He
does, however, find enough of himself in the situation to embark on further
imaginary exploration.What if,
he imagines, he were able to attend his present college but play for the
Black coach at the other?The encounter
does appear to provide the impetus for reflection that preserves the desirable
aspects of his present situation and recreates others.
A
second condition that we note in a number of the cases in which boundaries
became flexible was the presence of a precipitating thought or event.The
kindergarten teacher was responding to a specific student response about
"Indians"; drumming was presented as a response to a perceived problem
-- student tardiness; Brian entered a segregated restaurant with his teammates;
and Jeff U's presence in Huntington's gym caused Julia to reflect, like
Robert Frost, on potential experiences not chosen.In
some instances, the precipitating event or trigger was deliberate and overt;
in others it was a more internalized thought or reflection that apparently
made the transposition of perspectives easier or more likely.
Certainly
one might argue that precipitating events were just as present in those
situations that led to the creation or reinforcement of more rigid boundaries.A
faculty workshop in the Native American school seemed to prompt the teacher's
smorgasbord analogy; a teacher's perception of acts of misbehavior prompted
the first-graders’ unscheduled recess.The
critical difference, however, may not be the presence of such events, but
the level of awareness of them.Perhaps
the ability of those able to engage in a translocation of self stems from
a greater degree of self-reflection.In
some cases, the level of reflection associated with some degree of movement
between ‘we’ and ‘they’ appears to be increased as participants hold positions
of responsibility, particularly those in which students find themselves
in the position of having to represent their group to others.
Julia's
feelings of responsibility for her team took a number of forms. As co-captain
of the team, she began a players’ only pre-game retreat before each game,
led warm-ups, systematically publicly assessed the team's play during time-outs,
and taught the team new plays throughout the season.In
her retelling of the Jeff U game, her sense of responsibility for the actions
of her teammates come out clearly in her description of the post-game reception.
Again
nobody was social.... One of the few things Coach and I agree on is that
when you go to these receptions, no matter win or lose, the classiest way
to deal with those is to be social with the other team, with the other
coaches, with the parents.You don't
sit in the corner and eat.And plus
it's more enjoyable that way.It's
more fun that way. ... We had one team lined up sitting down on
one side and half of their team lined up sitting on the other side and
I was just like, ‘Argg!’, you know...I guess maybe it's hard for some people
but you'd think after a couple of years... You're dealing with people that
are doing the same things you're doing.It's
pretty easy to find things to talk about.
The
responsibility she felt toward the team separated her from her teammates,
serving a function analogous to the kindergarten teacher's temporary separation
of Stacy from her non-Aboriginal classmates.In
order to represent the team to outsiders, she had, to a limited extent,
to adopt their perspective on her team.In
other words, she had to embrace both perspectives at once.Such
an inclusive perspective helped to preclude unreflective immersion in her
teammates' experience.She achieved
a reflective stance towards the community, a stance that recognized and
sought to overcome the segregation of teams.
Here
again a precipitating event, the post-game reception, likely encouraged
the transformation of perspective.But
it is also Julia’s sense of responsibility which, as she includes students
from the rival team into her conversation circle, in some sense serves
to unite inherently oppositional viewpoints, at least temporarily, into
an inclusive 'we'.
In
our other examples of movement from 'they' to 'we', we also found acceptance
of responsibility helping to draw lines of connection, influence and interdependence
between self and others.Students,
of all ethnic backgrounds who took responsibility for morning drumming
were observed more frequently than others embracing friendships beyond
their own classroom or ethnic group.Brian,
also, in his capacity as captain of his team expressed his acceptance of
this responsibility by endeavoring to enlarge his teammates' perspectives.Even
the sixth grader mentioned earlier, although misrepresenting herself and
her peers not only as poorer, but also as less smart than students in wealthier
schools, sought some measure of responsibility for her peers by imagining
herself as a politician.
In
contrast, neither the math teacher who prepared a smorgasbord for Native
American students nor the first-grade teacher who called an unscheduled
recess appeared to accept responsibility to engage in an educative role
with others; rather by their words and actions, they held a group of others
separate and distant from themselves.While
both might disavow the notion, their actions suggest they sought, in part,
to keep the other from having any bearing on themselves.In
fact, in the former case, in what we perceive to be an ironic (and perhaps
ultimately highly responsible) decision, rejection of responsibility to
the group ultimately led to the teacher’s decision to leave teaching.In
the latter, the poignant aspect of the situation is that the teacher did
not appear to be aware of the overt message she was communicating.In
her attempt to convey to the boys a message that misbehavior brings undesirable
consequences, her chosen course of action demonstrated, in our opinion,
the undesirable consequence, not of misbehavior, but of another’s representation
of such behavior.Here, representation
of part of the group, ‘we,’ to the other part, ‘they,’ resulted in the
creation, rather than the reduction of a barrier.
Implications
for Educators
Our
data have suggested that ‘we’ vs.’they’ constructions are easily found
throughout the education system.We
have identified instances when such constructions erect permanent, rigid
barriers and others when the barriers appear more temporary and permeable.Where
we have found considerable rigidity of perspective, often (but not exclusively)
in situations where different cultures have come into contact with one
another, we have also found, constructions of 'we' and 'they' which serve
to perpetuate racism and discrimination.Locating
blame and fault within specific groups of 'they,' thereby separating the
other from self appears unfortunately, to be too common a practice.Thus,
oppositional ‘we’ - ‘they' identities frequently established impermeable
barriers; but, as we have seen in this paper, it is the degree of inflexibility,
rather than the constructions themselves which create the greatest problems.
Our
analysis of a variety of incidents, with particular emphasis on how movement
suggesting the possibility of border crossing occurred in some of them,
holds some implications for educators who may wish to make conscious efforts
to encourage movement between constructions of ‘we’ and ‘they.’
We
have found, consistent with the suggestion of the secondary school student,
that where students “have some kind of stronghold that makes them intertwine”
'with each other, some movement towards a more fluid conception of ‘we’
and ‘they’ occurs.Temporarily grouping
and regrouping students to achieve the perspective needed for critical
reflection as the kindergarten teacher did holds this potential.Likewise,
we have seen strongholds created through drumming, pow-wow dancing, and
basketball.As the student observed,
it “needs a bit of work to make students fully understand”; however, we
believe that our data have demonstrated that the work may be worthwhile.Finding
ways for students to interact in a variety of settings and facilitating
intertwining rather than accepting the status quo of separate parking,
smoking areas, and seating arrangements, for example, may be one way to
help them understand the invisible and important aspects of the social
construction of school life (Anderson, 1990).Further,
had the teachers of the inner city school provided opportunity for interaction
between teachers and parents, rather than merely having the teachers provide
a meal for the parents, some movement might also have been noted there.
We
have noted several elements of successful movement that may provide starting
points from which educators might work.These
included engaging in compelling hypothetical reflection, making explicit
the impetus of a precipitating event for movement towards reconceptualization
of self, and recognizing the role of responsibility in drawing that connection.All
three of these can help students begin the process of identifying with
the ‘other.’
We
have identified the use of hypothetical reflection as a potentially safe
and certainly temporary way of beginning the movement towards overcoming
rigidity of barriers in order to accomplish the self-awareness advocated
by Mead (1932) and later by other writers previously cited (Crapanzano,
1990; Ochs, 1990; Ricouer, 1992).For
at least some of our participants, the hypothetical reflection may have
been a first step towards understanding Buber’s (1958) I - Thou relationship
which we posit as fundamental for a community of difference.Indeed,
we have examined at some length examples of how this type of activity has
fostered at least tentative and partial relocation of self and dislocation
of barriers.Helping students, through
discussion, role play, intentional reversals of situations and the like
to understand what it feels like to ‘walk in another’s shoes’ are pedagogical
strategies we suggest could intentionally and explicitly foster border
crossing.
The
importance of precipitating events or triggers has been noted by a number
of theorists of educational change (Fullan, 1993; Tichy & Devanna,
1986).In addition, recent perspectives,
such as Wheatley’s (1993) application of aspects from chaos theory and
other sciences to organizational life, suggest that although it is not
possible to control human behavior, it is important to develop an understanding
of patterns, and further, to try to identify the triggers which will precipitate
a change in the formation of such patterns.Our
investigation suggests that educators who make use of triggers in order
to help others change patterns of thought or behavior may also help in
the reduction of barriers.
Giroux
(1997) posits that representations of ourselves -- either self-representations
or depictions by others -- shape our understanding of self.We
have found that giving students opportunities to take some responsibility,
not only to a given group, but for representing the group to others, fosters
potential for movement.In other
words, the opportunity for students to accept and engage in leadership
responsibilities may encourage reflection upon how a given group should
be described vis-à-vis the oppositional ‘other.’Our
examples of movement related to responsibility have been associated with
leadership in sports or drumming, and suggest that further research to
investigate the relationship between responsibility in a variety of settings
and movement in conceptions of self and others is warranted.
Related
to the representation of oneself or one’s group to others is the issue
of perceptions of correct social posture in one’s identification.We
have identified the potential for social constraints to impinge on one’s
willingness to explicitly recognize such movement away from a distinct
‘we’ and toward ‘they.’Again, explicit
exploration of the presence of these invisible and often unrecognized constraints
could help students to overcome the tendency of over-identification of
their own group as acceptable and the other as ‘obnoxious’ (as Julia described
it at one point).Such conscious
and critical exploration and discussion might also help secondary school
students understand why Asian students who speak fluent English choose
to speak Mandarin, and conversely, how this choice affects English speaking
peers, and indeed, the development of a sense of community within the school.We
therefore suggest that, like the kindergarten teacher described in this
paper, educators take seriously the notion of the teachable moment, attempt
to make use of identifiable triggers, attend to the interpretive process
engulfing such triggers, and foster opportunities for students to take
responsibility for others.
One
promising method for directing students to increase the possibility of
conceptual shifts is, of course, open, responsive, and serious discussion.In
an attempt to determine whether conscious discussion about self and others
could be productive in fostering student reflection and growth, one of
the authors led a conversation with a class of first graders.He
queried, “Is it wrong to call a bunch of people ‘they’?During
the conversation, one student asked, “What if someone said, ‘We’re playing
by ourselves?’”After two intervening
statements, a little girl reflected, “Umm, like, we’re playing by ourselves
so you can’t play.”As they explored
this issue, a boy said softly, almost to himself, “Oh no, don’t say that
you can’t play.”Shortly thereafter,
another boy, recognizing the potential for hurt, asked, “But how are you
going to describe someone else without saying 'they'”?Therein
lies the problem, clearly delineated by first-graders.A
girl continued, “When you say ‘they,’ it’s like … ‘they’ is different and
whenever we say ‘we’ it’s not different.”This
example of a conversation in which the use of language was explicitly explored
with first graders suggests that such an activity holds considerable potential
for heightening awareness and raising sensitivity on the part of students,
even among those who are very young.As
these children began to recognize, it is not that the use of ‘we’ or ‘they’
is inherently right or wrong; rather, it is how a comment is framed and
what sense of self or other is being represented which is important.
Consider
the potential such a discussion might have in the examples presented above,
in thoughts about students not being hungry for knowledge, parents needing
new couches to be willing to enter the school, the perception that the
African American child was treated differently from her peers, or the sixth-grader's
assumption that the poor needed something from richer ‘others.’In
each case, using these statements as a trigger for critical reflection
and discussion might have helped to develop a shared understanding of what
constitutes the invisible construction of barriers to the development of
community (Anderson, 1990).It would
definitely have helped to dispel some of the inaccuracies of the constructions
of ‘we’ and ‘they,’ perhaps leading to the softening of rigidities and
increasing the potential for border crossing.
Conclusion
In
this preliminary examination, we have suggested that it is important to
reject the temptation to create barriers to community by relegating blame
to a distant ‘other.’We have identified
the importance of critical reflection to prompt movement between self and
other.We have posited the importance
of creating what a student called ‘strongholds’ that encourage students
to intertwine, of enhancing opportunities for students to take responsibility
for representing themselves and their groups to others, of explicit recognition
and discussion of a precipitating event or trigger, and of enhancing self-awareness
both through the creative use of imagination and hypothetical situations
and through dialogue.We have further
demonstrated that such dialogue has the potential to encourage analysis
and critique and to increase understanding of how our concepts and language
may overtly or covertly create barriers and borders to community.
Our
initial goal in this paper was to investigate how, through behavior and
language, concepts of ‘we’ and ‘they’ are socially constructed.We
have suggested that, in many cases, rather than any permanent sense of
encompassing inclusion, it may be the possible unimpeded movement of members
into otherness or others into inclusion we must seek.Through
careful examination of both transitional experiences and the obstacles
to such, we have begun to understand how and when such movement opens the
boundaries of community and enables the critique and self-correction requisite
for the creation of communities that embrace diversity.Much
additional research is needed into conceptions of ‘we’ and ‘they,’ in which
distance or proximity, rigidity or permeability, paralysis or movement
are identified and analyzed.
Attention
to the possibility of border crossing, through an increased understanding
of linguistic and social constructions of self and other, holds one possible
key to help us to move beyond an understanding of community as a collection
of I’s coming together in a like-minded ‘we’ with similar values, beliefs,
and practices (Sergiovanni, 1994).Rather,
a recognition of and respect for difference is inherent in the more positive
of the experiences we have analyzed.Thus,
we posit that careful and explicit consideration of the constitution and
reconstitution of ‘we’ and ‘they’ within educational communities holds
potential for creating communities of difference (Shields & Seltzer,
1997; Tierney, 1993) or of otherness (Furman, 1996).In
turn, this may help us to overcome the exclusivity and prejudice of community
when more narrowly defined.Providing
experiences in school intentionally directed toward this end may be a vehicle
for helping students to embark on lifelong, shared journeys of border crossing.
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ENDNOTES