Antiracism and Antididacticism
We are all racist if we've grown up embedded in systemic racism, so there's no such thing, really, as non-racism. But we can be both racist by socialization and antiracist by choice and action. Antiracism is "a powerful collection of policies that lead to racial equity and justice, and are substantiated by ideas of racial equality" (How to be a [Young] Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi & Nic Stone, p. 19).
Over the past decade, I've been trying to make my pedagogy and consequently my classes more overtly antiracist...not always successfully, because some of my attempts to discuss and critique racism in class have resulted in students thinking what I was doing was racist! I'm trying not to let those experiences scare me into inaction. Over the past year, I've taken part in a mostly online course for faculty at SFU called The Healing from Racism Journey, as something integral to my study leave project of redesigning my children's literature course to be more racially diverse. I was--naively--hoping for some good techniques to add to my pedagogical toolbox. I wanted to get right into developing my skills and my course designs to be more antiracist, and I learned through HRJ that I needed to spend lots more time in introspection, thinking about how I'd been socialized in white lower-middle-class Canadian culture, and developing my skills in listening to others' points of view. I needed to change myself more, in order to change how I teach for the better. I'm working on it, and will be working on it for the rest of my life. Our childhood lessons take a lot of work to change--it's usually easier to learn than to unlearn!
So, it feels good and right that one of the fields I regularly teach in is children's literature, in which I work to make my students more aware of the ideology they've absorbed from different contexts when they were younger, and how their work as parents, teachers, librarians, etc. will have significant and lasting effects on the next generations of young people. I want my students to make a start at unlearning some of their systemic lessons about childhood and children--for example, that children are by nature innocent or honest or sweet or imaginative or non-violent, all of which is Western cultural baggage from the Romantics.
Didacticism is having the qualities of a teacher (didikos in Greek), meaning teaching lessons, and children's and YA literature that adults write for young readers is always to some extent didactic, similar to the ways in which we're all racist. Texts can be overtly didactic, like episodes of Daniel Tiger or just about any other popular small children's TV program in the current North American market, but they're all implicitly didactic. Some texts are also antididactic, taking a stand against systemic didacticism and/or generic manifestations of it in texts for young readers. A famous example early in the development of antididacticism in English is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in which the parodic poems make fun of didactic poetry young English-speaking readers were forced to memorize and perform, and in which Alice looks for a poison label on the "Drink Me" bottle because she'd "read several nice little stories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts, and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them" (chapter 1). Antididactic texts are specific to their cultural contexts, making explicit the ways in which children's educational reading is invested in adult beliefs about children's nature and children's behaviour. Antididactic authors for young readers often get into trouble with parents/other gatekeepers in children's lives, and their books are often challenged and banned, especially when they recommend not believing or trusting all adults all the time (I'm thinking here of authors such as Roald Dahl, Edward Gorey, Jon Scieszka, and Shel Silverstein). My hope is that antididacticism can lead to age equity and justice, and I'm happy to celebrate both antiracism and antididacticism.
Now, I'm not arguing for a perfect parallel here between antiracism and antididacticism: I would like my world to be both less racist and more aware of the ways in which it still is racist, because racism encourages humans to devalue and mistreat each other, while I recognize that didacticism can do many more things, including encouraging humans to value and nurture each other! One of my personal goals in being didikos, though, is to help my students see when they're being given lessons and what those lessons are likely to do to them...mine included. And then to assess those lessons critically with regard to equity and justice. I value antididacticism in literary texts for yourng readers because it 1) shows them that some adults are aware of how heavy-handed and self-serving adult lessons can be, and 2) teaches a lesson (ironically) about the power of lessons and the dangers of accepting them thoughtlessly, assuming adults to be infallible and reliable.
One of the lessons I learned from The Healing from Racism Journey is that my personal introspection and growth has to lead to changes in my pedagogy for it to have meaning for those around me: I need to learn for myself those classroom techniques I was hoping the course would give me in a neat package, and I feel (somewhat) better now researching and using specific anti-racist classroom techniques. I'll continue with the self-exploration. The course leaders--a big shout-out here to Bee, Sarah, and Ashley!--also asked me to share what I'd learned with my peers. This led me to talk on a panel at the 2023 SFU Teaching and Learning Symposium, for which I wrote a poem, and to organize a set of lunchtime discussions about antiracist pedagogy for my department in spring 2023 with my colleague Alys Avalos-Rivera. I hope that my department can continue with the lunchtime talks in the fall, and I'll share the poem with you here. I chose free verse (not something I normally write in) to embody the ways in which I'm trying to move beyond the inbuilt limitations and regulations of the culture I was raised in.
This may be the most important blog post I write during my study leave (it's the end of July 2023), so I thank those of you who've read it!
Poem for HRJ
Walking is how the journey starts, and how it goes.
When I was small, I learned to walk quickly, to keep up with
Those whose legs were longer.
In my eyes, my life was full of fear... of bullies, nightmares, teasing classmates,
Of dad's paycheque not lasting 'til September, of
Not being able to tie my shoes,
not being able to hit the baseball,
not being able to jump the hurdle.
But I didn't walk in fear. I walked as a protected white child,
In small-town Canada where almost everyone was white:
Noticed, believed, inevitably thought cute.
As I grew older, I lived a similarly safe life below the poverty line,
Never really homeless, enough money for bad food.
I got this job, aged forty-two, and knew myself lucky,
Lucky to escape the sessional pool,
Lucky to have a love for teaching,
Lucky to be able to do that teaching well.
But I didn't really know how lucky I'd already been,
To get the scholarships and TAships and degrees,
To feel safe in all those basement suites,
To feel a value in myself in all those years.
I've spent ten years now unpicking at my past,
Hearing and reading what others face, trying to
Be a better teacher,
Be a better person,
Be a better friend.
And so I took this extra journey, to heal from racism
To gain some tips for making classrooms anti-racist.
And I did neither!
I learned I had to pick harder at the stitches,
Walk further into self,
Then sit still and listen.
I'm still a bossy white woman,
And I like to get things done.
But I thank the people and the places that have helped me listen.
And walk more slowly.
Walking is how the journey starts, and how it goes.