Читать книгу Educating Students with Refugee and Asylum Seeker Experiences - Maura Sellars - Страница 21

This brief analysis of some of the key characteristics that Foucault suggest need to be investigated in western societies indicates that, in order to make an authentically humanitarian gesture towards entire populations of society some serious consideration needs to be concentrated on issues that these new members of society cannot raise as a matter of priority. These issues include matters that are decided at various levels of authority and expertise that hold the knowledge power balance, the aims and purposes of governmentality and who is be invested in and who is left to ‘die’ and the extent to which new arrivals within these circumstances will ever be able to engage in powerful discourse. These concerns do not only have long term impact on the individuals who are identified as those with refugee or asylum seeker experiences, but on the fabric of the societies into which these communities are settled, and on the minutiae of the daily lives of these students in schools.

The very means by which individuals and specific populations are classified and differentiated in these societies provides not only identifiers which determine those with some common experiences of refugees from those with asylum seeker backgrounds. These identifiers are used, not only establish the ascribed (Watters, 2007 p.7) status of these individuals, and the legal implications for both groups of people, they are also used to categorize those which may be classed as students and those who are not, a situation which may determine the future prospects of many young people whose statistical information is vague, unable to be processed or simply not known at all. Additionally, much of the data gathering so important to Foucault’s notion of governmentality, its apparatus and purposes may also have little or no relevance in the countries where many of refugee and asylum seekers originated.

Watters (2007 p.7) notes that particularly pertinent to the categorization process is the notion of chronological age, with Western perspectives of childhood identifying this group as between 0 – 17 years of age. This is a particularly sensitive assessment for many students with refugee experiences and asylum seeker backgrounds because, not only may statistical information be unavailable, irrelevant to them socially and culturally or completely unknown, young people may appear considerably more mature and hence older than their Western counterparts as the consequence of their experiences, additional responsibilities and obligations; both to themselves and others. Failing to identify within the 0-17 age range impacts considerably, not only on their educational opportunities, but also on their access [27] to health and welfare support and to programs focussed on enabling successful integration which are primarily developed for those identified as students. This initial classification process continues to impact on the level of schooling that identified students are allowed be enrolled in, irrespective of their multiple, diverse educational experiences and academic prowess.

This aspect of governmentality that pervades what may otherwise be considered educational opportunities for self-improvement, socialization and academic growth frequently results in students with refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds being placed in inappropriate classroom contexts relative to their understandings of Western school systems, their operations and procedures, and, importantly, the epistemological foundations of these institutions which are regarded as ‘truth’ and which exclude all other epistemologies as without value or currency. Issues which have critical impact on the capacities of students with refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds are not limited to notions of childhood or age. For those who are admitted to the educational institutions, there may be expectations from some cultural groups that their children and young people be placed in the contexts where they are most likely to develop basic competencies that are decisive in terms of potential future success, irrespective of the student’s age and with reference to their background of formal schooling, interrupted schooling or perhaps no previous experience of schooling at all (Brown, Miller, & Mitchell, 2006; Dooley, 2009, 2012; Emert, 2014; McWilliams & Bonet, 2016; E. Miller, Ziaian, & Esterman, 2018; J. Miller, 2009). The ‘norms’ of classification that are applied to Western schooling processes and procedures preclude any other than age- based criteria. Consequently, many students in these groups have their educational prospects marred by the lack of skills, knowledge and capacities that are ‘taken for granted’ as foundational competencies for future learning in their new homelands.

For students who have the ascribed classification of refugee or asylum seeker, there may be another classification applied; that of students at risk; which in itself is used as an identification mechanism in the Foucauldian notion of ‘othering’ or practices of subdividing within technologies of government. This practice is present in the power/knowledge paradigm discussed by Foucault (1998) and the colonialism of Said (1978). When a population is ‘othered’ it serves to prioritise any of their perceived weaknesses and strengthen the sense of power of those doing the othering. When this is used as mechanism by governments or authorities, it serves to ensure the hierarchy of these bodies and reinforce their position in this order of power. This ‘othering’ leads to the perspective that students with refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds are ‘problems’ that need to be addressed in a particular, specific manner by policymakers and ‘micromanaged’ by teachers (Watters, 2007 [28] p.126). This perspective of this population of students in western classrooms typically leads to three major discursive domains focussing on child development, trauma, risk and resilience, the normative basis and evaluative criteria of which are exclusively based in western perspectives, ideologies and theory and formulated in the context of institutional parameters and procedures with little concern or consideration of cultural difference.

This exclusive perspective on universalized child development processes infused with western cultural norms not only has the effect of classifying students with refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds with the consequence of setting them outside the norm, but of concealing important issues that are related to social power, culture and identity. This absolute confidence of the western perspective of child development is challenged by LeVine (2010 p. 31), who notes in his commentary on theories of child development developed using observations from American clinical practice;

…..other non-pathological variants of childhood social development are possible in cultures with differing developmental goals. In this instance, the psychiatric theory ignored or underestimated the plasticity of human social and emotional development and claimed, in effect, that deviation from American standards of child rearing would lead to psychopathology, a claim that cannot survive empirical scrutiny of in diverse cultures. The evidence we have so far indicates that, on the contrary, there are multiple pathways….….to healthy or at least non-pathological psychic conditions in adulthood.

The implications technologies of power which are manifested as school routines and strictures and of a western model of ‘optimal’ child development being utilized to address the perceived problems of a Burundian family settled in an American town becomes clear in the narrative of Anders and Lester (2014). They describe how Burundian students in an elementary school are forbidden to speak their heritage (first) language, how they are isolated from their siblings and not permitted to visit each other during school hours or speak to each other if they pass in the hallway. Silent, single file constitutes a regulatory passage to and from class and to and from lunch. There is no collaboration permitted in classroom activities; each student is expected to work alone. Amid this administrative, controlling interaction, one Burundian child (Spiderman) becomes depressed, his teacher has low expectations for him despite his academic achievements, indicating a lack of intention to consider him worth investing in. Amongst all this authoritative power and micromanaging, the reasons Anders and Lester describe their work as “Specifically, we detail the power non-Native, whitestream, racist institutions deploy to do harm” (Anders & Lester, 2014 p.169) becomes apparent.

In discussing the ‘depth and layers of suffering’ that these students endured as the result of resettlement circumstances, the authors began to question their own [29] perspectives of inequity were allowing them to develop any real understanding of the suffering of these students in the research context. They write;

As Farmer (2005) has noted, the denial of the real origins of suffering “serves the interest of the powerful” (p. 17). There were feelings we had about our own experience in the process that seemed untranslatable, and there were issues we wanted to address that were not neatly tied to data points. Our interpretations of the non-Native, whitestream, and racist institutional norms that school and health professionals reproduced to maintain authority and power in the school and in the only health system to which Spiderman and his family had access revealed unadulterated condemnation (Grande, 2004; Urrieta, 2005 in Anders & Lester 2014 p.171).

While Foucault (1991) urges a positive perspective on the potential of power in his later work on governmentality, this narrative is a wretched example of much of what he perceives institutional power in society to represent in his earlier works (Foucault, 1977). The senseless imposition of petty, inhumane and uncaring rules, routines and discourses designed to dehumanize and ‘normalize’ in the institutional context of the educational professionals is only surpassed by the resultant medical treatment of Spiderman. His depression was diagnosed and treated with drugs intended, not for children, but for adult psychosis and schizophrenia. His parents were excluded from the Foucauldian discourse which determined this outcome. Spiderman was threatened with school penalties for his subsequent sleepiness in class.

In an attempt to understand the situation with the medication prescribed and the side effects this was causing more fully, Spiderman’s parents and the researchers of this study endeavoured to engage in dialogue with both school and health professionals. Their enquiries resulted in the many mechanisms of power being engaged by both cohorts of ‘experts’, ultimately revealing, in this instance, the powerlessness of the parents and those who supported them in the face of those who wielded institutional power and authority. Spiderman’s parents were issued with an ultimatum; cease all contact with the researchers or seek support independently. Out of fear and lack of resources, they chose the former. It would appear, in this instance, that Foucault’s (1997) concern that branches of the medical professional had changed their role of healing to one of oppression and censorship to avert any societal contact with those outside of the ‘norm’ is credible. The issue that is most alarming in this narrative, however, is the notion that all of these actions were viewed as acceptable by individuals who worked as part of these systems. Leask (2012) comments;

Teachers are, in essence, ‘technicians of behaviour’, or ‘engineers of conduct’ (Foucault, 1979, p. 294), who have absorbed (or, rather, are formed by) a set of disciplinary norms which they, in turn, impose upon their charges. …….. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, education would also seem to be a core element in the production of us (p.60).

[30] In this instance, it is difficult to defend the ways in which these teachers and health professionals ‘have been formed’ and have imposed their ‘disciplinary norms’ and power play upon those in their care. Campbell (2007), notes that because education is such a value laden profession, teachers may become ‘desensitized’ to their own behaviours. These ‘ behaviours may include engaging in actions which are unfair, patronizing, bullying or arrogant and those considered to be basically immoral (Sellars, 2017 p. 36). Farmer (2005 p. 28), notes, ‘Structural violence takes its toll in ways that seem to defy explanation’. In this case, the structural violence is operationalized through the school, viewed by Tait (2013) as being primarily about regulation and inculcation and not, as commonly viewed, as predominantly concerned with educating students to maximize their potential. He notes (2013, p. 91) ‘if you want to understand how we govern contemporary societies, the first place to look is the school’, a perspective that is validated by the very nature of compulsory schooling, enrolment ages, curricula and other authoritarian aspects previously discussed. Indeed, the school remains as an institution which reflects Foucault’s earliest notions of power structures.

Foucault (1995) recognised that power is exercised and operates in all directions rather than from the top down. Our education system, however, tends to a post war perspective of top down totalitarian power: education is ‘done’ to children. Foucault was concerned with places where the recipients, perhaps ‘clients’ in modern parlance, have little to say in what happens to them. This is a good description of most schools, where students have no real control over the curriculum, teaching, learning or organizational systems (Harber, 2002) in (Watson, Emery, Bayliss, Boushel, & McInnes, 2012 p. 133).

While Foucault’s (1995) also present power as a relationship dynamic in which the power of those in authority is necessarily accepted by those upon whom the power is exercised. It appears that in the case of Spiderman and his parents, the capacity to resist this authoritarian power was not able to be realized, as his parents obviously felt that they were not in any position to ‘push back’ at the agents of power. Given their position in society and in the school, it appears that they felt that they could not engage in any further investigation of Spiderman’s case. The totalitarian power of school provides potent imperative to meet the standards of the ‘norm’ and engage in institutional surveillance, monitoring and evaluative techniques, overriding any ‘self -originating ethical intention’ (I. Leask, 2012 p. 58) on the part of these professionals. It also erodes any positive disposition they may have towards developing a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship, critical to the success of students with refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds (Wilkinson & Langat, 2012).