women’s rights

The Power of We: In The Memory of Malala Yousafzai [On Thinking Globally] #BAD12

by Jose Vilson on October 15, 2012

Malala Yousafzai

Have you ever felt like the things you do in the classroom connect to some other, higher purpose?

Sometimes.

When I read about stories like Malala Yousafzai’s, it puts everything I do in the classroom in its proper perspective. For those of you who are unaware, Malala’s shown up in the news recently after Taliban rebels tried to assassinate her by shooting her in the head and neck for speaking out about education and women’s rights in Pakistan. The world has already seen a fair share of Muslim women, but what stood out for me is that she’s already posed a threat to such a nefarious group … at the age of 15.

Holy cow.

It makes me wonder how teachers can empower students to take ownership and advocate for themselves. It has scary implications for the adults who want all of the control all of the time, who prefer children to be seen and not heard, who won’t take the time to see what their students bring to the table rather than assume they know nothing, or, quite frankly, the adults who don’t care whether the students learned anything so long as they achieved on the test. This spans our entire school system, teachers included.

Yet, in Malala, we have another icon for students’ potential.

The more scaredy-cat nervous reader will say, “Well, I don’t want my students to get shot in the head and neck. They’re more effective alive and well.”

True. However, if you believe this, you’re missing the point. We can’t simultaneously believe that students these days don’t want to do anything AND we want them to become more informed. We as teachers have a responsibility to see ourselves as a primary interpreter for what children can see and do outside of their world view. Plus, coming where I come from, the alternative for getting shot for speaking out about injustice is getting shot for nonsense. I’ll take the former.

Malala, currently recovering in a hospital somewhere, has the courage of a person twice her age. Someone took it upon themselves to instill the virtues of learning more about what the world has to offer … and the obstacles she has to overcome in order to achieve true parity with her male counterparts. People with even a modicum of empathy cheer her on. But if the movement for students (girls in particular) to become more socially conscious citizens engaging in the problems and solutions for the world starts with her, then we have to prompt others to take that on.

This seems like a large task, but sometimes, it comes down to just having students reason it out, telling them, “I can’t tell you the answer. You say it.”

Jose, who is participating in Blog Action Day …

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On Rape [Where An Educator Stands]

by Jose Vilson on August 23, 2012

I will confirm first and foremost that I do know women who have been raped, momentarily dispossessed from their bodies by a sexually deviant aggressor. As a listener, I can’t sit there and try to empathize because “I understand” is completely false. I don’t. I’ve never had that happen to me. While the act of rape isn’t limited to women, it overwhelmingly happens to them, and, as such, I’ve never been asked by society to become an expert in how to prevent such a heinous act.

That’s part of male privilege. I’ve never had to change my clothes or consider looking more down to earth to avoid being raped. I’ve walked by myself in the middle of night, inebriated to the gills, and bumped by innocent strangers, but no one ever took that as a sign that I was asked for a proverbial “it.” I have a lot of other “isms” I face on a daily basis, and probably a few more now that you associate a face with what I’m writing.

What Akin et. al. Sound Like To The Rest Of Us

What Akin et. al. Sound Like To The Rest Of Us

But, because I’m a guy, you might be inclined to read what I’m saying about rape. Just like if I was white, you’d love to hear my thoughts on race. Or if I was rich, you might be more inclined to hear my thoughts on poverty.

All the while, women still get raped around the world at an alarming clip (and these statistics are only the confirmed cases). The “look to your left / right …” axiom they tell you in college might also apply to statistics on sexual assault. You don’t want to hear about that, though. You want to hear that there’s really nothing you can do because you don’t rape and never have as of now. You want to hear that the laws have put away the vast majority of the offenders, that if you don’t have to see rape then it’s not so bad, that religion and morality might prevent burgeoning rapists from completing their wanton fantasies, that most of these cases get solved within an hour episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.

You want someone to absolve you of your own male guilt. I can’t do that for you. Admittedly, I often feel guilt too.

I can tell you the first step in this, though. Stop having different standards for your boys and girls when it comes to sexual relations. Tell boys (and some of your friends as well) to not rape. Don’t let alcohol or drugs cloud your judgment to the point where you forget your manners.

Consent matters.

As an educator, I often find the non-statements from men in our field counterproductive to our profession. I wouldn’t want to “reach,” but certainly, because the majority of rank-and-file teachers are women, then educators ought to support women’s rights from the womb onward. Points of interest like equal pay and workers’ rights only scratch the surface. U.S. Representative Todd Akin only lit a fire in this conversation, but he also had an adverse effect on it: he asked us to reconsider what we think is rape.

Our silence on these issues only allows people like Akin to push progress back. To the ground. Out of their bodies. And into a place where neither the average men nor woman should consent.

Jose, who needs us to take a stand …

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