Two things happened. Number one, [the women-only class]
turned into a consciousness-raising group, a really tight little group of
women, who gave each other support about all kinds of stuff. And they did a
whole lot of literacy work around that. It worked beautifully in terms of them
using reading and writing skills to tackle their problems, as well as doing
some straight academic work...
So they took students at a certain range of ability and took
the women out. So what they were left with were the men. And most of the men
turned out to be more or less young boys. And nobody wanted to teach that
group. They were a pretty depressing bunch and very difficult to teach...
So the next term it came up and we were going to do this
again and the woman who had taught the all-women's group was too frightened.
Basically she said "I don't think that what we were doing there could be called
literacy work." ... She was quite terrified at having the group take
over...
Those women four years later still either knew each other,
or asked about each other whenever they saw any of us connected with that
department ...
We never had it again... She was a very strong voice. She
was the one that had had the direct experience and she could testify that it
wasn't really a useful class in terms of their literacy instruction. And
because we said, very clearly, that no one wanted to teach what was left-the
men-which was the boys mostly...
They weren't as motivated, they didn't have the social
skills... So the tone dropped ...The women carry on the social interaction so
the men are drawn into it. And they take care to include them and they watch
out for anybody who's not being taken care of ...
One man said that he could imagine taking it on, but you'd
have to develop this whole program, this whole curriculum you'd have to take
that on as separate from teaching them literacy. I mean, do you want to become
a socializing teacher. I mean most of us are in it because we like having
something as tangible as literacy to help people acquire. ...When you're a
literacy instructor you get to do all that [personal and community development]
by giving them this tool. It's a real treat compared to going in and saying
"Can I be of any help?"...
[Researcher: What the men would have been doing for the men
is going out there, and getting curriculum together and making the men better
men in the same way that women for years have tried to make the women more
effective women, more functioning women.] That's true... I have never yet, in
14 years now, taught a class in which I haven't spent a lot of time digging out
more material and searching for more pieces that would allow those women to
become stronger. That's because women are excluded in print just as they are
excluded in the rest of the media. They are excluded in our culture. So I have
this job to do. But men are in print.
[Researcher: But they're not in nurturing each other,
they're not in taking care of each other.] So of course that's what men should
be doing. [Researcher: Except that the men say, I don't want to do this, it's
too much work, put the women back in and just let the women do it.] That's very
interesting, yeah.