Introducing
Isolating the Barriers and
Strategies for Prevention:
A kit about violence and women's education
for adult educators and adult learners

Most of us believe that the right to education, from kindergarten through high school, is fundamental. However, not everyone is able to fully enjoy that right; not everyone is able to obtain an education that is empowering, relevant, safe and useful. Women who have lived in violent homes, who have been subjected to physical or sexual abuse, who have experienced systemic violence such as that experienced by many women at residential school, did not receive an education that was safe, empowering, relevant or useful.

Responding to these concerns, many school systems in Canada have developed resources and programs to educate both students and teachers about child abuse and spousal assault. Unfortunately, the same is not true for post-secondary education and training or adult education. There are few materials to enable female adult learners and those who work with them to understand, to cope with or to prevent violence in their own lives or in the lives of women around them. Often, women who have survived violence cannot cope with both the trauma of violence and with learning. Women may also experience violence in their home when they continue their education as adults.

Instructors and teachers are seldom trained to recognize the signs of abuse, especially emotional abuse, nor are they given the necessary resources and professional development to deal with such situations. Often instructors, counsellors and teachers are not connected to the community supports and networks for both survivors and women currently experiencing abuse.

The Project

The Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women (CCLOW), a national, feminist voice for women's education and training, works to raise the general awareness of the impact violence has on a woman's education and her ability to learn. In 1988, CCLOW-Quebec produced a handbook, "From Victim to Survivor," which encourages women to define themselves as survivors, not victims. In 1993, two special issues of our quarterly magazine, Women's Education des femmes, focused on violence and women's education. Next we conducted a series of pilot workshops, designed by CCLOW members, in four areas of the country. The success of the workshops and our learning from them made CCLOW members realize that we needed to share this information and seek out experiences from teachers and adult learners.

This kit is designed for adult educators and is our way sharing some of our experiences and ideas. We also hope it will encourage you to think about the issues raised here, to use the ideas and techniques discussed by our authors, to share this material with your learners, to adapt and/or expand these ideas so they suit your learners, and to collect materials from your community.