Education is Prevention

by Nadya Burton and Leona Heillig

The last issue of WEdf told eloquently, powerfully, and painfully of the violence in women's lives and how that violence is a barrier to education. This issue attempts to focus on prevention. We hope that the pain and sadness many of us felt in response to "Learning and Violence: Women Speak Out" can be transformed into action through the strategies presented here.

Collecting articles for this issue was not an easy task. We received many submissions that did not differ significantly from those in the previous issue, stories of abuse and violation. Looking at prevention, women wrote most often of "healing," of "breaking the silence," of "speaking out." There is no question that these are extremely important aspects of prevention; without the phenomenal courage of all survivors who have spoken out there would be no anti-violence movement, and no prevention being done at all. Ending our isolation as victims of violence as well as sharing information and stories are important elements of prevention.

Yet there is another step: a process of empowering ourselves and our children to be able to avoid and prevent assaults before they happen. Both of us work at the Montreal Assault Prevention Centre, and we believe strongly that women can prevent or reduce the violence in our lives. Self-defense has been around for many years now, but a truly holistic view to assault prevention, to strategizing for the wide range of assault situations women face, begins with education. Assault prevention is education. For our (mostly male) perpetrators it means learning to deal with anger and pain in ways that don't hurt others, learning to feel empathy and compassion. For women and children it means learning about our power, about the others who have fought back, who have lived through successful resistance.

Traditional prevention strategies for women focus on an approach we call "victim control," consisting mainly of rules or tips. women are advised to follow in order to stay safe. These range from staying inside at night, not talking to strangers, to putting police locks on your doors. As well as distracting attention to the least likely form of assault (by a stranger), these rules limit our lives, curb our freedoms - in fact, take away our control - and lead to blaming the victim, especially if she didn't follow the rules. Assault prevention should improve the quality of our lives, not disempower us further.

In this issue we have tried to look to another kind of prevention; a prevention based on empowerment, not rules. We have tried to show what we see daily at the Montreal Assault Prevention Centre: that increased confidence in one's intuition and capabilities' helps us respond to all kinds of situations (overtly violent ones as well as the day-to-day harassment so many of us face); that assault prevention is a kind of education that starts with how we parent our children to be caring individuals; that women and children have the strength and ability to fight back, to get out of and avoid dangerous situations. And we believe these skills can be taught in an empowering way, a way that does not blame us for times in the past when we may not have been able to fight back.

The women's movement is on the thresh old of a new way of looking at the problem of violence against women and we are witnessing the changeover. As well as speaking out, healing ourselves, breaking silence and isolation, we are moving to a new stage of empowering ourselves to take positive steps not only to heal, but to PREVENT.

Violence is a barrier to our education. Violence prevention means we can live with the freedom to which we are entitled, to learn, to study, to live life to its fullest. We take courage and strength from the information and stories told here.

Nadya Burton and Leona Heillig are Guest Editors for this issue of Women's Education des femmes.