Another student tells stories of how difficult it is to work in a correctional setting where violence is epidemic. Betty writes: “I don't want to go back to the correctional centre. I've done seven years and any ex-con will tell you that's enough. Actually my reason is that I'm too tired and hurt with losing all kinds of students. One of my best students got into a fight with a family member [last week] and ended up over-dosing. I spend a lot of time at the local poor people's funeral home and I don't like it.”

Feminist education and learning processes can be the key to positive change.

Sandra finds the struggle to help students living in violent environments often results in failure and loss. The odds of her students succeeding and surviving are poor, despite her best efforts. She questions whether positive changes can be realized within the correctional system as it is currently structured and given existing government policies. It becomes apparent that the hardships and violence inherent in a variety of workplaces are both systemic and interrelated.

Violence at School

Many women I teach struggle to understand and make sense of the issues related to violence against women using their Masters' program as a place to raise issues, question assumptions and apply feminist approaches in project work. In some cases, though, their efforts are met with resistance. For example, some learners have written about problems they experienced when assigned to an anti-feminist faculty supervisor: “When Kyle learned that I was a feminist, he told me that I could not write about creativity and strategic planning without giving an extensive explanation and justification about why I was a feminist. I remember asking him if in his writing he defined his social location and his normative assumptions. I suggested that he, too, had a social location - and that it was one of privilege. He did not appear to see the relevance of my questions.” I suspect that the violence inherent in this situation rests no only with the sexist and biased attitudes of a particular supervisor but also with unequal power relations in the teacher/learner relationship.

Some students struggle with negative memories of past schooling experiences where they were expected to conform to sexist stereotypes. As a result many have returned to university with low levels of self-confidence, high levels of anxiety and fears of failure. It is not uncommon for students such as Jane to admit that “I find academic work very alienating, as a student and as a consumer.” Many have struggled unsuccessfully in the past to find relevance in the curriculum where women are often invisible, or to feel comfortable in classrooms where competition and conformity are encouraged.

I have worked with several aboriginal students who frequently find school experiences alienating, owing to educational systems that have perpetrated violence through cultural biases. Heather writes that “I became more confused with each piece of material that I read, and reading about western ideas of adult education co-opted my own cultural philosophy and its ideas on education, teaching and learning. I have benefited from a process which required me to articulate the educational practices of my own people.” Heather went on to integrate traditional aboriginal ideas and concepts with other adult education concepts and in doing so felt she could contribute to “the growth and development of healthy aboriginal communities.” Had she not been able to negotiate a curriculum with teachers, she advised me, she would have discontinued an educational process that served to disadvantage her as an aboriginal learner.