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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Tahoma>[circulating on Facebook....]<BR></DIV>
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<P>U of T professor at the Women and Gender Studies Institute explains to her
students why she has moved their class off campus in solidarity with the ongoing
stri<SPAN>ke:</SPAN></P>
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<P>"I want to take a moment to explain why we are holding our class off campus
this week and why it is about more than physically crossing a picket line. My
area of research is how people learn about social justice, inequity, democracy,
participation, how they become active in the world. And what I know is that how
you experience the world matters immensely in that process. How you experience
moments such as the strike really does matter.</P>
<P>Right now, the University, like any other employer, is producing a very
important piece of ideology. By ‘ideology’ I mean the message that is being
communicated to students, faculty, workers, and the broader community is that
business as usual can continue at the university despite the fact that a large
portion of our teaching staff has had to walk off the job to protest their
working conditions. That message is also meant to communicate to us the value of
their work; that their work is of so little consequence that we can continue on
as if their absence means nothing and is not felt in our daily reality. I know
that’s not true, and probably you know that’s not true as well.</P>
<P>But there is something profoundly more insidious and disturbing to me in this
message. That is the message that we should not be disrupted or inconvenienced
by the suffering of other people, by the inequity that others must face every
day. That just because they struggle with poverty and have had to go on strike
to demand recognition from their employer, it should not disrupt our business.
But it is a disruption, it is a huge disruption. It is a disruption to our
learning, to our lives, and, very importantly, to the covenant between a school,
its students, and its teachers. It is not just a disruption, it is rupture, a
tearing apart. Look at what is being torn apart. Look at who is being torn
apart.</P>
<P>I have moved our class because I prioritize your learning. I know that how
you [my students] experience this will be very important in how you learn about
it, and I don’t want you to have the experience that there should be no
disruption. Whatever happens around you, even if it doesn’t happen to you, we
should not seek to turn away from disruption. We, as teachers in this
university, should not teach you that you can look away from what is happening
in this world to other people; that you can just avoid it, and it has no meaning
in your life beyond a bureaucratic nuisance or that what is also at stake here
is your education.</P>
<P>When these things happen, when your teachers go on strike, when an innocent
young person is shot by the police, when a woman disappears and is found in a
ditch, when we drop a bomb, we should be and feel disrupted. We should reflect
on that disruption; we should learn from it. This is part of how we learn to be
in the world as decent human beings who have an eye to the humanity of others.
We cannot go on with business as usual. So, we are here, off campus, because I
prioritize learning that takes humanity and social life
seriously."</P></DIV><BR></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>