Frosh Rape Chants and Teaching the Y-O-U-N-G

How can we create awareness, sensitivity, and prevention of rape culture through public education?

In Canada, national news reported an offensive rape chant being sung by frosh students a mari usque ad mare.  University of British Columbia (UBC) business students in Vancouver and Saint-Mary’s University students in Halifax were filmed chanting this:  “Y-O-U-N-G at UBC we like em young Y is for yourrr sister O is for ohh so tight U is for under age N is for noo consent G is for goo to jail.”  Here is further coverage of the events:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/ubc-student-leaders-resign-over-offensive-chant-during-frosh/article14188875/

I am hesitant to include coverage by UBC’ Ubyssey because the articles I have read to date, seemingly written by fellow students, do not emphasise how unacceptable and offensive the behaviour is.  If anything, the Ubyssey articles I have read reflect the indifference (or internalised sexism) of the students involved (the following statements were made by women):

“I think it’s all passed down year after year … from forever, I guess” Chen said. “It’s not something we can control, to be honest.”

“It was just for fun, right?  It was only on the bus so I didn’t think of it as a big deal, to be honest,” she said.  “It was just kind of like, ‘Let’s have a good time, let’s go all out, it’s frosh weekend.”

The Global clips included opinions by more concerned students.  It seems than in the case of this story the mainstream media has been more progressive that student-led reporting.

Beyond the cliché, platitude, and almost insulting understatement that such chants are “not appropriate,” university and school educators must wonder how so many students signed up for higher education are able to engage in such grotesque behaviour:  turning the horrors of rape, under age sex, and tight vaginas into a pep rallying cheer to encourage camaraderie amongst new students.

Most jurisdictions require that public schools assess critical thinking (i.e. thinking – the use of creative and critical thinking skills – is one of four competencies tested in Ontario’s standardised assessment grid, from the primary to secondary level).  Many jurisdictions also have anti-sexist education programmes and sexual assault prevention and awareness programmes.  If teaching and assessing critical thinking are mandated by policy, then are education systems effectively producing critical thinkers?  And are anti-sexist and rape prevention programmes effective?

While assessment of critical thinking is mandatory, teachers, schools, and textbooks have a lot of freedom in selecting subjects to discuss and analyse.  How often are public school students considering and critiquing representations of gender (“oh so tight”), gender relations (“your sister,” “underage”), dating, courtship, consent, and rape (“no consent,” “go to jail”)?

My own efforts in anti-sexist education have left me concerned that only a minority of students seem to become interested in gender issues.  I am concerned with the perpetuation of sexism and the fact that many students do not actually understand the meaning of rape (i.e. some students – girls in the cases I am thinking of – did not recognise abusive relationships or date rape in novels or understand the concept of consent following a sexual assault prevention workshop).

My question for fellow educators – my peers – is the following:  In your respective experiences, what is public school education doing about educating students about rape and sexual assault legislation, and more abstractly, of rape culture?   What is working?  What is not working?

Applying Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology (excerpt from a work in progress)

Applying Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology to the Problem Situation:  The Problem Situation Defined

At the French school where I used to work, the mandate of the school and school board is to provide French language education and to encourage students to feel a sense of belonging to the Franco-Ontarian community. However, the vast majority of the students did not actually speak French amongst themselves.  The situation is one of irony:  An ethno-linguistic community struggles for about a century to acquire the minority language rights guaranteed by the constitution.  Once the rights are fully acquired, most students no longer speak French naturally and teachers need to actively enforce the rule that French is the language of communication within the school.  Similar situations exist in many schools across Canada in minority francophone communities.  The situation is therefore not isolated.  Historical and sociolinguistic factors can explain the situation, which varies from one region to another and from one school to another.  For example, in small rural communities, particularly in Northern Ontario and Eastern Ontario, students tend to speak French amongst themselves at school just as community members tend to speak French amongst themselves.  In urban areas where the majority of community members are English-speaking, students tend to speak more English amongst themselves and need to be cajoled to speak French. 

In 1912, the province of Ontario limited access to French language education by prohibiting instruction in French for over one hour a day for children beyond grade two.  This law, Règlement 17, was enforced for fifteen years despite a French Canadian resistance involving teaching secretly in French.  The law was only formally removed from the statutes in 1944.  In 1968, French language secondary instruction became available thanks to law 141.  Public school boards were thus permitted, though not required, to offer instruction in French.  Regional struggles occurred.  The Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the right to minority language education in Canadian provinces:

Section 23, article 1 states the following:

Citizens of Canada

a)      whose first language learned and still understood is that of the English of French linguistic minority population of the province in which they reside, or

b)      who have received their primary school instruction in Canada in English or French and reside in a province where the language in which they received that instruction is the language of the English or French linguistic minority population of the province, have the right to have their children receive primary and secondary school instruction in that language in that province.

The Franco-Ontarian community acquired the right to autonomously manage their own school boards in 1997; in January 1998, eight Catholic and four public French language boards came to existence. 

Franco-Ontarians are dispersed throughout the province.  Some of those whose families have experienced the prohibition of French language instruction in primary or secondary school carry this in their collective memory.  Schools attempt to teach this history and to emphasise the importance of being grateful for the right to receive French language instruction.  In addition to this history, sociolinguistic factors involving proximity and interaction with the English-speaking majority of Ontario have influenced the use of French amongst Franco-Ontarians, particularly amongst young people.  Community leaders and teachers are particularly distraught to see assimilation rates increase and students struggle in their mother tongue, which might become the ancestral language for many.

Systems Thinking and Research (work in progress)

The following is a work in progress and an excerpt from a paper I am writing about applying systems thinking to education.

An analyst is not separate from the system or situation she analyses.  An external observer, researcher, analyst is not external while observing; she is engaged and absorbed in the community, the culture, the organisation, or the system being analysed.  Her journey into the system reveals a looking glass and imposes a journey into the self – a pilgrimage into a lake of intertwined lily pads.  The wind, the waves, and the analyst move through rhizomatous lily pads.  The journey is unlike the narcissist gaze.  The analyst moves through the lily pads, the rhizome, the systems, but also move with them, and is moved by them. 

The systems movement ripples through water, time, space, disciplines, professions, organisations, cultures, and… systems.  The analyst’s research requires her to internalise and integrate systems organically, holistically, from within the self and the body, and integrate the interaction and connections with other bodies, individuals, communities, structures, systems.  Like a dancer, she moves parts of her body, and even if apparently in isolation, she moves the whole; the whole body is impacted, just as the space around her is impacted, as are the other bodies dancing with her or observing her.  The body parts, the bodies, the space, the observed and the observers, the ideas, or the raw physicality create something new and whole and interconnected.  Like a dancer, the analyst moves through the system, in the system, with the system, and is moved by the system.

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