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Not Free Inside, Not Free Outside: School Expulsion And The Problem Of Freedom

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In this blog post:

Yotam Ronen recaps Addyson Frattura’s EDST doctoral colloquium on the link between school expulsion and freedom. Frattura’s work explores how expulsion disproportionately impacts marginalized students, and argues for a vision of freedom rooted in love and liberation, challenging punitive educational systems.

What happens to a student when they are expelled from school? What happens when they are expelled from a classroom? What does the experience of being expelled mean for a student’s sense of freedom?

These are the vital questions that Addyson Frattura grapples with in her work.

Her project examines the relationship between expulsion and freedom and argues that school expulsion exposes the existential problem of freedom.

Looking beyond expulsion as a punitive tool, Frattura differentiates between three forms of expulsion:

  • expulsion within the school
  • expulsion outside the school
  • self-expulsion

While each has distinct characteristics, Frattura recognizes that each effects different students differently, as students with disabilities and racialized students are disproportionately expelled not only from schools, but from other places in society as well.

Freedom, too, is problematized. For Frattura, drawing on Maxine Greene, the human experience is a constant search for self, where individuals confront nothingness and are destined to seek meaning. While often seen as a positive, absolute freedom can be overwhelming and create a sense of anguish, akin to that experienced during school expulsion.

Here, the relationship between expulsion and freedom reveals itself as complex. While they may appear as opposites, they do not behave as such, nor do they carry equal risks.

First, a student being expelled might be told they are free to choose another school, but the reality is they lack the freedom to return to the place from which they were expelled, and they also must still choose a school (and thus are still forced to be part of the same system that rejects them).

Second, expulsion and freedom do not carry equal risks. The risks of extreme expulsion are far more severe than those of extreme freedom, and both are experienced more severely by students with disabilities or racialized students.

Frattura examines this relationship and frames freedom as an “existential and abolitionary problem.” As she writes:

“The relationship between the anguish of freedom and the anguish of expulsion makes freedom appear more distinct. The possiblity of freedom makes school expulsion more severe. Students are confronted with these limits of freedom and school expulsion which are found in the danger of either extreme; complete freedom and complete school expulsion.”

Frattura explores these themes through philosophical and historical analysis and the careful use of metaphor. She analyses the experience of being free through the imagery of pollen, and argues that freedom in this sense is a negative form of being seemingly free. It is negative because it is freedom from control, but it is only seemingly freedom because the student is still required to attend the compulsory school system.

Frattura also delves into the history of school expulsions in the United States, drawing on W.E.B. Du Bois’ argument on the propaganda of history. She argues, through De Bois, that the U.S. falsifies its history to defend the white race, and that historical truth emerges only when truth is prioritized over this defense. Frattura applies this argument to school expulsions, not to tell a historical narrative, but to illustrate how school expulsions expose the problem of freedom.

Lastly, Frattura presents a promising discussion on positive freedom as a counter narrative to a libertarian sense of freedom (that often underlies discussions of education and expulsion). In her account of positive freedom, freedom is—following James Baldwin and bell hooks—rooted in love and liberation. 

She emphasizes that abolishing punishment must align with an abolitionary ethic of love. To underscore this point, Frattura analyzes Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, focusing on Justine’s punishment and framing punishment itself as the monster in the story.

Frattura’s work offers a compelling critique of punitive systems, revealing how the anguish of expulsion and the complexities of freedom intersect. Her ideas about education rooted in love and liberation offer new questions and discussion about ideas of freedom, punishment, and expulsion in educational research.

In October 2023, EDST began hosting a Doctoral Colloquium. Once a month doctoral students and candidates present their research to EDST students, staff and faculty.
 The next EDST Colloquium is:

Click here for additional information and to RSVP.

See the full doctoral colloquium calendar.

Check out our Doctoral Colloquium page for more blog posts from this series.

 

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The Research Day Blog Publication Award Winner...

Winner of 2024 Research Day Blog Publication Award: Mahfida Tahniat!

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We are happy to announce the winner of the 2024 Research Day Blog Publication Award… Mahfida Tahniat!

Mahfida is a PhD student in EDST— her Research Day Post below discusses “floating schools” in Bangladesh, highlighting their role in providing education to communities impacted by climate change.

Mahfida currently has an interactive photo and video exhibit, Beyond the Frame: Floating Schools in Bangladesh, happening at the Ponderosa Commons and Neville Scarfe buildings (July 15 – September 15). More information about this exhibit is shared below.

Floating Schools in Bangladesh: A Journey Towards Empowerment?

by Mahfida Tahniat

In remote areas of Bangladesh, children go to school on boat, called “floating school” which literally floats on water and comes to pick up its students for a regular school day. However, the idea of this floating school is neither a new one nor is it any fancy expensive water ride for the privileged children. Rather, this boat school is free and provides the much-needed education for the most marginalized community living in a country that has been struggling against the climate catastrophe.

Students return home after the end of the classes for the day. The floating boat school moves from one area to another and goes to the children for giving education as the children don’t go to the traditional school because of lack of communication during flooding, Billdohor, Natore.

While the most marginalised people living in villages have contributed little to climate change, not only do they find their villages eroding and becoming smaller and smaller islands, they also suffer the consequences of the increasingly violent storms and deadly cyclones that scientists have attributed to global warming. In fact, the concept of the floating school came as an initiative to climate change adaptation so that both children and adults can get access to the resources to educate themselves.

For a country like Bangladesh, climate justice is no longer a theoretical concept; rather it has become a biting reality and an existential issue since 56% Bangladeshis live in “high climate exposure areas”. Despite producing only 0.56% of global emissions, Bangladesh ranks 7th on the list of countries most vulnerable to climate devastation.

Because of the sea-level rise in Bangladesh, climate crisis contributes to over 10 million Bangladeshis already being displaced as “climate refugees”, unable to farm or survive on their flooded land. The consequences complicate the situation further since “climate change in Bangladesh has started what may become the largest mass migration in human history”. To make the matter worse, it has been estimated that by 2050, one in every seven people in Bangladesh will be displaced by climate change.

My research responds to address these challenges and analyses the floating school’s impact on sustainable community development within climate justice framework while introducing education as a potential remedy against being displaced in the global climate migration context.

A teacher conducts class for grade one students on a boat school at Chatmohor, Pabna.

The impact of climate change on education cannot be taken lightly. Because of climate change’s rising tendency of severe floods and regular cyclones, the educational programs in Bangladesh become frequently disrupted. Education is free in Bangladesh, but children cannot reach school buildings regularly and access their educational needs for various reasons connected to climate change.

Three students smile standing in front of the Boroda Nagar Uttor Para Boat School, Chatmohor, Pabna.

An estimated 3 million children needed education in emergencies assistance in Bangladesh in 2017 and in some areas, schools were used as temporary flood shelters, which had an impact on the learning ability of the students. There were instances of destroyed school infrastructure, damaged roads, disrupted transport facilities as well as higher risk of water-borne infections, malaria, and dengue fever. During the months-long school closure, poor parents can hardly afford to take care of their children, which has further serious consequences.  The long-term consequences are factors in being a climate refugee, including school dropouts, child labour, early marriage leading to an increase in maternal mortality rate.

Against such a backdrop, the floating school might be seen as a creative solution since this boat school brings learning, books and solar-powered electricity to the community (where darkness prevails from a very literal sense to a metaphorical one) and provide education. The Floating School project was initiated by a local NGO in Bangladesh, Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha (SSS) in 2002, and later in 2011, it was adopted by Building Resources Across Communities (BRAC), the largest NGO in the world.

“For Bangladesh, boats are the future,” said Mohammad Rezwan, an architect who is also the founder of SSS. The floating school provides free all-year-round primary education for children up to grade 5, along with library services. Using solar panels as the main source of energy, and through technology-enabled, creative and customized solutions, this school also provides adult education that focuses on sustainable agriculture, healthcare and climate change adaptation. By providing the environmental education, the project has even helped to develop floating crop beds to ensure year-round food supply and income for families in flood-prone areas.

What is interesting about this project is this holistic approach through educational sustainability which has become a test case for community-based adaptation to climate change in Bangladesh. On the one hand, these boats are built, using the local materials and the traditional knowledge of the community and on the other, with the promotion of literacy and trainings, especially among girls and women, the increasing chances for girls’ education and women’s empowerment, can have positive impact in the community development. However:

  • to what extent do parents and community members feel empowered to actively support and contribute to their children’s education and the overall development of the community?
  • how does the floating school program contribute to the economic empowerment of individuals and communities through enhanced livelihood opportunities, entrepreneurship training, and income generation activities?
  • how does it address intersecting forms of oppression and marginalization based on factors such as gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, or socioeconomic status?
  • to what extent does the floating school contribute to building resilience and adaptive capacity among communities, both in terms of education and livelihoods?
  • can education via floating school play an important role in preventing climate refugee impacts?

Only the latest data coming from an in-depth research study can answer these questions—Till then, the journey of the floating school continues in the riverbank communities in Bangladesh!

All Photo Credits: Abir Abdullah/ Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha/ https://shidhulai.org/

BEYOND THE FRAME: FLOATING SCHOOLS IN BANGLADESH

This photo exhibition, Beyond the Frame, is about the floating schools program in Bangladesh which might be seen as a powerful way to address educational needs in the current Climate and Nature Emergency (CNE) context. Even though education is free in Bangladesh, there are significant implications for the delivery of education due to the increasing number of regular cyclones and floods, which the scientists directly attribute to the ongoing climate change.

Against such a backdrop, many children, particularly the marginalised ones, attend schools in boats, called “Floating School” (that literally floats on water), a project initiated by a local NGO, Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha. In 2002, Mohammad Rezwan founded the floating schools program through which both children and adults can get access to the resources to educate and empower themselves. It also provides critically needed adult education on community development through healthcare and sustainable agriculture as well as environmental education and women’s empowerment among the most marginalised communities in Bangladesh.

GLOBAL CLIMATE JUSTICE: BANGLADESH IN FOCUS

The journey of the floating school continues

Climate justice is inherently laden with conceptions of injustice and inequality, as it disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable, living in countries in the global South. For a country like Bangladesh, climate justice is no longer a theoretical concept; rather it has become a biting reality and an existential issue since 56% Bangladeshis live in high climate exposure areas. Bangladesh ranks 7th in the most climate vulnerable countries despite producing only 0.56% of the global emissions. Much of the country remains below 10 meters above sea level and during heavy monsoon rains, 70% of the country ends up under water. For Bangladesh, climate change has started the largest mass migration in human history, and over 10 million Bangladeshis have already become displaced as “climate refugees.” Scientists further predict that Bangladesh will lose 17% of its land by 2050 due to flooding caused by climate change.

Climate Complicity: Responsibility & Relationality

Beyond the Frame is a critical and creative intervention to provide an opportunity for all to engage with the complexities of the Climate and Nature Emergency (CNE) and look beyond the conventional frame of the mainstream approaches of the climate conversation, while contextualizing the CNE from the global South lenses. In the context of climate justice, it is important to acknowledge the disproportionate contribution made by the Western nations like Canada, in causing the climate catastrophe, because of which countries like Bangladesh, are now experiencing the effects of climate reality with far more intensity.

This photo exhibition invites everyone to explore their connection to these climate crises, and specifically recognise their complicity in them; it also emphasizes our shared responsibility and relationality in improving the quality of life for all living beings on the planet Earth!

Please Feel Free to Fill out the Following Survey: https://ubc.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bqlCRyEtAvSOpYa?Q_CHL=qr 

Feedback for the author? Please email: mahfida@student.ubc.ca

Click here to learn more about this exhibit

Click below to open full size photos:

 

 

 

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Remembering Sandy Abah Banner

Remembering Sandy Abah

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From Alison Taylor and Claudia Ruitenberg

Sandy was the Graduate Program Assistant in Educational Studies between 2013 and 2019. When Alison was Graduate Advisor from 2017 to 2019, she worked closely with her. In the same role, Claudia worked closely with her from 2014 to 2017.

She worked at UBC for almost 25 years and was working as the iSchool Program Assistant when she passed away last year. When we learned of her passing, we decided to write this tribute.

Alison Taylor:

I remember Sandy as a warm person who was a fierce advocate for students. She knew most of the graduate students in the department and always put their interests and needs first. She always wanted to take time with them and make time for them, which often put her at odds with bureaucratic university policies. For example, I remember having discussions with her about how long past the admissions deadline to wait for missing pieces of student applications. She always wanted to wait longer. 🙂 I appreciated and greatly respected her care.

It was never just a job for Sandy, and she made my work as Graduate Advisor more meaningful because of that. Like many of the staff who keep universities running, she did her work diligently and without any fanfare. But we noticed. When she was leaving the department she said, “I love working with you and the faculty and students.” She also said, “I am a teacher and student advocate,” which is exactly how I think of her.

I developed a strong working relationship with her and want to share a few of her messages because I think they speak to the kind of person she was.

On April 5, 2018, at the opening of the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre, her email to me was simple: “Shall we all go?”

On April 6, 2018, she sent me a link to an article called, “Hunger and homelessness are widespread among college students, study finds.” In addition to its relevance to my work as Grad Advisor, she knew I was researching working students.

After she left EDST, I heard from her periodically on email. Initially, she was in touch because she’d received a few emails from graduate students in EDST and wanted to make sure I responded to them. In April, 2019 she said about her new workplace, “Would you believe we don’t have a coffee maker here??? How would you survive? LOL.”

When I had my first doctoral oral as supervisor at UBC, she wrote to ask how it went. For a month or two, she continued to answer my questions as Graduate Advisor, because admittedly, I was lost without her. Later, she wrote whenever she had something to share, like a healthy juice recipe, a news article, a holiday greeting, or cartoons. She sent me many cartoons, and particularly liked “Peanuts”! I became teary-eyed as I read over our email exchanges.

Claudia Ruitenberg:

I very much enjoyed working with Sandy. As Alison describes, she cared deeply about students and would go above and beyond to try and help them if they came to her in a panic about having missed a deadline. Sandy saw her workday as being done when the important stuff on her to-do list was done, not when the clock said so. Several EDST graduates mention Sandy by name in the acknowledgements of their thesis or dissertation.

Sandy completed a UBC Bachelor of Arts with a major in Religious Studies in 2014, while working in our department. She would tell me about courses she was taking or a final paper that was a struggle. I believe that her own studies at UBC made her even more empathetic with the students in our department. When I suggested we celebrate her graduation during the EDST graduation reception, she did not want to advertise her own achievement. She definitely believed others’ achievements were worth celebrating, however, and there was never a shortage of food if Sandy had ordered the catering for the graduation reception!

Sandy liked her office cozy and personalized. I remember her in her oversized sweater with an extra scarf wrapped around her neck, a blanket on her chair, and multiple coffee mugs on her desk. I think this made students feel more comfortable going to see her to ask a question. She was not a functionary, but a mensch.

We both feel that Sandy contributed to humanizing EDST and wanted to share these reflections.

 You are welcome to add your memories of Sandy by clicking on the + sign in the bottom righthand corner below.

 

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Exploring Histories Confronting White Supremacy: Aneet Kahlon, Erin Villaronga Mulligan, and Mark McLean

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This is the first post in a new series from the course “Topics in the History of Education: Histories Confronting White Supremacy,” led by Professor Mona Gleason.

This course delves into colonialization, racism, and systemic oppression, exploring how historical understanding shapes our world today. In this series, students collaborated to craft blog posts where they explore themes related to course topics and share their insights with the larger EDST audience.

Keep an eye out for more posts in this series!

Co-authored by Aneet Kahlon, Erin Villaronga Mulligan, and Mark McLean, this blog post discusses the complexities of historical narratives surrounding education and white supremacy. Drawing insights from the work of Michael Marker and other course readings, the authors reflect on topics like colonial borders, Indigenous experiences, and educational structures.

In this post, we centered our discussion on the work of Michael Marker, an Arapaho scholar, whose invaluable contributions have not only left an enduring impact on the EDST community but have also significantly influenced scholarship in higher education (Gill et al., 2023).

Within our conversations we weave together our understandings of his work with other readings that we have been offered throughout our course to answer the question:

“What have you learned about the past in relation to education and white supremacy that you didn’t know before?”

ANEET: In other classes, we’ve talked about how borders are arbitrary concepts, but Michael Marker’s (2015) article, “Borders and Borderless Coast Salish: Decolonizing Historiographies of Indigenous Schooling,” made me think about this idea within the context of B.C.

India Pakistan border

It’s new for me to think about how Canadian residential schools and American boarding schools affected a single community differently depending on what side of the border they were on. It reminded me about the partition of India and Pakistan, where connected communities were forced to migrate to a specific side of a border randomly drawn up by a white man. I also think about my research because focusing on B.C. educational policies is a constraint that’s inherently colonizing. Indigenous communities don’t end at the border just because my analysis does.

MARK: I’m thinking about how many times Marker walks up to an idea and then shows that it’s too complex to follow in a short article, and instead notes another author in that space. These threads are worth pulling, and need to be pulled, and that makes the idea more complex.

ANEET: It’s been helpful to complicate ideas in this class!

MARK: When I read Marker’s work, I connected it back to a chapter of Thomas King’s (2012) book The Inconvenient Indian that we read; they both serve as a call to complicate things and acknowledge their complexity. As opposed to a flattened perspective, just on one side of the border. There is a quote in King’s work that says, “North America hates the Legal Indian. Savagely. The Legal Indian was one of those errors in judgment that North America made and has been trying to correct for the past 150 years” (King, 2012, p. 69). Each country wants to have a story to tell about what is going on with Indigenous peoples, Indigenous existence, and epistemologies, but all ignore complexity. In the U.S. it was public schools where Indigenous students experienced more racism, whereas Marker suggests that boarding schools were places where Indigenous students could also connect and define their own identity. This made me think about identity and what King (2012) called the “Dead Indian,” because as a nation, we’re not seeking out these complexities.

ERIN: Having done my undergraduate work at a U.S. institution, I guess I’ve never tried to fully articulate the experience of studying structural racism of public schools and educational inequality in an American context to learning about movements of indigenizing or decolonizing public schools in British Columbia. Because of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, I think many people are so focused on the historical aspect of residential schools, and not as much on the broader racist and colonial structures of modern public schooling systems. This is a complete flip in perspective for me; something that I’m processing as I talk through it now.

MARK: Yeah! Both articles speak to the idea of treating residential schools like they only existed in the past. And Canadians love a chance to forgive ourselves. We’re less concerned with the transition out of residential school systems, and how much racism and damage happened in that situation. Everything didn’t just end when the last residential school closed. Again, it’s just flattening a narrative.

CBC Article: Vehicle torched, lobster pounds storing Mi'kmaw catches trashed during night of unrest in N.S.

When we talked about the Boldt Decision and how the judge decided on fishing rights for Indigenous peoples in America, it reminded me of the CBC article talking about the Mi’kmaq lobster disputes in Nova Scotia. Canadian media didn’t know how to approach what was basically terrorism by white fisherman. So much of this results from an educational system where we’ve been taught this flat story, flat story, flat story. How different would it be if there was an understanding of the complexity of all this, for the Mi’kmaq and for our case, the Coast Salish?

Exploring histories of white supremacy

ERIN: I want to shout out a different article from one of Mona’s classes. It’s “‘The children show unmistakable signs of Indian blood’: Indigenous children attending public schools in British Columbia, 1872-1925” by Sean Carleton (2021). He writes about the history of Indigenous children that attended public schools in British Columbia. It was an interesting read for me not having known a lot about how public schools were established here. The stories of those children and the adults (Indigenous and settler) that facilitated their enrollment in those public schools added another dimension to that normally flat story you’re talking about, Mark. The histories of white supremacy and those fighting against it in the world of education don’t all follow the singular residential school narrative that gets told.

ANEET: Mark, you’ve made a good point! What we learn about through Canadian education systems must fit within the constraints of what Eurocentric values want us to learn. For example, social studies curriculum teaches “Canadian” or “B.C.’s” history. A bordered history. These constraints act as a mechanism of validating those imaginary borders.

MARK: Yeah! I keep thinking, Aneet, about your comment about the border in Punjab, and how people had to swap back and forth across the border. I just googled the Salish Sea because I never think about it as a unit in the same way that we think about the Mediterranean as a unit. It’s so hard to untangle… yeah, it’s just really hard to not see borders.

ERIN: And all our other units of geographical organization. Water borders have always been especially bizarre to me. Because water is water! You just can’t draw a border in water! And that really emphasizes another idea that I think Marker brings us face to face with within this article: about  how settlers conceptualize not only land, but place.

Place-based education is big, especially in early childhood right now, with things like forest schools, but we need to be careful about what type of teaching is still reinscribing very particular understandings of place that don’t align with the original stewards of this land. I don’t know if it’s possible to reach the same understanding. But if we’re taking children out for nature walks and talking about street names and showing them “borders” of parks and such, it’s almost like, what’s the point?

MARK: Totally! This connects well to “Decolonization is not a metaphor” by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang:

“These fantasies can mean the adoption of Indigenous practices and knowledge, but more, refer to those narratives in the settler colonial imagination in which the Native (understanding that he is becoming extinct) hands over his land, his claim to the land, his very Indian-ness to the settler for safe-keeping. This is a fantasy that is invested in a settler futurity and dependent on the foreclosure of an Indigenous futurity.”

Essentially, when settlers adopt watered-down practices of place-based learning, its main purpose is to reinforce a safe settler future.

We went for a walk in Musqueam territory for Pro-D day and they pointed out Iona Beach Regional Park across the river and showed us that it didn’t count as their territory. Musqueam has fishing rights, but they’re hampered by the actions of the logging industry across the river. I imagined these lines across the water and it’s an absurd, imposing, and abstract idea. It’s just a river.

musqueam teaching kit map

I wanted to share this map with you. Musqueam collaborates with the Museum of Anthropology, and they have a map that shows how the delta formed over 10,000 years ago. It made me think… MAN! Richmond didn’t exist 10,000 years ago. Indigenous peoples were here before Richmond existed as a physical land. Not only are these lines arbitrary, they’re also shifting!

References:

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