Narratives of Injustice and a Quilt of Hope

Intercultural Project Argentina, Germany, USA

Narratives of Injustice and a Quilt of Hope

All stories presented in this book are based on true personal experiences. In order to protect the project participants, no author names are given.

The narratives, the preface as well as the artwork included in this book were created by students.

Photos (story "Excuses"): Canvas, royalty-free

Because of different privacy policies at the universities involved in this project, this book only includes stories from the University of Munich (LMU), Germany, and the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), Argentina.

This publication may not be reproduced in part or in whole without permission from the editors.

Project supervision:
LMU: Petra Rauschert
UConn: Manuela Wagner, Sandra Sirota
UNLP: Melina Porto

February 2022

Contents

Preface

Narratives of Injustice
The Daisy That Wilted
Great Enough
A Lesson on Equality and Empathy
Birds of Passage
The Odd One Out
Excuses
My Solution
Cowardly Little Lion
Ghosts From the Past
The Gray Sheep
Young Betrayal
Teacher’s Pet
A Narrative of Injustice in Osler’s Terms
The ‘Unsuccessful’ Completion
Be Sure to Taste Your Words Before You Spit Them Out
The Cancelled Schoolball
The Mystical Forest
Cultural Insensitivity
School Uniform: Another Expression of Sexism
Wasted Hours

Additional stories
(injustices in non-educational contexts)
Ipanema
Bartender

Quilt of Hope
Selected Artwork and Statements

Preface

In the winter semester 2021/22, students based in Argentina (Universidad Nacional de La Plata), Germany (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität), and the USA (University of Connecticut) collaboratively explored the research question of how trauma and suffering associated with experiences of injustice in higher education become a site of hope with transformative potential.

In this virtual exchange project, students met on Zoom and shared information via WhatsApp and Google Docs. The project started with each student writing a self-reflection of their own injustice experience in school, which was then shared with other classmates, so that students can engage with each other’s narratives of injustice to gain a deeper understanding of the concept of injustice and its influence on students. At the research stage, students were divided into small groups to conduct research and discuss the findings to learn more about the topic. Once students had better familiarized themselves with the causes and effects of injustices, they set out to look for solutions. Solutions were later presented as a quilt of hope using various artistic forms (drawing, painting, collage, video, etc.). In the end, students took different actions (social media, presentations for pre-service teachers, website post, etc.) to spread the quilt of hope to a large audience.

The goal of the project was to shed light on the impact of injustices in higher education and taking action to address them. Students' competencies related to cultural diversity, intercultural communication, multimodality, openness and curiosity, human rights, and democratic values were greatly promoted throughout the project.

Your project team

The Daisy That Wilted

During my first year at university, I attended a demanding subject whose topics seemed complex to me as a newly undergraduate and, sometimes, I struggled to understand some theories or even to explain them with my own words.

One day, one of the professors who lectured on that subject asked me some questions about an important author’s theory in front of all my classmates. Of course, I did my best to answer, having in mind everything I had learnt so far. However, by the expression on his face, I could see that I was going in the wrong direction, so I tried to clarify myself - but suddenly, he began to laugh. I didn't quite understand why since I hadn’t said anything funny. He continued asking me more questions but related to topics that we hadn’t worked on yet.

By that moment, even though I was feeling so nervous and anxious, I kept trying hard to respond to everything I could. But the more I tried, the harder he laughed. I felt humiliated and couldn’t stop thinking that all the time I spent reading the materials and solving exercises was in vain. Then, disdainfully, he asked me to stop talking, making me feel like a small daisy that wilted. I didn’t want anyone to see me cry so I swallowed my tears and not until I arrived home, I let my eyes cry out.

I haven’t felt comfortable or confident enough to take part in any class since then. The fear of enduring the same situation in front of my classmates and the teacher again is palpable and making that fear disappear, it’s something easier said than done.

Great enough

When I was in primary school I almost effortlessly was one of the best students in my class. This came to nobody’s surprise. Everyone seemed to take it for granted, given that my mother was a primary school teacher. Until today I am not entirely sure what to make of this assumption. Clearly, parents do make a big difference when it comes to the academic performance of their children, and without a doubt doing well at school is a lot more difficult for those whose parents never read a book, never explain anything, never seem to care. Still, I feel like directly expecting a child is going to perform brilliantly at school because of their parents’ profession may be a bit unfair. It almost makes it seem as if instead of an angel and a devil that child constantly had its parents sitting on its shoulder, whispering the correct answers into its ear. A rather unsettling image if you ask me, but the main problem is that it lays the entire merit at the parents’ doorstep. Besides, this viewpoint completely disregards the pressure this kind of ever-present expectation puts upon the child.

Without question I was one of these children who, for one reason or another, have very high academic expectations towards themselves. At the same time I genuinely loved learning new things, which – lucky me – meant I really enjoyed going to school. This included all subjects – okay, maybe except for Physical Education. In PE I always was a bit bullied for being by far the tiniest one, which is hardly astonishing if you consider my dad’s Brazilian indigenous genes. But children that age aren’t exactly famous for considering questions of political correctness; to them I simply was the midget.

Things changed when I entered Gymnasium [1]. In most subjects I was still doing fine, but not so in mathematics, where in the very first test I got my very first 4 [2]. Even though at the time this was quite a shock for me, this in itself wouldn’t have been a disaster. (About a year ago at uni I even found out that this is a far from unusual thing to happen at the beginning of high school; nice to know that now.)

But the real disaster was my teacher’s reaction, who called my mother in to tell her that there was no way I was ever going to get my Abitur [3], given my complete lack of understanding of sciences. Mind you, at the time I was only ten years old, and by the time the abitur exams would come up I would have lived almost twice as long. Nevertheless, this teacher was both confident and careless enough to make a shattering prophecy about my academic career, after the very first test I took with him. But although I was outraged, although I knew it was an overhasty judgement to say the least, what he said still got to me. With just a few words he managed to wipe out every bit of motivation I had to try, since the idea he planted in my brain – far from any mathematical understanding – was the conviction that I was simply unable to ever perform well in sciences.

Many years later I changed to another Gymnasium and by chance I was once again one of the best students of my year level. Now it was quite the opposite once again, the way it had been back in primary school. I was the daughter of a teacher, I was interested in learning, I did well in the first few tests and somehow the teachers expected that this was simply who I was, a very good student, always well-performing. Their attitude towards me was encouraging, and I felt like I could prove again that I was smart and able to achieve good results, even in sciences. However, the fact that most of the teachers seemed to expect that I definitely knew the answer to their questions even when nobody else did, together with the expectations I had developed towards myself already at a very young age, meant that I felt an overwhelming amount of pressure weighing on my shoulders. The result was that I focused so much on school that I was barely able to concentrate on anything else at that time, let alone enjoy life. I forgot how much I loved listening to music, I forgot how it felt to be hungry, sometimes it even was as if I had forgotten how to laugh. I remember that after the Abitur exams the biology teacher, who was one of my favourite instructors at the school, walked up to me and asked what had gone wrong during the test.

What had happened was that instead of the usual, that is, the expected 15 points (4) I had reached only 13 [5] in the final exam. By that time I was so exhausted that I was beyond caring, and instead of an answer I merely shrugged. But I remember how disappointed I was that even though my Abitur was the best of the entire year level (together with three of my fellow students), even though I was visibly drained from all the effort I had put into studying in the previous two years, all he, my favourite teacher, had to comment on was a grade slightly below perfection.

The reason I wanted to tell this story here is that I think it shows how much of an effect we as teachers can have on our students. But while by now this may be a well-known fact concerning possible bad outcomes like the complete demotivation caused by my maths teacher, I would like to help us remember that very high expectations can also be harmful. Even though we want to encourage our students to do well, maybe we shouldn’t push them too hard to do their very best all the time. Maybe it would be good if we, as teachers, were able to allow our students to make mistakes and still reassure them they’re doing a great job. Maybe it would be good if, for however much we may love the subjects we teach, we show our students that there are other things in life far more important than sine and cosine, passé composé and Mendel’s beans. Maybe it would be good if we made our students feel that they do not need to be faultless in order to be great. And neither do we.

Notes
1 German academic high school
2 This would be more or less a D in the USA.
3 A levels/high-school diploma
4 Equal to A+
5 A-