When the Personal becomes the Educational: Towards an Ecofeminist Popular Education

By Vérène Nicolas, Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology

Not so long ago, I was asked to clarify my “ideology” in a teaching context. I got attacked for seeing and acting in the world from an eco-feminist perspective. Someone felt threatened by the expression of my “ideology”: someone who, I think, was uncomfortable with defining their own values; someone who did not want to be “boxed” and believed they could stay “value-free”.

In this article, I will push these points of discomfort further. I will take on Liam Kane’s challenge from a highly personal position because I believe that only by such openness can we honestly reveal our ideologies.

Yes, as Liam argues, ideology matters. But expressing one’s values is fundamentally difficult. Values are shaped in people’s very intimate experiences of life from childhood onwards through multiple encounters, reading, travel etc.

In times when most traditional ideologies have lost their credibility or are facing a real backlash, holding on to firm values and ideas can seem unrealistic. In the context of involvement in charitable organisations or public bodies, affirming our commitment to an education that is “overtly political and critical of the status quo” (Jim Crowther & al, 1999) can often be a little tricky. Defining our values within the field of popular education can potentially lead to inner conflicts if we choose to work in structures that don’t allow us to be overtly political, whether that is from a feminist, religious, Marxist or even ecological perspective.

Speaking up implies risking conflict, being open to daily challenges and being ready to disclose the personal journey that has led us to hold such beliefs.

My interest in feminism was initially shaped by my own mother’s concerns about women’s lives. In the summer of 1995, I read about the Beijing U.N. Conference for Women. I felt positively inspired by the lives of all these amazing women taking part. I realised that as a woman myself and as someone who was deeply unimpressed by the state of society, there was a huge potential to bring about change and “challenge the status quo” by working with and for women.  That’s when I decided to become a “career feminist”!

This led me on a journey from my native France to Ireland, where I ended up managing the Drop-in Well – a creative learning for women in Dublin’s Ballymun housing scheme. From there, I moved to Scotland. Based at the Centre for Human Ecology, I now work with community empowerment, women’s groups and in developing Training for Transformation workshops.

I define my work, indeed my epistemology, as feminist because I am convinced that feminine values are desperately needed in the world today. We need to establish balance between values that are traditionally associated with the “feminine” (such as being co-operative, emotional, caring, intuitive, holistic, nurturing, etc.) and values that are more associated with the “masculine” (being competitive, rational, providing, thinking, focused, aggressive, etc). Alternatively, to use less gendered expressions, we could talk about the receptive “Yin” and the assertive “Yang”, which mutually give rise and dynamically balance one another.

But why bother with establishing balance by focusing on women’s needs and ways of being and doing? Well, working with women is fun. Sharing our stories and our struggles, where appropriate in the intimacy of a women-only space, is profoundly nourishing. Women who are struggling for justice are inspiring and often full of common sense. Their activism comes from concerns for their children’s future. As such, the imperative of “sustainable development” is implicit to the solutions they seek. Indeed, this raises the question as to whether men, too, can only make the world a better place if they take on more caring responsibilities.

Because human life is dependent on the Earth, social justice cannot be achieved separately from the well-being of the planet. My concern for the environment and my belief in the power of the feminine naturally led me to explore ecofeminism as an ideology that helps make sense of the world and all forms of injustice. Eco-feminists assert that the destruction of the Earth has its roots in the patriarchal mindset, a mindset that values domination and which oppresses women, black people and all who do not conform to the white, middle-class, rational, Classical, male ideal.

In their excellent ecofeminist anthology, Irene Diamond & Gloria Orenstein (1990) propose that ecofeminism is “not a monolithic, homogeneous ideology. Indeed, it is precisely the diversity of thought and action that makes this new politics so promising as a catalyst for change in these troubled times”. Accordingly the ecofeminist values that I try to adopt in my daily practice as an educator are, as these writers put it, “life-affirming, consensual and non-violent”. 

What does this imply for popular education? Walter & Manicon (1996) suggest that:  “Feminist popular education is a participatory, democratic and non-hierarchical pedagogy which encourages creative thinking that breaks through embedded formats of knowledge… [It] obviously focuses particularly on the conditions and positions of women and the renegotiation of gender relations.”

For me, then, being an ecofeminist popular educator means encouraging people to look critically at power structures, especially from a gender perspective. This means exposing the links between such forms of oppression as poverty, racism, sexism and the destruction of our environment.

Because it is life-affirming, ecofeminism also allows exploration of the spiritual dimension of human life and its potential for transformation and empowerment. bell hooks, the American black feminist whose writings I greatly relish, defines spiritual life as, “first and foremost about commitment to a way of thinking and behaving that honours principles of inter-being and interconnectedness”. In ecology, everything is understood as being interconnected, and human beings are part of this “web”. The methods I use in my popular education practice will therefore stress creativity, nature as a healing place, and people’s personal paths and passions.

In her brilliant essay on “engaged pedagogy”, bell hooks talks of education as the practice of freedom. She says (1994): “That learning process comes easiest to those of us who teach who also believe that our work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students. To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin.”

Revealing one’s ideology can be a risky exercise. I sometimes find myself being accused of “reductionism” or even intolerance. However, in my experience, feminism provides both nourishment and inspiration for action. Letting this be known to the people I work with, is, I think, essential for my practice of popular education. That is why Liam Kane is so right in saying that, “Unlike size, ideology matters”!

References

Crowther, Jim, Martin, Ian and Shaw, Mae (1999). Popular Education and Social Movements in Scotland today, NIACE, Leicester.

Diamond, Irene and Orenstein, Gloria F. (1990). Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco.

hooks, bell (2000). All about Love: New Visions, Women’s Press, London.

hooks, bell (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge, London.

Walters, Shirley and Manicon, Linzi (1996). Gender in Popular Education: methods for empowerment, Zed Books, London.

22/4/02