Ways to interculturize and decolonize education in westernized universities: epistolary exchanges and dialogical/collaborative knowledge productionABSTRACT
This article discusses how a 19th-century educational phenomenon in England can be extrapolated transnationally to 21st century classrooms as a form of teaching innovation. In our transdisciplinary reflection (history/pedagogy), we describe the concept of epistolary education as it was experienced by a group of white bourgeois Victorian women; and we explain how we have transformed it into a teacher training epistolary workshop, first in Lleida University (Spain), and then in Brasilia University (Brazil). We then explain our pedagogical objective: to convert the linguistic, cultural and social difference of our students into an opportunity to learn from alterity. Committed to critical feminist and decolonial pedagogies, in the third section we evaluate the potential of epistolarity to work towards intercultural education. The data analysed show the potential of 21st century forms of epistolarity to create communities of affection and learning capable of putting into practice other ways of being in the university and of producing knowledge and devising educational practices that mobilize other ways of feeling-thinking (sentipensar).
Keywords:
Critical Pedagogies; Epistolary Education; (Anti-)Racism; Narrative Learning; Narrative Pedagogy
RESUMO
Este artigo discute como um fenômeno educacional do século 19 na Inglaterra pode ser extrapolado transnacionalmente para as salas de aula do século 21 como forma de inovação pedagógica. Em nossa reflexão transdisciplinar (história/pedagogia), descrevemos a educação epistolar tal como foi vivenciada por mulheres burguesas brancas victorianas; e explicamos como a transformamos em uma oficina epistolar de formação de professores nas universidades de Lleida (Espanha) e de Brasília (Brasil). Em seguida, explicamos nosso objetivo pedagógico, que consiste em converter a diferença linguística, cultural e social dos alunos em uma oportunidade de aprender com a alteridade. Comprometidos com as pedagogias críticas feministas e decoloniais, na terceira seção avaliamos o potencial da epistolaridade em sua versão atual para interculturalizar a educação a partir de diálogos epistolares. Os dados analisados demonstram o potencial das formas de epistolaridade do século XXI para criar comunidades de afeto e aprendizagem capazes de promover outras formas de estar na universidade, de produzir conhecimento e de desenvolver práticas educativas que mobilizam outros modos de sentir-pensar (sentipensar).
Palavras-chave:
Pedagogias Críticas; Educação Epistolar; (Antir)Racismo; Aprendizagem Narrativa; Pedagogia Narrativa
RESUMEN
Este artículo analiza cómo un fenómeno educativo del siglo XIX en Inglaterra puede extrapolarse transnacionalmente a las aulas del siglo XXI como una forma de innovación docente. En nuestra reflexión transdisciplinar (historia/pedagogía), describimos el concepto de educación epistolar tal como fue experimentado por mujeres burguesas en la Inglaterra victoriana; y explicamos cómo lo hemos transformado en un taller epistolar de formación de profesores en las universidades de Lleida (España), y de Brasilia (Brasil). A continuación, explicamos nuestro objetivo pedagógico, que consiste en convertir la diferencia cultural de los alumnos en una oportunidad para aprender desde la alteridad. Comprometidos con las pedagogías feministas críticas y decoloniales, en el tercer apartado evaluamos el potencial de la epistolaridad para trabajar por la educación intercultural.
Palabras clave:
Pedagogías Críticas; Educación Epistolar; Racismo; Aprendizaje Narrativo; Pedagogía Narrativa
INTRODUCTION: EPISTOLARY EDUCATION IN THE 19TH CENTURY
On December 29th, 1849, English painter Anna Mary Howitt (1824–1884) wrote to her friend and colleague Barbara Bodichon (1827–1891):
we have just read Tennyson's new poem "The Princess," and are delighted with it and now I want you to get it and read it also, and let me know your opinion I think all true women must like it, and for the sake of the beautiful noble conclusion […] It is [a] poem on woman's education, women's rights, woman's true being and according to our notions noble and true (Columbia University, Butler Library, Leonore Beaky, Letters of Anna Mary to Barbara, letter 5).
"The Princess" is a narrative poem that tells the story of Ida, a princess betrothed to a prince. Defying her family, Ida decides to found a college for women instead. The reading, recommendation and analysis of this poem led the two young, White English women, along with a third friend, writer Bessie Parkes, to consider the issue of guaranteeing women's access to higher education. In a historical context in which university was formally banned for them, reading this poem contributed to awakening a feminist consciousness in these three friends. Born into families with strong economic, social and cultural capital, they became the pioneers of the then nascent women's rights movement in England. The letter that Anna Mary Howitt wrote to Barbara Bodichon is one example of the daily exchange of letters between the three friends, which they engaged in for decades and which triggered their feminist consciousness and militancy. Deprived of the schooling their male peers received, this network of letter exchanges acted as a source of informal education. The act of writing letters and the daily act of exchanging correspondence served as a space where the three friends acquired and shared knowledge and exercised and developed their critical capacity. As educational instruments, the letters allowed them to keep abreast of new cultural productions (for example, Tennyson's poem), to recommend readings or cultural visits, to facilitate access to these cultural manifestations (for example, to get a copy of a newspaper issue or a book), and to develop personal viewpoints. In this chain of affective and intellectual exchanges, the gesture of expressing their ideas and receiving each other's feedback allowed the friends to develop their own opinion (for example, on "The Princess") and, through this opinion, to outline and individualize their subjectivity. Indeed, challenging normative gender expectations, in their letters they presented and developed their own conceptualization of femininity and equality. In other words, within the framework of an epistolary education, the letters fostered the production of feminist knowledge (Simon-Martin, 2012; 2013; 2016; 2020a; 2020b).
This epistolary historical phenomenon provides us with other transdisciplinary learning. In terms of pedagogy, the exchange of letters between Anna Mary Howitt, Barbara Bodichon and Bessie Parkes offers us the opportunity to innovate in teaching methodology today. This is so because this 19th century epistolary educational phenomenon illustrates the intrinsically intersubjective and cooperative nature of self and thought formation, precisely against what the prevailing liberalism of the time advocated. In a historical context in which economic liberalism and philosophical positivism placed man (i.e., White and bourgeois) at the centre of society as a thinking and moral agent (autonomous and free), the network of letters between these three friends shows the need for intersubjectivity among individuals to become and act as citizens.
This (epistolary) narrative relationality resonates with the concepts of narrative learning and narrative pedagogy that have been theorized in the field of teacher education (Goodson et al., 2010; Goodson and Hill, 2011), and that we put into practice in our university teaching (Jové and Simon-Martin, 2018; 2021). The concept of narrative learning points to the central role played by self-referential speaking/writing in learning processes. Narratives are here understood as the (written/oral) articulation of a series of events that take place in a given space and time. It is through the ability of individuals to tell their story, to attribute meaning to their experiences, and to situate themselves in their context as subjects, that students verbalize and develop learning. Narrative learning allows teachers to move away from a strict focus on the curriculum to try to incorporate and accommodate the students’ personal experiences, articulated in the form of autobiographical accounts (as we will see in this article, in the form of letters). This change of focus allows teachers/lecturers to promote the motivation and commitment of students in their training as active agents in their own learning process. In turn, the concept of narrative pedagogy suggests that the analysis of one's own autobiographical narrative, individually (a student examines her story during a tutorial with the lecturer) or collectively (students examine all the stories in class with the help of the lecturer) enhances the potential of narrative learning. This work of dialogical introspection represents an opportunity to encourage the exercise of students’ critical spirit and fosters the development of their identity as education professionals and citizens. In this sense, as a space for meta-awareness and self-reflection, the autobiographical narrative is a learning and teaching instrument that facilitates the production of knowledge by students and the improvement of the professional practice of teachers in training.
Persuaded of the potential of autobiographical narratives as learning and teaching tools, we have sought to transform the abovementioned 19th century epistolary education in which the letter, as an autobiographical space of meta-awareness and self-reflection, acts as an intersubjective narrative learning instrument into a teaching tool that permits exploring an innovative method. Our proposal sits within other schemes that explore letters as teaching instruments (Domínguez Chillón, Melgar Villa and Millán Polo, 1998; Reiss, 2000; White, Wright-Soika and Russell, 2007; Senior, 2008; Novia, 2016; Pensoneau Conway and Cummins, 2016; Marín Suelves et al., 2017; Bell and Zaino, 2022).
EPISTOLARY DIALOGUES IN 21ST CENTURY CLASSROOMS
At a time in Western history where the handwritten letter sent by post is almost an anachronism, as university lecturers we have ventured to explore the 21st century version of epistolarity. Our starting point is the affective, intellectual and militant epistolary interconnections in favour of the social change we described in the introduction. Inspired by them, in our teaching we have sought to extrapolate the epistolary educational phenomenon of the 19th century (which took place in one of the great centres of industrial-liberal Western thought in the world) to university classrooms that, in the 21st century, aspire to a feminist, anti-racist and decolonial critical pedagogy.1 For the sake of space and focus, in this paper we discuss one dimension only: anti-racism.
Initially, during the 2018–2019 academic year, two of us (Meritxell and Gloria) designed an epistolary workshop with early childhood and primary education undergraduates from the University of Lleida (UdL, Spain) and pupils from the state school Lluís Castells, in Riudaura (Spain). The main activity consisted in creating, throughout the school year, a network of exchanges of letters at two levels: on the one hand, between the undergraduates enrolled in the course "Education in diversity" (aged 22–23), and, on the other, between them and primary school pupils (aged 3–12). These letters were read and discussed collectively in class, both in the university classroom and at school. This epistolary experience culminated in a face-to-face meeting at the end of the year, where participants were able to get to know each other and exchange impressions on their participation in this updated version of epistolary education.
The first edition of this transdisciplinary epistolary workshop (history/pedagogy) showed us how, through epistolary exchanges, undergraduates produced pedagogical knowledge and developed their identity as teachers in training; and primary school pupils produced knowledge related to the curriculum. Following the principle of narrative learning, participants produced this knowledge by relating it to their personal experiences: in the case of undergraduates, they related their personal experiences to the content of the course "Education in diversity," and, in the case of primary school pupils, to the content of the curriculum. This is exactly what Howitt, Bodichon, and Parkes did spontaneously, as part of their daily chores, and as part of a desire to communicate to counter physical distance. They connected the educational input they received with their personal experiences. Ultimately, they developed their consciousness and identity as women, and produced feminist knowledge. In both cases (in the 19th and 21st centuries), the letters placed learners at the epicentre of their own learning process intersubjectively. In this article, we discuss the teaching scheme that stemmed from this first epistolary experience, as we now move on to explain.
Encouraged by the success of epistolary education as a teaching innovation, and eager to respond to the educational and human challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, during the 2020–2021 academic year we made the most of Meritxell's stay as a visiting researcher at the Universidade de Brasília (UnB) to expand the format of this epistolary workshop. We aimed at facilitating transnational communication, thus aspiring to establish intercultural dialogues in the field of education. Our epistolary activity consisted of creating a network of e-mail exchanges between UdL undergraduates enrolled in the course "Education in diversity" (aged 22–23) and UnB undergraduates enrolled in "Education of ethnic-racial relations" and "Introduction to Environmental Education" (aged 23–50). Our purpose was to transform the linguistic, cultural and social differences of our students into an opportunity to learn with alterity. Our goal also consisted in reflecting on racism in society and anti-racist practices in schools (the focus of this article), and on the culture/nature relationship in the episteme of the West and in the worldviews of the original peoples of Abya Yala.2
In the following section, we reflect on how we experienced this second edition of our epistolary workshop as lecturers. We also evaluate its potential to work towards an intercultural education that creates communities of affection and learning that are capable of putting into practice other ways of being in the university and producing knowledge, and devising insurgent educational, epistemic and ecological practices that mobilize other ways of feeling-thinking (sentipensar)3 that transit with freedom in the generous and creative field of the plurivers.4
EPISTOLARY EXCHANGES IN PRACTICE
In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic burst in our countries. All of a sudden, we found ourselves in a new and challenging situation that demanded a good dose of creativity: to guarantee quality in our teaching without the possibility of face-to-face interaction. More than that, we faced the challenge of ensuring that academic activities could continue amidst a scenario of perplexity, fear, loss and grief. In this extreme situation, our biggest challenge was to guarantee a sense of learning community, the cultivation of affection, and the caring of others, including students who, often due to their personal circumstances, showed themselves behind a dark screen with merely their name written on it. We asked ourselves: if educating requires listening, dialogue and love, as Paulo Freire (1996) has taught us; if it requires fostering anti-racist subjectivities that are open to otherness, raising the recognition of the differences that constitute us, experiencing respectful coexistence in difference, and fighting all forms of discrimination, how are we supposed to proceed without the most elementary aspect, that is, physical presence?
In this context, Meritxell's expertise in epistolarity as a strategy for the collaborative production of knowledge gave us the opportunity to bring listening and dialogue to this virtual context. Considering the care involved in suspending everyday life duties to write to someone, the exchange of letters proved to be a promising way to restore, albeit precariously, the empathy and proximity that virtuality had taken away from us. It was necessary for the letter-exchange activity to be a space for freedom of thought, motivated by the genuine desire for listening and dialogue; to guarantee an environment of mutual trust, in which not only the sharing of ideas but also the confidentiality of sensitive situations could find a favourable and welcoming ground. Thus, we decided that, unlike the first edition (2018–2019), the activity would not be mandatory or assessed. Likewise, we ensured the anonymity of the exchanges (i.e., we lecturers did not have access to the epistolary dialogues themselves), and left open the possibility of interrupting participation, at the discretion of each student.
Within these epistolary dialogues, students were prompted to exchange ideas, feelings and thoughts about the topics covered in class. The goal was to identify specific aspects of the Brazilian and Spanish realities and the points of dialogue between them. In the process, the undergraduates were encouraged to report and reflect on situations of (anti-)racism they had experienced or witnessed. The activity required a careful approach, the guarantee of anonymity and a relationship of trust based on consensual and clear terms. This is so because for many students, particularly for Brazilian students of African and Indigenous descent, racism is a tangible reality.
The exchange of letters took place in two stages. First, the undergraduates exchanged letters with their classmates, responding to the teaching material discussed in class. This fulfilled the purpose of humanizing the educational process in times of pandemic, bypassing the impersonality of virtuality and the gaps caused by the impossibility of meeting face to face. In line with this, the second stage focused on the transnational dialogue between Brazil and Spain. In the latter, students were able to put into perspective their own experiences and cultural contexts in relation to those of their correspondents.
The dynamic consisted of a weekly exchange calendar that allowed the undergraduates to send and receive letters from at least five different correspondents throughout the activity. At the beginning of each lesson, students were invited to share if they wished their experience in epistolary learning. This permitted us to follow up and understand, from the perspective of the undergraduates, the positive and limiting aspects of exchanging letters as a pedagogical tool and as a strategy for humanizing the educational experience in times of COVID-19. These collective moments of reflection also allowed us to reorganize the dynamics of the exchanges, aiming above all to guarantee the constant flow of sending and receiving letters. This epistolary experience culminated in a virtual meeting at the end of the year, where participants were able to get to know each other and exchange impressions on their participation in this updated version of epistolary education.
Ultimately, the interactive and affective variables that we attempted to mobilize throughout the process seemed to reaffirm the radicality and actuality of Paulo Freire's thought (1996): no one educates anyone, and no one educates oneself alone; people educate each other through experience, mediated by the world. As the epistolary experience took shape, the more we were convinced of these Freirean teachings, the more we understood that, as the letters exchanged by the three friends Barbara, Bessie and Anna Mary in the 19th century showed us, education is also an eminently intersubjective process, a political act, radically humanizing, that, for that very reason, demands meeting and opening up to the other.
ETHICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL DILEMMAS
The semester was over, and with it, the letter exchanges. As teachers interested in improving our teaching practice, we asked ourselves: what have these epistolary dialogues really meant for our students? We incorporated them into our courses in the hope of counteracting the harmful effects of isolation during the pandemic and promoting (transatlantic) discussions that fostered anti-racist imaginaries and subjectivities open to alterity. However, did the students experience it this way? Did the letters serve as stimuli for intellectual and emotional learning? Was the environment of trust, empathy, intimacy and freedom of thought we sought translated into a community of learning and affection that recognizes the difference that constitutes us as a source of creative coexistence? More importantly, did they enjoy this innovative activity that we devised as a pedagogical tool and as a strategy for humanizing the educational process?
Reading and analysing the letters of our students would be a way of trying to answer these questions, but having access to them presupposed an ethical dilemma: breaking the confidentiality we promised them. When we designed the activity, we did not think about the possibility of subsequently reflecting on the potential of epistolary exchanges as a teaching innovation in the form of academic writing. Hence, we never got to ask them if they would give us permission, once the course was over, to have access and analyse their letters. The priority, at that time, was to offer them a stimulating environment that could contribute to counteract the negative effects of COVID-19 isolation. If we had asked their permission, would we not have entered into a methodological contradiction? After all, if we had warned them in advance that we intended to subsequently analyse their letters (with their express permission), we might have conditioned the frequency, format and, above all, the content of those letters. Our starting point was the firm conviction that exchanging letters between students without monitoring by the teaching staff, that is, without the relations of power and control that their presence intrinsically implies, is what guarantees freedom of participation and expression among peers in a more horizontal space.
How to know, then, what this epistolary experience had meant for our students? To try to answer this question, we resorted to four strategies. With the aim of being able to listen to the students’ own voices, the first strategy consisted in reproducing the epistolary dialogues of those who wished to participate in the publication of our book Vozes do Pluriverso. Práticas e epistemologias decoloniais em educação (Simon-Martin, 2022). The second took the form of small reflections that some students wished to share with us months after the end of the experience, where they expressed what our proposal for an epistolary learning activity had meant to them. These two strategies are included in the fifth part of the aforementioned book. By publishing them, we invite readers to make their own assessment of the potential of epistolary exchanges as a teaching/learning method.
In turn, the third and fourth strategies consisted in reading and analysing the anonymous feedback that the UnB students sent to Ana Tereza right at the end of the epistolary experience, and the autobiographical accounts the UdL students wrote at the end of the course as part of one of the assessment activities Gloria asked them to produce. In the following section, we analyse this second set of data, and we put forward our vision of the potential of transatlantic epistolary exchanges as sources of dialogic and collaborative production of knowledge. Given that at the time of writing, only the second set was available to us, in this article we discuss these data only. The original languages of such data are Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan. For communication purposes, we present excerpts translated into English.
EPISTOLARY DIALOGUES: WAYS OF INTERCULTURALIZING AND DECOLONIZING EDUCATION IN WESTERNIZED UNIVERSITIES
At UnB, students were invited to submit their feedback on their courses with the purpose of identifying positive aspects, limits and suggestions. The feedback questionnaire included a question on our epistolary method. The students who answered the questionnaire shared a positive feedback of the epistolary activity and qualified it as "very rich," "excellent," "innovative," "positive," "unique," "amazing," "challenging," "enhancing," "liberating," "enriching," "positive," "inclusive." This feedback suggests the importance of the human dimension that the exchange of letters seems to have provided to students in a context marked by social distancing and virtuality.
The activity promoted a connection between the students, making alterity and difference a more palpable presence. That is, the epistolary dialogue made the encounter possible as it provided the consideration of the humanity of the other, consequently promoting situations of mutual recognition, empathy and affection. The linguistic differences that we saw as a barrier to dialogue ended up arousing curiosity regarding "difference." This led them to put themselves in a cultural perspective of alterity. In the following narratives, it is possible to identify how students positively emphasize the possibility of meeting that the letters provided, "albeit at a distance;" and, also, as they emphasize the strangeness, the richness and the interactivity that emerges from the contact with a different reality:
It was very enriching to be able to understand the processes of racism that take place on other continents from the perspective of students in Spain. (Student 2)
The use of letters led to greater interactivity in the class, more debate, making the class more interesting. (Student 3)
I want to point out that the exchange with the students from Spain was the one that made me most excited, I believe it is because of the geographical difference. (Student 4)
As we got answers, I saw how enriching the experience was. (Student 11)
It made it possible for people to be close even at a distance, a closeness that I might not have had even in the classroom. (Student 20)
The fascination that diversity evinced in students shows how, surprisingly, such an old exchange tool letters can provoke such enthusiasm in (young) learners. This is so especially when we consider that in today's world, new technologies, virtuality and social networks play an increasingly central role as a means of instant communication and as a learning tool. Letter-writing involves taking time out of your life to put down on paper feelings-thoughts (sentipensamentos)5 that you want to share with your correspondent. It is a gesture of care that seems to find little place in a world marked by the ephemeral.
The vast majority of students reported never having written or received a letter in their lives. And, in a world dominated by the volatility of instant messaging, even e-mail seemed obsolete to them. What we were proposing had an air of novelty. More than that, we offered an experience (the exchange of letters) not as something that happens, but as something that can happen to us and that can touch us in multiple dimensions:
Experience, the possibility of something happening to us or touching us, requires a gesture of interruption, a gesture that is almost impossible these days: it requires stopping to think, stopping to look, stopping to listen, thinking more slowly, looking more slowly, and listening more slowly; stopping to feel, feel more slowly, dwell on details, suspend opinion, suspend judgment, suspend will, suspend the automatism of action, cultivate attention and delicacy, open eyes and ears, talk about what happens to us, learn to be slow, listen to others, cultivate the art of encounter, remain silent, be patient and give yourself time and space (Bondía, 2002, p. 24).
The data also highlight the dialogical and pedagogical dimension of the experience. Letter-exchanges generate learning at two different relational scales: the individual (the exchange between people who write to each other) and the collective (as a classroom). Indeed, the experiences of the other can expand our own (collective) reading of the world:
It was very interesting to exchange knowledge about anti-racist education and my experience with other students, getting to know other views and cultures. (Student 14)
I found it very cool to write and be able to read several experiences that made me think about how I can act making a difference as an educator. (Student 17)
I have received many interesting testimonies from classmates who have experienced racism as well as testimonies from people who recognize structural racism6 in their everyday attitudes. […] It was very good to know a little about the issue of prejudice against immigrants, which is what happens most often in Europe. (Student 29)
From this unfolds an understanding that both what is learned in dialogue with the other (the forms of manifestation of racism in Spain and Brazil, for example), and the processes of self-knowledge that are forged in a more private and sometimes unfathomable way (awareness of one's own pain and the other's pain) reverberate positively in the learning of the collective. That is, these processes of (self) knowledge were not restricted to those who exchanged letters with each other; they could also broaden the debate in the classroom around a common concern, in this case racism and the violence it engenders, the right to difference, and the commitment towards anti-racist education.
Weaving a parallel with Freire's notion of education as an intrinsically political and relational act in which the leadership of the process must be shared, we can say that epistolarity can strengthen the centrality of students in the learning context. It is certainly up to us, lecturers, to mediate the meeting and offer theoretical-conceptual tools. After all, we have the prerogative to teach. However, by doing so, our goal as lecturers is rather to equip students so that they can autonomously reflect, formulate their own ideas and review their understandings, actively participating in the educational process. In this sense, our role as mediators consisted of facilitating anonymous letter exchanges, ensuring every student received letters, and prompting the emergence of debates on (anti-) racism in the classroom as triggered by the epistolary exchanges. When we analyse the students’ feedback, we understand that pedagogical and epistemic autonomy is given by the opportunity to learn in dialogue with alterity and not exclusively through the teaching authority a point we nuance in our concluding remarks. This is what the narrative excerpts below tell us:
It [letter-exchange] was one of the most significant moments in the course in terms of reflection on topics related to diversity, racism and fighting against racism. (Student 21)
I learned a lot [from letter-exchanges] and saw how important an anti-racist education is. (Student 22)
It [letter-exchange] made me think about things I had never thought about before (Student 32)
I learned a lot of new things [from letter-exchanges] and was able to share different experiences in a very affective and private way. (Student 33)
It [letter-exchange] was an activity that could continue even after the end of the course, exchanging experiences, materials, testimonials from future colleagues in the profession making us grow as professionals and this should be more common. Therefore, being part of the course and having this experience makes me a person and a professional with a different worldview. (Student 11)
Another aspect highlighted by students concerns the subjective transformations that the epistolary dialogue can provoke, modifying the way they identify, reflect and deal with the violence engendered by racism. Thus, students talk about a pain that is not always evident or conscious pain they talked about owing to the space of trust and intimacy provided by the exchange of letters. This space also promoted confidence, self-esteem, and security to confront adverse situations. These are, moreover, learnings that are still being gestated, understood, and which require time to be assimilated:
[The experience was e]xcellent both for the opportunity to have recalled important events for me, which I had kept for a long time, and for being able to reflect on them, share and learn from points of view different from mine. The exchange with classmates and [with students] from Spain was very fruitful and interesting. And it fits perfectly as an instrument of awareness. (Student 10)
Thanks to this experience, I was able to talk to someone about certain things that happened to me, I was able to meet other people and experiences and, with that, to improve certain points regarding myself. (Student 18)
Seeing other people's experiences brought up a reflection on how important it is to fight racism. (Student 20)
It [letter-exchange] provided me with such special moments of knowing myself and, more importantly, knowing the other. (Student 27)
The students are telling us, therefore, about a form of learning that humanizes; about empathy, acceptance, the opportunity to explore their memories, to remember important events about which they had not stopped to think before, to navigate subconscious experiences. They are talking about how opening up to the other teaches us how to deal with suffering, and encourages tackling pain pain that, through self-defence mechanisms, is usually relegated to a place of oblivion precisely because talking about it means making it resurface. Opening up to the other, with the other, can be liberating. A student who identifies as being of African descent, for instance, tells us about the importance of the reception she received by confiding her pain and understanding that it is also shared by others: "As a Black woman, it was very important for my self-knowledge to be able to hear the experiences of other colleagues and feel welcomed by the majority. In addition, it was a very rich experience to be able to understand the processes of racism that take place in another continent" (Student 2).
What we infer from these narratives is that the students identify the epistolary dialogue as an opportunity for self-knowledge that takes place through knowledge of the other, the sharing of painful experiences and the mutual empathy that arises from it. In one of the feedback forms, we found a very assertive interpretation of how the subjective and humanizing dimensions of learning are activated through the exchange of letters, to the point of being interpreted as a therapeutic, caring and healing process:
I believe that autobiography is equivalent to saying that it is a therapeutic moment, where experiences that I wouldn't even imagine have been rooted for so long are resurfaced; experiences that are socially naturalized in the face of those who have never been through a particular situation, [experiences] that only you have been through. At the same moment that I remembered and reflected on them, I understood how important it is to enter not only into their particularities but also into those of others, because it is a way of humanizing oneself (Student 34).
In short, the aspects that UnB students appreciated in their anonymous feedback were the novelty of the proposal; the space of exchange with "equals" who are actually "different;" the possibility of remembering, expressing and sharing their own experiences and opinions, as well as discovering the realities, personal experiences, opinions, and educational resources of the other; the surprise and pleasure of knowing oneself, of what one thinks and feels; becoming aware of the need to open horizons and incorporate alterity in one's own subjectivity, discourses and practices; and the possibility of consolidating knowledge related to the topic thanks to listening to the other and to the articulation of the self, as the fragments cited above illustrate.
In addition, the autobiographical accounts written by UdL undergraduates which, as noted, were part of their assessment activities also illustrate the use Spanish students made of the letter-exchange, and, therefore, its usefulness for their development as teachers, e.g., defining their identity and imagining possibilities in their (future) professional praxis. The story of student number 26 permits illustrating this pedagogical-epistolary phenomenon. In her writing, we can trace the thematic connections she develops from the Brasilia-Lleida epistolary stimulus. In the first place, and like many of her classmates, the student points out that receiving letters in Portuguese made her put herself in the shoes of a foreign primary school student who joins a class knowing neither Spanish nor Catalan:
The epistolary dialogue we have established with students from Brazil has helped me to be aware of multilingualism, as it has helped me […] to understand how newcomer children feel when they arrive in a country and do not understand the language, because when I received emails written in Portuguese, it was difficult for me to understand them. Here I can corroborate the importance as a future teacher to give all possible support to children so that they can have a linguistic immersion in the new language and quickly feel in a climate of trust from the first moment so they can communicate easily (Student number 26).
Once familiar with Portuguese, and thanks to the simultaneous translation techniques available online (pointed out by several other classmates), student number 26 explains that the letters from Brazil were an opportunity for her to redefine herself as a teacher committed to anti-racism. This self-redefinition of hers was stimulated by the racist experiences that her epistolary interlocutors from UnB shared with her:
Through the experience of the epistolary dialogue with students from Brazil I have been able to put myself in the shoes of people who have really experienced racism over the years, and I find it very important to start from the same experiences in order to promote meaningful learning. This has allowed me to broaden my perspective and see the reality of racism beyond my experience [as a White woman] (Student number 26).
Ultimately, this intellectual journey has led this student to ask herself how racist values are conveyed within schools, including through teachers and the official curriculum, as well as the need to detect and combat them:
Can the school be responsible for an education that builds racist or anti-racist values, based on the values built on its hidden curriculum? This is absolutely true, hence the importance of taking action as a teacher to prevent racism while promoting anti-racist values (Student number 26).
This type of intellectual journey stimulated by the Lleida-Brasilia epistolary exchanges, present in all the autobiographical narratives of UdL students, leads other classmates to draw similar/nuanced connections and to articulate other reflections on racism in a subjective, unique and committed way. Thus, for example, the need to be actively anti-racist and to deconstruct the hidden curriculum (Jackson, 2009; Gimeno Sacristán et al., 2015) in terms of racism (proposed by student number 26) are also the conclusions reached by students number 2 and 25. Indeed, as the above authors claim, the curriculum often conveys (discriminatory) values that are reproduced in the classroom via trivial phenomena, which most often go unnoticed. Through the letter received by a colleague from Brazil, student number 2 becomes aware of the difference between not being racist and being anti-racist. Citing in her story a fragment of a letter she received that has been especially relevant to her, the student verbalizes the following reflection on micro-racisms:
One of my classmates, Eric, told me about the importance of being ANTI-RACIST, and I quote: "so now, after studying all the theory and debates in class, I started to reflect on how extremely serious this is, and the fact that it's not enough just not to be racist. It is necessary to be anti-racist" [original quote in Portuguese]. […] Knowing that racism exists is very different from perceiving how it is embedded in our daily lives and rooted in our customs and traditions, so it is very important to promote anti-racist attitudes in all walks of life and to create intercultural schools. In schools, there is a whole hidden curriculum that shows evidence of attitudes, actions, racist comments from professionals that operate implicitly. […] We must have a desire for otherness, which has awakened in me intensely this course with all the learning I have gone through, which has shown me the prejudices and micro-racisms and stereotypes that I had inside me that did not let me move forward towards being an ANTI-RACIST person. If there is no such desire for otherness, understanding the other and placing ourselves on an equal footing, there will always be racism and exclusion (Student number 2).
For her part, moved after having discovered the concept of "structural racism" through her Brazilian peers and how it operates in a particularly pernicious way in the form of daily micro-racisms, student number 25 shares the following reflection:
The letters from Brazil have made us think about xenophobia and racism. Two words that do not appear in the entire primary school curriculum, which is the basis of the syllabus for many teachers. But how is it possible to build an intercultural school if the curriculum tells us nothing about racism and xenophobia? (Student number 25).
The deconstruction of the curriculum is also a concern expressed by student number 23. She alerts us, in a somewhat more self-critical way, that in order to decipher the underlying racism in the hidden curriculum and in everyday educational praxis, it is necessary to make an effort, firstly, to become aware of the privileges that some citizens enjoy. The student wonders:
We must highlight the richness in the diversity that is to be found in classrooms, and most importantly, we must know how to make the most of it. […] But is this diversity really respected? What do teachers usually do in the face of such a beautiful and rich heterogeneity? […] In my school internships, most of the time, I tried to silence this diversity, ignoring, despising and even silencing the voices of students who were different from the teacher. We need to be more open-minded, listen to and nurture the voices of our students. As the sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos says, we must listen to the alternatives if we are not to perpetuate this violence against them. This violence is called racism. Racism that lives in the classrooms, in the streets and also in our day to day. […] Why not change it? It's hard to change something you're not aware of (Student number 23).
The difficulty of becoming aware and recognizing that each of us, often unconsciously and without necessarily being ill-intentioned, contribute to reproducing discriminatory contexts (either actively, even deliberately, or passively and connivingly) is a concern expressed by many students. Thus, for example, student number 11 alerts us of the importance of being critical observers of the infra-ordinary i.e., apparently insignificant, quotidian, trivial, self-evident, ordinary phenomena that convey meaningful (often discriminatory) happenings (Perec, 1973; 1989; 2012) and of ourselves and those around us:
we must take into account the OBSERVATION OF SMALL DETAILS. […] The CAPACITY OF OBSERVATION empowers us to have an OPEN MIND thus avoiding being exclusionary (Student number 11).
In addition to this Brasilia-Lleida learning, the autobiographical narratives also show that the awareness of micro-racisms is bilateral, since UdL students share their opinions about a specific type of discrimination that is anchored in Spanish culture and which many UnB students were unaware of: racism against the gypsy ethnicity and against foreign seasonal workers (mostly from Mahgreb and sub-Saharan Africa). It is worth noting that the data analysed do not mention other targeted populations, such as Latin-American and Eastern Europe migrants, for example.
Racism against the Rom community in Spain is a recurring theme in the autobiographical accounts of UdL students, and these suggest the type of learning Lleida-Brasilia mentioned above. In addition, this form of racism means a step towards a self-critical attitude on the part of UdL students regarding the concept of "structural racism" that is widely used in the Brazilian context, but is much less known among UdL students. The example of student number 21 is illustrative. In her story, she cites a fragment of a letter she received. Excited about this epistolary experience, she shares with her readers her surprise at the notion of "structural racism" that her interlocutor mentions in her e-mail regarding her Brazilian context. The first reaction of student 21 is to consider that "structural racism" does not exist in Spain. However, a reflection on racism against the Rom community there forces her to reconsider her own opinion:
I first wanted to find out about the type of racism that she [her UnB correspondent] was talking about, structural racism, in order to provide a careful answer. Later, when I discovered that, as I believed, structural racism was racism from the structure of the system, that is, laws, policies and the like, I replied that there was no structural racism in Spain as such. There was racism, but no racist messages are sent from the institutions, at least directly or explicitly. […] The teacher in charge of the subject [Gloria] let me know that in Spain […] there was structural racism specifically towards the gypsy community. […] To what extent does stigma condition them? Personally, I believe that [it does] to the point that from an early age, society sends them the message that they will not be able to aspire to anything other than the street. [They have been s]ilenced, cornered, traditionally punished and marginalized, treated as second-class citizens. […] So, yes, in Spain until very recently there was structural racism towards gypsy people and even today, the ashes of hatred sown for more than 600 years remain latent. Now the stigma is so great that it is difficult to dispel the distrust of people who have been systematically persecuted, discriminated against and marginalized (Student number 21).
This connection between the concept of structural racism and racism against the Rom community in Spain is indeed a theme raised by many other students. And this two-way learning acts as an often uncomfortable "mirror effect." For example, student number 5 consciously and openly expresses what other autobiographical narratives only hint at: the fact that the experiences and opinions of the UnB students about racism in Brazil force UdL students to rethink racist discourses and practices in their own context, including the most familiar and everyday; as if the letter acted as a revealing mirror of racism in oneself and in one's environment:
I noticed a lot of differences in dealing with racism in both countries, as I had to open my eyes to start being aware of the micro-racisms and racisms that we already have integrated and we see them as something "normal" and, at the same time, I saw another kind of racism at the other end of the Atlantic Ocean. […] This experience has been essential, as it has made me think, reflect, question many aspects of the culture I had integrated, and how these affect my education and how I approach students. [It makes me] keep in mind experiences such as the one in the curriculum to act against the racism that exist in society as a teacher and especially as a citizen (Student number 5).
This "mirror effect" provided by the letters received from Brasilia appears in several autobiographical accounts in relation to the incidents that occurred in Lleida just a few months before: an alleged focus of COVID infection among the community of seasonal workers. Lleida is a city rich in the food industry, and regularly hires temporary workers, foreigners, mostly coming from Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. During the fruit-picking campaign in the summer of 2020, these seasonal workers, housed in questionable human and sanitary conditions, were accused of causing an increase in COVID infections among the city's population. Faced with this incident, which had a very significant press repercussion at local and regional level, student number 13 considers the following paradox, which she shares with her Brazilian correspondent in her letter (quoted in her autobiographical narrative):
Here in Spain we can see how racism is still present but in a camouflaged way; I'll give you an example. My parents live in a town (Castelló d’Empúries) near the beach, which every summer receives a lot of tourists, so there is an increase in the population. And where I study (Lleida) in the summer there has also been an increase in the population, since the city receives many immigrants who come to work in the fruit harvest, mainly from Senegal. Well, this summer we have been able to observe how, in cities with the same sanitary conditions, it has been decided to confine one of them: Lleida. That decision was justified on grounds of an increase in infections. However, we can see how in my parents’ residential area, with the same and even worse conditions, it was not decided to lockdown the city. […] This makes us see the discrimination that exists [against those who are accused of worsening the contagion] (Student number 13).
In short, as student number 9 forcefully and succinctly expresses, the Lleida-Brazil epistolary dialogues were a very enriching experience as pedagogical instruments that promote awareness of one's position regarding what surrounds them a phenomenon we call (and explain in the last section) transnational dialogues, an area of intercultural contact:
[the] epistolary dialogue we have had with students in Brazil, [is] a tool that I found amazing: to be able to share experiences and visions about other realities and experiences, beyond my position as a White, working-class man coming from a country like Spain (Student number 9).
CLOSING-OPENING: TO CONTINUE REFLECTING
In this article we have shared with our readers the teaching scheme we have developed in the Faculty of Education, University of Lleida and University of Brasilia. This scheme is inspired by a 19th century British historical educational phenomenon: the epistolary education experienced by three friends Anna Mary Howitt, Barbara Bodichon and Bessie Parkes. Analysis of the data collected shows that, just as in the 19th century, the letter acts as a pedagogical tool that fosters interpersonal dialogues and, with them, a dialogical and collaborative production of knowledge. In the case of the three British friends, the knowledge they created was feminist in nature. As a sign of the letter's potential as an instrument of social change, these three Victorian friends ended up becoming the pioneers of the then nascent feminist movement, organizing militant campaigns in favour of the educational, social, economic and political rights of women. In the case of our students in the 21st century, the knowledge they have produced has focused on two themes, common to the courses studied: racism (discussed in this article) and the culture/nature relationship in the field of education. This is so because the linguistic, cultural and social difference that "separates" them has served them to learn from otherness. The result of these transatlantic epistolary exchanges has been a first step to rethink and make intercultural education real.
Indeed, the data analysed show the potential of 21st century forms of epistolarity to create communities of affection and learning capable of putting into practice other ways of being in the university and of producing knowledge and devising educational practices that mobilize other ways of feeling-thinking (sentipensar). In the case of the experience described and commented on in this article, it is about anti-racist knowledge. Starting from the potential of epistolarity as a pedagogical tool, we are convinced that other themes, such as environmental education and feminism, can be equally promoted. This is due to the narrative learning that letters promote. In them, narrative relationality is activated. Through it, stimulated by the input that correspondents provide, students exercise their ability to attribute meaning to experiences, to situate themselves in their context as subjects, and, in this narrative process, verbalize and develop learning and knowledge.
Our data also suggests that, in order to get the most out of epistolary learning, it is worth considering resorting to narrative pedagogy, that is, working with students the analysis of this epistolary input. In both cases (UnB/UdL), this analysis was briefly done at the beginning of each class, when lecturers asked students how the epistolary exchange was going and guaranteed a regular flow of letters by updating the exchange calendar. Additionally, in the UdL context, this analysis was promoted and articulated in autobiographical accounts. These were collectively discussed in class, and individually commented on via tutorials, where the lecturer discussed each student's work-in-progress. In these personal narratives, the exercise of introspection made it possible to further define, specify, and develop the critical spirit and the production of knowledge that epistolary dialogues stimulate. This is so because both the letter and the personal account act as a space for meta-awareness and self-reflection. As we have illustrated, the letter is a pedagogical tool that provides a space for individual reflection on an educational input experienced within the framework of a course, where the student expresses what this stimulus has meant for him/her. In addition, the letter serves as a humanization strategy that provides a space where the personal, the intellectual, the theoretical, the practical, the experiential, the witnessed create an epistolary educational input that complements the educational stimulus of the classroom.
Even so, our experience in the Lleida-Brasilia edition of our epistolary workshop shows that it is above all in the autobiographical narratives that students transform this epistolary input into a subjective, unique, and elaborate piece of thinking. In other words, we understand that letters offer a space of intimacy, trust, empathy and freedom of expression that creates educational communities of affection. In them, students respect and support each other as members of an educational group; personal experiences are shared, and opinions related to the course topics (racism, environmental education) are articulated; knowledge and resources are exchanged (videos, articles, documentaries); awareness of difference/alterity is verbalized as a source for self-reflection, even self-assessment; and the emotional learning that cognitive learning implies is expressed un/consciously.
Notwithstanding, to get the most out of this epistolary learning, our experience suggests that the ideal is to employ narrative pedagogy in these letters. This accompaniment by the lecturer-mediator allows a more profound self-criticism in students pondering, for example, how we collude with racism. In this edition of our epistolary scheme, this narrative pedagogy mediation took place (briefly and) collectively in the classroom (at the beginning of each session) and, in the case of UdL students, also in face-to-face tutorials, where they discussed their work-in-progress autobiographical narrative with the lecturer. As we now move on to explain, our experience suggests that a strengthened conceptual mediation might take us beyond transnational dialogues. A strengthened pedagogy narrative approach might even foster an area of intercultural contact (Santos, 2002), and a good support for the articulation of this outcome might be the autobiographical narrative.
Indeed, we are persuaded that our epistolary scheme has led us to transnational dialogues, an area of intercultural contact. Yet, the elements we have analysed do not allow us to say we have managed to achieve a radically intercultural dialogue. This is because we mobilize, here, an expanded meaning of interculturality that transcends what Catherine Walsh (2012) calls relational interculturality and functional interculturality. That is, the multiculturalist perspectives that celebrate cultural diversity, hiding the asymmetries of power/being/knowledge between peoples, and the theories and pedagogical practices that, even seeking to insert diversity, bring together different cultural and linguistic contexts, do not problematize nor alter the class, gender and race inequalities that operate in the institutions and structures of societies. That would be what seems to emerge in our data. What we envision instead is critical interculturality (Walsh, 2012). A perspective that conceives difference as a socio-historical production and that, for that very reason, points to the need for a broader pedagogical horizon. It is not, therefore, just a matter of recognizing racism as a hegemonic imaginary that produces difference as inequality, but of interpreting it as a pattern of power that is born with colonialism and is maintained over time as a structure, as a coloniality of power/being/knowing (Quijano, 2005).
More than that, a critical intercultural pedagogy committed to the decolonization of knowledge, relationships and power structures must provide a deep analysis of the gears of racism/Eurocentrism; the ways in which it dehumanizes, engenders and naturalizes physical and symbolic violence, as well as how it affects the subjectivity and historical experience of racialized subjects (Reis da Silva, 2022). It is from this understanding and within it that we can forge pedagogical practices capable of advancing, beyond the identification and criticism of racism, in the construction of an anti-racist education committed to epistemic and cognitive justice, with the promotion of epistemic pluralism and intercultural dialogue. This cognitive justice
implies valuing and recognizing the validity and legitimacy of other forms of knowledge and its enunciators, recognizing that they inform other ways of feeling-thinking [sentipensar] and other senses of the world. Therefore, cognitive justice is a way of relating, a translation and an intercultural dialogue that generates a respectful tension between knowledge from different contexts; it is also a way of confronting the privileges, hierarchies and inequalities generated by the locus of enunciation from which people are situated in the world (Reis da Silva and Soares, 2021, p. 20).
There is, in fact, another dimension of this critical interculturality that presupposes democratic coexistence with difference. It is about recognizing the incompleteness of the human, that is, recognizing that we are susceptible to reproducing racism even when we want to fight it or when we are not fully aware that we are being racist. Consequently, this demands a permanent willingness to learn-to-be, an attitude of daily self-examination that allows us to identify how we become racist and reproduce racism. This is a necessary posture for the promotion of anti-racist educational practices, through which the radically democratic coexistence between different parties is taught/learned. This corresponds to saying that:
The recognition and respect for cultural diversity, as well as the recognition of the plurality of identities and belonging cannot be separated from the guarantee of democracy, that is, from the guarantee of the right to participation, to the full exercise of the condition of subject of law that claims and fights for new rights (Reis da Silva, 2015, p. 473).
For a truly intercultural education to exist, we suggest that a reinforced narrative pedagogy mediation on the part of the lecturer might be necessary. A conscientious lecturer with the appropriate conceptual instruments might help students be aware of the privileges we enjoy and thus prevent neocolonial epistemic gestures from being overlooked. In this sense, in order not to break with confidentiality (which, as noted, we believe, guarantees freedom of expression), a bolstered narrative pedagogy articulated in an autobiographical account might be a good complement to letters. Once the epistolary exchange (free, confidential, voluntary) is done, personal narratives allow articulating a meta-awareness where what is learned through epistolarity/in the classroom is synthesized, specified, defined, developed, and affirmed (as the UdL examples analysed above hint at). A conceptually well-equipped mediation might, in addition, (further) question taken-for-granted meanings and hence complement autonomous and horizontal epistolary learning (discussed above). We are convinced that this reinforced mediation, equipped with the conceptual instruments of critical pedagogies, is the path to in-depth intercultural education.
In this sense, writing from a self-critical position, despite the achievements made in this Lleida-Brasilia edition of our epistolary workshop, we are aware that our proposal for methodological innovation in university teaching has limits. In this Brasilia-Lleida epistolary teaching scheme, we have not reached the depth that critical interculturality demands. The fact that students showed themselves capable of recognizing racism as a structural, multidimensional and intersectional violence does not allow us to affirm that in our epistolary learning activity, we have achieved critical interculturality. This is because critical interculturality presupposes that each student assumes, as a human being and citizen, a radical and daily commitment to anti-racism, which implies behavioral and attitudinal changes. In other words, we can state that we have managed to design an epistolary experience that has the pedagogical potential to interculturalize and decolonize Westernized universities as noted, what we call, at this stage, an intercultural dialogue, even an area of intercultural contact. Notwithstanding, we reckon a more conceptual mediation in the narrative pedagogy stage of our epistolary scheme might help achieve our ultimate goal: critical interculturality.
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Funding:
Data availability statement:
Research data are available only upon request.
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