INQUIRY: WEAVING THE WEB

WHAT DOES THE LITERATURE SAY?

Despite the relevance of “safe-space” discussion within the media, there has been relatively little written from the perspective of the secondary school educator, and even less from an arts education perspective. Most articles that I encountered focused on post-secondary education, and nearly all dismissed the need for safe spaces. While post-secondary education is dramatically different from secondary education (the students are adults rather than children, the students are enrolling and paying to attend, the students may not be so actively negotiating their developing identities in relation to their peers), there are numerous lessons that can be learned from these articles. In “No Safe Space: James Arnt Aune and the Controversial Classroom”, Stob reminisces on the professor and academic Aune who suggested that “Classrooms should be unsafe spaces” (qtd. in Stob, 555). Aune’s pedagogy was inspired by the idea that “rhetoric remains our only real alternative to violence.” (558), and the ability to debate difficult issues is necessary for adults to fulfill their civic duties. I am taken the notion of the classroom as a place to learn civic responsibilities, but wonder if this would work when the students are worried if they will be pushed or beaten up after school for sharing their opinions in my classroom.

            While Stob’s discussion of safety and danger is powerful, anecdotal, and more inspirational than practical, Stengel’s article: “The Complex Case of Fear and Safe Space” provides a highly useful theoretical framework that can easily be applied to the secondary classroom. In this article, Stengel is critical of the practice of creating “safe spaces” through segregation. Through an analysis of Dewey and Ahmed's theories on the emotion and affect of fear, Stengel suggests that the students who call for safe spaces are rarely the ones that need them, and that marginalized groups are made marginalized through fear, or as Dewey puts it, “organic shrinkage” (529) on the part of the more privileged individual. Last but not least, Stengel reminds us that, while students cannot learn or succeed if they are deeply oppressed by their surrounding environment, some discomfort is necessary for education to occur.

            Although the previous two articles outline a comprehensive overview of the pedagogical complexity of safety and danger in the classroom, neither provide the necessary background on the phenomenon of safe spaces to understand when and why students and teachers have begun to call for safe spaces within their educational settings. Rosenfeld and Noterman’s “Safe Space: Towards a Reconceptualization”, provides a thorough history of “safe spaces”, and as the title suggests, a reconceptualization of these spaces as often reinforcing a binary of “safe” and “unsafe”. Indeed, much like Stengel’s interest in fear as the impetus behind the creation of safe space, Rosenfeld and Noterman identify how our society conceptualizes “unsafe spaces”. However, the most useful section within this article came within a discussion of “Inclusive” safe space in the classroom
: “By acknowledging that “no space is free from domination” or risk, teachers and students can constructively explore how issues of privilege, power and difference play out in the classroom and in the larger socio-political realm” (1355). Indeed, this conceptualization of “safe spaces” in the classroom, however impractical and difficult for teachers to successfully enact, echoes noted Drama Education scholar Jo Beth Gonzalez’ idea of a “critically conscious production oriented classroom” (1). Gonzalez suggests that in fostering a democratic classroom where students are working together to create a final production, teachers do not need to enforce social justice education, but simply must be present to facilitate a critical discussion amongst the students when issues of race, class, sexuality, religion, ability inevitably arise.

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Gonzalez, Jo Beth. "What Is a Critically Conscious Production-Oriented Classroom?" Temporary Stages: Departing from Tradition in High School Theatre Education. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2006. 1-23. Print.

Rosenfeld, Heather, and Elsa Noterman. "Safe Space: Towards aReconceptualization."Antipode 46.5 (2014): 1346-365. Wiley Online Library. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.

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Stengel, Barbara S. "The Complex Case of Fear and Safe Space." Studies in Philosophy      and Education 29.6 (2010): 523-40. SpringerLink. Web. 8 Dec. 2016.

Stob, Paul. "No Safe Space: James Arnt Aune and the Controversial Classroom." Rhetoric and Public Affairs 16.3 (2013): 555. Project MUSE [Johns Hopkins UP]. Web. 6 Dec. 2016.