Challenging Coercive Power Relations

In the Multilingual Education for Social Justice video,  Jim Cummins presents the idea of how "coercive power relations" have contributed to the frequent education failures of our Indigenous students.  I found Cummins' sociological perspective really digs deep into the heart of questioning our educational framework and its relationship to historical patterns of British Colonial power relations. While I hope at this point, we are all well aware of the link between this type of coercive power and the destruction of First Nations language and identities that manifested through the residential school systems, but what I found deeply engaging, was Cummins' take on how our present-day systems are still involved in navigating these residual power dynamics.

Cummins challenges us to look at the fact that power is infused through all aspects of our schools - from how the curriculum is developed to how learning is organized and implemented. And while we may not overtly be denying students access to their first languages and cultures, our system is still involved in a type of subversive denial. Cummins refers to the term: "benign neglect" and speaks to how coercive power relations can present themselves through what we ignore or don't teach our students. While the curriculum is changing, the British colonial context of teaching is still dominant. For our First Nations students, we are often filling their day with contexts and histories that are not relevant to them, and this is the quiet way in which education continues to subtly devalue our Indigenous students and set them up for failure in a system with which they are disempowered.

As educators, we must be critical of this ever continuing colonial discourse and its effects on our students. At times it can be hard to identify because it has been a type of stakeholder in our culture for so many years. But if we hope to engage our First Nations students with a type of learning that is collaborative in power, according to Cummins, we must activate our students' prior knowledge and allow them to participate in an education that strengthens their cultural identity.  For me, this means teaching content which is relevant to their lives and cultures, and teaching it in a way that allows them to meaningfully access the content.