Daniel Lance paper COV&R 2007

Limits of Communication and Communication at the Limit with Socially or Scholastically Marginal Teenagers in an Experimental Center in South of France.

I would like to investigate communication with socially and educationally marginal teenagers and the methods of a team of educators and other professionals who created a experimental educational center in the south of France from 1998 to 2002. The center operated under the general supervision of the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Justice and a local Association of insertion of difficult teenagers and illiterate adults. Most of our teenaged participants had been expelled from many schools and were monitored by the French Institution of Justice for Teenagers (Protection Judiciaire de la Jeunesse). This means that they had committed crimes serious enough to be reported to the police, but not sufficient to warrant imprisonment. In France, teenagers under sixteen are protected and their imprisonment is rare.

Negative reciprocity

Initially the teenagers regarded the adult team as enemies, the ones to fight, the ones using language which for Roland Barthes is understood as fascist, a reflection of dominant power, following its own rules and laws (Barthes, 1978). Nevertheless, by using this dominant language we were able to communicate and build a project with them. As Michel Foucault pointed out, communication relationships imply power effects (Foucault [1982], 1994, p. 234). Those effects are understood as very negative for our teenagers. Foucault pointed out, too, that language and exclusion are closely linked. The same recognizes the same and excludes what is not conformed to its standards. The structures of power are indicated by the coherence, the multiplication of a network that allows someone to impose his will upon another (Foucault, 1971). For example, university standard excludes what is not exactly seen as conforming to its criteria; education is a system of domination since it excludes what is not seen as conformed to its standard. Foucault noted that even philosophy excludes what is not understood as philosophical according to its own standards. Our teenagers did not accept this exclusion and excluded the dominant system as a consequence, developing a logophobia (Foucault, 1971). They dont speak the language of the Master. So they follow some mimetic desire choosing the opposite of what WE wanted them to choose.

This mimetic desire is as a consequently a source of conflict and violence since A desires the same object as B, and rituals are a way to deal with violence (Girard, 1977).

We use a dominant language to communicate, we agree on the same codes and references, but the teenagers choose the opposite of our codes. They will mimic us, but in an opposite way. They will choose the opposite of what we have chosen. They will go for expensive brands and clothes, they will follow specific dress codes, but they dont want to work for it, to integrate the standard social system, and more specifically they wont use our language. What system of communication can be established to go beyond this rejection? Our team had moments of deep and moving communication with them. And we do think that this communication to its limits can be very useful to rethink dialogue theory; it gave us a new perspective on all forms of communication, from silent communication, to non-verbal communication, to verbal communication. At the end of the process most of our participants were able to resume their schooling, they returned with a better image of themselves and with more self-esteem! What occurred and how did we achieve it. Our experience is summarized below.

As noted, the specific context was the education of teenagers who had rejected social and school norms. As a first step, we grouped them into small and well-structured educational settings involving no more than twelve each. Did they speak the same language as the adults receiving them? Yes and no. Many teenagers excluded from academic systems lack standard language skills. They are in danger to be as much out of law as they are out of language, they are, according to Alain Bentolila, in a semantic insecurity (Bentolila, 2000). To be insecure in speaking and writing means an inability to clearly express oneself. Here, we are speaking of poverty, exclusion and marginalization.

The team was composed of an educator of Institution of Justice for teenagers (full time), under the authority of the director of the Center of Educative Action, a trainer in cognitive therapy (part time), funded the Association earlier mentioned, a psychologist funded by the Ministry of Justice, a math teacher (three hours per week), a female martial artist, training in Aikido, a non-violent and defensive martial art. I was responsible for the center under the authority of the National Education teaching: French, Literature, philosophy and Aikido (full time). We benefited from the creation of two jobs for young people (one from the Ministry of Justice, the other from the Ministry of Education).

Most of them had been expelled from seberal secondary schools, or were perpetual truants. Most had been abused. One had a brother who hung himself as he was incarcerated. Another had a mother who died of Aids in his arms. They were received at our center from Monday to Friday, except Wednesday, from 9am to 4pm and we had lunch with them. None of them were excluded from our center. From now on, we refer to them as students.

Before integrating our class they went through different processes. They had a psychometric test, a meeting with the professionals of cognitive remediation of the Association and another interview with the educator and me about the activities in which they would participate during their stay at the center. Those test and interviews served us as a kind of break between two systems, the traditional educational system and our center. They stayed in our center with the objective of reintegration into vocational or traditional education.

We mentioned logophobia. Lets mention an interview with one of our students. We will use the name of educator for any adult in the center, and student for the teenager.

E. : You had a good time for a while and good results at schools with your stepfather. You went for a formation in mechanics. Wasnt it?

S.: Dont care. Anyway I always do the same thing, and thats ok for me. I fly away. Thats my way. Dont care.

That is where we come from. The teenager doesnt want to speak and rejects any kind of authority. Thats why we do think that education, understood in a wide sense, is based on communication. If the youth doesnt want to communicate with the adult, if the adult is the enemy, what kind process of education could be initiated? Lets add that this student who never went to school on a steady basis, was first to be at our center, in the morning, two weeks after he was integrated

Questioning education through the prism of communication has been our method. We thought about different levels of communication, from difficult communication to good communication, which we call different levels of dialogism. We questioned communication through a very demanding theory which is the one developed by the French philosopher Francis Jacques. For Francis Jacques the relation to the world of a man is initiated only through the language that he uses and that indicates his relation to the world (Jacques, 1982). The language, the logos is the fundamental matrix. Language is relation between A and B, A with B, the dia of dialog means the logos is shared with the other, is constructed with the other.

Dialogism according to Francis Jacques responds to specific needs. Dialogism begins by a first question on which we agree to discus: initial question. What is our subject? Which are our common and different pre-suppositions? What do we want to achieve in the process of communication? Do we agree on our goal of communication? Those conditions of communication determine the level of dialogism to the highest level, which the philosopher has named dialogue. So Francis Jacques develops the concept of dialogism, with its degrees from its lower degree to its higher degree which he calls dialogue. As a consequence there is a lower limit and a superior limit.

So, lets concentrate more on the process of communication. For Francis Jacques, if two people speak to each other, they respond to the other augmented by what the other said. They hear themselves taking in consideration words of the other. Each one belongs to a culture. Each has his own community, called Cultural Communities (Communauté dappartenance[1]), which we could call C₁ and C₂. Both of them should be are aware of their own pre-suppositional community K, Pre-suppositional communities (Communauté présuposionnelle[2]), they know what they have in common. They should know what they share in common as ideas and what they disagree with. And they build their own new community of communication C_c, Community of Communication (Communauté de communication[3]).

We must understand how difficult this demanding theory of communication which can be seen as a conceptual idealistic model but not a theory that can be experienced, rethought and confronted in reality with marginal teenagers. It is clear that the theory points out what we, adults socially integrated dont have in common with them. Apparently we do not share the same community, the same pre-suppositional community, simply the same words. Our students didnt make the choice of the French controversial writer, Jean Genet, who decided to speak the language of the master: we are clearly defined as the enemies.

Communication Through silence, non verbal communication, martial arts, theater, fundamentals texts.

Here I would like to give an example about silence as communication. We can add a new precision in this process of communication by showing that our words dont always reflect what we actually say. I had to welcome the teenager whose mother died of Aids. The suffering and the violence of this boy were extreme. He was ready to attack me if I had mentioned his mother (or maybe thought about it). We began our communication with silence. I was just assuming the fact of being there, with him. Eventually we began talking about different things, light topics, etc. But we both knew that those first levels of communication were building up to what I would called P_T: pre-requested and non-verbal of recognition, and pre-acceptance of the words, the mental world of the other. This kind of caring taming was the base of our communication, and possibility of further education. This first level of words were linked to his suffering and his personal drama, which we never spoke of previously. Obviously, if I admire somebody, I will be more inclined to accept or to try to understand what this person really means. We do have to emphasize also, the definitive importance of silence, non-verbal communication which should build up communication, which should build up, if we choose to use a metaphor of construction, which constructs the basement, the roots of the communicational edifice. This P_T, this pre-requested and non-verbal of recognition, and pre-acceptance of the words, the mental world of the other has been in our experience the true basis of communication. The words of the adult was at the beginning even not heard, it was our first goal to build up, what could be called some confidence and trust, to build up some community of communication based on what makes humanity.

A very well known priest-educator in France, Guy Gilbert mentioned the same ideas. He believed that to say to a child who has been eating after the dog in its bowl, and, as punishment, locked up in the kitchen closet: You know that God is Love would be the most stupid and violent sentence to pronounce. Who could be this God who allowed this kind of abuse? No, Guy Gilbert said nothing, he was just there with him, bringing him to what he called an educational Farm, deep in the south of France, with different wild animals that the children would take care of. He called his method zoo-therapy. The communication was there mediated through animals, the way the took care of those animals.

There is definitely an act of silence as much as an act of language, speech acts according to John R. Searle (Searle, 1999). As Lacan pointed out: do we have to deliver the word, the hidden word (Lacan, 1991, p. 204)? For the student whose mother had died of Aids, the word should not be delivered. As the educator is not an analyst, he has to face this same question of silence. What should be the right attitude of communication with an adolescent isolated in his suffering, what to do in front of the silence that follows the confession of a rape or of a child abuse, what would be the right choice when a teen-ager has been doing a new crime while his educator thinks this one, at least, is ok, has lost his crime outlook? How do we proceed with an adolescent who has, for the first gained some confidence in the adults world? Being here assuming the maximum of humanity, pointing out the rules, the law and, whatever happened, going on with this process of education. These youth have been hurt by life, they have, hidden somewhere, a very negative image of themselves, a very low self-esteem. Society has rejected them as the black sheep, and that is the identity they assume. They have societys judgment.

There is a very sensitive moment with such youth: this time of silence and happiness and confidence. For many it is the first time they have trusted an adult and its often an uneasy moment for them. I noticed when a very special moment or understanding has occured, when they cried and confessed to you, that their goal is to resist and to destroy the confidence that we had just achieved. The reason for that is obvious: they have always been rejected, so feeling accepted is difficult for them. They seem to say: Im going to leave, to break up everything and close myself so as to avoid being excluded again. They want to destroy a relationship that could be too dangerous for them, they want to return to their former identity and behavior. They have spent their time being alienated and expelled from school systems, and they want to replicate that behavior again. So, I would remind them of the laws and rules. Many of them would ask me: Im fired again? My answer would be clear: Its what you asked for, its what you wanted, and you can dream about it: but tomorrow at 8 a.m. we are going back to work! And their look, their expression would soften: they were not being excluded again! We were building the base of our communication based on being there, firmly, strictly but as gently as we could! The first taming is definitely non-verbal.

It is this kind of communication that often created the relationship. We tamed each other this way many times

The dialogism of Francis Jacques allowed us to resolve the principle of Double Bind (Watzlawick, 1967). The school of Palo Alto has developed with Gregory Bateson and Paul Watzalwick a well known theory concerning double binds.

Our experimental center was particularly vulnerable to double binds. We faced double bind from the Institution, from our students and from their parents.

A mother of twins was really eager for her daughters to enter our center. She was crying, she was totally exhausted by the violence of her daughters. But what we did during the week was systematically destroyed when her daughters returned to her home. The mother was attacking our efforts, our educators while at the same we were her last option. As a matter of fact, this mother was stuck in a double bind. If we succeeded it meant, for her, that she had been a bad mother, a bad educator but at the same time she saw the success of our work with her daughters. She was stuck in a double bind. In fact, that was the reason the team decided that the center would belong to the students and that parents (who themselves needed real support), should have their own place to speak about their personal despair. As a consequence, we introduced two different types of dialogism, one with the twins, the other between a psychologist and the mother. The two logos were produced at different location so we reduced any possible negative interaction between the two therapies.

We were aware that our students were stuck in a double bind. They had gained identity by being the bad one, the rejected one; to be successful, to learn to write and read in three months when they had been illiterate for years meant forfeiting a position in a society they had fiercely achieved.

Another double bind was common with our students. They had learned to survive in their world of exclusion. To be accepted meant that they would be soon be expelled again, fired from their new school. So, the more they progressed, the better the communication was, the more careful the team had to be with them. They wanted to destroy their toy before being themselves rejected, so they could have the illusion that they kept the control of their destiny. Different levels of dialogism from non-verbal to verbal dialogism allowed the team to find a way to avoid this upcoming double bind.

The last double bind we faced was institutional. For the standard education system, our success suggested that their pedagogy was not good enough, yet at the same time they had no other choice than to present those students who were and only one of them was necessary for that setting to fire a full secondary school. We resolved this double bind by having a close follow-up of the teenagers reintegrating the school system. We made contacts with ther classroom teacher, we kept contact with the headmaster, building up with them an educational system in which they were fully integrated.

We can now focus on non-verbal communication as a proof of this caring taming of the students. Training in martial art, and especially Aikido, created an opportunity to reintegrate rituals into education.

Aikido is a non-violent martial form using the force of the partner. There is no winner or loser but a communication, a creation of a new communication, a new logos, but a non-verbal logos, which is constructed though bodies with the other. Forgiveness is the quality of the soldier wrote Gandhi (Rolland, 1929). But to be able to forgive one needs to be in position of force, for his forgiveness to be understood. As Simone Weil pointed out: non-violence is good only if it is efficient (Weil, 1991, p. 101). Gandhi mentioned, too, that he would prefer violence to cowardice (Rolland, 1929, p. 54). In the martial art created by Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969) the purpose is to protect the opponent against his own violence, the purpose is to blend with the opponent, to be involved in a new form of dialogism through bodies and minds. In Aikido the one doing the technique, tori, is always in a safe position, he could hurt his partner, uke, but the purpose is to go for clemency, and to keep the relation even with a sword as Christian Tissier, French Master of Aikido, told us in an interview for our second thesis (Lance, 2005).

It is interesting to observe the role of sport education as understood by French thinkers. Michel Bernard, (Bernard, 1995), Vigarello (2001) or Jacques Gleyse (Gleyse, 1997) all noted, as followers of the theories of Michel Foucault, that sport education was a way to build a body, to make the body fit into a social system. Aikido, in contrast, is a school of freedom, of adaptation, of communication with the other.

As experts on violence, we were invited to help some secondary schools at requested by the department of education in the City of Nice. We were directed to a very difficult suburb of the city. The secondary school was attacked with stones and teachers openly insulted in the classrooms. We really thought about the world of the Philosopher Simone Weil, non-violence should be efficient. In this case, it was the students who had the power over the official authorities. The lunatics were running the asylum. So we tried to use dialogism to define degrees and types of violence with the actors of the educative system, to put some distance between them, and the role they presented to their students. It helped. But we could clearly see that non-violence in this case was totally inefficient.

In Aikido you can hurt, you have the power to be a better human being, to go beyond mimetic violence defined by René Girard, because you dont need a scapegoat on which to vent the violence of a society (Girard, 1986). For René Girard, the multiplication of violence caused by mimetic desire, the conflict to obtain the same object is a source of so much violence on a society level that this violence has to be controlled through rituals, violent rituals and scapegoating. Aikido allows us to control violence and to blend with this violence to create a new relation, a caring and nourishing relationship. Aikido constructs the same figure,

One attacks the other one using his force, they both create a new situation in which neither is hurt. Those youth wanted to fight, they attacked me, were put on the mat, controlled, and they were not hurt. For the first time of their life, they had a fight with no winner no loser And I can affirm that it was an experience for them, a moving experience, an initiation to life and respect of others. Many of the girls we received had been sexually abused, but in the center they were positively touched by an adult, and it was securing, protective! I taught Aikido with a friend of mine, a woman, so we could add another form of respect. I could throw her on the mat, and she could do the same to me. Many of the students had very strong images of female-male roles: those roles were revised through Aikido!

Aikido reintegrates rituals. All students had to wear the same white kimono, they had to bow to the founder of Aikido (Morihei Ueshiba), whom they kindly called pappy, and they had to bow to each other before and after practicing; they also bow to their professor as the professor bows to them. They had to place the mats for training, and to return them after the training. The ritual was always the same, ritual is the repetition of the sacred but the sacred in Aikido is the sacred of humanity, which has to be protected whatever happens. The master of Aikido can assume the status of master because he elevates his students with the respect they deserve, and as a consequence rituals worked out.

Let me finish this point with a joke, even in this very serious and academic paper. When teachers of martial arts asked me for advice before exploring martial arts with violent kids; my only answer was: sleep well and be in shape Guy Gilbert gave the same advice to future educators

Of course we cannot fully describe in this paper all processes utilized in our experimental system. I can mention that we used the works of Art as experience (Dewey, [1934] 1958), of the Pragmatist Aesthetics (Shusterman, 2000).

One example about dialogism applied to art. We decided to make a big fresco of letters of the name of the center one meter by one meter. It was a huge and demanding work, and they had to work together. It was really an experience to see our violent kids discussing whether we should put here or there a touch of blue or red, or if we should leave the piece of art as it was. Dialogism of Francis Jacques applied to Art.

With the functionally illiterate youth, I used fundamental texts of great writers speaking about desire, death, love and destiny. They learned how to read and write with the cognitive method employed by the Association. And by the end of the academic year, all of our student participants were able to write, think and express them selves clearly. We worked on plays, and literary masterpieces. Classic writers speak about essential things: desire, love, hate, relationships. Racine, Shakespeare (Girard, 1990), Proust (Girard, 1961), Claudel, Tennessee Williams speak beautifully about us and about our humanity. Our teenagers, who had spent years in traditional educations and yet unable to write or speak standard language, were, within months, able to write and to express themselves. This was not a miracle, only an understanding of them as human beings. They had a reason to learn with us!

I tought philosophy twice a week, fifteen minutes, about fundamental interrogation and about freedom. I recall questions about fashion and the links between fashion and freedom. Why do you all follow the same dress code? Why do I wear a suit? Are we free, what are we following then. Would we dress like that if we had been in the eighteenth century? What about desire? How do we desire things and objects? When do we consider subjects as objects. What can Kant teach us? And I was amazed by the pertinence of their remarks: Yes we wear the same sportwear so that we can be integrated in a group. And why do you want to be integrated in a group? Do you feel free to change groups? What about your image, since now you are brillant students? The answer there was a joke: Oh we just have to hide it not to be considered as fools, but well keep it in mind. I sometimes wish that my students at the University had the same pertinent remarks about philosophical interrogations

Our team learned as well. Our teenager students, viewed by general society as hoodlums and delinquents made us think about our own behavior and attitudes. This understanding of communication gave the adult the authority. We had authority, we could be heard, because by this communication we had, in a way, augmented the humanity of the other. This authority is not the one putting down the other, but putting up the other. We, adult and teenager, had been both augmented by a parcel of humanity each time we entered the process of communication.

At this point, I would like to give a tribute to our students, and to our team. We all learned much; and hopefully we learned to appreciate the most important thing: how to be a better human being, a caring and listening human being!

And isnt it for those chosen moments of communications that we all live for. We all want to reach those unique and ephemeral moments of dialogue. We all want to achieve the same goal that is to push away the specter of disagreement, misunderstanding and exclusion; it has been definitely the purpose of this paper and perhaps another way to understand what is ethical in an interlocutory relationship. As more and more of our young people are excluded from the traditional educational system, we beleive that the approach of dialogism according to Francis Jacques could be a useful theory for educators, teachers, and thinkers on communication.

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[1] As called by Francis Jacques, in French.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

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