The Times They Are A-Changing: Researching Transitions in lifelong Learning
TRANSITIONS AND LEARNING IN THE LIFECOURSE: INSIGHTS FROM THE LEARNING LIVES PROJECT (SYMPOSIUM)
SUBMITTED BY:
Gert Biesta (University of Exeter, UK - on behalf of the ‘Learning Lives’ Team)
CRLL Conference - 22-24 June 2007
(University of Stirling, Scotland)
work in progress – please do not quote without consulting the authors
Address for correspondence:
Norma Adair
Educationa Research Centre
University of Brighton
Falmer
Brighton
BN1 9PH
Paper 1: The Making of Two Masks: Transition and Stasis in the Life Story of an Asian Woman
Norma Adair, Education Research Centre, University of Brighton
Introduction
In a world that is in a state of constant flux it is argued that we are forever travellers, if not always physically, certainly spiritually (Bauman, 1998). We are, in other words, forever in transition, always on the move. Not only are there those linear transitions in life that are age/stage related: adolescence to adulthood; pupil to worker; single to married; childless to parent. Now there are transitions being made throughout our lives, as we make our way in a myriad different contexts, with a fluctuating ‘Other’, in a series of communities of practice that we find ourselves temporarily belonging to. With all this fluidity, Bauman (2004) claims, comes less self-assuredness and greater anxiety (ibid. p. 93). No longer can we be sure who we are, where we fit, where our ‘home’ is. In the “liquid form [of] modern life” (Bauman, 2004) there have become fewer shared systems of meanings and collective identities. Increasingly individual identity has been seen as an issue for personal choice and decision-making (Furedi, 2003). No longer is it about trying to find the right means to a given end, now it is about knowing which end to aim for and for how long (Bauman, 2004); it is about having the “freedom to explore” and the “costumes of identity” (Claxton, 1999) to select from or create.
How do we cope, make sense of our world of flux? What happens in those transitional spaces when we move from ‘place’ to ‘place’? Are we always in a state of flux or do we, as well as carving out our new identities, also find or create places of stasis that provides us with a continuity through all the change, or maybe paralyses us, rendering us ‘unfit’ for late modernity and our place in the post-modern world?
In this paper I map out a part of a life story of an Asian woman told to me over the course of five interviews as part of the Learning Lives Project. In doing so I show how one woman with many transitions stories her life, tries to make sense of, to cope with, all she faces whilst living her life with “two masks”. I begin, as we do so often in life, with a story, before sharing with you some tentative thoughts about how we may make sense of this telling in terms of transitions, learning, identity and agency.
Noor in a Nutshell
Noor was born in Pakistan in about 1961 and lived in a rural community within an extended family. Her father left when Noor was very young, finding employment in England. When she was eight years old the family joined her father in an urban area of northern England. At age 16 she entered into an arranged marriage and became a mother. Unhappy in the marriage, she spent two years with her infant daughter in Pakistan before returning to her husband in a city in southern England. Five more children followed. Noor not only brought up the children and managed the household, she also worked. She became a child-minder and, having gained formal qualifications, opened her own nursery. This came to an end when she moved to the south coast of England with her husband and her children. Continuing to be unhappy in her marriage Noor contemplated divorce, but as a Muslim woman found it difficult to reconcile her early interpretations of the Koran with her desire to follow a script that in the Western world is ‘acceptable’ now within society. Noor became seriously ill and at the same time a number of separations and reconciliations with her husband occurred. Through the course of the interview process Noor swung between taking action and remaining passive, but she eventually gained a divorce from her husband. Far from freeing her from worry, however, Noor was soon thrown back into another round of dilemmas that continued the theme of ‘two masks’, which I now want to explore in more detail. I look only from childhood up to the point of departure to the south coast of England in this paper, but analysis of her more recent story continues the theme.
Noor and the Making of ‘Two Masks’
Before Noor left Pakistan, at the age of 8, she began her transition from child to motherhood and wife. She was expected, and relied upon, to help her mother look after her younger siblings. She also maintained a childhood, playing on the beach, going to school and “bunking off” with friends. There was great emphasis placed on family values and she was taught
. . . the way that we should run our lives and the way that we should respect our parents and elders . . . (2:3)
Within the family and at school Noor was being taught not only her current place in the world but also her future place as a Muslim woman.
At the age of 8 the family migrated to England. At the airport her younger siblings relied on her as ‘mother’:
. . . I said, don’t worry, we’ll be fine. But inside I was scared as hell I was so scared but I tried to be strong for the little ones. (1:2)
Here was Noor in her ‘mothering’ role, making the transition from child. But here also is the first inclination of Noor having two different identities: the public ‘brave’ and the private ‘fearful’.
In her early days in England
It's like I was thrown in at the deep end. It's like, you know you can't swim and they just throw you in, so I arrived from Pakistan to England. It was totally, totally new way of life. New people, new home, new way of life, everything was totally different, and I remember I used to cry at night thinking how am I going to cope with this, because I was expected at the age of eight to do everything in this new country that I didn't know anything about. So that was really scary for me. Really really scary. (2:7)
She was expected to learn English so she could act as the interpreter for her parents and other Asians in the community; continued to help look after the younger children; and was involved in running the home. Noor was undergoing a number of transitions simultaneously: from eastern to western culture, from rural to urban, from child to unpaid worker (as interpreter). She continued the transition started in Pakistan to motherhood and housekeeper. Not only was she learning the script of the traditional Pakistani woman, she was also enacting it.
Noor’s sense of divided self grew. Through her interpreter work she became known by people in authority such as doctors.
. . . I felt important that at least these people acknowledge what I am, or what I think I am. But not really so much in the home. In the home I was a different person, I was really scared . . . I had these two lives, in a way. (3:19)
I was expected to grow up. I was expected to act older than my age . . . I remember I was feeling very scared, but because it was expected of me . . . it was just I had to do it. (2:9)
At school Noor could revert to childhood again.
I was happy at school, I was happy . . . for the few hours I was there, I didn't have the responsibility . . . I had my own set of friends, my own way of life in school, but that was it. Once I was out of the school gates, I was the older Noor not the younger. [laughs] So it was like I had two masks. Two masks. So at school I was really um, into studying, I was very happy, I had a circle of friends, but then when I came out of school I was a totally different person . . . I was the grown up. I was coming home to do cooking and sorting out the kids. [laughs] That was the way of life. (2:9)
The divided self continued to develop. Now she was both old and young; the strong and weak theme was strengthened.
I think probably the only time I will say to you that I felt strong was when I was trying to deal with my little brothers and sisters. I was stronger for them. Being strong for them. Because I was . . . looked up to as the mother figure, the father figure. So in that area, I felt strong that I was capable of doing everything that was expected of me, but within myself I didn't feel strong. (3:4)
Culture dictated that she should not voice her concerns to others, so she kept quiet and tried to make herself stronger, attempting to make the transition from the weak, scared Noor to the strong ‘Other’ she wanted to be.
I was trying to convince myself by talking to myself. [laughs] . . . I was trying to say . . . this is the positive side and this is the negative side you have to sit and think, you must take this path. (3:2)
But
. . . family members or aunties or whoever, they were telling us about the role of women, so I took that as, well, that's probably what's in the Koran, because you don't know, as a child, you don't know, because whatever the olders are telling you, you tend to believe that. So I believed that life for a Muslim woman it was like closed, like a cocoon . . . You're in this cocoon and you have to do as you're told and, erm, you can't go out and you can't do this and you can't do that and you know, a lot of restrictions. (5:9)
Noor dreamed of becoming a doctor but this dream abruptly stopped when, at the age of 14, unknown to Noor, her father arranged for her to become engaged to a cousin living in Pakistan. Noor rapidly went through the transition of single girl to fiancée. At age 15 it became clear that she was to be forced into marrying the man of her father’s choice and at age 16 the marriage took place. Noor had a further transition to being a wife. Whilst she was deeply unhappy about the arrangement, she was ‘too scared’ to prevent the marriage occurring. Taking on the role of obedient daughter, a role reinforced by her school learning in Pakistan and the teachings of the Koran she put her father’s feelings before her own needs. She was, as she says, “stuck”. Unable to realise her dream of becoming a doctor she told herself she would become a happily married woman, have several children and live her life through them.
When Noor made the transition to enforced wife she felt particularly weak, unsure and scared.
I thought my world was just collapsing around me. There was nothing I could do. There was nothing. It was like a tidal wave and I was just sucked into it, and there was nothing I could do. Even now when I think about it, it makes me shudder.
Did you at the time think of options?
I did. I was not strong enough to carry them out. [laughs] (3:5)
While still age 16 Noor had her first child. However, she was also by now a very unhappy young woman. In a loveless marriage, having moved away from her own family to live near those of her husband in the south of England, Noor began to feel she was “going mad”. For two years she went to live with her husband’s family in Pakistan. It was a brief interlude where she gained support in bringing up her daughter and could, to an extent, revert to being an adolescent rather than a fully fledged adult.
For the sake of her daughter’s education Noor returned to England to live with her husband. More children followed. Although in the marriage she remained an unhappy wife, she made the transition into work. At first the work was in a shop but then she gained employment in a food factory. After a very short time she was promoted to supervisor, quickly gaining further promotion to a role in quality control. That “management” had ‘noticed’ her capability to supervise, had “seen the potential of me”, made Noor think:
. . . oh, well at least I am somebody, I'm not like a nothing, because I did feel, erm, oh, I don't know, what's the word, maybe unwanted, that I was doing something and not being appreciated [in the home]. (4:6)
Noor wanted more than she was gaining from her job. With a third child of her own, some child-minding experience, and her interest in children, Noor decided to enrol on a nursery nursing course at college. She had in mind that she may be able to open a nursery of her own, and once she had successfully completed her college course she did eventually achieve this. Nevertheless:
I was not happy in my marriage, I did feel I was nobody, because I didn't have the happiness that I wanted, maybe you call it fulfilment, it was not there, so I felt, nothing. I thought I was nothing. (4:5)
While Noor was successfully negotiating the transitions she faced in the work place, at home she was in stasis. Unable to break from the cultural script she was entrapped. An escape route presented itself when she was given the opportunity to manage a retail outlet. Noor thrived.
I enjoyed the fact that I was, I was going out of my home, in some way, where, because I was, in a way I was the boss . . . I felt important . . . I felt important. I felt important, that I was doing something . . . (2:22)
Though she wonders:
. . . maybe it took me away from the [pause] the feeling of this forced marriage . . . (1:5)
. . . I was really unhappy in my marriage . . . Which way do I go? So it's like a case of either you start drinking or you have an affair, or you go and do your work. So I chose my work. [laughs] And I was constantly busy. I was always busy. I was tired, but I just wanted to keep busy so I didn't have the time to sit down and think about my life . . . to stop myself from thinking . . . Then I used to think, right, this is it. I'm going to leave him. I'm going to get a divorce. I'm going to start my life again. I'm going to move from here. I'm going to do this, this, this and that. Things I knew I wouldn’t do. [laughs] Things I knew I wouldn't do. But I used to sit and think about them.
Sort of a dream for the future.
Yes. Dream, but nothing becomes of this dream. [pause] I couldn’t - I didn't have the strength to carry out, my plans or my dreams. Within myself I was too weak for that, within myself . . . At that time . . . I thought I was strong but I wasn't really. I thought I was strong but I wasn't really. I was still like, tried to act strong, but when it actually came down to the nitty gritty that I had to be strong I wasn't as strong at all . . . I couldn't do it. I couldn’t do it. So it was like, all I can say is, probably I, even though age wise I had grown up but I was still little in more ways. (2:23-24)
Where once she had felt she was older than her years now, as an adult, she felt young again. This youthfulness was the weak side of Noor she did not wish to be.
But Noor also tells that through the years of work fulfilment she made a transition as a person – she changed.
I started to be more outspoken, whereas before I wasn't. I'd just keep, used to keep quiet but I started to be outspoken a little more . . . (4:7)
I hadn't changed in my attitude towards [my husband] or the children or the home life, it was still the same, but my outer . . . the way I dressed changed, the way I spoke changed, it was everything . . . the housework was done on time, the dinner was on time, the washing was done on time, as normal . . . I did everything. I did everything that was expected of me . . . I started to go out more, whereas before I hadn't been out at all. I was going out to dinner with my friends, or at the weekends they were coming to me, or we were just going out to the cinema, things like that, that changed. Whereas before I wasn't doing that. I started driving, taking driving lessons. So that was a big change, it was a big [chuckles] change, a big change. (4:7-8)
Neither her husband nor her parents approved of the changed Noor. For her parents she was going against cultural norms; with her husband she made him feel uncomfortable and “very small”. He felt she had an air of “authority”, of “power”. In a way she felt this too:
I did feel different in the sense that, [pause] I wouldn't call it power, but I had that sense that I am something, I'm not a nobody, I am something, I can manage my home, I can manage my children, my home life and I can work at the same time. I can be somebody. So I felt, it did feel better, much better (4:5)
Noor began to feel proud of herself.
. . . getting this job and this responsibility, so much of it all at once, a big dose of it . . . actually made me think to myself that I was somebody, I was capable of doing things that I thought I couldn't, and I wanted to prove to myself that I was a somebody, I have something in me, within me, to prove. And I actually did really want to prove to the family, the husband, everyone, that I was capable, capable of doing anything outside the home, not just the home. I was capable of achieving something. (4:5-6)