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What We Have Learned
Lots. We know that whatever the modifications we've made, we started out
on the right foot. We've learned quite a bit about the obstacles women like
our
students face when they try to change their lives in major ways. We've learned
that what happens to our students in the program causes significant changes
in
their children, that when our students have to study and write papers for
class,
their children see them as models and take their own studies more seriously
(sometimes the older children come with their parents to the preparatory
mod-
ules sessions, especially the math classes). We think that what we do can
make
quite a difference in the attrition rate of nontraditional students who enroll
as reg-
ular students. We are learning a lot about the importance of helping students
to
understand how they learn and why they can rely on their own abilities. On
the
other hand, we learn again and again that values, expectations, and habits
that
took years and years to develop cannot be changed in the course of a few
weeks
or months.
We've learned that we don't cause what happens to the students in our pro-
gram; they do. We don't "teach" them; we don't "enable"
them. They are per-
fectly able themselves. We do set up situations-opportunities and an atmos-
phere-to which they respond. We offer respect and trust. We know that if
our
students are to gain any lasting self-respect and self-confidence, they must
see
that what has happened to them, how they have been treated, is not simply
the
consequence of their own weaknesses or deficiencies. They must understand
that
none of us lives as an individual apart from the effects of our society and
commu-
nity, that the tribulations associated with being on AFDC-or the benefits
associ-
ated with a Ph.D. from Yale-may stem from community attitudes and choices.
If, in other words, they are uncertain about their self-respect, it may be
in part
because the community treats them as though they are not respectable.
Each of our students comes initially alone, nervous, and often fearful. Each
who stays chooses to act, to think, to speak-and in so doing, finds shared
expe-
riences and knowledge. The courage to respond creates both relationships
with
others and self-reliance. As we act responsibly toward ourselves, we learn
to trust
ourselves; as we perceive our inextricable relationships with other people
and the
natural world, we recognize a larger kind of wholeness, a more complex kind
of
integrity. Only within that totality does the self, finally, find sufficiency.
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