[…] 

     Education as “practical” starts with the social structures and practices in use. It demonstrates how an individual becomes a member of society by letting them in on the history and customs that they will need to know in order to survive in the external world. Since communication is the basis of community, education becomes the primary tool for instruction.

     Education as a seductive theory, then, is one that is conscious of its intergenerational knowledge and the need to collect our place; namely, to desire who we are. As teachers, we give away who we are as a way of circulating what we know, only to receive a transformed version in return—different perspectives. Education thus is never finalized; it remains a way of relating to the world that can only be experienced as we experience social life. 

     Both Durkheim and Giroux confirm that critical self-knowledge can only be gained by living the life of an active member. It is through critical, active education that Giroux’s individual can become who they are meant to be. As well, it is through seductive or reflexive education that we can pursue and maintain a language for a kind of knowledge that cannot help but return to its own ambiguity.

     Hence, we return to education and its desire, its power, as relating our sociability. Our relation to education, as a seductive discourse, maintains the necessary tension between the individual and the social, between a practical and reflexive language, and between the seducer and the seduced. This tension is not in opposition, rather, it is a constant ordering and re-working of the soul in order to become who we are (knowing that this may only be finalized at death). For this reason, society continues to exist; continues to re-work itself by struggling with the necessary rules and boundaries it places upon itself. What remains constant is an endless seduction of education; one that moves towards a social spirit that cannot be annihilated:

All of production, and truth itself, are directed towards disclosure, the unbearable “truth” of sex being but the most recent consequence. Luckily, at bottom, there is nothing to it. And seduction still holds, in the face of truth, a most sibylline response, which is that perhaps we wish to uncover the truth because it is so difficult to imagine it naked. (Baudrillard, 1990, p. 181)

What we desire, what we wish for, cannot be put into a logic of cause and effect. Education—as the seduction of pedagogy—is the maturity of human inter-relations, which help affirm our existence (even if all we can say for certain is that our fate is death): society, we know, continues to exist. It is seduction that helps human inter-relations even if we are aware that knowledge will change and that education can lead to error. By playing with meanings, seduction (as the grounds for an artificial interpretation of language and symbols), recognizes the possibility of desire as present right down to our linguistic constructions.
     Education as seductive, then, does not allow for a total and final description of life. Both Durkheim and Giroux are aware of the need to be seduced in order to re-learn or even to desire to learn. The truth, our desire to know, always needs an ‘other’ as reader—as seducer, structures of intersubjectivity are interpretations of our ways of knowing. For both Durkheim and Giroux, education is possible because we are part of a shared language. A seductive pedagogy, then, must resist its own “truth” in order to see beyond itself; to see us as social beings who are struggling with pleasure and unpleasure—our resistance to the unknown. 

     In all, these understandings take place in a cultural psyche; in human inter-relations that remember and forget as people re-work what has already been said and done. It is this diversity of weights, of choices that makes life bearable—the mistake is to suppose that the social is not seductive. Educations, the experiences of life (past and present), are not to be seen as stepping stones to preferred states in the present or future; these are its immediate rewards. Learning, like living, like loving, must be its own reward.

     Here lies the challenge for Portuguese-Canadian students. Do they see themselves as citizens within the larger context of Canadian civic life and cultural opportunities? Or do they see themselves as immigrants, or the children of immigrants, here to better their “individualized experiences?” 

     There are multiple replies to such large questions but all have to do with the models of education and socialization our youth have access to: and along with this access to democratizing education, is a conviction or belief in it as just as valid as any economic or market-styled educational process. When the 2001 Census Data reports that 93.8% of Portuguese in Canada do not have English/French as their mother tongue and did not speak English/French with parents until the age of 15, and even more telling, that 40.8% felt out of place in Canada by age 15, subscribing to a democratic model of education and their place in Canada beyond the workforce becomes a major hurdle for this group (Abada et al., 2009, p. 13; see also Ornstein 2000).
David Pereira’s research takes a cross-section of the Portuguese-Canadian community as he considers male youth and their attitudes towards educational attainment through perceptions of masculinity. Pereira writes:

As the first exploration of masculinity among young men of Portuguese heritage in Canada, the importance of this study is clear. Participants’ personal understandings of masculinity were frequently in conflict with how they understood constructions of masculinity in their community, which caused significant internal tension for some participants. Power, control, sexuality and gender relations emerged as main dimensions of masculinity that informed the various ways these young men relate to other men and women, as well as how they relate to education and their community. (2011, p. 103)

This type of research is paramount in looking at the grass-roots issues that exist within the Portuguese-Canadian culture before connections to a communal validation of education as a liberating and democratic process can begin to excite our youth. There cannot be a ‘top-down’ imposition of the value of education as more than just becoming a ‘good provider,’ unless the very youth we are trying to reach can recognize ‘the good’ as encompassed in the ability to challenge fixed perceptions of issues such as ‘what is a man/woman,’ ‘what does it mean to be Canadian,’ etc. We risk alienating our youth even further from an understanding of education as moving us beyond our limited social experiences if we do not first allow them to consider their own positioning as part of a larger human concern.
     This need to educate so that individuals can situate themselves within the larger context is part of the ongoing challenge, their resistance to a perceived loss of ethnic heritage, in the Portuguese-Canadian community. The young men in Pereira’s study are representative of this larger problem: the problem being that inter-generational knowledge is becoming stagnant in the Portuguese-Canadian community. It only makes sense to them that education should be about the immigrant/individual being able to take care of himself, his family, etc. It only makes sense that becoming ‘too educated’ may distance me from the ethnic roots I love and am familiar with. Too much thinking about the larger world around me is not “useful” to what I “do.” It does not bring wealth, recognition, or praise. As one Portuguese young man, in Pereira’s study, said:

At the end of the day it didn’t make any difference. I was the first in literally my entire family to go to and complete university. And I thought, if I’m the first, I’m like hello, I’m the first, I gotta get some kudos here. But no, there was never, I don’t think my dad was ever proud of me for completing university, especially since I didn’t get the typical $100,000 job that you’re supposed to get at the end of university, which he thinks I should have right now (2011, p. 48).

[…]
The Portuguese-Canadian community is but one group of many ethnic groups in Canada that reflect and encompass the need for an educational system that encourages learning beyond its monetary value. Such a model only further reproduces the hegemonic discourse that urges ‘the immigrant’ to work hard, and they, too, will become a ‘real’ Canadian one day. This is a form of alienation that Portuguese-Canadians must overcome, but first they must become aware of it. Here is the catch: this awareness comes from insisting that democratic forms of education be the model for all Canadians, not simply a luxury after the money has been made. 

     Democratizing education includes activities that urge humans to come together to organize their world in new ways. Ideas are not the ‘dross of history’ or meaningless expressions of abstraction that hide the reality of economic control; they are the material from which our sense of reality, our common sense is made. The ‘way things are’ just seems ‘natural,’ ‘normal,’ and ‘mainstream.’ We generally do not question these ideas and values and simply assume them to be our own. However, PortugueseCanadians must ask, when these ideas and values benefit others more than they benefit them, is the hard-working immigrant a worn-out narrative that keeps the Portuguese in their ‘place’? It is not easy to name or see the ideas that alienate us from our potential; hence the urgency in making sure that the educational model in Canada does not become a ‘business’ that is in the ‘business’ of making sure we produce workers, not aware citizens.

InterDISCIPLINARY Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies (IJPDS) Vol. 3.1 (2014), pp 125-127.

Noémia (Naomi) Couto’s research interests are in law, justice and public policy, human rights, and international criminal law. Her present focus is on child and youth rights in Canada. She has published Violated and Silenced: The Gendering of Justice; “On Justice and Education” in Law and Criminal Justice: A Critical Inquiry; “Oral History and the Struggle for Human Rights in Social Dislocation and the Lived Experience,” and “Paradox and Origin: On the Structure of Legal Communication” in The International Journal of Criminology and Sociological Theory. She holds a Ph.D from York University.

Abada, T., Hou, F., & Ram, B. (2009). Ethnic differences in educational attainment among the children of Canadian immigrants. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 34(1), 1–30

Baudrillard, J. (1990). Seduction (B. Singer, Trans.). Montreal, QC: New World Perspectives

Durkheim, E. (1956). Education and sociology (S. D. Fox, Trans.). Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.

Giroux, H. (1983). Theory and resistance in education: A pedagogy for the opposition. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey.

Giroux, H. (1989). Schooling as a form of cultural politics: Toward a pedagogy of and for difference. In H.Giroux & P. McLaren, (Eds.), Critical pedagogy, the state, and cultural struggle (pp. 125–151). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Giroux, H., & Purpel, D. (Eds.). (1983). The hidden curriculum and moral education: Deception or discovery. Berkeley, CA: McCutcahn Publishing.

Ornstein, M. (2000). Ethno-racial inequality in the city of Toronto: An analysis of the 1996 Census. Toronto, ON: Access and Equity Unit, City of Toronto.

Pereira, D. (2011). "Dropping out or opting out? A qualitative study on how young men of Portuguese ancestry in Toronto perceive masculinity and how this informs educational attainment." (Master’s thesis). Graduate Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.