Education & Ontological Violence

“Ontological violence refers to the practices, such as curriculum and pedagogy, that only offer one version of the truth” (Montpetit, 2018)
            When academics interpret the process of children’s learning and development into contributing members of society as ontological violence is extremely troublesome. The process where students learn would be considered ontological violence, however, this is the way humans learn. We learn from our experiences. Nevertheless, to consider it ‘violence’ desensitizes the word, makes it less impactful and loses its true meaning. 
Even when, we, as students in teacher’s college, are fighting with facts and opinions about particular topics. This type of conflict is how humans learn to grow and when students are not taught how to differentiate between facts and fabrications, students are not equipped with critical thinking skills.
Castoriadis argues that the psyche of an individual is ‘coerced’ into becoming a social individual, through the social institutions (e.g., the family, school, and religion) and impose limitations upon an individual’s desires and drives (as cited in Todd, 2001, p. 432).
As humans, we are of course socialized individuals that have external pressures that cause us to act in a particular manner. A case may be made, that with out these pressures and societal norms, humans may act in unpalatable extreme ways, such as: incest, rape or murder.
In class we talked about how a group of students were pulling off the bark of a tree. Through some educators’ lenses, this would be considered curiosity and discovery learning. However, pulling off the tree bark is comparable to pulling off the skin of a human. The bark protects the tree from outside forces, such as the scorching sun and drying winds which is similar to the epidermis protecting the body from bacteria, infections, viruses and other unwanted substances. Telling the student to not pull off the bark from the tree could be considered ‘ontological violence’ and may cause emotional damage. However, this “emotional trauma” is short-lived but very important.  If an educator can intervene and demonstrate that pulling the tree bark is wrong and that a more appropriate way to learn would be by examining the tree bark from the dead log. This would still allow students to learn through inquiry based learning, but with guidelines and rules.
In the end, I believe that ‘ontological violence’ will always be involved in the effective development and education of the child. Without it, individuals will never utilize the process of learning.


  
References
Montpetit, M. (2018). EDUC 5461: Curriculum, pedagogy, and learning in early childhood
education II, week 2 notes [powerpoint slides]. Retrieved from https://owl.uwo.ca/portal/site/5b7bb0b0-0421-482d-af83-9324f1fc1182/tool/c1b7e782-26c8-42a8-af94 1705241b1e9e/ShowPage?returnView=&studentItemId=0&backPath=&errorMessage=&clearAttr=&source=&title=&sendingPage=103591492&newTopLevel=false&postedComment=false&addBefore=&itemId=103591493&path=next&addTool=-1&recheck=&id=
Todd, S. (2001). ‘Bringing more than I contain’: ethics, curriculum and the pedagogical

demand for altered egos. Journal of curriculum studies, 33(4), 431-450.


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