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Feminist Education  

reprinted from Spinning Off, July, 1978

Education is the key to the creation of the future.  We are molded by what we are taught to believe. Our attitudes are shaped, our behavior reinforced and our visions determined by the educational process we undergo.  

  Feminist education involves "unlearning." We have been taught some faulty information: that males are the sole architects of history, culture, philsophy[philosophy]] and science; that women are totally absent from or play a minimal role in the development of civilization; and that as women, we have certain inevitable limitations on our capabilities.  Feminist education is a recovery from that amnesia which has erased female from our cosmology.  
  Once we have shed these fallacies, we discover new information about feminine consciousness.  As we reclaim our hera-tige, we uncover sources of ancient wisdom:  the power of intuitive knowledge and the value of learning from our subjective experience.
  Feminist education challenges both the content of traditional instruction and the process through which we learn.  Our efforts in this field include filling in the gap made by women's exclusion from scholastics, restructuring the learning situation and building new institutions that create a context for expanding and nurturing female knowledge.  These activities manifest themselves in three major formats:
  1) Women's Studies Programs in colleges and universities;
  2) Small groups, including workshops, study groups and consciousness raising;
  3) Independent schools, programs and learning communities.
  The purpose of Women's Studies is to transform the content of traditional subject matter to include women's experience and contributions.  Similar to Afro-American Studies, Women's Studies are seen as a supplement to existing information.  Today most colleges and universities offer classes like Women in Literature or the Psychology of Women, and some Workshops are a common and prolific form of small group education.  Based on the knowledge that women have skills and information to share, the workshop structure serves the function of providing women with a chance to learn everything from carpentry and auto mechanics to self-defense and psychic healing.  In workshops women learn survival skills not accessible to them elsewhere.  
  Feminist educational institutions are an outgrowth of both Women's Studies and small group activity.  Many of these independent schools and programs began within the confines of an academic establishment and all of them derive from or contain elements of small group process.  These new learning centers focus on the content and method of feminst [[feminist]]education, personal as well as intellectual development, and experiential wisdom.  The particular emphasis may vary; from the study of feminist political theory to the expansion of feminist art and culture to the creation of a women's community lifestyle.  
  In Los Angeles, the Feminist Studio Workshop at the Woman's Building is entering its sixth year of alternative education for women.  In 1973, the founders-Judy Chicago, Sheila de Bretteville and Arlene Raven-left their teaching positions at Cal Arts to build a program where women could engage in creative evolution outside the competitive standards of academia.
  The Feminist Studio Workshop combines a focus on feminist issues; an exploration of female culture, past and present; personal reflection and collective' sharing; and training in writing, performance art, video, graphic art and feminist education.  Through these media, a woman learns to express herself and to address issues relevant to a broad public audience.  In individual and group learning situations, she may discover her own symbol system, forms that seem intrinsically female or the beginnings of a new language.  
  The program remains flexible, restructuring every year in response to changing student need and the 

[[images - Art for All, a New Moves workshop taught by feminist educator Gloria Hajduk]]

Art for All, a New Moves workshop taught by feminist educator Gloria Hajduk.  Photos by EK Waller             

Transcription Notes:
Misspelled words in document.