by Christine Clark

The Social Construction of Borders and Trends Towards Their Deconstruction:
Implications for the Pedagogical Engagement of Students Identified as Behaviorally Special Needs

Introduction

The idea for the Borderlands Center for Educational Studies (BoCES) Border Walking: A Bilingual Special Education Conference presentation on which this paper is based, emerged very inadvertently one day. In a passing conversation with a, as he describes himself, "mostly" White male colleague, the issue of "borders" came up. He mentioned that one of the things he liked most about living in a physical border community, a community geographically situated on an international boundary, was that in a concrete, tangible way it represented what he felt he lived everyday but could only express philosophically, so to speak. That is, life in the margins, life as a person of mixed racial and ethnic heritage but trapped in a blonde haired, blue eyed, light complexioned body; life as a person in a long term committed and fulfilling monogamous interracial heterosexual relationship but perhaps bisexually and/or non-monogamously inclined; life as a bilingually, multidialectically talented person constantly searching for varied opportunities to code switch, and so forth. Living in a border community these struggles are reinforced as one is constantly reminded by mass media how far one's geographic circumstances deviate from the norm, the mainstream, the "center," namely, the East and West Coasts, in terms of topography, climate, language, racial and ethnic culture, socioeconomic class status, religious or spiritual affiliation, generational culture, size and appearance culture, social codes, and on and on and on... The conversation was so brief that I am still surprised at how profoundly it impacted me.

Border Construction and Deconstruction: An Autobiographical Perspective

I have always thought about borders in ways similar to those described by my colleague, not just as physical but as psychological, emotional, social, political, and cultural among others (Giroux, 1992). And, I guess that at least subconsciously I have always known that I too lived in the margins before actually living on the border. As a "completely" White person committed to interrupting and challenging racism I live in the margins, as a multicultural educator I live in the margins, and in all of the other ways that my colleague described and more, I live in the margins. What our conversation did for me was to bring this to my conscious attention. In essence, I had forever sensed my self identity being marginalized but I never consciously acknowledged it. In so doing, I felt a sense of freedom, the freedom to enjoy who I am, where I am instead of psychologically withholding this enjoyment from myself until a time in the future where social change work has created the context for the margins to become the center, until eurocentric society becomes multicultural society. It's as if I was waiting for "the revolution" to appreciate myself, waiting for the center to reflect me, to affirm me, to affirm my experiences, my psychological, emotional, social, political, cultural and other norms. This is not to suggest that I expect nor actually want this to become a concrete reality, that I simply want to reverse the terms of the contradiction by centering the margins and marginalizing the center. On the contrary, I believe that the progressive reality lies in the continual process of decentering not in the finished product of having decentered.

And yet, the sense of longing for centeredness persists which led me to also feel some dissention from the sentiments expressed by my colleague. Realistically speaking, life in the margins is a struggle, life in a border community is a struggle. I do want my realities reflected in the mainstream, I do want them centered, I do want to rupture the eurocentric norms that have been socially constructed against my self interest. I do want people who look, think, talk, walk, interact, smell, and so forth more like my peer group in positions of power, making decision that will positively influence my life, my livelihood, my self-expression and that of others heretofore relegated to varying degrees and in various fashions to the margins. In analyzing my dissenting sentiments, it occurred to me that my colleague, in being a "mostly" White male and having been afforded all the privileges associated therewith, could revel in his enjoyment of the margins more than most because when he in fact entered the mainstream, crossed over to the center, he could find himself reflected, affirmed, and reinforced there where the rest of us generally can not.

Still, the sense of freedom my colleagues sentiments engendered in me felt unbridled. I began a reanalysis of my autobiography vis-a-vis how borders impacted it. I began to think in particular about my gender and class identities, how borders were constructed in my life around those identities, how and why I learned to observe, cross, and in some cases also eradicate those borders, and how the consciousnesses that ensued from this led me to others; race consciousness, ethnic consciousness, sexual preference or orientation consciousness, able-bodied consciousness, and so forth. (I explore these issues in greater detail in my chapter, "The Secret: White Lies Are Never Little" in, Becoming and Unbecoming White: Owning and Disowning a Racial Identity (Clark & O'Donnell, forthcoming)).

Border Construction and Deconstruction in the Everyday

After looking at border issues in my autobiography I began to look for examples of border crossing in the everyday when it involved a challenge to the status quo, the center; border crossing as liberation. For example, a working class Mexican American teen rediscovering herself as "Chicana" after reading, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color (Moraga & Anzaldua, 1981) rather than assimilating herself as "Hispanic" or "Spanish" after hearing Linda Chavez, former spokesperson for the English Only Movement, speak; this latter occurrence I would call border terrorism.

I became particularly interested in finding such examples of border crossing in popular culture. One interesting such example emerged in the media and was discussed in Race Traitor (Ignatiev & Garvey, 1996). The philosophical gist of this discussion was that even White anti-racists (neo-liberals) become so invested in their status as such that in the process they reify both race and Whiteness in such a way that they simply end up perpetuating not dismantling racism and White privilege. Hence, the only recourse for Whites genuinely committed to dismantling racism is for them to engage in the utter abolition of Whiteness altogether. In the introduction of this book, the authors detail the circumstances of a small group of White teenagers who have taken on so-called "Black" identities through their attire. While the teens call their association "Free To Be Me," their town refers to them as "wiggers," White niggers. The authors argue that the emergence of this conflict is a sign that the White race is beginning to disintegrate. Taken at face value this is a compelling example of border crossing as liberation. However, it could also be analyzed as border terrorism. Just because they dress "hip-hop" and appeared on a Black-hosted talk show denouncing their school for expelling them and their town for attacking their association does not mean that they did at the time nor will in the future think and act as abolitionists. They could still engage in actively racist behavior. The clothing could be an appropriation of Black culture in their minds, taking from Blacks for themselves, an act of colonialism. Such culture cross-over is not necessarily to be seen as a sign of "unwhitening," border crossing as liberation, but rather corporate marketing having the effect of increasing the level of repression in Communities Of Color. White parents, with access to institutional power based on skin color or the perception of skin color, unhappy with the Black influence in their community, put this message out, the media picks it up, and the Yusef Hawkins' story (a young Black man who was murdered for simply being in a White community) gets repeated over and over again, border terrorism.

Another, perhaps better, example I came across listening to a Lesbian feminist comedian, Kate Clinton. Clinton was retelling the story of a family gathering that she attended with her lover. After the gathering, one of her nieces, seven or eight years old, asked her mother, Clinton's sister, "Can lesbians have a baby?" Her mother explained the options two women could pursue to have a child (artificial insemination, invitro fertilization, adoption, etc.) and how these differed from the main option available to heterosexual couples (intercourse). Clinton's niece reflected upon this information for a moment and responded by saying, "But [Lesbians] can still try [to have a baby], right?" I understood this to be the child's way of recognizing first, that sex is not just for reproduction but for pleasure, and second, that heterosexuals don't have a corner on the market of pleasure, both border crossing observations on her part reflecting a great deal of critical thought.

Two other interesting examples come from Nike commercials. The first commercial challenged gender borders. This commercial depicted several young girls citing statistics that positively correlate female self-esteem with sports involvement. For example, one girl begins a sentence with, "If you let me play sports..." and a second girl finishes the sentence with, "I will be more likely to leave a man who beats me."

Contrast these border crossing sentiments with the relatively recent status quo position taken by the Pope. A study on female distance runners (Women's Health Clinic, 1986) detailed their propensity to become amenorrheic (to lose their menstrual periods) due to decreased body fat; consequently, their fertility decreased as well. In a response to this study, the Pope came out against women's sports citing them as a form of birth control (Women's Health Clinic, 1986).

The second Nike commercial shows a healthy male distance runner, running over various terrains while the text, "Ten miles a day....Seven days a week....365 days a year..." appears on the screen below him. This is followed by a few seconds of no text and then the text, "HIV Positive" appears. In this commercial the border crossing messages that came to my mind were, "Who's healthy?," "What does healthy look like?," "People live with HIV statuses, not just die from them," "What does a person with an HIV status look like?," and so forth. However, the fact that the runner in the commercial is brown skinned and his surname is Spanish (his name appears on the screen before the text runs) might lead some to the border terrorist conclusion, "only Latinos have HIV."

My favorite example of border crossing in popular culture is embodied in the heart and soul of the musical rap group, Delinquent Habits. One of its members identifies himself as a "Blaxican," half Black and half Mexican, a perfect example of racial and linguistic border crossing. The name of one of the group's songs, "Tres Delinquentes" (Three Delinquents) (1995) also illustrates linguistic border crossing in much the same way that many of their lyrics do by integrating Spanish, English, Pachuquismo (Chicana/o "street" Spanish) and Jive (Black "street" English, a.k.a., "Ebonics"). "Delinquente" is a cross between the English word, "delinquent" and the Spanish word "delincuente." This song also illustrates the group's ability to cross borders musically, combining multilingual/multidialectical raps with beat boxing, hip hop, and mixed in pieces from the original score of, "The Lonely Bull," an instrumental ballad indigenous to Spain but adopted, especially with Mariachi trumpeting, by Mexico (Alpert, 1995). The groups' lyrics speak to border crossing as well, detailing their struggle as boys becoming men to define themselves in a society that relegates them to the margins as less than men. "One Blaxican on this marginal test, sittin' hard like an Aztec, swift like a Zulu, this is how I kick it when I'm speakin' to my gente. Tres Delinquentes, step into the madness."

Borders and the Implications for the Pedagogical Engagement of "Delinquentes"

Border Terrorism in Schools

Because of one or two chapters in my own autobiography, the ones with the "thirty seconds in the other direction and it could have been me..." in jail, HIV positive, or dead incidents, I have always felt a special affinity for the students labeled "behaviorally disordered," "at risk," "juvenile delinquents." While such students are considered under the rubric of "special education," they are often forgotten in the discussion of special education in favor of the student identified as developmentally or physically special needs. I believe this is because students identified as behaviorally special needs are seen as "responsible" for their learning problems (in the same way gay men are held responsible as the "guilty" victims of AIDS, or scantily clad women the "guilty" victims of rape, and so forth) whereas students identified as developmentally and physically special needs are not. In truth, many students identified as behaviorally special needs were students with unidentified developmentally special needs whose learning problems went unaddressed (Taylor, 1991). Too, many were academically gifted students whose learning exceptionalities were ignored (Oakes, 1985). More often than not, this inattention can be attributed to the lack of a school culture that affirms them (Nieto, 1995). Given the disproportionate representation of Latino and Black male students referred for special education services as behaviorally special needs by the disproportionately White female teaching establishment, it is clear that racism, eurocentric cultural hegemony, plays a role in this unaffirming school culture, much in the same way that the disproportionate representation of Latino and Black male adults remanded to prison by disproportionately White juries and judges can be attributed to the role racism, eurocentric cultural hegemony, plays in our larger societal culture (Kunjufu, 1983; Clark, 1993; Jenkins, 1994).

In particular, Kunjufu (1983) identifies that Black male students are the most likely to be placed in special education programs for behaviorally special needs issues while White female students are the least likely to be. Not coincidentally he reveals, White female teachers, who comprise the overwhelming majority of both public and private elementary and secondary school teachers, are the ones most likely to so place Black males and, correspondingly, the ones least likely to so place White females.

Kunjufu (1983) aptly concludes that the negative side of this dynamic is a function of how eurocentric cultural hegemony leads to cultural misunderstanding, indifference, or even hostility to the socially constructed "Other," illustrating how eurocentrically conceptualized schools with eurocentrically entrenched teachers are destroying especially Black male students. The White female teachers are most different from their Black male students with respect to both race and gender culture and, to a lesser extent, socioeconomic class background culture as well. They therefore experience the greatest difficulty in behaviorally engaging them in learning because not only do they share different behavioral expectations, but their expectations for how behavioral guidelines will be communicated are also different. To complicate things further, the teachers are often not consciously aware that they have these differences in expectations, and while the students are astutely aware of these differences, of their "Otherness," they lack the power and often the language to articulate their awareness.

On the other hand, says Kunjufu (1983), the positive side of this dynamic is a function of cultural understanding. The White female teachers who are most similar to their White female students with respect to race, gender, and socioeconomic class background culture, experience the greatest ease in behaviorally engaging them in learning. Not only do they share similar behavioral expectations, but their expectations for how behavioral guidelines will be communicated are also similar. Usually neither are conscious that they have similar expectations.

Kunjufu (1983) goes on to suggest that, while Black female students, other Students of Color both male and female, and White male students are also negatively impacted by this dynamic to varying degrees, Black male students bear the brunt of the dynamic because of the combination of gender difference and racism. That is, not only are they male where the teachers are female, they are also furthest in color from that of the teachers, and a color socially constructed as inferior.

It is important to note that this dynamic does not academically advantage especially White female students, but in general all female students, over especially White male students, but in general all male students (Kunjufu, 1983). The only advantage in this dynamic is that female students, especially White female students, are less likely to be referred for behaviorally special needs services; they are still largely ignored in the classroom in terms of academic affirmation even by White female teachers, a function of self-colonization (Kunjufu, 1983; Nieto, 1995). In essence, female students, especially White ones, are rewarded for being passive learners while male students, especially Black ones, are punished for being active ones (Kunjufu, 1983).

It is unfortunate that in the eurocentric public school educational setting, the primary tactic employed in dealing with students identified as behaviorally special needs in particular is to move them out of the "regular" education classroom into some facsimile of so-called "special education." The discussion on "mainstreaming" focuses on the student identified as developmentally and physically special needs to the exclusion of the student identified as behaviorally special needs (Kunjufu, 1983). Special education for the student identified as behaviorally special needs usually begins with their being moved into a special education classroom, still within the "regular" school building, with others supposedly like themselves, for some or all of the school day (Massachusetts State Department of Education, 1991). At this stage, this kind of special education, which focuses on student behavior and not on learning issues (such as a remedial or advanced placement reading or math class would), generally involves little diagnostic intervention in determining the appropriateness of lumping all the behavioral problem students together. That is, diagnosis and placement are determined by the behavior itself, not the range of possible etiologies of that behavior such as learning, nutritional, or interpersonal issues (Taylor, 1991).

Occasionally, a student identified as behaviorally special needs is able to turn her or himself around in the special education classroom, which focuses on teaching the student to control, not understand and resolve, behavior "problems" and return to the "regular" classroom. More often, however, the movement of a student identified as behaviorally special needs into a special education classroom becomes but the first step in a long and twisted downward staircase of subsequent steps that this student will take en route to developing a disdain for schools, alternative special educational settings, and education in general, and a propensity, if not a predilection, for a long rap sheet. These subsequent steps begin when the student identified as behaviorally special needs is not able to turn her or himself around in the special education classroom in the "regular" school and so is required to move into an "alternative" special educational setting (Massachusetts State Department of Education, 1991).

In the "alternative" special education setting the tactics employed in dealing with students identified as behaviorally special needs fall roughly into four different categories all of which have their strengths and weaknesses: therapeutic, grassroots, spiritual, and sociopolitical (Coles, 1987; Taylor, 1991). Examples of some of the strongest, "liberatorily oriented," "alternative" educational settings which implement such tactics in a manner consistent with these categories are the NEARI (New England Adolescent Research Institute) School in Holyoke, MA, the EWT (Experiment With Travel) School in Springfield, MA, the Mel Blunt School in Pittsburgh, PA, and the Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School in Chicago, IL, respectively. Far more examples could be cited of weak, "terroristically oriented," "alternative" special education settings (Nieto, 1995).

In the therapeutic model, a psychoanalytical approach is emphasized. Behavioral modification is attempted through the use of highly individualized educational programming, rigorous limit setting, non-violent physical restraint, individual and family counseling, and psychotropic medication (Clark, 1993; Coles, 1987; Massachusetts State Department of Education, 1991).

In the grassroots model, a work ethic approach is emphasized. Behavioral modification is attempted through the use of highly experiential educational programming in which students may grow their own food, recycle their own garbage, and visit the places and/or perform the experiments that they learn about in texts, and through extracurricular work assignments and/or initiative-building exercises in forestry, trail-constructing, mountaineering, caving and/or rafting (Clark, 1993; Coles, 1987).

In the spiritual model, a humanistic approach is emphasized. Behavioral modification is attempted through non-denominational (though generally ecumenical) educational programming focusing on the development of puritanical values, exposure to an austere lifestyle, the development of a personal relationship with a higher power, and clergical counsel (Clark, 1993; Coles, 1987).

In the sociopolitical model, an empowerment approach is emphasized. Behavioral modification is attempted through the use of highly culturally specialized or "centric"

educational programming, street smart and street level intervention, recruitment, and retention initiatives, exposure to extracurricular, usually left-wing cause activities, and participation in one-on-one and/or group rap sessions with auxiliary educational personnel (i.e., an ex-con and/or ex-gang member) (Clark, 1993; Coles, 1987; Jenkins, 1994).

Nof these models exists in a pure form. But of the millions of eurocentrically as well as multiculturally oriented alternative educational settings functioning in the United States today, all employ one of these models' approaches as their dominant "approach" in attempting behavioral "modification," usually as opposed to behavioral mediation (as in conflict resolution), while drawing, to a lesser extent, on the others (Coles, 1987). And all of these models have their successes, but not nearly enough in proportion to their attempts (Coles, 1987). This is because none attempts to comprehensively explore with each and every student the impact of various forms of violence and their manifestations on the student's identity development and, subsequently, behavioral special needs in attempting to mediate those behaviors so that the student may enjoy greater success in school. Each puts the agenda of the behavioral modifiers first, in both developing and implementing the programming. As a result, violence is treated as an abstraction in trying to get on with the "busi-ness" of "instruction" instead of centered as barrier that must be mediated in the ongoing struggle to realize the pedagogical engagement of all students. Educators can not expect to be effective if they see violence, one of the most negative and, unfortunately, most influential forces in communities today, as only "symbolic" and/or as an abstraction; in essence, if they do not really see it all (Clark, 1993).

Few students ever make it back to the "regular" education classroom once they have been referred out for especially behaviorally special needs oriented services (Taylor, 1991). This is especially the case for young Latino and Black men. Once these young men are referred for such services, the major site at which they pursue secondary education is never again the "regular" education classroom, but rather prison (Bracey, 1993). Going to prison is the context in which the vast majority will receive their secondary education via a GED (General Equivalency Diploma). In some states an inmate cannot even be released until s/he has completed a GED regardless of time served. Yet, in no state are public school students legally obligated to finish high school or a GED. It is interesting to note that a year of incarceration costs taxpayers approximately $40,000 per inmate (Jenkins, 1994). While per capita spending on students in eurocentric public schools ranges from $15,000 in affluent communities like Cambridge, Massachusetts to less than $3,000 in low income communities like Anthony, New Mexico (Massachusetts State Department of Education, 1991) . Either we continue to fund prisons as schools, or we fund schools instead of prisons.

Border Crossing as Liberation in Schools

Here in the border community of Las Cruces, New Mexico, as in practically every other community in the United States, there is an "alternative" educational program for students identified as behaviorally special needs, students whose "delinquent habits" so to speak, have gotten them literally kicked out of the center, the eurocentric public school, and into the margins, into the S.T.A.Y. (Social Services and Tutors Assisting Youth) program. The S.T.A.Y. program was established in 1988. Like virtually all programs of its kind, it is the "step child" of the eurocentric public school system and usually a "last chance" to facilitate student engagement in the curriculum before they are lost to the streets and/or prison. The Program's student body is comprised of mostly (98% or more) Latino/as (ethnically Mexican) of which about 5% are female. About 1.5% are Black males which is really extraordinary when you consider that the whole state has only a 2% Black population, the overwhelming majority of whom live in Albuquerque, three hours North. The other .5% are White males which is also extraordinary when you consider that the city and public school population is at least 35% White.

For the meantime, the students at the S.T.A.Y. program are better off than they would be in the eurocentric public school. This is in large measure because the school is headed by a man whose consciousness is in the border crossing as liberation instead of border terrorist realm. He self identifies as Chicano and believes that a comprehensive, critically conscious, democratic, multicultural, if not also Chicana/ocentric education is what these students need to become pedagogically engaged.

But, resistance to this philosophy runs high statewide. Just recently, in Vaughn, New Mexico, two teachers were suspended by the superintendent for "teaching racism;" using the book, 500 Years of Chicano History (Martinez, 1996) and starting a local chapter of the national student organization, MEchA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan). University of Colorado ethnic studies professor, Evelyn Dehart explains their suspension as "a backlash against curricula that challenge standard (eurocentric) history. When...new knowledge is introduced, standard (eurocentric) history loses its centrality, its primacy and its supremacy (Rodriguez & Gonzales, 1997).

Locally, concern over this philosophy has school officials discussing the possibility of converting the S.T.A.Y. program into a Cesar Chavez "academy," as was done with a similar program in nearby El Paso, Texas. The academy model is a slap in the face to the man after whom it has been named. Chavez championed the principles of Teatro Campesino or community theater, a Chicana/ocentric form of theater that uses political satire as a way of engendering consciousness in the disenfranchised to determine their own destiny; border crossing as liberation (Benson, 1995). In diametric opposition to these tenets, the academy model is a mini-military camp. Its orientation assumes that the students remanded to it are deficit "discipline" and that their school success may only be cultivated through rigid structure of their leisure time, hard labor, and eurocentric education; in essence, forced assimilation, mandated border terrorism.

Problem-Posing and the Struggle for Voice

I thought it might be interesting to explore the role that borders, socially constructed and deconstructed, autobiographically and in the everyday, as terrorism as well as as a path to liberation play in the lives of the students in the S.T.A.Y. program. Towards that end, I contacted the school director to get permission to dialogue with students about the possibility of engaging them in such an exploration. The director was very supportive, he even helped me to explain the concepts of borders, broadly interpreted, to the students by using examples from his own autobiography.

Initially, only a small number of students expressed interest in the dialogue; despite this, a date was set for it. In preparation, I developed some questions to open and initiate dialogue:

How do you understand the term "border"?
What do you think a border is and how would you define it?
Can a border be physical, like the U.S./Mexico geographical border; social, like interracial dating; emotional, like taboos against boys crying; and/or something else????
What borders do you see in your life?
Which of these borders do you observe (stay on "your" side of) and which ones do you challenge (cross) and why?
How do you decide which of these borders to observe and which to challenge?
What borders were there in "regular" (eurocentric) public school that there are not here in the S.T.A.Y. program?
How do the differences in the borders between these two school settings impact your school success?
How do you understand border avoidance, walking, and crossing?
What purposes do you think borders serve?
Should we get rid of borders? All of them, some of them, which ones, and why????
How could we go about getting rid of borders?
Also in preparation for the dialogue, I asked a male Chicano colleague adept at problem-posing (Freire, 1987; Freire & Shor, 1987) to co-facilitate it with me and arranged for an audiovisual technician to videotape it. (This latter arrangement was probably not such a great idea. Many of the students who participated in the dialogue expressed reluctance to say anything about gangs, whatsoever. Fear of reprisal either by law enforcement officials or gang members fueled this reluctance. They knew that the videotape was going to be shown publicly, albeit at an academic conference, but who could say who might attend. And, in truth, how well did they know us? Might we be falsely representing ourselves to them in an effort to access information about gang affiliation and/or activity? This would not have been an entirely off base suspicion, but rather a fairly well thought out, well calculated rationale for their silence, one on which their physical survival has, no doubt, long been predicated.)

The day of the dialogue, S.T.A.Y. program staff offered students "points," a part of the program's therapeutically modeled behavioral management or incentive system, to participate. As a result, we ended up with about twenty students. In retrospect, this was far too many students to effectively engage in one dialogue for many reasons. First, with such a large group it was impossible to establish a rapport, trust, and any sense of group cohesion or unity. Second, the power dynamics that pre-existed among the students participating, dictated the nature and extent of their contributions, and in many cases altogether precluded it. In essence, "power wielders" decided that the dialogue was basically "uncool" and tacitly communicated to the "power wieldees" that authentic participation in it was discouraged. A small number of more mature students who moved outside of these power relations were able to make more sincere contributions. Limiting the group to about ten participants would have likely lessened the power plays. Ultimately, however, all of the contributions, including the negative attention getting ones, were valuable to the study. The body of dialogue speaks volumes about the struggle for voice of these students.

To mitigate the negative attention getting behavior, the students were informed that they could talk about anything and do so employing the discourse style to which they were most accustomed and comfortable. We were clear in expressing our desire for them to speak candidly from their autobiographies.

Not all that surprisingly, the dialogue focused on drugs. Ironically, even with the discussion of drugs positively sanctioned so to speak, getting dialogue going was like pulling teeth. Separate and distinct from the resistance related to videotaping, group size, and power issues, resistance at this point in the dialogue appeared to be more a function of these students' eurocentric public school conditioning. That is, it appeared that they were so used to being told to "shut up," to being silenced, to being censored, to being marginalized when they spoke autobiographically, especially about drugs (which is in and of itself often grounds for a behaviorally special needs placement in the first place), that they had learned to police each other out of a voice. In an attempt to weaken this latter vein of resistance, my colleague tried to frame their discussion of drugs, especially their drug use, as an act of border crossing in general; uncritically conscious, they viewed the crossing of this border as liberatory. To problematize this view, my colleague suggested that drug use was a way of crossing a border into, entering, a different reality. Why, he asked, was it necessary to enter another reality? What was wrong with the present one? A provocative line of problem-posing questions that again yielded little dialogue. But clearly, the absence of dialogue here seemed to have different roots. It was obvious as these questions hung in silence, that even the power wielders in the group were at a loss for how to disavow the insights peaked inside them by this inquiry. Intrigued and visibly aching to engage with us, the students seemed utterly unable to develop or at least articulate a critically conscious response. Shortly thereafter the bell rang and the room emptied. They were literally saved by the bell.

Conclusion

The goal of all educational endeavors must be the practice of democracy. Democracy, by definition, requires the participation of all its constituents. If teachers routinely ignore the multiplicity of the autobiographies represented by the students in their classrooms, especially the students whose autobiographies are the most divergent from their own, these students will never engage with the curriculum, or rather, the pedagogy will never engage them in the curriculum. Instead, these students only learn how to practice marginalization, delinquent habits.

As a result of the dialogue results detailed herein as well as other pedagogical engagement endeavors piloted with they S.T.A.Y. program students, my co-facilitator colleague, other of our colleagues, and I are working with the S.T.A.Y. program director in an effort to more deliberately facilitate students there in the crossing of borders liberatorily. Towards that end and to better engage these students in autobiographically oriented problem-posing dialogue, we are using what we have learned from all of our previous efforts to do so. First, there will be no video cameras. Second, we will be intermittently interacting with these students in various contexts during their usual school schedule to establish rapport, trust, and ultimately a relationship with each of them individually before organizing any formal dialogues. Third, we intend to limit dialogue groups to ten students. Each group will have a female and male co-facilitator, at least one of whom will be Chicana/o. And lastly, the students, not us, will determine the topics of discussion for the dialogues. Ideally, these topics will not be predetermined but emergent from the students' experiences in the everyday.

Eventually, we hope to expand the problem-posing dialogue pedagogy to facilitate the engagement of these students in their core curriculum as well. As this expansion ensues, again, the students' autobiographies will drive necessary core curriculum revision to help us reflect their realities in the context of the multicultural whole as it pertains to every academic subject area. Hopefully, this will become the proving ground for these students' inclination to engage themselves in the practice of democracy as adults; to find and use their voices, to cross borders in unabashedly liberatory fashion.

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