I am Phebe Veronica Jatau, a Ford Foundation Fellow and a PhD student in College of Education and Human Development with a track in Curriculum and Instruction: Literacy Education at the University of Minnesota. I am originally from Nigeria and I am..
I am Phebe Veronica Jatau, a Ford Foundation Fellow and a PhD student in College of Education and Human Development with a track in Curriculum and Instruction: Literacy Education at the University of Minnesota. I am originally from Nigeria and I am here in University of Minnesota to further my interest and develop my passion for women and literacy so that I can get back to my country and make a difference. I am in my second year and I intend to carry out an ethnographic study on the situation of girl child education in Nigeria for my dissertation beginning next year and this conference is one of the avenues I am using to build up myself in this regard.I am Gbagyi, a minority tribe in northern Nigeria and I have only been privileged to come through school up till this level through scholarships otherwise I would have been like the lots of other northern Nigerian women who have been marginalized a great deal. They are not only treated as “lesser citizens” but their predicament has grossly affected their being able to gain access to basic literacy. Certain socio-cultural, political, economic and religious forces have continually been used to keep these women in their subjugated positions to patriarchy worsened by capitalism and globalization. As a victim who has enjoyed the bitter taste of liberty, I am concerned about how to extend this liberation to others who are still in “bondage”. Since the commencement of my PhD program in August 2006, Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed as well as bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress have had tremendous impact on me and my perception of social justice issues as I have had to read them in my Critical Pedagogy, Curriculum in Context and Feminist Pedagogies classes.In my country before I am came, precisely in 2004, I founded an NGO – Women Literacy and Health Protection Team, which was still in its embryonic stage but which in partnership with other NGO’s and in collaboration with UNICEF undertook some projects to reach orphans of HIV/AIDS and the victims with awareness and sensitization programs. As a teacher at the Federal College of Education, Zaria in Kaduna State of Nigeria, I assisted a number of girls from my community to get into the college and to get further education against the norms perpetrated in the community which would rather have them get into early marriages or hawk on the streets thereby exposing them to the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS and VVF as well as other social vices. Also my Masters in Literature dissertation is entitled “An Examination of the Voice of northern Nigerian Women Using Shantu Songs”, one I undertook using participant observer approach and an analysis of the songs to reveal the women’s socio-cultural world views. At my return, after the completion of my PhD program, I intend to continue working with Women Literacy and Health Protection Team particularly in the operation of an adult literacy outfit in addition to teaching in the classroom where I hope to implement some of these radical changes in teaching as far as making my students critical thinkers is concerned. I will also be in a position to organize workshops and conferences in order to disseminate these ideas. Students will be encouraged to explore writing their dissertation using critical theory research paradigm. I am still evolving in my understanding of the pedagogy of the oppressed but I commit to its tenets and its implementation to the extent that I understand its expanse.
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