What is Teaching 2010 Resistance?
How did Teaching 2010 Resistance start up?
What do you hope to teach youth?
Aren’t you forcing youth into the middle of a political debate?
If you are for “balanced education,” why are you only teaching the negative aspects of the Olympic Games?
Are you affiliated with VESTA or other teaching unions?
What is your relationship to the Olympic Resistance Network (ORN)?
Don’t you feel that you are crushing kids’ dreams?
Aren’t you destroying kids’ faith in “Olympic values”?
Aren’t you destroying kids’ faith in Olympic role models?
What do you mean by “resistance”? Are you recruiting youth to commit illegal acts?
What is Teaching 2010 Resistance?
Teaching 2010 Resistance is an independent, community-based project aimed at providing free, optional teaching resources for educators who wish to bring a critical perspective on the Olympics to their classrooms. In addition, Teaching 2010 Resistance has developed a workshop that is interactive, fun, and based in cooperative learning, in order to examine the social, environmental, and economic issues associated with the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. At teachers’ invitations, members of the project are presenting this workshop in classrooms throughout British Columbia.
How did Teaching 2010 Resistance start up?
Teaching 2010 Resistance arose in Fall 2009 as a response to a perceived lack of balance in education around the Olympic Games. September 2009 witnessed not only massive provincial cutbacks to education, but also the launch of VANOC’s $500,000 Spirit School program. When budgets cuts in education coincide with heavily-funded pro-Olympic curricula, the neutrality of the whole educational system is threatened. We took it upon ourselves to address the gap in critical learning resources.
What do you hope to teach youth?
Our workshop and teaching resources highlight the connections between the Olympic industry, and changes young people are witnessing in their own surroundings. They promote an understanding of impacts of the Olympics on students’ own lives, and encourage students to identify their own needs and visions of change.
In our workshop, we touch on environmental issues, rising rates of homelessness, increased surveillance and policing, threats to Native sovereignty, and the impact of the Games on funding for education, sports, and arts programs. We also introduce a conceptual understanding of the structures behind the Olympic Games and the erosion of democratic process.
Naturally, our teaching materials are adaptable to students of different ages and abilities.
Aren’t you forcing youth into the middle of a political debate?
Youth have been officially excluded from voicing their opinions on the Olympics except in the most “celebratory” fora. This is striking given that today’s youth will inherit all the Olympic legacies – including environmental degradation, diminished social and educational services, restricted civil liberties, and fiscal woes. For the next several decades, young people will be paying off the Olympic debts contracted by the long-since retired politicians of today.
In our opinion, youth are directly impacted by the Olympics, and they have a right to be included in an honest discussion of its costs.
If you are for “balanced education,” why are you only teaching the negative aspects of the Olympic Games?
Teaching 2010 Resistance does not deny that our approach to the Olympics is critical. Thanks to the $500,000 “Spirit School” initiative, there are already reams of educational materials celebrating the Olympic Games. Meanwhile, the links between the Olympics and homelessness, Native struggles, environmental impacts and civil liberties are systematically forgotten in the official literature. Teaching 2010 Resistance is concerned with telling the other side of the story.
Are you affiliated with VESTA or other teaching unions?
No.
Teaching 2010 Resistance is an open and collaborative project organized by community members, youth workers and educators. It is not affiliated with VESTA and has not been formally endorsed by any professional body.
What is your relationship to the Olympic Resistance Network (ORN)?
The ORN supports a diversity of social justice initiatives, of which Teaching 2010 Resistance is one. The ORN is a diverse network unified by a stance of opposition to the Olympics. Contrary to media hype about “violent protesters,” the ORN does not advocate perpetrating harm against any human or animal life. In fact, it is precisely a deep concern for human, animal and ecological welfare which informs the ORN’s opposition to the Olympics.
Don’t you feel that you are crushing kids’ dreams?
Kids don’t only dream about jumping down hills in skis. They also dream about affordable housing, food on the table, new computers at school, more arts and education programs, youth-focused health services, and lifelong environmental legacies – all things which could have been achieved with the $6 Billion in taxpayer money funding the Olympics.
Aren’t you destroying kids’ faith in “Olympic values”?
It is a mistake to presume that the only way to teach youth about fair play, ambition and athletic excellence is to studiously avoid addressing the Games’ detrimental impacts. Many youth are already wondering how this “Olympic” province could cut all its funding to B.C. School Sports, which provides intra-mural athletic opportunities to thousands of children in the province. Others wonder why the “health-conscious” Olympic Games are sponsored by fast food companies like McDonald’s and Coca Cola, infamous for their role in the rise of childhood health concerns. We would be doing our youth a disservice if we chose simply to sweep these contradictions under the carpet.
Aren’t you destroying kids’ faith in Olympic role models?
Teaching a critical perspective on the Olympics does not mean dismissing the commitment and skill exhibited by the athletes. However, it does mean asking ourselves whether the Olympic Games are truly about athletics. Arguably, what most compromises athletic integrity is the Olympic industry itself, by transforming sport into a lucrative brand-marketing opportunity for transnational corporations with poor human rights and environmental records.
Why should we encourage kids to look up to athletes as role models, yet discourage them from making role models of people taking a stand on issues such as global warming or freedom of speech?
What do you mean by “resistance”? Are you recruiting youth to commit illegal acts?
The word “resistance” in the title of our project refers to the power of individuals to produce positive changes in the world. This power may be found in taking action to prevent harm to the earth and its peoples, or in creating new spaces for a world based on mutual aid, human dignity and sustainability.
Teaching 2010 Resistance is neither “recruiting” youth, nor advocating illegal acts. Our aim is to open up space for a respectful discussion with youth about their concerns, questions, and visions of change.
