Slowing Down as Anti-Colonial & Anti-Ableist Pedagogy
Contemporary society, for the most part, doesn’t value slowness. Calling someone slow is often intended as an ableist insult and critique of their intelligence. A recent episode of Accessagogy Podcast (link opens in new tab) prompted me to think further about how colonial and “neurotypical conceptions of productivity and time are embedded in [academic norms]” (Gange, 2024). Academia is a site that encourages and rewards timeliness, linear progress, and speed.
Programs are structured to educate students quickly, with many courses having attached lists of learning objectives that are seemingly impossible to achieve in a single semester. Luckily, I don’t teach in any of these fast-paced programs and as a part-time instructor, I’m not competing for tenure, so I have the luxury of slowing down. For one of the courses I taught in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences last semester, “Indigenous Research Methods”, slowing down seemed like the only reasonable pedagogical approach since Indigenous research requires a type of relationship building that can’t be rushed. Building authentic relationships, whether within a research or teaching and learning context, takes time. Keeping this slow approach in mind while constructing the course syllabus, I carved out time for students to build relationships with one another in class and kept the number of required readings to a minimum, so that students would have time for slow reading and reflection.
Slow reading, explained by Michelle Walker, involves a willingness to “…read carefully, to reread, and to return to what one reads.” (xiii, 2016) I limited the assigned readings in my courses to two chapters or articles per week, so students could read slowly, giving us ample time for discussion in class. As Walker writes, slow reading “…allows [us] to embrace complexity within an institutional context dominated by speed and efficiency” (xiii).
(Dis)ability, feminist, and queer studies theorists have problematized conventional notions of time, speed, and efficiency at length (Freeman, 2010; Puar, 2017; Martino, 2023). In contrast to linear, (hetero)normative conceptions of progress, queer temporalities and “crip” time encourage the redefining of productivity within academia. Not all body-minds operate according to the same tempo that academia has come to expect, and taking an inclusive approach to education necessitates recognizing this.
When I think about “Indigenizing” academia, I consider how Indigenous peoples had different conceptions and relationships to time prior to colonization. Before Indian residential schools were enforced, many tribes were still land-based peoples who lived according to seasonality. That’s why, to me, adhering to strict schedules and lesson plans that are sometimes timed down to the minute is a very non-Indigenous approach to teaching and learning.
In contrast, pre-colonial Indigenous education always occurred within the context of relationship, and therefore within the slow, uneven unfolding of time: teachers and students knew and trusted one another and Indigenous pedagogies, therefore, call for the building of relationships as a central component of the learning process.
Slowing down the pace of the courses you teach will make your courses more accessible and inclusive to a broader range of students. The learning will be deeper and more reflective; there will be more time for students to share about themselves and for authentic relationships to develop. Slowness needs to stop being conceived of as a negative attribute, a concept that the digital age and ableist culture has only propelled. Instead, slowness should be embraced as way of prioritizing relationship building, reflection, and discussion, and resisting the de-personalization and de-humanization of education. Slowing down is key to de-colonizing teaching and learning.
Works cited:
Freeman, E. (2010). Time binds: Queer temporalities, queer histories. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Gange, A. (Host). (2024, April 7). Accessibility and timing (No. 24) [Audio podcast episode]. In Accessagogy Podcast.
Martino, A. (2023, Dec 21). My attempts to ‘crip’ academia: Navigating academia with invisible disabilities. University Affairs.
Puar, J. K. (2017). The right to maim: Debility, capacity, disability. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Walker, M. (2016). Slow philosophy: Reading and the institution. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic.
rachelle mckay
Educational Developer, Indigenous Knowledges & Ways of Knowing