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| `American Progress, painted by John Gast, in 1872 |
A lady I met at a networking event in Dubai invited me and several friends to a showing of `Schooling the World: The White Man's Last Burden. Disturbing was one of my first reactions.
An ancient culture is an ecosystem, a complex web of relationships, between human beings and the land they live on. As in any ecosystem, every element is intertwined with all the others. And as in any ecosystem, sudden changes have unpredictable effects.
Among the most pernicious ways of oppressing a people, I suggested to friends years ago, are to school their mind with your way of thinking, to inculcate their spirit with your religion, and to put your toothpaste in their mouth. We were talking about how the Spanish, Chinese and Americans colonized the Philippines for centuries.
The traditional forms of knowledge fostered sustainability. All of these cultures were not perfect. But they did know about their own specific climate, soil, water, and they did manage to survive, independently, in charge of their own lives, for generation after generation.
The stated mission of the World Bank is "to reduce global poverty." But many have come to question whose interests the Bank really serves. Who really benefits when every child on the planet is educated in the same way?
How does the biggest economy in the world, among the most educated nations in the world, come to harbor 13,247,845 children living in poverty?
What is amazing is that people who are claiming to be concerned with social justice cannot see the huge kind of social hierarchy and inequity that is created through modern education. Mind-boggling for me how people don't see that.Well-meaning people like Heidi are moved by the local culture and are keen to help, such as collecting money to build a hostel, where school children who have left their families can board. But sometimes our efforts to help may not be so helpful, especially when we don't connect the dots and we don't see the overall impact of our efforts.
A language isn't just grammar or vocabulary. A language is a flash issuance of spirit, its a vehicle through which the soul of every culture comes in the world. Every language is like an old growth forest of the mind, an ecosystem of thought, a watershed of social and spiritual possibilities.I am privileged to have traveled from Europe to the Middle East and from Asia to Africa, and honestly I appreciate that people across the globe speak English. But English as a form of cultural hegemony is not good, so I also appreciate that countries like France and Belgium challenge English as an international language. However, children cannot readily challenge or rebuff that, and are subject to punishment if they do.
Education is a compulsory, forcible action of one person upon another... Culture is the free relation of people... The difference between education and culture lies only in the compulsion, which education deems itself in the right to exert. Education is culture under restraint. Culture is free. ~Leo Tolstoy.Mahatma Gandhi echoes these words by speaking specifically about the domination of Western culture and consequently the lack of freedom of Indian people. To his and Tolstoy's points, the Spanish, Chinese and Americans may no longer be in control of the Philippines, but their longstanding history of oppression remains formidable albeit invisible shackles around the ankles of Filipinos.
There is an assumption that Western education, Western knowledge is universally applicable, is something that is superior. There is a sense that we have evolved into a higher level of being, and that these people, however lovely they are, are going to benefit from this superior knowledge.
Whether in the Philippines where I was born and where I attended school until 3rd grade, or whether in the US where I grew up, attended universities, and nailed down an advanced degree, I am a product of Western education and culture. I happen to love what I've learned and how I've learned it. So there isn't anything innately wrong with Western education or culture itself. It is as much ours as local education or culture is to local people and communities. But to use that as an imperialist bully pulpit is arguably immoral and irresponsible.
If you wanted to change an ancient culture in a generation, how would you do it?
You would change the way it educates its children.
The U.S. Government knew this in the 19th century when it forced Native American children into government boarding schools. Today, volunteers build schools in traditional societies around the world, convinced that school is the only way to a ‘better’ life for indigenous children.
But is this true? What really happens when we replace a traditional culture’s way of learning and understanding the world with our own? SCHOOLING THE WORLD takes a challenging, sometimes funny, ultimately deeply disturbing look at the effects of modern education on the world’s last sustainable indigenous cultures.
Beautifully shot on location in the Buddhist culture of Ladakh in the northern Indian Himalayas, the film weaves the voices of Ladakhi people through a conversation between four carefully chosen original thinkers; anthropologist and ethnobotanist Wade Davis, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence; Helena Norberg-Hodge and Vandana Shiva, both recipients of the Right Livelihood Award for their work with traditional peoples in India; and Manish Jain, a former architect of education programs with UNESCO, USAID, and the World Bank.
The film examines the hidden assumption of cultural superiority behind education aid projects, which overtly aim to help children “escape” to a “better life” – despite mounting evidence of the environmental, social, and mental health costs of our own modern consumer lifestyles, from epidemic rates of childhood depression and substance abuse to pollution and climate change.
It looks at the failure of institutional education to deliver on its promise of a way out of poverty – here in the United States as well as in the so-called “developing” world.
And it questions our very definitions of wealth and poverty – and of knowledge and ignorance – as it uncovers the role of schools in the destruction of traditional sustainable agricultural and ecological knowledge, in the breakup of extended families and communities, and in the devaluation of elders and ancient spiritual traditions.
Finally, SCHOOLING THE WORLD calls for a “deeper dialogue” between cultures, suggesting that we have at least as much to learn as we have to teach, and that these ancient sustainable societies may harbor knowledge which is vital for our own survival in the coming millennia.Reference: `Schooling the World.
To forge that dialogue between Western and local cultures is to require a common language. But that common language comes best when both cultures are willing to listen earnestly, to learn openly, and to understand as holistically as possible. Westerners have as much to teach, and to learn from, local people.
The fundamental message of `Schooling the World is at the heart of what I wrote in Part 1 - A Beautiful Matter, as an introduction to my conceptual framework:
In brief, then, Theory of Algorithms encourages us to (1) look at everything as is, keeping in mind that human reality is part of reality. It also encourages us to (2) avoid preconceived notions about things and (3) avoid sweeping generalizations about people. Finally it encourages us to (4) understand others and their situation first, as best as we can, before making judgments or drawing conclusions.
