In a previous article, we decried the usefulness of our education system, as it is today, in preparing students for nation building. In the article, found HERE, we took issue with the emphasis on the teaching methods used that emphasis rote learning to pass exams. The top scoring students in the national exams are feted while being cursorily reassured that they may have a promising future, while the lesser scoring students are discarded to fend for themselves in the informal sector, without further training.
In this submission, we will make arguments against this education system we have in place. We have to state that we are not diminishing the usefulness of a higher education especially in specialized areas such as doctoring, lawyering or other sciences. What we do wish to present is the argument that we should adopt a policy of giving our students a well rounded education to prepare them for a fulfilling life after school.
India’s Shikshantar: Rethinking education and development.
This grassroots movement, website HERE, encourages individuals and communities to reclaim control over their own learning processes, minds, and hearts. Its philosophy springs from the Gandhian principle of Swaraj, or liberation through self-mastery and self-awareness of the diverse and non-violent cultures, traditions, and values of South Asia.
For the people of Shikshantar, social change starts with individuals and communities existence and daily practices. That means drawing on traditional wisdom and imagination to build trusting communities; value indigenous expressions and local resources; and continually share skills, visions, and experiences across generations.
Community members involved with Shikshantar have transformed the entire city of Udaipur in Rajathstan into a learning ecosystem.
• Through songs, stories, films and publications, the community is regenerating Mewari, the local language that has been falling from use because of the government promotion of Hindi and English.
• Led by artists, farmers, healers, chefs and artisans, free workshops teach local crafts made from waste, media production, self-healing, slow food recipes, and sustainable agriculture.
• Shikshantar also offers resources to walk-outs - its term for people who have chosen to leave traditional schools - such as apprenticeships that give walk-out youth on-the-job training, real world vision, and the skills they need for green vocations and lifestyles.
The Community School: Offering alternatives through Relational Education
“Relational Education” is a form of education that places a primary focus on the development of trusting, supportive, and resilient relationships between all members of the learning community. It has been crafted by the staff and students at the Community School, Camden, Maine.
What the Community School offers to students, who are 16 to 20 years old, is unique and attractive – a six month residence that combines work, community living, and academics and results in a high school diploma regardless of previous success or failure in traditional schooling.
What it is
Teachers as Listeners
One aspect of our approach is that teachers must become listeners. We actually call our faculty teacher/counselors. Each student is assigned a “one to one” or advisor, who they meet with regularly to go over their progress in the program and to develop a trusting and supportive relationship.
Informal Time and the Experience of Each other as Human Beings
Teacher/counselors live at the Community School. Human interactions occur over a breakfast bowl of cereal, on a ride to work, in a late night discussion in the living room, during “informal” times when our “official roles” in the community are not as sharply defined. It is here that we find out that we are more alike than different.
The Development of Trust
Choice: Students have chosen to come to us of their own free will, they have applied to the School, gone through an extensive interview process and have chosen to stay after completing the two and a half week trial period at the beginning of the term
Sensible structure: Day to day life at the Community School makes “sense” – students work at jobs in the community during the day, are responsible for daily household chores, and study at night
Academic engagement: Students are involved in the structuring of their own courses; whenever possible curricular subject matter is relevant to the student’s interests and skill levels
Democratic decision making: Students are involved with faculty in making decisions regarding programmatic issues as well as codes and consequences for individual behaviors.
A Sense of Belonging
Because of its small scale (eight students, six faculty), residential nature, and focused goal, the School creates a learning community which invites a sense of belonging from the participants.
The School’s Outreach program which works with graduates and families to help them with their post-graduate lives.
Former students also play a role with current students through volunteering as tutors, panelists, special class presenters, and working in the program.
Responsibilities and the “Real World”
Students at the Community school hold jobs in the community and owe room and board. They do not graduate if they are not paid up. They have to find and hold these jobs in order to complete the program.
Pertinent points
-From the Indian Shikshantar movement, we learn the usefulness of preserving our own cultures and languages. Perhaps we can introduce tribal languages as options for students to study.
-Another idea would be to have students stay with a host family of a different tribe over holidays to learn their customs and traditions.
-Students who do not make it to University and don’t have funds to pay for technical school, could perhaps get apprenticeships with trades people to learn hands on. Experienced trades people could get a kind of teaching certification and would then give some kind of diploma to successful apprentices.
- From the Community School in Maine, we learn of the usefulness of students and teachers interacting in an informal setting. If our teachers scheduled activities with students such as eating lunch together while discussing the day’s news, attending sporting events and others, teachers and students would value each other more and would be more receptive to formal learning.
Conclusion
We ought to reconsider the Culture of Schooling because:
• It labels, ranks and sorts human beings. It creates a rigid social hierarchy consisting of a small elite class of ‘highly educated’ and a large lower class of ‘failures’ and ‘illiterates’, based on levels of school achievement.
• It forces human beings to violently compete against each other over scarce resources in rigid win-lose situations.
• Confines the motivation for learning to examinations, certificates and jobs while delinking knowledge from wisdom and practical experiences.
• It drives people to distrust their local languages. It prioritizes newspapers, textbooks, television as the only reliable sources of information. These forms of State and Market controlled media do not serve the interests of the general public.
• It destroys the dignity of labor and devalues the learning that takes place through manual work.
The African Economic Democracy Party, will be responsible for implementing the views presented here. We hope it will have a national appeal when we launch next year. We invite economic revolutionaries to join us to bring the progress only we the people can effect.
Reader responses welcome.
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