by Kumari Beck
(This article was originally published in SDIA’s magazine, IN CONTEXT. To get a printed copy, please send $4.00 along with your name and address to Susila Dharma International Association, 777 Campbell, Greenfield Park (Montreal), Quebec J4V 1Y8, Canada.)
We live in a world that is marked by intensified technological and scientific advances and marvels; but is also a world scarred by deepening inequities. Millions of children and youth, our future, live in conditions of poverty, in hunger, are susceptible to illness, lack basic health care, and have few prospects of attaining the most basic standards of comfort. Even children in the so-called ‘developed’ nations are not spared conditions of scarcity. They lack access to resources and suffer marginalization. It has been 60 years since the Declaration of Human Rights, and yet we are far from achieving economic, social and cultural rights for the majority world’s people.
Recognizing that it is a fundamental human right, we speak freely about education being the way to the future and the panacea for many of our problems. As a world community, we have pledged to address these issues through diverse plans of action. In spite of these good intentions, the reality on the ground is that, for many, the challenge is simply one of staying alive and the education that can make a difference becomes a lower priority. Our hopes for education may become platitudes unless we can act on those hopes in a way that is relevant to the particular conditions and contexts of each local community.
I share these thoughts about education, educating, and development for all from my particular location, straddling the world of educational research and teacher education and from my long-standing interest and work with the Susila Dharma Network. My comments are introductory and are meant to raise questions and ideas that will move us towards best practice and to encourage us to pause for reflection. It is a call to ‘right action’.
Education for Development
There are many initiatives and programs to make education a high priority in all countries, especially in countries in the difficult circumstances designated as ‘developing’. The call to action in the field of development is based on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs — see link below). The Declaration on ‘Education for All’ (EFA) is the best known education-related development initiative and was launched in 1990 by a group of governments, non-governmental organizations and agencies, including UNICEF. All the MDGs are interconnected and relevant to education. An integrated approach to achieving progress in poverty reduction, sustainable livelihoods, access to and quality health care, gender parity, are connected to the education goals of providing access to, and maintaining, quality education for all. The facts are staggering: in 1990, 100 million children had no access to primary schooling or did not go to school, and 62 million of those were girls. 960 million adults (600 million women) were illiterate.
Semillitas education program, Fundación Amanecer, Colombia (photo by Fundación Amanecer)
The United Nations’ World Declaration on Education for All (EFA)1 resulted in the creation of goals to meet the learning needs of diverse populations of children, youth and adults through access to education, creating an effective learning environment, attention to the scope and delivery of education (with a focus on the diversity of contexts, learning needs and modes of delivery), and strengthening the policies, partnerships and resource networks that will make these goals possible.
Two reviews of these initiatives (1996 in Jordan; 2000 in Senegal) revealed that much progress had been made towards universal primary education. Many countries were either close to achieving that goal, or had met it. There were fewer out-of-school children than in 19902 and more governments of low-income countries were working towards the EFA goals. However, challenges still remained. Striving to meet those challenges, the Dakar Framework for Action identified the following goals to be accomplished by 2015:
- All children, especially girls and children from marginalized groups, to have access to quality primary education;
- Young people and adults to have access to learning life skills;
- A 50 percent improvement in adult literacy rates especially among women;
- Equitable access to continuing education and improving the quality of all education, especially, literacy, numeracy and life skills.
Recommitting to the vision of EFA, delegates reaffirmed their pledge to ensure that all children have an education, described as ‘learning to know, to do, to live together and to be’. UNESCO was given the task of coordinating the international efforts related to these goals.
The numbers associated with who is in school and who is not do not convey the experiences of the millions of children, youth and adults who are still illiterate or unable to access schooling due to the impact of HIV/AIDS and the resulting loss of teachers, the failure of harvests due to drought, the loss of land and livelihoods, war and conflict, epidemics and natural disasters, and the impact of being long-term refugees. Nor do the numbers tell of the quality of learning and teaching, of what is being taught, why it is being, or by whom. They do not convey the many reasons why the education of girls and gender disparity still remain widespread issues, nor do they explain the glacial pace at which these goals are being implemented.
Some of the educational challenges relate to the quality of learning that is sacrificed in order to get numbers into classrooms. There is a serious shortage of qualified teachers and a widespread use of unqualified teachers. Classroom sizes, lack of resources—especially locally generated and relevant learning materials as opposed to imported textbooks that are no longer useful for classrooms in developed countries—are common problems encountered by teachers. From a development perspective, the most daunting challenge is to meet basic life needs and to address the relationship between the capacity to receive education and the improvement of living conditions.
The creation of international goals for the education of all marks progress; but it is another matter to reach those goals. Participatory decision making, effective governance, and partnerships at the local, national and international levels are strategies identified to attain them. Other strategies cover policy issues, curricula and instruction, teacher training, and overall learner support. EFA policies should be contained within sustainable, holistic frameworks that include development for the entire community. Curricula, instructional methods, teacher training, and resource development must be supported by systems of educational governance and should be relevant to and developed with the local community in mind. Strategies for implementation need to reach the most marginalized and ensure equitable access to classrooms and programs. A key to achieving success is to engage civil society at all stages, from policy making to delivery. At the heart of the learning-teaching relationship are teachers, and attention must be paid to their needs—pay, working conditions, training and professional development and participation in decision-making.
Developing Education
There is no end of solutions and educational innovation to address the perceived ‘problems in education’ and ‘problems with education’. Opinions on what’s wrong with schooling and on the proper way to teach are many and diverse, with varying ideological positions on how schools should be differently run. Bring back the small school, say some; or, create arts-based schools, or technology-oriented classrooms. Classrooms should be learner-centred environments, according to the more common, Western/Northern models of learning and teaching. On the other side is the view that we need to get back to the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, and ‘traditional’ forms of instruction. Never mind the frills and added distractions. The language of accountability, testing and standards is becoming more common. Education is viewed as a means to support economic development to the exclusion of more holistic values incorporating creativity, imagination, curiosity, care, community building, and spiritual traditions (as distinct from religious values). In the face of the diversity of educational practices and approaches, how do we choose what is the right fit for each context and community?
Inca Samana Indigenous School, Ecuador (photo by Inca Samana School)
Practitioners and supporters of Susila Dharma education projects have much to draw on, whether it be from the best practices of development or of education. One effective strategy might be to identify important common principles that reflect our strengths and what we have to offer, helping us to achieve our goal to develop education. Perhaps the enormity of the challenges themselves blind us to what is possible, especially in regard to our source of inspiration—our deepest values about human life and well-being. This, I suggest, is our own best starting point: to go back to the source and draw from the inner wellspring that feeds our hopes, aspirations, and our decision making, especially in the face of difficult circumstances.
Honouring the spirit, or creating a space for spirituality, is an important element of the Susila Dharma model. As our search for external solutions becomes increasingly frustrating, we must turn inward to find the way forward. We need to inspire our thinking and knowledge with the values of spirituality rather than externally administered remedies. Supported from this place, we will be able to call forth right action from ourselves, and from those we work with, and serve in our communities.
Another strength is our emphasis on the local: local initiative that attends to the needs of the people in a particular community rather than applying a template for recovery. How can we help local teachers and project leaders to access educational resources that best meet the needs of that population, in that space, place and time? How best can a curriculum be developed that will help students, not just to survive and get by, but to flourish? Could the curriculum emerge from the place, rather than be imposed as an external solution? What are the wisdom traditions of the place that could form the foundation of the curriculum? How do local wisdom traditions and spiritual values influence the principles of teaching? How do they shape our ideas on how we should relate to one another, which is, in the end, the basis of the learning-teaching relationship?
Placing relationships at the heart of the work (be it education, community building, or health care) has been key to the success of many Susila Dharma projects and should be acknowledged and strengthened. In schools there are many levels at which relationships can be developed: between teacher and student, among students, among teachers working collaboratively, between teacher and administrators, between school and policy makers, and among the school, the parents and the community at large. How can we support teachers and project leaders to develop, improve and enhance such caring relationships? How might these relationships lead to an increased capacity to deliver quality education that meets the needs of learners and the community they live in?
Student at Chimoza School, in Zambia (photo by ‘Q’ Fund)
One of the messier issues in providing education for all is deciding what education is for, what should be taught, and how that content will be prepared for learners. The problem is compounded in places where colonial educational practices and schools have provided much of the education, or where marginalized peoples have been excluded from social participation. Curricula were produced based on what, in far off places or by elite groups, was considered ‘good’ for students, preparing them for imagined futures, for realities far removed from the experiences of the people being educated. To avoid reproducing the harmful effects of imposed ‘imported’ curricula and foreign languages, to avoid reproducing social exclusion and marginalization, we need to encourage and help teachers to be part of the process of curriculum development. What is the benefit of a curriculum that emerges from a local place, is relevant to learners, and contributes to the well-being of their communities?
This ties into teaching methods and practices, teacher training and the retention of teachers. As the renowned teacher and author, Parker Palmer, describes, we teach whowe are, and the primary responsibility for teacher training is to ‘re-source’ the person who teaches. When teacher training is not available, when physical conditions are life-denying, and the teacher herself struggles to keep body and soul alive, effectiveteacher training falls off the priority list. It becomes difficult to avoid state policies and the wide-spread, systemic dysfunction of state-run systems in which many teachers are trapped. Partnership support for these situations must take the overall contexts into account while remaining sensitive to the cycle of dependency that interventions can produce, however well intentioned these interventions may be. Does our partnership support confirm the inadequacies of the local people, building further dependencies, or does it support their own emergence from harmful practices? Are we contributing to education as a process of ‘becoming’ rather than to education simply as a means to an economic end? Participatory models of governance and practice that have proven to be deeply satisfying and effective in other community development Susila Dharma projects could prove to be useful resources in approaching this challenge in schools.
Many Susila Dharma projects, no matter what their focus, have emerged from a wish to restore equitable practices to populations that have been excluded from the wider community: low-caste people barred from school and work, children of incarcerated women, seasonal agricultural workers, people displaced by migrations caused by wars and natural disasters, or people who have lost traditional livelihoods as a result of development. We are already aware of the dangers of looking at others in terms of deficiencies, and help offered as ‘aid’ to improve others. We can take strength from these principles of equity in our schooling practices.
Mithra Foundation School, Bangalore, India (photo by Bardolf Paul)
We should also acknowledge that there are educational strategies and principles being applied in all Susila Dharma projects and not just those identified as schools. This is a useful element to focus on in terms of the goal of education for all. How can a health project’s successful strategies contribute to teaching and learning in another, and how can ideas from a successful school support community development in another place? We are a multifaceted and multi-sectored network, and we have much to learn from one another through regional networking, sharing and learning. A comprehensive community development approach that considers the needs of the community rather than just ‘education’ will provide a sound basis for successful strategies in enhancing our educational practices throughout our network.
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The World Declaration on Education For All, www.unesco.org
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For example, 20 million fewer children drop out of school.
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In 2000, the World Education Forum created A Framework for Action in Dakar, Senegal, to implement the goals of EFA.
Kumari Beck
Kumari is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University in BC, Canada. She teaches courses in social issues in education, global education, intercultural and international issues, and contemporary issues in curriculum and pedagogy. She also works with student teachers and with undergraduate and graduate programmes. Her main research focus is international education. Kumari was on the Board of SDIA from 1993-2005, and the chair from 2001-2005.