Many societies met a fate similar to the cocoon through
development and assistance programs, which lacked the wisdom embedded in life
and in the “soil of cultures.” Since the development age was launched by Truman
some 50 years ago (through declaring all societies outside the Western world
“underdeveloped” and, thus, in need of “assistance” to “develop” them),
education, development programs and knowledge have been the main tools used in
breaking the back (chrysalis) of societies (though not with the same innocence
that the boy had). The story of the boy and the cocoon also tells what we (as
parents and teachers) often do: we break the “chrysalis” of our children and
students by trying to help them, thus denying them to learn and build the
internal natural strength they need in order to be the beautiful persons they
are.
First Main Trouble with Knowledge and Education: Dishonesty
I do believe that one aspect which characterizes education,
development and the production and dissemination of knowledge, in today’s
world, is the lack of intellectual honesty. This belief is an outcome of being
true to life as I experienced it, through my years of schooling and my almost
40 years of work. The dishonesty is connected to the values, which govern the
thinking and practice in the fields of education, knowledge and development:
control, winning and competition. Having a syllabus and textbooks, and
evaluating and judging people (students, teachers, administrators, and
academics) through linear forms of authority and through linear symbolic values
(such as arbitrary letters or grades or preferential labels), almost guarantee
cheating, lack of honesty, and lack of relevance (1). I taught many years and
put exams both at the level of classrooms and at the national level, and I
labored and spent a lot of time and effort in order to be fair. But, then, I
discovered that the problem is not in the intentions or the way we conduct
things but, rather, in the values that run societies in general and which are
propagated by education, development and knowledge -- among other means. Thus,
the main trouble with knowledge and education, is not so much their irrelevance
or process of selection or the issue of power (though these are definitely part
of the trouble) as it is with the lack of intellectual honesty in these areas.
Giving a number or a letter to measure a human being is dishonest and inhuman.
It is probably the biggest abuse of mathematics in its history! Moreover, as
long as the above-mentioned values remain as the governing values, talking
about fundamental improvement in education is a contradiction in terms; simply,
it is not possible. Labeling a child as a “failure” is a criminal act against
that child. For a child, who has learned so much from life before entering
school, to be labeled a failure, just because s/he doesn’t see any sense in the
mostly senseless knowledge we offer in most schools, is unfair – to say the
least. But very few around the world seem to be outraged, simply because we
usually lose our senses in the process of getting educated. We are like those
in Hans Christian Anderson’s story that lost their ability to see and had to be
reminded by the little child that the emperor is without clothes.
People in the educational world have to be dishonest (often
without realizing it) either because they are too lazy to reflect on and see
the absurdities in what they are doing (and thus they just give to students
what they themselves were given in schools and universities, or during training
courses and enrichment seminars by the experts of course), or because they are
simply afraid and they have to protect themselves from punishment or from being
judged and labeled as failures. I had a friend who was working in a prestigious
university in the U.S. and who often went as an educational consultant and
expert to countries to improve and develop their educational systems. Once,
while he was on his way to Egypt as a consultant to help in reforming the
educational systemthere, I asked him, “Have you ever been to Egypt?” He said
no. I said, “Don’t you find it strange that you don’t know Egypt but you know
what is good for it?!” Obviously, the richness, the wisdom and the depth of
that 7000-year civilization is totally ignored by him, or more accurately,
cannot be comprehended by him. In a very real sense, he doesn’t only abstract
the theories he carries along with him everywhere but also abstracts the people
by assuming that they all have the same deficits and, thus, the same solution.
Let’s take the term “sustainable development,” for example,
which is widely used today and it is used in the concept paper for this
conference. If we mean by development what we see in “developed” nations, then
sustainable development is a nightmare. If we all start consuming, for example,
at the rate at which “developed” nations currently do, then we need at least
five planets to provide the needed resources and to provide dumping sites for
our waste! If “developing” nations consume natural resources (such as water) at
the same rate “developed” nations do, such resources would be depleted in few
years! Such “development” would be destructive to the soil of the earth and to
the soil of cultures, both of which nurture and sustain human beings and human
societies. The price would be so high at the level of the environment and at
the level of beautiful relationships among people. Thus, those who believe in
sustainable development (in its current conception and practice) are either
naïve or dishonest or right-out indifferent to what happens to nature, to
beautiful relationship among people, and to the joyful harmony within human
beings and between them and their surroundings. Nature and relationships among
human beings are probably the two most precious treasures in life; the most
valuable of what human beings have. The survival of human and natural
diversity, even of human communities, are at stake here.
We do not detect dishonesty in the fields of education,
knowledge and development because usually we are protected (in schools) from
having much contact with life, through stressing verbal, symbolic and technical
“knowledge,” through avoiding people’s experiences and surroundings, through
the means we follow in evaluating people, and through ignoring history (history
of people, of ideas, …). During the 1970s, for example, and as the head
supervisor of math instruction in all the schools of the West Bank (in
Palestine), one question I kept asking children was “is 1=1?” 1=1 is true in
schoolbooks and on tests but in real life it has uses, abuses and misuses, but
no real examples. We abstract apples in textbooks and make them equal but in
real life there is no apple which is exactly equal to another apple. When
students and teachers protested, I said “just use your senses and your
experiences. 1=1 is not a universally true statement. Similarly, 1+1=2 is true
only in very limited cases. Saying otherwise is simply part of the dishonesty
in teaching! The same is true when we say that Newton discovered gravity.
Almost every child by the age of one discovers it. (When my grandson, for
example, was 15 months old, I was watching him once pick up pieces of cereal
and put them in his mouth. Every time he lost a piece, he would look for it
down, never up!) By teaching that Newton discovered gravity, we do not only lie
but also fail to clarify Newton’s real contribution. Similarly with teaching
that Columbus discovered America …. Everyone of us can give hundreds of
examples on dishonesty in the way we were taught and the way we teach.
Dominant forms of education, development and knowledge (as I
mentioned earlier) abstract the “social majorities” in the world and dump them
all under one name: developing nations. This could have been a laughable matter
if we did not, and still do not, pay a high price for this dishonesty; it is in
a real sense a crime against the social majorities in the world.
Human development is another term that sounds positive and
well- meaning but inhuman. How does one develop human beings without ruining
them? It is like help developing the cocoon in the Indian story. Or like
talking about “flower development.” Usually, when the term “human development”
is used, it usually means that people become better consumers or more useful to
the consumer society. It could also mean more useful to the control system.
The value of schools is related mainly to its relation to the
spheres of influence than to any intrinsic value in them. The best example I
can give is the closure of Palestinian schools and universities by Israel for
almost four years. As a result of the closure, Israel faced a real problem.
What would it do with the students when they don’t move from one grade to
another? It had to do something; otherwise it would have faced four times the
number of students waiting to enter the first grade with all the repercussions
(economic, political, social …) associated with that The solution was to
promote all students in all grades to the next grade! This happened every year
for four years. What made things more absurd was the fact that the results on
the national general exam at the end of the school cycle were the highest ever
in the history of the exam! I wrote an article in al-Quds newspaper then saying
that Palestinians seem to be on the verge of being all geniuses without
studying a word!! Even worse: Palestinian parents and teachers did not object
to this dishonesty, because they did not want their children and students to
repeat any grade. Actually, everyone seemed to be happy with that dishonest
solution! The fact is that they all seem to realize that education is a farce
and that economic and other considerations can easily take over, without any
objection from any soul, including concerned educators! Each party justified it
easily.
Equating education with learning is part of the dishonesty; so
is calling the casting of votes every few years democracy; and so is calling
cola a drink, or potato chips food. In this sense, the call to improve
education is like the call to improve cola or the call to improve elections.
The problem is not with the brand or the quality of the cola but with the cola
itself. The solution in such cases is simple and obvious: to reclaim water as
the main source for drinking, to reclaim our lives and cultural spaces as the
main source for learning, and to reclaim our responsibility in running our
affairs as the main source for governing.
In February 1999, I was in Yemen participating in a workshop
on working with youth. There were about 40 young people from 5 Arab countries,
in addition to some adults. A school principal (who herself is involved with
groups on the Right of the Child) told the following story about a 15-year old
Yemeni girl. In one of the meetings that took place before our arrival (which
was one of many meetings held to introduce and advocate the rights of
children), that girl -- after a long and elaborate introduction by several
“experts” about the rights of children -- asked two questions. One question
was, “My government signed the Treaty in my name without discussing it with me.
Isn’t it my right to have had it discussed with me before it signed it?! Isn’t
that one of my fundamental rights? I am 15 years old and I can read and voice
my opinion … ….”. [Her question would not have carried much weight if the
government of Yemen was the only government that ignored this fundamental
right: consulting people and youth before signing anything in their name.
Almost all governments did.] The girl’s second question was, “You talk about
education as a right. I go to school every day, and I get bored and insulted in
it every day. Nothing in the curriculum reflects my life. Nothing is relevant.
… … If this is what you refer to as the right to education, please protect me
from this right. If you need a job, please don’t let me pay the price.” That
girl, with her clear mind and honest expression, exposed the hypocrisy of the
“experts,” of the treaty, and the way it is legitimized around the world
through hegemonic organizations, sweet packaging, and sometimes through force
(just think of the expression “compulsory education”! It is like talking about
compulsory eating. If it is a truly natural need, why do we need to have it
compulsory?! We seem to have forgotten that learning is as natural as life
itself, almost synonymous to living. But that natural process does not exist in
education. Something unnatural and horrible exists instead. That’s why it has
to be compulsory!) That girl dismantled the logic and exposed the hypocrisy of
both experts and world organizations with an innocent persistence, exactly like
the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes: “But
the emperor has nothing on at all!” That girl was not yet constrained by the
forces that blinded and silenced the adult “experts” and caused them to “see”
what is not there, and not to see what is there.
A last example about the dishonesty is embedded in the term
globalization. I have been married for 33 years and as a result a lot has
changed in me and a lot has changed in my wife. But a lot has refused to change
although we have been trying to change certain aspects in each other for those
33 years. We simply failed. We are still struggling to understand each other.
Thus, talking about globalization in the sense we can understand the world is
an example of dishonesty as big as the word globalization itself! If by the
time I die, I succeed in understanding my wife fully, I will have accomplished
a lot. Accordingly, understanding the world has only one meaning: an illusion.
It can only mean something in the language of control. Moreover, it is true
that a person can communicate with millions of people around the world, but
most probably lose the ability to communicate with those living in one’s home.
That person, probably, has difficulty in communicating with real people; s/he
probably has difficulty in striking a meaningful conversation with another
person. Two thousand years ago, a famous Palestinian with the name of Jesus
Christ, said, “what benefit man if s/he gains the whole world but loses
herself/ himself?!” Talking about Jesus, He probably was the first to talk
about “globalization” in a totally different sense: the oneness of human
beings; that they are all children of God. No developed or chosen ones.
People are autonomous human beings, full organic creatures,
with their ways, habits, etc, that resist arbitrary change. We cannot just
impose change without breaking the very essence of people and societies –
without breaking their “chrysalis.” For a person or organization to go to a
place as rich in culture as Egypt or India and impose a solution from outside
is shear arrogance. History has not known a more destructive form of arrogance
– done in the name of help, assistance, development, and progress, i.e. coupled
with hypocrisy. In this sense, an expert is a person who has lost his senses
and is driven by an illusion, by self interest, and by plastic words (that may
look shiny but have no life, and usually are distortive and destructive).
Second Main Trouble with Knowledge and Education:
Lack of Connection to the Lives of the Social Majorities in the World
I cannot subscribe to a system that ignores the lives and ways
of living of the social majorities in the world. I cannot subscribe to a system
that is geared to 20% of the students and calls the other 80% failures,
dropouts, misfits, … and blames for that! It behooves me how most people today
accept a system that produces so many useless people; in fact, in most
societies, it changes them from people who potentially are able to deal with
most of their needs into useless people incapable of satisfying any of their
needs.
I asked hundreds of teachers why they were teaching what they
were teaching and no one really seemed to know -- in the sense that they did
not have an answer that came from their innermost convictions. One answer,
which was often mentioned, was “because it was needed in the university”! When
I said “but only 20 or so percent of the students go to universities, what do
you do for the other 80%? Don’t you care about them?!” most would respond “but
they didn’t work hard enough, they don’t deserve to go to a university. They
are the ones to be blamed, they failed to earn a decent life …”!! The way to
heaven has many gates, but there seems to be only one gate to success in life
in modern societies: the school! Among the teachers whom I asked that question
and who were more honest said “we teach what we teach because we are told to do
so, we get paid for it, and we never thought of what happens to the majority of
students.” This fact seemed to be true about various aspects in the world
today; education just mirrors that fact and help justify it.
In other words, the second trouble with education, development
and knowledge is not so much with what they offer as with what they conceal,
marginalize, make invisible, or render worthless. The problem is with the
values that they embody in their assumptions and practices (which are very
different from what they espouses in public). The example which I always give
to illustrate this is the “discovery” of my illiterate mother’s math around the
year 1976. [For details, see my article “Community Education: To Reclaim and
Transform What Has Been Made Invisible” in the Harvard Educational Review,
Vol. 60, No.1, February, 1990.] What was particularly significant about that
discovery (in relation to the discussion here), is that it is almost impossible
to teach her type of math and her type of knowledge, using the means, methods,
concepts, and structures of what we refer to as education, no matter how much
we improve it! Her type of math and knowledge can only be learned and acquired
through life itself; through living and doing in real settings. It would be
impossible for me, thus, to do what she was able to do, even if I spend another
20 years of study in the “best” schools and universities! Another significant
aspect of her type of knowledge is the fact that she was able to make a living
out of it in almost any setting, while mine was “meaningful” and earned money
only in particular, mainly artificial and hegemonic, settings.
The assumption that people are born ignorant and that they
need education to make them able to function well in life may be true about a
place like the USA, where people are usually kept separated from real life and
detached from the daily means of living. In contrast, in a place like
Palestine, where people were accustomed to producing most of their essential
needs, it is ridiculous to talk about education as a need; it was more of a
hindrance and a dismantler than a need. Increasingly, Palestinians are losing
this ability. To mention one small (but illustrative and significant) example,
it is extremely difficult to find in Palestine today the type of bread which
was the only bread when I was growing up: bread made totally of healthy
(naturally organic) whole wheat with all its natural nutrients. Within the
Palestinian tradition, that kind of bread was treated as sacred. When a piece,
for example, fell on the ground, we were made as children to pick it up and
kiss it. Today, not only this ritual has disappeared but also that kind of
healthy bread, and with it a whole way of life which provided people with most
of their basic and essential needs. We are becoming almost as handicapped as
the Americans in providing for our daily needs – thanks to education, universal
declarations and development programs! Today, we probably rank among the top
peoples in the world in terms of skills of demanding rights, begging for jobs,
and writing funding proposals!
What helped me get out of the dominant mode of thinking was
not a superior intellect or a divine revelation, but my life as a Palestinian
and my culture (as embodied for example in my mother’s ways of doing, knowing
and living). Both “saved” me and put me back on the path of life and learning
and away from the plastic world I internalized through my schooling and
universalizing. Obviously, that did not happen overnight, but through a
continuous struggle for almost three decades (and which is still going on
within me). Since the discovery of my mother’s math, I have been working very
hard to heal myself in the inside, to regain my internal natural “immune”
system, to reconstruct my “inner world” and to restitch the social cultural
spiritual fabric with real people and with the world around me. It needed all
that time, effort and healing for me to be able to stand in front of people and
have the courage to say that education, development and knowledge are without
clothes.
Often, we are given the impression that people in the “Third
World” welcomed western education with open arms and with no critical attitude.
Far from it. The story of the history of Palestinians’ conceptions of
‘education’ is very telling in this regard. It probably mirrors the history of
peoples’ conceptions in many other places. Education was first introduced into
Palestine by missionaries and religious organizations in the late 19th century
and early 20th century. After WWI, the British occupiers of Palestine imposed
their curricula, books, structures and ways as well as their systems of
measures and evaluation on people (such as the London Metriculation). This was
resisted by important segments of the Palestinian society who saw its alien
character, its political agenda, and its irrelevance and hegemony. One segment
was exemplified by the Palestinian educator Khalil Sakakini, who lived and
practiced his concept of learning in Palestine during the first half of the
20th century. (In 1990, he wrote a book in Arabic with the title “Wearing
Someone Else’s Shoes.”) The other segment was exemplified by the peasants of
Palestine who organized a conference in Jaffa in 1929 and asked questions about
the relevance of the new curricula and what do we want education to do. These
questions and concerns (which were manifestations of resistance to the blind
adoption and implementation of ready curricula and solutions) were dismissed by
the Palestinian elite in the towns and cities in Palestine, such as Jerusalem,
Jaffa and Haifa and, gradually, education became a “need” felt by most
Palestinians, and a “universal right” demanded by most! Today, it is almost
like an addiction! At the same time, however, in spite of all appearances to
the contrary (such as Palestinians continuing to build more schools and
universities, and to generate more certificates) many Palestinians today are
increasingly doubtful about the promises of education, and critical of its
assumptions. Today, many see it as a false Messiah, as a dismantler of life, as
a fragmenter of the mind and society, and as a crusher of dignity and self
worth for the majority of people. If warplanes and army tanks flatten houses,
education along with development programs and universal declarations flatten
people’s minds and souls, through linear thinking (such as the concept of
progress), through scientific/ mathematical “facts” (such as 1=1), through
universal claims (such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), and
through killing diversity and ignoring the richness and wisdom in cultures and
communities. More people seem to see the danger and, thus, are ready to
entertain alternatives to what is presented today as “natural," and to work
within different assumptions, values and paradigms. This reminds us of how a
member of the Zapatistas (in Mexico), who are struggling to regain their lives
and cultural spaces, responded to a question, “Changing the world is very very
difficult, almost impossible. What we are trying to do is create a whole new
world, where many worlds fit.”! This, in my opinion, is the real challenge
facing us in the 21st century. What makes the task easy is that these many
worlds already exist!
Building Learning Societies: Approaches to Learning
From what has been said so far, two main approaches to
knowledge and learning can be identified: (1) learning by doing; i.e. by being
embedded in life. In this approach, learning is almost synonymous to living,
and (2) the formal approach, which usually starts with ready pre-prepared
content, and which embodies tests and grades.
The two approaches differ mainly in terms of values (whether
one is aware of them or not). The first approach values life (as people/
learners experience it, and not as experts define it); it values, diversity,
lack of fragmentation, relatedness of the various aspects in life, human
dignity, honesty, freedom, truth, and linking words and thoughts with actions.
In addition, it avoids hypocrisy and arrogance. [In short, the values mentioned
in Tagore’s quote, which appears underneath the title of this Workshop 21.] The
second approach embodies mainly the values of competition, winning, control
(control of meanings, people, measures and outcomes). These values usually lead
to fragmentation, cheating, self-defensiveness and, thus, to the tearing of the
inner world of people and tearing the social spiritual fabric of communities.
If we use our senses and regain our honesty as human beings,
we cannot but see the crime we are committing in changing three quarters of
students from human beings into useless unemployable people; people who are
unable to make a living or to satisfy any of their needs. They are useless to
their communities and education is useless to them. Many capitals around the
world (but mostly in what is termed as the Third World) are increasingly
witnessing demonstrations by holders of Masters and PhD degrees, demanding jobs
from governments. This is a new phenomenon in history. Just imagine how much we
have deteriorated: a PhD holder is incapable of making a living by himself and
is asking his new “daddy” to find him a job. They have learned about their
right to demonstrate, demand, and express, but lost their ability to live and
how to make a living. The fact is: any one who has gotten nothing but education
is basically handicapped; he cannot make a living by himself.
Education produces a majority that is uprooted from their soil
of culture and give them false promises and empty expectations. It deprives
them of hope and has absolutely no respect to that kind of soil without which
human beings just lose learning how to break their “chrysalis” and live on
their own in life. Breaking their “chrysalis” is the only way to give them
internal strength. Instead of learning this, and going through that natural and
healthy struggle, they learn how to fight one another over meaningless and
lifeless symbols as diplomas. They grow up not even being able to see or
comprehend the richness in their own soils; they learn to despise them. They
learn how to import chemicals, hormones and plastic concepts, thinking they can
save their peoples. For some and for a while, things may seem to improve. Soon,
however, they discover the high price that had to pay at the level of the
community, the environment and human relationships. In this sense, my mother’s
knowledge was not only different but radically different: I was not able to see
it for a long time. And when I saw it, I was not able to comprehend it. It was
so embedded in life like salt in food: it is impossible to see them separate.
When I say these things, I don’t mean that everything in the
soil of culture is good. The best example I can give for a person who was
grounded in his own culture and at the same time not being blind to some of its
horrors (like the cast system) is Ghandi. His adherence to his Indian culture
did not stop him from doing something about that system. Living in one’s own
“cultural soil” does not mean being blind to some of the horrors that it has.
But to run out of it would be like trying to get out of one’s own skin! It is
important that we don’t jump into horrors we can do nothing about such as the
ones produced by education and development.
Development and education are geared towards 20% of the
population, those who can be absorbed into the machine of consumption and
compete over its mainly plastic gains. The rest is doomed to the labels of
failures, unfit, dropouts, unemployed, underdeveloped, … They are made to
believe that they are to be blamed. The solution, however, is not to go on
complaining but to regenerate the soil of their cultures. One hopeful fact
along this path is that 80% of what we need is available to us and that 80% of
what we currently consume (the junk of modernity) we don’t need. This is true
whether we are talking about knowledge, food, or entertainment. This is where
the hope lies. In all of these areas, protecting our children becomes a much
needed challenge rather than acquiring more of these horrors. Too much
information, food, and entertainment (even when it is good, which usually is
not) causes indigestion, lack of clarity and ability to comprehend.
I know that by saying all what I said above, and by not
conforming to the dominant paradigm in thinking about education and rights, I
am risking the possibility of appearing marginal, out of my mind, unfit, or
merely stupid. But somebody has to play the role of the “fool” and the innocent
if we are really serious about saving ourselves and our children from something
as hypocritical and as junky (not to say also as dangerous) as universal
education and universal declarations. It is about time to shake the dirt off
our minds and souls and look at life face to face again: to touch it, smell it,
listen to it, live it, and feel its joy and pain. (By the way, this shaking off
of the dirt is the literal meaning of the word intifada in Arabic. The
Palestinian intifada is a manifestation of reclaiming our lives and regaining
spaces.)
I feel I need to clarify one point here. I am not against
improving schools and education. I have been involved in doing that for almost
three decades, and I still am. A good school is better than a bad school, and
every teacher who works on himself/ herself in order to better themselves and
improve their ways of relating to students and to knowledge, and thus create
better learning environments, definitely form an important part of the process
of building a better world. All what I am saying is that it is not enough. It
is important that we do not fool ourselves by believing that improving
education is a magical recipe for creating a “world where many worlds fit.”
Education cannot do it. At least some of us need to talk about more fundamental
issues and develop and practice different sets of values, different ways of
relating to one another and treating each other, different assumptions, and
different visions; i.e., to strive to live their various worlds and regain
their various cultural spaces.
My Attempts to Create Learning Environments
My first attempts to create learning environments were related
to the voluntary work movement in the West Bank (in Palestine) and my work with
improving the teaching of math in the schools of the West Bank region. Both
were in the 1970s. (At the time I did not call what I was doing “learning
environments,” I just did what I felt I could do and needed to be done). The
driving idea in the voluntary work was, first, how to use the tremendous energy
and hope that was then in people (who were mainly students and teachers) in
doing needed work in the community. Joy was part of the work: we would walk in
the fields, sing, dance, joke, play and also build within ourselves a better
understanding of the world we inhabit through conversations among ourselves and
with people of all sorts and walks in life. Groups sprang naturally all over:
in schools, universities, …. (I wrote more about it in Arabic).
My work with math in schools involved several aspects that I
would consider today part of learning environments: small groups in various
places and settings, each doing their own thing; a core group that facilitate
communication among the various groups and also to articulate some of the
common concerns, common vision, and organize common activities; math and
science clubs in various schools; open meetings to discuss the new syllabus and
any related questions; …. I used to go around visit schools and ask students to
give as many meanings and examples of mathematical concepts and “facts.” In the
clubs, I used to say to students interested in forming a club in their school,
“There is no ready material or content. Science and knowledge do not start with
ready theories and book questions but by questions that people have. The clubs
revolve around questions that you have, so bring what you have and start with
them.” That first experience for me in creating learning environments opened up
ways and possibililities in my imagination which I employed in my work later.
One of these was establishing a new course in math for entering first year
students at Birzeit University. (2) [FLM]
Then was my experience as Dean of Students at Birzeit
University. The atmosphere at Birzeit University during the 1970s was the
closest I have experienced in terms of learning environments in any university
I studied or worked in. The place was always buzzing with all kinds of
activities which included various forms of expression, most of which was the
creation of the students themselves. In addition, the spirit and atmosphere in
the University was very open, democratic and healthy. At the time, no one
called it democratic; there was no need for this “plastic” word.
[Unfortunately, like many other aspects around the world, things have
deteriorated so much that right now, for example, Birzeit lost that spirit of
real democracy and, instead, Birzeit now has a masters program in democracy and
human rights!!
Then came the intifada with its most inspiring aspects as a
learning environment. Probably the most significant among these aspects is the
sense of responsibility and collectivity which people felt at the personal
level. Each person asked “what can I do” and went ahead and did it. People
learned how to survive with what they had and what the environment provided. It
was then that many of us discovered that more than 80% of what was in the
market was not really needed, and that 80% of what we need is already there!
The intifada inspired the Tamer Institute which I established in 1989. The
reading Campaign was one manifestations of the learning environments that were
developed through that institute. (See HER …). Also in 1995, I wrote a small
book (in Arabic) as a result of that experience, with the title: “The main
challenge is ending the occupation of our minds; and the main means is creating
learning environments.”
One aspect which is needed is real dialogue between people
from the various “worlds” which exist around the world. Currently, such
dialogue does not seem to exist. I am talking here about dialogue, not only as
an exchange of ideas and experiences, but dialogue through which we build our
“inner worlds,” stitch the human fabric among cultures and societies, decide to
live with a different set of values and regain spaces for our various worlds in
a way that makes it possible for them to live with one another -- just like the
wild flowers of Palestine do in the Spring season.
Dominant discourses and assumptions do not, in general,
enhance real dialogue. Terms such as “developed” and “developing or
underdeveloped,” for example, reflect a dichotomy in the mind between givers
and takers. And it is obvious that there can be no dialogue between givers and
takers; there can only be begging. This conference can act as a spring board
for a real dialogue to take place – with the explicit purpose of regaining a
space for all peoples; a space where people celebrate the diversity which
exists in human life, and learn from one another, rather than have the attitude
of the “developed” educating the “underdeveloped.” England stayed in India for
hundreds of years and they seem to have learned nothing from the wisdom of that
sub-continent. They – it seems -- didn’t even notice it! Actually, they brought
nothing back to England except tea and called it “Earl Grey”! Similarly,
missionaries who entered our home in Palestine, never tried to learn from my
parents’ Christianity. These are examples of the fact that learning and
arrogance can’t go together. Is the situation any better today? Is arrogance on
the way out? I don’t know. But there seems to be enough people who are fed up
with institutions and organizations that claim to save the world via ready
recipes and with attitudes like “I am chosen” and who are ready to join efforts
to build a happier and saner world; “a world where many worlds fit.”
In a sense, what I am talking about here is not free thought
and expression (as current discourse and dominant ideology have it, and as
experts on civil society, democracy and human rights preach it) but, rather, I
am talking about freeing our thoughts and expressions from the junk ideas and
“plastic” words that fill current thoughts and expressions. Free thought and
expression is like telling people that they have the full freedom to choose
what they want to eat from a table that has nothing but junk food! The example
which I usually give to illustrate the difference between free thought and
freeing thought is the example of what happened when Israel closed all schools
and universities in the West Bank and Gaza during the intifada. Israel didn’t
mind Palestinians shouting and demanding the opening of schools. It even
allowed conferences to be held in Jerusalem to criticize the order of closure
and demand the opening of schools and universities. That was a manifestation of
free thought and expression that does not bother any oppressor; in fact, if
anything, it beautifies the oppressor’s image. In contrast, when some people
freed their thinking from demanding to acting, and started teaching children at
homes and in the neighborhoods, Israel issued one of the most notorious
military orders in its history: any one who is caught teaching children at his/
her home or in the neighborhood is liable to face the penalty of demolishing
his/ her home and up to ten years of imprisonment! That was in August 1988.
Freeing one’s mind from the confines of where and how learning can take place
(i.e. ‘breaking the conditioning’ process, in the words which my 22 year old
son reminded me of) is a totally different and much more fundamental act and a
beautiful manifestation of freeing thought and expression, in contrast to free
thought and expression.
In today’s world, what controls people and communities are the
market, the police and ideology as embedded in universal education, universal
declarations, and dominant mass media. The governing values in such a world are
obvious: winning, controlling, feeling superior to others, defining the world
unilaterally and linearly, and greed. In such a world, reclaiming our cultural
spaces with various sets of values is a main challenge. It is the real
challenge today.
* * * *
Finally, I would like to affirm -- as a form of summary --
certain points and point out to the need of dismantling others:
We need to dismantle the claim that learning can only take
place in schools.
We need to dismantle the assumption that teachers can teach
what they don’t do.
We need to dismantle the hegemony of words like education,
development, progress, excellence, and rights and reclaim, instead, words like
wisdom, faith, generosity, hope, learning, living, happiness, and duties.
We need to affirm that the vast majority of people go to
school not to learn but to get a diploma (exactly like the permit from the
Israelis which I need in order to leave Palestine. There is no intrinsic value
in either, both are part of oppressive inhumane systems.)
We need to affirm our capacity for doing and learning, not for
getting degrees.
We need to affirm and regain the concept and practice of
“learning from the world,” not “about the world.”
We need to affirm that people are the real solution, not the
obstacle and not ignorant.
We need to spend more time in conversations face-to-face with
one another, in doing things together, in dreaming beautiful dreams, and in
building shared visions. In short, we need to reclaim our lives and regain our
cultural spaces.
Two thousand years ago, a wise Palestinian with the name of
Jesus Christ asked us to see the wood in our eye before we see the speck in the
other person’s eye. Another man from the same region with the name of Mohammad
defined religion as the way we treat one another. We will do well and good if
we reclaim a space in our lives for those types of wisdom, and make them part
of our guiding principles in creating “a world where many worlds fit.”
The challenge in building learning societies, thus, does not
lie in the realm of introducing new technology or changing policy or talking
about technical matters but, rather, in the realm of values: to reclaim honesty
in thought, practice and expression; to develop again qualities of generosity
and responsibility; to regain respect for people and for the diversity and
richness in life and cultures; and to reclaim our senses (to learn again to
see, listen, feel, care, …).