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[NASEDEC 2000. The Oslo Conference, 15-17 June
2000, at Oslo University College, “Education for all – human need or human
right?”]
Reclaiming
Our Lives and Regaining Our Cultural Spaces
[First, I would like to say that I am writing these
few pages to generate discussion in a different direction. I am writing
them without elaboration and without any form of self censorship, using life as
I sensed and experienced it, and conversations as I lived through them.
You don’t have to accept anything in these pages; but, please, before you
dismiss them, I ask you to reflect on them seriously. I feel that in a
conference and a place like this one in Oslo, we can push away junk words and
concepts, and get down again to the basics in life and learning. The
survival of human and natural diversity, and even of human communities, may be
at stake here.]
“Education for all.” Every time I read or hear
this phrase, I cannot escape the feeling that it hits me the same way as saying
“AIDS for all” – and exactly for the same reason: both kill the natural immune
systems within people and communities, and in its stead, they create artificial
and dangerous worlds.
Education is artificial – to say the least. In
the words of Gustavo Esteva, my dear friend from Mexico, it is one of the
plastic words that has been floating around the world in recent history.
Most people in most societies today, however, think of it as a natural need,
and as a universal right. We are in the same situation as a child who
lives in a home where cola is served as the main (sometimes even the only)
drink; s/he would think it is a natural drink! So is the case with many
other aspects in life today. Just to mention one more example, we are
made to believe that casting votes every few years is the natural way of
practicing democracy. 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 drunk but with the
cola itself. The solution in all 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.
The problem with education is not so much with what
it offers as with what it conceals, marginalizes, makes invisible or renders
worthless. The problem is with the values that education embodies in its
assumptions and practices (which are very different from what it espouses in
public). The example which I always give to illustrate this invisibility
and these values is the “discovery” of my illiterate mother’s math around the
year 1976. [For details, see my article “Community Education: To Reclaim
and Trasform 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.
Seeing education as artificial makes it meaningless
for me to enter a discussion around whether it is a need or a right. To
talk about it as a need or a right means to imprison my mind totally within the
confines of the dominant ideology, with its terms, meanings, logic, assumptions
and limitations. My mind was imprisoned within those confines for many
years; I know what it means and how it feels. What helped me get out of
it 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. Obviously, that did not happen overnight, but
through a continuous struggle for more than two 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.
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!
The story of the history of Palestinians’ conceptions
of ‘education’ is very telling. 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
Matriculation). 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. 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, if not all,
Palestinians! Later, it was talked about as a “universal right”!
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 fragmentary 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 and trees, 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.
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, would you 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.
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.)
Just to give one more example, concerning the concept
of rights, at a different level and from a different domain, to clarify what I
want to say, one can ask whether the New York Times , for example, has the
right to use – in a daily manner – several million copies to print out, for
example, a Nike shoe or a cellular phone on a whole page?! Why isn’t
there an item in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which protects the
Earth and humans living on it from this plunder?! Similarly, one can ask
who gave the cola companies around the world (especially where water is scarce)
the right to use fresh clean and much needed water (and change it to something
harmful and expensive), while leaving people thirsty?! Why isn’t there an
item in the Universal Declaration to protect the right of peoples around the
world from this outright plunder? Or is the Declaration (just like formal
education) deals with issues only in abstraction? Or is it designed and
tailored to see only the small pirates and leave the big tyrants wandering free
in their plunders – as St. Augustine once put it?! Talking about small
violations and ignoring big ones is not the way to talk about rights. 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.”
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.
One aspect which is needed, and which this conference
can exemplify, 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, 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
organizations like the World Bank 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.
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Finally, I would like to affirm -- as a form of
summary -- certain points and point out to the need of dismantling others:
(1) We
need to dismantle the claim that learning can only take place in schools.
(2) We
need to dismantle the assumption that teachers can teach what they don’t do.
(3)
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.
(4) 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.)
(5) We
need to affirm our capacity for doing and learning, not for getting degrees.
(6) We
need to affirm and regain the concept and practice of “learning from the
world,” not “about the world.”
(7) 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.
Munir Fasheh
Director, Arab Education Forum
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