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How to
Eradicate Illiteracy without Eradicating Illiterates
Munir Fasheh
Director, Arab
Education Forum
Center for Middle
Eastern Studies
Harvard University,
Cambridge, MA
For the UNESCO round
table on “Literacy As Freedom.” On the occasion of The International
Literacy Day 9-10 September 2002, UNESCO, Paris
Introductory remarks
This paper is a personal testimony of part of my story with language, literacy,
and knowledge. During the first half of my life (first 30 years), I – like
most educated people – approached life/reality from a standpoint superior to
that of the “elements” themselves (people, things, social relations,
phenomena…). I started with official and professional texts, universal
concepts and theories, standardized measures, and ready meanings – the approach
followed by institutions in general and by the educational institution in
particular. In the second 30 years of my life, I have been trying to
listen to the elements in my surroundings, including my inner voice and the
voice of Nature. In other words, I have been busy “healing” myself from
the assumption that thinking is superior or higher than living and
doing. Being attentive to my surroundings and faithful to my experiences
and inner voice, and using words rather than be used by them, became main
guiding principles for me.
In
those second 30 years of my life, I became increasingly aware and cautious of
the role of universal thinking, solutions, claims and declarations, of dominant
forms of knowledge, and of texts, in contributing to the disappearance of
diversity, and to the dominance of one path for progress and
development. To define people in negative terms is part of the problem
with the dominant discourse. To define a person, for example, as
“illiterate” (i.e. in terms of what s/he lacks instead of what the person has
and what s/he does) is one striking example relevant to the discussion
here. That illiterate person may have tremendous knowledge and wisdom, and
may be able to express herself/himself in beautiful ways; yet, all that is
ignored and what s/he lacks is stressed. It is a very effective way in
using language to control what the mind sees and what it fails to see. If
it were only about the term illiterate, I would not have mentioned it. I (along
with my people) was defined by negative terms throughout my whole life, and
very rarely – if ever – by what we are and what we have. We were defined
as “non-Jews,” even when we formed the majority in Palestine. (It is like
defining the French in France as “non-Algerians”!) And at least since
1949, we (along with 80% of the population of the world) were defined as
undeveloped or underdeveloped or developing! [In spite of this, I will
use the term “illiterate” to point to its absurdity and to relate what I am
saying in this paper to current discussions on the topic.]
A
good part of the paper consists of comparing two “worlds”: the world of my
illiterate mother and the world of my literate self. My fascination with
this comparison has been a main inspiring element in my thinking and doing for
the past 25 years at least. I am still fascinated by my mother’s world,
her way of living, understanding, knowing, relating, and expressing. She
continues to be an invincible treasure for me every time I find myself in a
situation (such as this one concerning the “literacy crusade”) where I need to
look at things in a way different from the norm, where I need to imagine a
different way of perceiving. I find my imagination, in such situations,
wandering back to her, because she was a true embodiment of a radically
different worldview. That’s why when I hear a person, or read a statement,
which implies that the illiterate is not a full human being, and that we need
to save her/him, I shiver inside, and feel the urgency for a new vision
touching the core of what is real. In addition to comparing the two
worlds, I will describe some projects that I was involved in during the past 30
years, which embodied the approach, principles and convictions that I lived by
and worked with concerning language, literacy and knowledge.
The
first articulation of the comparison between my world and my mother’s world
appeared in my article “Community Education is to Reclaim and Transform What
Has Been Made Invisible,” in the Harvard Educational Review Feb.
1990. My “discovery” of my illiterate mother’s math, and how my math and
knowledge could neither detect nor comprehend her math and knowledge, mark the
biggest turning point in my life, and has had the greatest impact on my
perception of knowledge, language, and learning and their relationship to
reality. Later, I realized that the invisibility of my mother’s math was
not an isolated matter but a reflection of a wide phenomenon related to the
dominant Western worldview. [See, for example, Martin Bernal, Black Athena:
The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization the Fabrication of Ancient
Greece, 1785-1985,
Rutgers University Press, 1987. In this book, Bernal argues that Classical
civilization has deep roots in Afroasiatic cultures, which have been
systematically ignored, denied or suppressed since the eighteenth century -
chiefly for racist reasons. Development during the past 50 years has been
a continuation of this ignoring, denial, and suppression of what peoples and
cultures had throughout history, and still have.]
The
first Palestinian Intifada, which started in December 1987, deepened and
broadened many of the convictions, which started growing within me during the
1970s. It made me aware of cultural and social aspects that were also made
invisible by dominant structures and terminology. During the first Intifada,
I realized that what kept Palestinian society viable were people who were
rooted in the soil of the culture and in daily lives, whether literate or
not. It was the rooted traditions and social structures that kept the
various communities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip functioning. In other
words, the crucial factor in whether a person is “nurturing the community and
nurtured by it” is not whether one is literate or not, but whether one is
rooted in the cultural soil and in daily living or not. For me, the
challenge facing communities everywhere is to reclaim and revalue the diverse
ways of learning, studying, knowing, relating, doing, and expressing. My
first reaction to the Intifada (in relation to language) was to work
with students from Birzeit University (we met “illegally”, because Birzeit,
along with other Palestinian universities and schools, was closed by Israel for
more than four years). I asked students to read the front pages of
newspapers and write about them, comparing the titles with what was written
below the titles and with what was happening on the ground. However, the
biggest project I was involved in as a result of the Intifada (and
related to language and literacy) was launching the reading campaign in
Palestinian society as a main project of Tamer Institute, which I established
in Palestine in 1989. [For details, see my article “The Reading Campaign
Experience within Palestinian Society: Innovative Strategies for Learning and
Building Community, Harvard Educational Review, Feb. 1995]. Since
1997, I have been involved with two projects “The Arab Education Forum” and the Qalb
el-Umour Project, both of which embody a different perception,
conception, practice, and “myths” concerning learning and the use of
language.
Before
I end these preliminary remarks, I would like to make three comments concerning
the 2-page statement, which was sent to us in regard to the round table,
because of their relevance to issues I raise in this paper. My first
comment is related to urging participants in the round table discussion to “be
open, honest, self-critical, and reflective.” I promise that I will be
exactly that. My second comment (which embodies the promise in my first
comment) is related to the sentence: the UN Literacy “Decade was adopted
unanimously by the nations of the world….” For a delegate to speak on
behalf of a nation, without discussing it with the nation (without even the
nation knowing about it) is symptomatic of what is taking place in today’s
world and part of the reason of an attitude, which seems to be spreading among
peoples around the world: being indifferent spectators. Moreover, the
unanimous approval of the decade does not necessarily reflect the importance of
the topic, but probably its non-seriousness and non-relevance to most
governments (the approval does not carry with it any commitment in terms of
actions). What I am sure of, however, is that I was not consulted, and it
does not seem to have been discussed in the open within any nation. If I
were consulted, I would have raised some of the issues I am raising in this
paper. In this sense, the claim that the decade was “adopted unanimously
by the nations of the world” in the absence of the nations of the world is a
denial of a most basic right of any human being: the right to be asked about
her/his opinion before speaking on her/his behalf. Decisions that are
taken in the name of all nations do not stop at the level of
literacy. More often than not, they involve declaring wars on small
nations, like what happened during the past 50 years. In addition, I
belong to a nation that is not fully represented in the UN. [I was robbed
of both my country and my nationhood by Britain, and the “civilized” countries
sanctioned the robbery at the UN]. A more humble and accurate statement
would thus be “The Decade was adopted by the delegates of those countries that
are represented in the general assembly.” This example reminds us of the
importance of being accurate and intellectually honest as a fundamental
principle in using languages.
My
third comment is related to celebrating literacy. I have a big problem
with celebrating a tool, especially in a world where tools (such as language)
are used to control, suppress, and distort. Celebrating literacy is like
celebrating cars. When we look at what cars have done to ancient and great
cities like Cairo and Athens, we realize that we need to be more
careful. In other words, we need to look not only at what literacy adds
(in the way it is conceived and implemented) but also at what it subtracts or
makes invisible.
In
short, my bias in this paper is obvious: my concern is not about statistical
measures (for example, how many learn the alphabet), but about our perception
of the learner and what happens to her/him in the process of learning the
alphabet. My concern is to make sure that the learner does not lose what
s/he already has; that literacy does not replace other forms of learning,
knowing, and expressing; that literacy is not considered superior to other
forms; and that the learner uses the alphabet rather than be used by it.
In other words, my concern is to make sure that in the process of eradicating
illiteracy, we do not crush illiterates. In this paper, I stress aspects
that are usually not stressed in discussions and programs on
literacy. There is no need to repeat things that have been stressed
before.
The story of my “illiterate” mother
In the 1970s,
while I was working in schools and universities in the West Bank region (in
Palestine) and trying to make sense out of math, science and knowledge, I
“discovered” that what I was looking for has been next to me, in my own home:
my mother’s math and knowledge. She was a seamstress. Women would
bring to her rectangular pieces of cloth in the morning; she would take few
measures with colored chalk; by noon each rectangular piece is cut into 30
small pieces; and by the evening these scattered pieces are connected to form a
new and beautiful whole. If this is not math, I don’t know what math
is. The fact that I could not see it for 35 years made me realize the
power of language in what we see and what we don’t. Her knowledge was
embedded in life (like salt in food) in a way that made it invisible to me as
an educated and literate person. I was trained to see things through
official language and professional categories. In a very true sense, I
discovered that my mother was illiterate in relation to my type of knowledge,
but I was illiterate in terms of her type of understanding and knowledge. Thus,
to describe her as illiterate and me as literate (in some absolute sense)
reflects a narrow and distorted view of the real world and of reality. I
am illiterate among the indigenous peoples in Ecuador; a Greek is illiterate in
Pakistan; and so on. A division, which I find more significant than
literate and illiterate, would be between people whose words are rooted in the
cultural-social soil in which they live (like real flowers) and people who use
words that may look bright and shiny but without roots (like plastic
flowers). Put differently, a serious challenge, which we face in today’s
world, is for each person (whether literate or illiterate) “to say what one
means and mean what one says,” a principle that is alien to institutional logic
and contrary to the interests of career-oriented professionals. [I really
hope that one day the UN declares a decade where people say during that decade
what they mean and mean what they say. That would, in my opinion, have a
real and deep impact on reversing the disastrous logic, which currently runs
the world.]
The
realization of my mother’s knowledge challenged several assumptions, which are
usually embedded in official discussions on literacy: that a literate person is
better than an illiterate person; that an illiterate person is not a full human
being; that s/he is ignorant; that by becoming literate, a person would be
magically transformed and poverty and ignorance would be wiped out; that a
literate person is freer than an illiterate person; and so on and so
forth. The fact is that my illiterate mother was neither inferior in her
knowledge nor was less human or less free. Giving literacy magical powers
and claims is simply a false promise.
My
engagement with my mother was neither objective nor subjective, although it
included elements of both. My engagement with her touched the depth of my
intimate convictions and beliefs. The “dialogue” between her worldview and mine
helped me remove many masks, which I acquired through my education. It was
not easy for me to take them off. It took me several years before I was
able to admit my new convictions publicly. I was simply risking my career,
prestige and reputation.
At
one point, I really thought that what was needed to make my mother understand
math better, was to teach her how to read and write, to teach her some accepted
terminology and ways of the dominant math. I thought if I only could
teach her how to put what she knew in terms of the categories (which I studied
and taught), then her knowledge would be much better. I thought that if I
can mix her math with mine, I might come up with something
fantastic. Gradually, however, I realized that her knowledge and mine
could not be mixed; it would be like mixing real flowers with plastic flowers
(her knowledge being the real flowers). Her knowledge cannot be
taught/transmitted by ways, methods, categories, and language, which I studied
and was teaching. [I even became convinced that the worst way to learn is
to be taught according to a curriculum, a syllabus, or a manual.] At the
same time, I realized that my kind of knowledge could not be integrated into
life the way hers was. I don’t like the term empowerment, but if I allow
myself to use it I would say that I was empowered by my mother rather than the
other way round, (although current wisdom has it that my mother needed
empowerment!) I realized that what I really could do was to articulate my
realization of her knowledge and make it visible to the world of the literate,
hoping that we learn how to be humble again and become aware of the diversity
of ways of learning, knowing, living, perceiving, and expressing – and that
such ways cannot be compared along linear measures. I articulated my
realization of her knowledge hoping that we stop making universal claims such
as “literacy does wonders” without many and severe qualifications, and also
hoping that we realize again that diversity is in the nature of life and, thus,
stop claiming that there is only one path for learning, knowing and for
progress, namely education. My hope was, and still is, to end the monopoly
of education over learning and regain diverse “spaces,” along with resources,
where people learn. Put differently, education is one way to learn; those
who are comfortable with it should be supported. Those who are comfortable
with other ways of learning should also be supported by providing them with
means and facilities (including resources) that help them learn. This
implies an end to the era of “education for all” and, instead, providing
diverse ways of learning where we do not produce useless people (including
dropouts) and blame them for it. I think this is very relevant to the
“literacy crusade” that is currently being launched.
Literacy As Freedom?
Since
freedom is a main theme in the literacy decade, it merits some elaboration
before I discuss its relation to literacy. For me, the most fundamental
aspect of freedom is “making one’s path in life by walking it”. Freedom
is not choosing between path X and path Y although it can embody this
aspect. And it is not following a predetermined path. It does not
refer to freedom of choice and of decision, although it embodies
both. “Making a path in life by walking it” implies being attentive to and
acknowledging reality, and also being faithful to one’s experiences of that
reality and to one’s convictions and principles. In this sense, we are all
co-partners in understanding reality; each person is a source of
understanding. We are all doers, observers, and constructors and authors
of reality. Understanding reality does not have one author but many, as
many as those who care to put an effort to independently investigate meaning of
life and words. No one has the right or authority to monopolize
interpretations and meanings. Personal interpretation and independent
investigation of meaning are, for me, most fundamental human rights (which,
ironically, are not mentioned in the universal declaration of human
rights!). In addition, personal interpretation and independent
investigation of meaning are among the most fundamental characteristics of
freedom. They respond to free interaction and honest reflection between the
world within the person and the world around the person. Personal
interpretation and independent investigation of meaning, however, embody
responsibility on our part and, thus, embody risk. This is where freedom,
responsibility, commitment and readiness to pay a price converge. In this
sense, freedom can neither start with models nor follow predetermined patterns
nor be measured, but it can be inspired by the lives of others.
In
the sense described above, I feel that my “illiterate” mother was much freer
than me. She made her path in life “by walking it”, and not by being
trained nor by fragmenting knowledge and teaching them to her separated from
life. She learned rather than was taught. She learned by observing,
doing, reflecting, relating, and producing. She created her own path and
constructed her own understanding. One big difference between my mother and
me is that if I needed to find the meaning of a word I would look it up in a
dictionary, encyclopedia or some other book. In contrast, she would look
for meanings through her experiences and life. My way was the
lazy way. I would rarely bother to put any effort to explore the meaning
by reflecting on my experience with the word; no independent investigation of
meaning. She was authoring her understanding. She was a spectator, a
doer, and an author of reality. In contrast, I was an imitator, solving
problems, most of which have been solved for a trillion times, in boring
repetition in schools around the world for the past 100 years at least. A
typical question in my type of education was “what are the dimensions of the
biggest box we can make out of a rectangular piece of board.” A typical
challenge for my mother was, “how to make a beautiful dress out of a
rectangular piece of cloth that would fit a particular person.” In
addition, she was free in the sense of not being bound to an institution to
give her a job. Her knowledge sprang from life and was connected to
life. She was needed everywhere she lived. She was her own
boss. She was free from the fear of losing her job, or of being labeled
by an arbitrary committee that she was not fit for the job. [Freedom from
fear is another fundamental aspect of freedom.] She was free from the
hegemony of institutions and professionals. Unlike teachers, trainers,
experts, and the like, her commitment was not to institutions and
professionals; she did not need them to get legitimacy. Her commitment was
to people whom she cared about, many of whom became her friends. In
contrast, my knowledge originated in institutions and needed institutions to
get work. Moreover, having a curriculum and constantly feeling fearful of
failing or being accused of one thing or another, contradict freedom in the
sense described above.
One
objection that could be presented here is that knowing how to read and write
can help people be free in terms of not depending on others in ‘moving around’
in the modern world. True, but my main point in this paper is exactly
this: how to gain this kind of freedom without losing other kinds, which in my
opinion are extremely crucial?
An Analogy
I
will use cars to clarify what I want to say here. In imitation of the
word “illiterate”, I will use the term “car-less” to define people who have no
cars. Instead of talking about such people as those who walk, those who
use what is abundant and healthy (legs), we stress what they don’t have.
n some sense, a person who has a car is freer to go to more places, and to
farther away places, but s/he is bound to drive on pre-paved roads. S/he
may have several roads to choose from, but they are all predetermined,
pre-constructed. It is much harder to make one’s own path using a
car. “Car-less” people (just like “illiterate” people) probably cover less
area, but are freer to move around and explore the surroundings. They
“make their paths by walking.” Their feet are always on the
ground. Seeing the landscape from the window of a car (or from a plane)
gives the illusion that the person is “learning” about the landscape but it is
totally different from walking on and feeling the soil, the plants, the fresh
air, nature’s sounds, etc. Some may say why not have both? Fine, as
long as using cars (or planes) is not considered superior, and more valuable,
than walking, and as long as we do not lose the ability to reach places or to
realize aspects of life where cars and language cannot reach. It is very
hard to be wise if you travel all the time in cars or planes. In contrast,
it is very hard for a farmer, a sailor, a true scientist, a true artist, or a
traveler on foot not to be wise. Wisdom is listening to and being attentive to
nature and surroundings. It does not consider increasing the speed of life as a
main goal or value. Gandhi, who is considered wise by many, once said,
“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”
Considering
reading and writing as a basic human need often robs people from what I
consider to be more basic, which is the ability to express one’s living in some
form, which may not (for many) be language and literacy. If we can provide
literacy to all without robbing them of what they have, that’s fine. Since
resources are limited and our ways are often exclusive, it only makes sense to
provide various options for people to choose from. The expression of my
mother’s knowledge, for example, took the form of beautiful clothes. That of a
farmer is what s/he grows. And so on. To claim that literacy is more
important for my mother doesn’t make sense. If one can acquire an
expression without losing another, that is fine, but if for some reason one has
to choose, then claiming that literacy is the only or the best choice for all
cannot be justified. To put all our energies and resources in one form
limits diversity and freedom.
The
teachers I still remember fondly are not those who were trained well, and who
possessed technical knowledge and advanced degrees, but those who were generous
and hospitable. They were generous in their spirit, and with their time
and with their ears (i.e. compassionate listeners). They were hospitable
in their attitude and relationships, and with their hearts and minds. They
accepted not only what was familiar but also what sounded strange (hospitality
is true when it is extended to strangers and not only to those whom we
know). They were open to strange ideas, never judgmental, and had big
hearts. My mother was such a teacher. She was not a certified
professional teacher; she was a profound human being. She was generous,
hospitable, kind, caring and wise. In addition, she was doing something
artistic and pleasing to her. She was not an educator or facilitator or
liberator or conscientizor or any of those terms that are good in the world of
control and consumption, where people are divided to “helpless” and
“saviors”. She was truthful, she did what she believed in, and I never
heard her say anything she didn’t mean (she would rather remain silent).
Her way of living was compelling enough that people were affected. She
never preached; rather, she lived the principles she believed in, those that
she wished for the community. There was no separation between her words
and her actions; when she used the word love, for example, her actions already
preceded her word. I never felt she was competing with anyone. She
was doing things out of personal convictions, of inner calling. Through
her way of living and relating, and through her perceptions, she helped me heal
from a lot of the aspects of being literate. I am still literate, but I
won’t do what I did blindly before. For example, I abandoned many words
that I used before healing, such as progress, success, failure, and measuring
people. I suggest that we allot some time where we celebrate the knowledge
and wisdom of my “illiterate” mother, and of all the “illiterate” people who
have no interest in the dominant system of competition, control and
winning. It is worth mentioning here that I am not talking about my
mother as an exceptional and extraordinary person. I believe deep inside
that all those who are labeled illiterate have special and wonderful qualities
about them. [I certainly encourage any one who lives with an “illiterate”
person to dig into the treasure inside that person and bring it out.]
Any
attempt to uproot people like my mother from their cultural soil and put them
in plastic frames or boxes, whether in the name of literacy, development,
education or whatever, is an attempt that we should eye with caution. We have
to look at what we lose in any process and not only at what we gain. The
challenge is how a person like my mother can become literate, without losing
the tremendous knowledge, self-confidence, and wisdom that s/he has.
Projects I Have Been Involved In
Many projects that I started
and worked on during the past 25 years sprang from the realization of what my
mother embodied, and after 1987, from the inspiration created by the first
Palestinian intifada. These projects included teaching math to
illiterate workers at Birzeit University in the late 1970s, encouraging
students to use their experiences in redefining terms in my classes,
experimenting with community education (such as launching a reading campaign in
Palestine) through Tamer Institute, encouraging people to articulate what they
do through the Arab Education Forum, and creating spaces for young people to
express, exchange and discuss, as in the Qalb el-Umour project. I
will touch briefly on these projects.
When
Birzeit University was closed by Israel in the late 1970s, I decided to teach
math to illiterate workers at the university. I didn’t start “logically”
by first teaching them the numbers and numerals etc., but by choosing tasks
that they were doing more or less daily. I will choose two
examples. Every day they came to the university from their homes. So
I asked them to draw the road from their homes to the university. [Some
of the drawings and discussion appeared in my article Mathematics, Culture, and
Authority in For the Learning of Mathematics, Montreal, Canada,
1982.] The second example was about arranging chairs in big rooms and
halls. Because the university was small at the time, many rooms and halls were
used for multiple purposes. My question was to find out how many chairs
can fit a certain hall before they start moving the chairs. That required
various dimensions related to math and language (such as drawing a “map” of the
hall, showing the tiles, counting and writing the symbols of numbers, writing
words, etc.) That question took several days of discussion and covered
several aspects. In short, I used what they did daily in building knowledge of
the alphabet and numerical literacy.
As
for redefining terms and building one’s own understanding, I devised a course
for entering first year students at Birzeit University (in 1979), which I
called “math in the other direction”. [I wrote a book with the same title
in Arabic.]
The
Reading Campaign: When we (at Tamer Institute) launched the reading
campaign in Palestine in February 1992, its main objective was to make reading
into a habit and reading books an enjoyable activity within the Palestinian
community at large. [This recently was extended to Palestinian refugee
camps in Lebanon.] It did not attempt to deal with illiteracy in a literal
sense, because we felt that literacy is not only the technical knowledge of how
to read and write, but is rather having the ability and means to learn and
produce. Thus, the activities of the reading promotion campaign focused on
helping people acquire these means to learn, mainly the ability to work within
small groups, dialogue, and reflect on one’s actions through writing and
discussion. Regardless of whether one was “literate” or not, the atmosphere was
such that everyone wanted to be involved in “reading” whether through the
literal reading of books or listening to books being read or contributing to
the writing and documentation of one’s experiences. [It is worth
mentioning here that, in cooperation with the UNESCO office in Amman and with
the Ministry of Education in Jordan, we – as Arab Education Forum – organized a
meeting on 07 September in Amman, to celebrate the International Literacy Day,
that brought together various groups in the Arab world who publish books
(especially for children and youth) and/or run reading and literacy promotion
campaigns to exchange their experiences and talk about possibilities of
cooperation. The purpose of the meeting was to look at such initiatives
and see how efforts can be combined to produce better effects on the long run,
on both the local and regional levels.] (Again, for details concerning
the reading campaign in Palestine, please see my article referred to earlier.)
The
“essence” of the Arab Education Forum is inviting every person (or group) that
is doing something which is inspired from within (as opposed to doing some
repetitious meaningless job) to reflect on what s/he does and express and share
it with others. Although we describe the initiatives as inspiring, yet we
do not put ourselves as judges to exclude any one from such reflection,
expression and sharing. (This includes both literate and illiterate
people.) We consider every person as a source of understanding and every
experience as having value which can be brought out and shared. The
responsibility is totally at the personal/ local group level.
The
Qalb el-Umour magazine: Although it is not strictly teaching the
alphabet, it is an example of how to use the alphabet rather than be used by
it, which to me represents a crucial distinction in relation to literacy. Any
group of friends – regardless of age, background, and geographical location –
can get together, express aspects of their lives, and pull together some
resources and produce an issue of the magazine. The idea is built on the
fact that what is needed to produce an issue is available to any group: their
stories, expressions, will, and their collective decision to produce
it. It is built on what is available, on what people have, on
abundance. No one approves, and no one edits. In other words,
language in the magazine is considered a tool for freedom (i.e. in expressing
what exists inside the person and the interaction of what is inside with one’s
surrounding), and not a tool which is used to evaluate children through words
such as right and wrong. There is no professional editor to edit the
writings, but we encourage people to share what they write with one another,
and if as a result of discussions, they feel they want to make changes, that’s
fine. But no one has the authority to correct another. They can use
any language (or any tool of expression they are comfortable with, such as
videos, drawings, etc. which they feel comfortable with) to express aspects of
their lives that they would like to share with others. If the group does
not have access to a typewriter or a computer, they are encouraged to write
their pieces in their own handwriting (which actually happened in some
places). There is no monopoly in the magazine on who can write and who
can’t, and no exclusion of people who do not write “correctly.” People
who are engaged in producing an issue enjoy the blessing of their natural
ability to work together, act, reflect, express, read, converse, study,
communicate, learn from one another, and produce – in freedom, dignity,
openness, and honesty. No fears, no judgments and no evaluations along
“objective” or universal professional measures, and no story that is not
valuable to be expressed. In two years, more than 20 issues were
produced in several Arab countries; others were produced in Boston, Iran and
Udaipur (India). The “essence” of Qalb el-Umour is for people, in
small groups, to look at their lives as the subject of reflection, expression
and action and to take responsibility in doing something about their lives and
their surroundings, and to share that with others. In other words,
listening to one’s inner voice, building one’s “inner world,” stitching the
social fabric of the community, being attentive to one’s surrounding and
feeling a sense of responsibility to do what needs to be done, and being honest
in one’s expression are guiding principles and convictions in the
project. Aliveness is a natural accompaniment of this process.
The Trouble with Literacy
The biggest
problem with literacy is substituting words for life, and considering concepts
more real than reality. Concepts and professional/scientific terms are
often treated more real than reality. I participated recently in a
symposium where 50 presidents, vice presidents, and rectors from various
universities in Eastern and Western Europe and the US gathered to talk about
how they manage their universities. Instead of starting by each one
describing how s/he manages his/her university, participants had to start with
the concept of autonomy. The concept became the “real” thing, more real
than the diverse realities in how the universities that were represented are
really managed. The concept became the reference, the measure, and the
subject of discussion. What was taking place in the various universities had to
be squeezed and measured according to this concept, mainly as developed in
American, and to a lesser extent in West European, countries.
I
mentioned earlier that one big difference between my mother and me is that if I
needed to find the meaning of a word I would look it up in a dictionary or
similar source. In contrast, she would look for meanings of words in her
experiences and life. Literacy deepens the habit of learning about the world
rather than from the world. My mother learned from the world; I learned
about the world (often artificial and fabricated aspects of the world).
Learning
how to read and write can help a person be free. However, I also believe
that it often happens that there is a need for a literate person to free
herself/ himself from the hegemony and tyranny of words. It is crucial to
have a new look at literacy in a world which is marching fast towards
catastrophes that are created mainly by literate people (such as polluting air,
land and ocean; controlling minds; creating tools of total destruction…).
In
one of UNESCO’s publications, I read the following, “… the goal is to liberate
100s of millions of our fellow citizens by getting them to learn to read and
then to keep on reading.” What about people (a huge number of them) who
don’t like to read and, instead, they like to do something else which to them
is more pleasing and which nurtures them daily? Can we conclude that there
is something wrong with them and they have to be forced to learn how to read
and go on reading? This is my main point in this paper: if somebody
doesn’t like to read and write, we should not conclude that there is something
wrong with him or her.
When
we had our first child, my wife (she is American) bought several books on
“teaching your baby how to go to the bathroom”! Babies throughout history
did very well. Now, we find many books, some of which claim that they can
train parents to teach their baby how to go to the bathroom in half a
day. Literacy can become absurd. Let’s treat it in a simple and
natural way. Those who like this tool are fine, but those who like other
tools are also fine.
With
texts forming the main tool in education, our minds become what my friend
Gustavo Esteva and his colleagues refer to as textual minds, rendering them
uprooted and homeless. If we look seriously at the history of education since
its conception 500 years ago, or the history of development since its
declaration 53 years ago, or the history of human rights since its adoption,
then we won’t rush into advocating them blindly. It is urgent to
rethinking such tools, which we have been taking for granted. Stressing
rights, for example, helped change many people from feeling responsible, and
free to act, into people who constantly complain and demand. We need to be
intellectually honest if the path towards catastrophes (which we witness in
today’s world) is going to be turned around; we need to re-think of any thing
that claims to be universal. Universalism (more than anything else) has
been a main cause in killing diversity, which, in my opinion, is the essence of
life. This path towards catastrophes – as I mentioned earlier – is mainly
the making of fully literate people, armed with science and technology.
Nothing, for example, has done as much irreversible harm (in terms of polluting
the human body, food and nature) as the science of chemistry during the past
100 years!
There
are some strange beliefs that are held by literate people, such as most
children don’t like to learn unless forced (hence, compulsory education).
It is like saying that fishes don’t like to swim unless forced! John Holt
put it nicely, “Fish swim, birds fly, and people learn.” Learning is a
natural accompaniment of living. We talk about compulsory education
because what is presented at school is not interesting, to say the
least. And if some schools can make it interesting, with such facilities
as swimming pools and gym halls, the tuition usually skyrockets! “People
don’t learn unless taught” may be true about technical skills.
Another
example of how literate people can be blind. After 50 years of turning
most societies into social-economic ruins, development still is looked at
(mainly by literate people) as freedom and as a dream. Much of the
disruption and destruction in many countries was due to development programs
and policies. What happened in Argentina recently, and what happened in
Brazil in the seventies, and what happened in many countries in Black Africa
during the past 50 years, testify to this fact. Such outcomes can be
invisible to the literate mind, because there are many publications and experts
who still claim that development is good. In texts, we have many stories
of success; it is easy to lie with words. On the ground, however, we
hardly have any example where diversity was not killed, where ways of living
were not crushed, where communities did not become fragmented and totally
dependent on the mercy of the outside. Development in most countries has
been like AIDS: it killed the natural immune systems in them and exposed them
to all kinds of social and economic “ills”.
We
can only teach by doing and loving what we do; i.e. by embodying in our lives
what we want to teach. We teach honesty by being honest; language, by
using it creatively and meaningfully; science, by constantly observing,
questioning and doing; and so on.
Controlling
minds through what is usually referred to as the mother tongue is not a fantasy
or fiction. It is history. It was dug out and told by Ivan Illich
in his book Shadow Work. Very briefly, the story goes like this:
at the same time Columbus went to Isabella and presented his plan to extend her
rule and control over new lands, another man, with the name of Nabrija, went to
Isabella and presented to her a plan to control her people within the
boundaries of her country. He told the ambitious queen that the way to
control her subjects’ minds is by teaching them a common language, which later
was referred to as “mother tongue” and paying those who teach it and making
sure that those who speak differently feel embarrassed or less. He had
two books ready for the language he forged from various languages that were
spoken at that time in Spain: a dictionary and a grammar book. (It is
worth and instructive to mention here that Nabrija’s plan embodies the seed
idea for both education and the nation-state.) To her credit, Isabella told him
he must be out of his mind to try to force a whole nation to speak exactly the
same language, with the same meanings. Nabrija’s ideas had to wait
another 150 years, when the French picked them up to establish the French
state. Britain, Sweden, and other European countries soon followed.
As
a literate person, whenever I wanted to say something, I searched for the
“right” words in my “mental dictionary”, my memory, for words and ideas that
are stored there. My mother seemed to be much more spontaneous and honest
in her expressions. As an illiterate person, she searched in her
experiences to guide her to the words that best would say what she wanted to
say. She looked for elements and referents in her surroundings and
experiences, and chose the words that would express most honestly what she
wanted to say.
The
tool of the alphabet reduced me to a person who is able to work mainly through
texts. My mind and my thinking, and the terms I used and their meanings
were confined mainly to textbooks, which I studied and taught. Discovering
my mother’s math and knowledge helped me discover how deeply my knowledge was
anchored in textbooks, how much my mind was pulled away from life and shaped by
words – first during my studies, then later during my teaching (often the same
textbooks!). I realized how much the shape of the concept (the written
word) has dominated my thinking and perception; how I often behaved as if the
concept, the shape, and what they refer to, are the same; and how I
unconsciously transmitted that to my students. (I would like to stress
that I am not talking here about reading books, which brings in tremendous
enjoyment and lets the mind and the imagination wander into all kinds of
worlds; I am talking here about textbooks and taught language.)
I
started realizing that, yes; there is oppression of all kinds around me:
political, military, social, and economic. However, becoming aware of my
mother’s knowledge helped me realize the oppression caused by literacy, through
being confined in my knowledge and learning to texts. In the 1970s, I used
language as a tool of “freeing the minds” by seeing alternatives and breaking
the hegemony of universal meanings. Soon, however, I realized that there were
limits to this function of language. Language is limited in terms of
understanding. The fact is that we experience much more than we can
understand through the mind, and we understand much more than we can express
through language.
Education
has transformed knowledge and learning into commodities, and students and
teachers into consumers. I feel that we need to make sure that we don’t repeat
the same pattern in literacy programs – during the literacy decade and beyond.
What to do?
Just like any other tool, the impact of literacy depends on the values that
govern the society in which it is launched. This is hardly ever
mentioned, although it forms, in my opinion, the most important factor in how
literacy affects people and to what ends it is employed. Since the main
values that govern modern institutions and professionals are winning, control,
and separation from life, it follows that literacy would mainly serve these
values, which would mean, in practice, that it would help transform people into
better consumers and competitors, and into becoming more individualistic and
detached from real life.
From
this it follows that the first and most important step, which any group (that
wants to be involved in working on literacy or to launch a literacy project)
should take, is to discuss the values that they would like to be guided by in
their community. Luckily, since the worlds of the illiterates are usually
governed by values that are more human than winning, control, and
individualism, there is a better chance to raise the issue of values in such
communities.
The
second step, which follows from the first, is for each group to decide for
itself the meaning it wants to adopt for literacy and to embody in its work and
its thought. We cannot impose one meaning on all. Thirdly, we need to
abandon universal solutions that fit all,
which legitimizes their imposition on people, usually in the name of progress,
development and empowerment. It is inhuman and disruptive.
One
strong conviction that grew within me over the years is that a need which is
more basic than knowing how to read and write is to have at least one
ability/form in which the person is able to express himself/ herself. Some
would choose reading and writing. Others, however, may choose other
forms. To force one form on all is not only oppressive and disregardful,
but also robs people of what they like to do and how they like to learn and
express themselves. Forcing one form (literacy) leads to discriminate against
those who do not like this form. It would lead to treating an illiterate
person as less, not fully human.
We
need to live with new “myths” and convictions. First and foremost, we need
to realize that every person is a source of knowledge and understanding. One of
the biggest resistances that I had in working with math teachers was for them
to accept that there is no child who is not logical. That was the biggest
challenge during my work with teachers during the 1970s. We also need to
drop equating being illiterate with being ignorant. Believing that there are
people who are ignorant or illogical is itself an ignorant and illogical
belief.
Liberation
and freedom are linked to diversity and pluralism. Thus, freedom from
universals is crucial to any concept of freedom. We need a decade to
celebrate the diversity which exists in learning, knowing and expressing; a
decade that reminds us that learning happens through doing and interacting with
as many elements as possible in one’s surroundings, including
books. Freedom is connected to being honest and faithful to our
experiences and inner voices. If literacy is going to be for freedom it
cannot be taught, using dominant ways.
The
decade for literacy (just like the call “education for all”) is a call for one
treatment to all people. What are needed are spaces, opportunities,
facilities, and resources for people to develop their expressions, i.e., to do
(in terms of expression) what already they do but constantly better. To
develop the means in which they already express themselves or they would like
to express themselves. This is a much more human and real need than
literacy for all. If, for example, a person is a storyteller, her/his need
is more for developing that ability. If a person were a dabke (Arab
dance) dancer or a tableh (musical instrument) player, it would make
more sense to develop that. Putting our (limited) resources in one form
of expression and communication, and to impose it, cannot be viewed as totally
innocent. What is desperately needed is to regain a pluralist attitude,
through which we again respect radically different and diverse ways of living,
knowing, and expressing. What people need is to be provided with spaces
and facilities (including resources) from which they can choose. I don’t
think it is a good idea to repeat the practice of education where students are
provided with one option. Universal solutions or declarations have been
crushing diversity at a fast rate. We need to be careful not to extend
this destruction further, and into new domains, such as literacy. We had
enough destruction caused by education and development during the past few
decades. We need to be careful and critical.
I
can say that I have been lucky with three things in my life: I lived a good
part of my life in the pre-development age; a main teacher in my life was an
illiterate person; and I lived most of my life without a “national”
government. The three provided me with a “worldview” that is not
attainable through institutions and professionals. I feel lucky because I
had to rethink constantly of the meanings of words, because I had to be
responsible for most of what we needed in my community, and because often we
had to live with what is available to all people: each other, nature, what the
land produces, and the ability to feel, reflect, learn, and express. I
feel lucky because I had living examples of people who embodied a different way
of living, according to a different logic (different values and different
assumptions and different convictions).
ÇááÞÇÁ ÇáÃæá Ýí ÚãÇä, 7 Ãíáæá/ ÓÈÊãÈÑ2002.
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