Does the sheer joy of learning belong only to the privileged?
For a few years now I have been thinking about the relevance of formal schooling and its curriculum, particularly for members of the society who are marginalized – geographically, economically, politically, socially, or culturally. My encounters with communities living in poverty or in remote areas have made me seriously question what formal schooling means for them.
In an article I wrote in 2008 (available here in Bahasa), I argued that formal schooling in Indonesia is too academically oriented for a population where only 17.2% of 28 million youth age 19-24 pursue higher education. In rural areas, the percentage is even worse. During a visit to a small village of Marangkayu, in East Borneo province of Indonesia to conduct an evaluation for ProVisi Education, of the 22,117 people, only 7% graduated from high school.
In the attempt to start experimenting with what kind of schooling would be more relevant for communities in rural and remote areas, at the very last week of 2010, I had a lengthy discussion on this topic over coffee with a friend who is a social entrepreneur in the field of education. He shares his growing conviction that the only way to convince marginalized families on the importance of education is by ensuring that schooling makes a difference in their lives. Schooling has to directly translate into economical terms, if not immediate economical return for the families.
While this conviction is well founded on compassionate observations and is well meaning, I couldn’t help feeling a certain degree of discomfort. If schools are not only more relevant, but also introduce students to the wonders of the world, shouldn’t the sheer joy of learning become part of the main reason for education for all?
I found better comfort while finishing Stanley Aronowitz’s "Against Schooling (2008).” One of his main arguments is that because schools have become mere extensions of industrial productions, schools are no longer sites for social transformation. The growing pressure for higher education institutions to be financially more self-sustaining has taken away students’ “thirst for reflection” in exchange for the demand for ““relevance” in the curriculum” (p. 75). Quoting Gramsci at length, he suggests instead that education should find the balance between the two:
“The tendency today is to abolish every type of schooling that is “disinterested” (not serving immediate interests) or “formative” – keeping at most only a small-scale version to serve a tiny elite of ladies and gentlemen who do not have to worry about assuring themselves of a future career. Instead there is a steady growth of specialized vocational schools, in which the pupil’s destiny and future activity are determined in advance. A rational solution to the crisis ought to adopt the following lines. First, a common basic education, imparting general, humanistic, formative culture; this would strike the right balance between development of the capacity for working manually (technically, industrially) and the development of capacities required for intellectual work (Gramsci 1971, 27)."
7 comments:
Numerous economic studies (note: economic not education studies) in Africa and Asia found that education provided basic reading, writing, and math skills for villagers that are great economic enablers for these people to start low productive microenterprises and/or particiapte in low productive non-farm employments. These studies also found that, for these types of opportunities, education provides a diminishing return (in economic term the function is concave/quadratic with a negative magnitude) where their benefits increases up to the 6th grade and starts falling off after that. More interestingly is that the more educated villagers do not start their own enterprises but tend to find high productive employments, which are mostly found outside of their village resulting them to migrate to urban areas. Whereas, for the low educated enterprises started by low educated villagers, one of the major obstacle they face in growing their business (beside financing and marketing) is lack of specific skills/knowledge that they face in their business. Thus general skills training programs, which are sponsored by governments and donor agencies, are mostly useless to them in advancing their business, its to generic for their needs!
So to answer your initial question, I think the joy of learning will be irrelevant to the poor in rural areas. "Joy of learning" will only be relevant for urban middle class students to engage them more in education. While for the rural poor it is more important to provide them with more relevant education, and as Dewi imply in this article, which are not being provided by Indonesian general education system.
A better approach I think for this community is a more applied approach to teaching where a generic consultant can be located in their village that can cover the needs of the microenterprises/businesses in the village but is equiped with the technology to access a network of experts that can aid in solving any problems that these village businesses encounter.
Mas Rahmad,
Thanks for sharing your summary of the studies! (If you have the references handy, please email them to me! – I would love to read them!) I have to agree that most type of jobs in rural areas are low productive ones. As the studies mentioned, they do not necessarily require higher order thinking capacities and skills being trained by higher schooling. The studies for me clearly highlight the fact that there aren’t enough high productive employments in most rural areas. Sadly so, because low productive employments will continue to diminish because they don’t provide enough economic returns for the physical efforts and time (although the time factor rarely enters into the equation in this part of the world), not to mention the impact on severe climate change on agricultural/ fishing families.
However, in places with rich natural resources, the very people who have occupied the lands for generations are the ones being generally unskilled and unequipped with the scientific knowledge required to fill the available employments. Hence, many outsiders end up filling in. So higher order skills and thinking are definitely in demand, yet, the quality of schooling available in such areas do not adequately prepare youths. So I think (and I hope that) there should be plenty of room for joyful learning to take place, even for students from poor, rural families.
One of the solutions for the first instance (rural areas with no natural resource), I think, is to innovate large-scale community/ social business development programs that address the multifaceted challenges holistically – from empowerments, employment opportunities, market access, education, health, infrastructure improvements, etc.
I like your idea, but I still have this looming skepticism on using technology in solving geographical challenge of remoteness. Despite many wonderful technological innovations, I haven’t seen how infrastructures to support such innovations can be brought to these places, and who will invest heavily when the government won’t. Mobile phones maybe a better solution for Indonesia, but the consulting process you mentioned should be simplified.
I need to get back to you on the reference, there are quite a few of them and as I said these were economic studies that looked more into economic activities of the rural non-farm sector. And as with any economic studies, the research measured and controlled for the basic things like education but it does not discussed them in detail, at most one paragraph. So don't know if you might be interested in reading through them.
Regarding low productive work, these researches also found that these activities supplements the villagers income from farm-based work. The main point to note here is that rural villagers don't rely on one form of income but on several that are adapted toward their local conditions. There are various reasons for them to do several lines of work ranging from seasonal factors where they can't farm, don't own farm-able land and rely on farm labor which are limited at times, or to take advantages of free time they have at home especially for women and children. Note here that these works are considered as low productivity because of the part-time, seasonal, and informal nature of the activity not the physical work itself. So, IMO, potential intervention here are in the form of generating more opportunities for part time work or increasing incomes from the part-time work. And I agree social-business (or more properly social-entrepreneur) ventures can play a big role here and at the same time be sustainable in the long run but I don't agree that these ventures should be holistic and instead should be very focus and intimately know the outcome they want to achieve. Once we known what work then we can think about expanding it. I've read too many development projects failing because they were targeting the moon. This is a good piece that speak to this point:
Fisher, M. (2006). Income Is Development: KickStart's Pumps Help Kenyan Farmers Transition to a Cash Economy. Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization, 1(1), 9-30. doi:10.1162/itgg.2006.1.1.9 Available at: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/itgg.2006.1.1.9
Your point on joyful learning is interesting but I think we can expand it to not just include playfulness but also being worthwhile, So for example: a microentrepreneur learning to solve his/her problem by actively working and learning with their mentor/teacher/etc. I think this makes the learning activity worthwhile because it solves their particular problems and at the same fulfilling and joyful for them, well that's what I feel when I can solve a technical problem that I'm facing.
I agree that technology is not the all encompassing solution for all problems but I believe technology can play a role. I subscribe to the notion of understanding the problem and process first then see where (if any) technology can support the current process, blindly throwing tech will rarely solve a problem. Look at the most useful technologies, it is invisible and blends in with your activity.
For my idea, the key there is not the network but the network of consultants locally available in the rural areas. The tech is there to support the consultant since obviously he/she will not have all required knowledge and he/she can easily access the social network of available experts if needed.
Thanks for the book reference. I would be interested to read a few of the papers you mentioned, when you get to find them. A quick note: The term social business is recently coined by Muhammad Yunus, and he distinguishes it from social entrepreneurship in that the former stems from a social cause and would keep 100% of the profit within the business, whereas the latter distribute some percentage to the profit to the shareholders.
My observations of rural communities in Indonesia concur with your readings in that they do and need various kinds of income-generating activities. But most community development programs focus on only providing one kind of income-generating activity for one community. This becomes an issue because not every target beneficiaries would have a knack for the activity being offered. Even if they do, the size of the community would not be able to sustain the product of the activity economically, because there will be too many people doing the same thing and often they have no access to the outside market.
So what I mean by holistic is that projects need to be thorough. If the intent is to provide improved economical condition of the community, then activities from ways to reduce spending, ways to improve income, and ways to access markets should be included. And such thoroughness would require that the communities be provided with trainings (i.e. education in a broad sense), that the infrastructure needed to access the markets is provided for, that challenges that stop members of the communities from joining such project (i.e. preventable diseases and other health issues) should also be addressed.
I’m not sure if your idea of locally available consultants are outsiders or insiders to the communities. If they are outsiders, I would worry about long-term sustainability of the program. It may work better if they are insiders, but it implies that they need to be trained and employed to provide consultancies for his/ her neighbors.
I would be interested to know what your take is on programs such as Indonesia Mengajar, Dewi.
By the way, great blog, just stumbled upon it today.
Thank you Kamil. Indonesia Mengajar could be the start of a great movement, depending on the rigor of the preparatory training for the teachers, the support they receive on the field, and the sustainability of the overall program. I find that one year commitment is a bit too short, and I am not aware of any systematic plans to sustain the change once the teachers leave the places. My sense is that, at this point, the experience is a lot more meaningful for the teachers than it is for the children/ communities/ schools. Nevertheless, it is promising, especially if lessons learnt from similar movements in other countries – Teach for America, Teach for India, etc. – are utilized.
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