Relevance of Schooling for All

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)."

Quadruple one and the creative act

Happy quadruple one! I have resolved to start blogging again this year, to outlet experiences, thoughts, reflections, hopes, expectations along my personal and professional journeys through life, and to channel them through writing, which had hopefully reached its all-time low productivity in 2010.

I did try putting matters into words, but it was awfully difficult, not because of a writer’s block, but more as an outcome of – what dawned on me while reading Aronowitz’ “Against Schooling” – the lack of time and space to create. 2010 was a busy year, as I plunged into what was then a new job: developing and managing quality improvement program for schools in remote parts of Sumatra. Between overutilization of my finite time and limited brain power and underutilization of my best skills, I was mostly left exhausted and uninspired on weekday nights and weekends. “We are all so busy doing things that we never have time for thinking,” summarizes Aronowitz (2008: 58) in a chapter entitled “The World Turned Upside Down – Again” in the previously quoted book.

In this brilliant less-than-eight pages short essay, Aronowitz starts by highlighting the problems of the globalized world – from millions of displaced people unabsorbed by available employments, the availability of less fulfilling jobs despite supposedly better skilled and more intellectual labors, the requirement of lifelong learning as a result of insecure employments, and the strengthening and overpowering of capitalism on almost all public domains. He argues that the need to provide and create alternatives to globalization as a hegemonic system (and other hegemonic systems for that matter) is unfortunately unaddressed in schools: the need to gain self-knowledge vis-a-vis the world-at-large, to know the histories of the self and of humankind, and to have the time and the space to reflect, to invent and to create.

Let’s carve out the time and the space it takes in 2011 to reflect, to invent and to create, in order to find “what the alternatives are to simply accepting things as if they were natural (Aronowitz, 2008: 57).”

Reading 1984 in 2008

“[C]an human nature be changed in such a way that man will forget his longing for freedom, for dignity, for integrity, for love ... ?” asked Erich Fromm in his afterword to George Orwell’s 1984.

In his haunting novel, Orwell described very convincing procedures through which even the most ardent believer in humanity, “a minority of one” in the sea of an otherwise brainwashed society, could be turned into an automaton, made possible by the concept of doublethink.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... The process has to be conscious or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.

George Orwell, 1984, 1949: 214.

The following remarks are probably personal side effects of being freshly influenced by Orwellian thoughts: Aren’t we all, to differing degree, doublethinkers? Don’t we all maintain contradictory beliefs in our minds as a survival method in evading what would otherwise be too painful of a reality, too unpleasant of a memory, and too feeble of a character?

About (In)visible Traces

For a while I’ve been thinking that the previous title of this blog – Space & (Indonesian) Society – hasn’t quite captured the development of my own thoughts over time. But I couldn’t quite pin point what are the threads of my interests and writings that have been captured within. Yesterday, an idea that has always been there hit me: It’s Italo Calvino’s quotation that I put under the title of my blog, cited from none other than his famous Invisible Cities.

In Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino told a story of the journeys of Marco Polo, as being told to Kublai Khan. The presentation of the journeys was captured under different headings categorized as Cities and memory, Cities and desire, Cities and signs, Thin cities, Trading cities, Cities and eyes, Cities and names, Cities and the dead, Cities and the sky, Continuous cities, and Hidden cities, with five different journeys for every heading. The beauty of this work, apart from its exquisitely imaginative story and structure, (and I recommend you skip this next part if you haven’t read the book) is because all those journeys describe a city none other than Venice. One city, fifty five presentations/ interpretations: All trailing along different parts and perspectives of Venice.

While this blog is anything but about one subject matter, it is a continuous effort to shape my own thinking and interests, trying to find what connection there is, what may emerge from all this. And without realizing, I have been utilizing the same method that I’m most familiar with as a trained architect, but using a different language: Tracing in words what I used to trace in graphics.

In the world of architecture, to trace is to make lines over and over an older or another drawing (usually a site or an already existing or established design), trying to give a new form to the emerging design, to get to a point when suddenly all the elements seem to fall into place and the solution feels most right and logically elegant. Among its many other descriptions, some definition of “trace” and “to trace” captures many of the things that I’ve been trying to do: copying and quoting other people’s writings, going over certain topics over and over again, and, less often but more personally desired, making correlations among seemingly divergent topics – be they clear and visible or otherwise invisible to everyone including myself.

While I don’t expect to become Marco Polo or Italo Calvino, I do hope, at the end of it all, I will find my Venice.

So, as a tribute to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and my ingrained method of a previous life, I have decided to change the name of this blog to (In)visible Traces. For those of you that have links to this blog using the old name, please kindly revise, and I hope this will happen even less frequently in the future.

My Passion (for Markisa) Fruit

Image source

The months of May through August (or what used to be known as the dry season in Indonesia before climate became quite unpredictable worldwide) bring a certain delight for markisa (passion fruit in English, maracuja in Portuguese, maracuya in Spanish) lovers. I have only become recently addicted to markisa, but I have mostly been absorbed by the beauty of this fruit's structure and texture - which very much heightened the experience of eating this tangy and juicy fruit.

I enjoy cracking the hard outer shell, carefully turning the fruit around its cross section until the brown-dotted-yellow cracks, revealing an inner white and soft shell with the thickness and texture slightly denser of a cotton square. The spongy second shell needs a bit of a tension, instead of a compression, to rip open, which action most likely burst the third thin, translucent, elastic inner layer membrane. Hundreds of soft black seeds clung onto tiny clasps that are embedded onto the inner side of the membrane, organized neatly along three columns that run across the long section, from the tip to the bottom of the fruit. The space in between the three columns is exactly the lengths of two pulps. The black seeds are dulled by their transparent flesh casing, all carefully tugging themselves onto the clasps along the three columns, filling in completely the space within the ovoid fruit.

The fruit is a biological marvel that reminds me of D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form. And although I have never seen markisa flower or plant, it looks very exotic on pictures.

Image source

Here is a more technically accurate description of the fruit:

The nearly round or ovoid fruit, 1 1/2 to 3 in (4-7.5 cm) wide, has a tough rind, smooth, waxy, ranging in hue from dark-purple with faint, fine white specks, to light-yellow or pumpkin-color. It is 1/8 in (3 mm) thick, adhering to a 1/4 in (6 mm) layer of white pith. Within is a cavity more or less filled with an aromatic mass of double-walled, membranous sacs filled with orange-colored, pulpy juice and as many as 250 small, hard, dark-brown or black, pitted seeds. The flavor is appealing, musky, guava-like, subacid to acid.

Maybe I just miss a bit of an architectural talk :)