[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