I received two packages today from my mother in eight days! Incredible. (A NOTE FROM MOM -- Actually, it took about 3 months,but it was only eight days from the last place they ended up in...) Yet it often takes months for things to arrive. How many hands does a package pass through? And how many of these hands simply say, "Ahh, that can sit here for a while longer..."? But the real question is, how far does that 70 cents go? I forget whether I wrote about this before, but when Dan's letter stamped with 70 cents, 10 cents short, returned to him six weeks after being sent, Adam commented "I wonder how far it got before it was sent back?" Maybe 79 cents gets it to the postmaster's hands (Sr. Machava) but he has to send it back immediately. I dare someone to try (note: if it does arrive, please write something interesting beyond "Did it get there?" because I'll be tempted to write back simply "Yes".)
Among the packages was a book on education, specifically primary and secondary school and how the educator has to be an active, aware learner. Which I completely agree with. But her thesis seems to be that learning is active and the methods should depend on informational resources. Which is fine, but does active learning apply for every educational situation? And is it education if it can't involve learning?
She points to the teacher who stands up in front of her class and simply talks about the subject, leaving the students to memorize and repeat the information back to her, as the counter-example of education. She makes the point that information is endless, and so methods should be the focus of education instead. I completely agree, in societies where the information is readily available.
So this got me to thinking that our educational goal here is quite Western in approach and naive (hah! I knew I'd stick the naivete on someone else at some point). We have learned in an information-saturated environment. We have computers, libraries, highly educated teachers, and textbooks. An educated person is one who can absorb and make sense of this information.
Here, school's purpose is to disseminate information, which is difficult to come by. The focus of education is on memorization because the information exists more readily in peoples' minds than in books. Intelligence is much more easily quantified.
Yet a Western observer calls this educational system poor and the intellectual elite, intellectually devoid. Put simply, many Westerners see people here as "stupid" at first glance. What they don't realize is that Africans, specifically Mozambicans, would say the same thing about someone who didn't know a set amount of facts.
The issue here is that the difference between the two ways of thinking is not philosophical - they are simply two points along the same long road - it is develomental. But the manifestation of the differences seems philosophical, and so it becomes equated with ideas of education.
This conflict aside, what can be done about the development aspect? As I've seen, donation without work rarely turns out well because there is no investment in the donation by the receivers (other than rarity or actual cash value). So as a development worker, is it my role to be a liaison and motivator for my school to obtain and maintain resources? I think so, and I think as far as bringing in materials, this is the limit. but there is plenty to do in this area.
On the other end of my work, as an educator, how do I balance the local need for internalized information with the more modern idea (or should I say "developed") that learning is the processing and analysis of information? Is a student capable of both absorbing the information and processing it in a curriculum designed for the former system? Or, instead of looking in between these two lines for my answer, is there a solution that resides outside the lines? I think there is.
Even in my quick skim of this book, it was clear that my problems are not unique or solved. This is an issue that frustrates thousands of teachers. The idea that the information mandated in the curriculum is too ambitious to be properly absorbed in the time allotted seems to be a curse. Curriculum developers all over the world are some of the most optimistic and cautious members of the educational system.
In the book, this is seen as a cycle because the products of the curriculum that has no room for "learning" go on to teach in the very same way, and develop curricula in the same fashion.
But I think change MUST begin with the curriculum, and with the view that every subject is independent of the other subjects. There is always a meta-objective of an education, and it should be as specific and broadly engaging as possible. I suppose the ultimate objective would be to create a student who is able to understand and use all manner of information, utilizing and and all resources available. And so, does a curriculum that has a student learn about the differences between two functions of a lead that are both responsible for water delivery to the leaf, achieve this goal? Or is a curriculum that infuses in the student the ability to discover these differences and why these functions are in fact the same function with different end products, a curriculum that strives for learning?
Clearly, the latter curriculum is more ideal, but in reality is impossible to achieve with the presence of standardized testing, an entirely different issue.
So where along this continuum of information vs analysis should Mozambique reside?
I promised a solution outside the lines, and though it's not groundbreaking, it somewhat undermines the authority of the curriculum developers. And that is to semi-randomly deem parts of the curriculum unnecessary. Very large parts in some cases. And in order to compromise, give the information required, but don't focus on it in any way whatsoever. Focus on the concepts that can be used to inspire an analytical approach, and let the rest be statis information.
However anticlimactic a solution this may sound, it's a solution I've seen and heard of in many shapes, but never formalized. Either do it 100% or don't do it at all. Choose your battles and fight hard. And then, as more information is available, less choosing needs to happen and the battles can be fought in more analytical ways.
For some reason, the feeling side of me is uncomfortable with the smoothness of this approach. Everything, after all, has very rough edges when looked at closely enough.
But I think it's a matter of loose ends - where exactly does this battle fit in with the idea that all concepts start out as one indivisible "Way", "One", "God", whatever, and finds its own way out of this singularity by finding an opposite? Light's dancing partner is dark. We discovered nothingness when we discovered the idea of matter. Pulling an idea out of the Yin-Yang that is everything requires something equally abstract to leave as well. So taking an idea like "learning" requires there to be an opposite. Memorization is not the opposite, for there is some overlap here. Even the recognition of letters on a page is in some sense "learning". I think "forgetting methods or facts" is the closest things to an opposite - it is the decay that marks a brain that is unchallenged and unseeking. So really, in the big scheme, education can be seen as a way to avoid the attrition of our brains that occurs with disuse. What worlds this opens up to education! To be continued...
Peace
John
