Schooling the World

[narya]

Below is a link to a thought provoking hour-long video about the spread of Western education to the rest of the world. It is extremely slanted against Westernization. While the early examples - forcibly removing indigenous children to schools where they are turned into "civilized" people - are unarguably egregious, is there not some benefit in teaching children, both male and female children, basic reading and cyphering skills? Education has been directly linked to lower birth rates and higher standards of living. And as the old song goes - "How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm once they've seen Paris?" Is it right to say to young people, "No, you must stay on the land and keep to your traditional ways," if they want to join the material, Western world?

The video (wrongly, I believe) contrasts a lovely rural agrarian culture with a sad example of a westernized densely populated city. We have 10 times as many people in the US as we did 50 years ago, and the population is now 95% urban/suburban. It was 95% rural in the 1800s. The same no doubt is happening to other countries. The land can no longer support the agrarian lifestyle for all those people.

Full film:
http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/sch ... orld_2010/

Trailer:
http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/sch ... ailer=true

Short clip:
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10 ... =2&theater

[Griffon64]

That sounds really interesting. I need to carve out an hour to watch the full film, because I would like to participate in a discussion on this. It is a general topic I've kicked around in my mind before.

[axordil]

"Traditional ways" is code for "zoo attraction without political power." You can't be a threat when you exist at the whim of TPTB.

[Beutlin]

We have 10 times as many people in the US as we did 50 years ago, and the population is now 95% urban/suburban. It was 95% rural in the 1800s. The same no doubt is happening to other countries. The land can no longer support the agrarian lifestyle for all those people.

In 1960, the U.S. population was 179,323,175.

In 2010, the U.S. population was 308,745,538. That is an increase of 72 per cent, and not ten times as many.

In 2010, 249,253,271 lived in urban areas. That is 81 per cent of the U.S. population.

Saying that the U.S. population was 95 per cent rural in the 1800s is arguably only correct for the first decades of the nineteenth century. In 1820, 7 per cent of the U.S. population lived in urban areas. By 1870 that number had risen to 26 per cent, however.

Source: http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/cph-2-1.pdf (pages 13ff.)

[narya]

I stand corrected by someone with ready and exact numbers rather than my rusty memory.

I do know that the city I grew up in, Walnut Creek, is 20 times the population it was when my mom first lived there, and that all the lovely farmland I used to wander thru as a child has since sprouted a crop of suburbia. Likewise, the city of Anchorage, Alaska, where I lived for 25 years, sports over a quarter million people in a location which used to support a summer fish camp of a few hundred Alaska Natives, living in the Stone Age, just a century ago.

I've met some of those elders, back in the 70s, who lived from the Stone Age to the Space Age. It is a difficult transition to make, when so much of who you are (hunter, gatherer, fisherman, provider, boat captain, village leader, master craftsman/crafts woman, traditional healer) is no longer valid.

My main point, though, is a more general one - that there are too many of us in this world now to all live traditional hunter gatherer or agrarian lifestyles, and that how we assist or do not assist in the transition, is not an easy choice.

How the developing nations school the next generation is part of the bigger question of how they move the bulk of their population off the land. How should they educate their youth? To what extent? How can we help, or are we doing more harm than good?

Removing young indigenous children from their homes to be raised far away in group boarding homes in a White culture is a quick and thorough way to destroy the old culture and instill the new. Not to mention raising the rates of alcoholism and suicide. Alaska's policy since the 70s of building a 1 room schoolhouse in any village with at least 4 high school aged kids is more humane, but the graduates then come to the big city woefully under skilled in college prep and job skills. Yet they can't stay in the village, which already has more people than can live off the land, and no industries to speak of (except commercial fishing in some locations).

What can we do? what should we do?



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[axordil]

It is possible to maintain a cultural identity in a world that's at best indifferent to it, but it's not easy, and there are a variety of necessary compromises...and worse. The Jewish people have probably done the best job of it, all things considered, and their history isn't exactly a cavalcade of joy, nor have they remained unchanged.

[Inanna]

I think we need to think about what we mean by education and school. There is no reason education cannot be taught in their native language & include their history. Surely there is a middle ground here?


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[nerdanel]

I think we need to think about what we mean by education and school. There is no reason education cannot be taught in their native language & include their history. Surely there is a middle ground here?

Have not seen the film, but there's also the counterargument that certain languages open up many more opportunities nationally and internationally - and facing facts, English is a critical language to know. I know that my mother's school in India insisted on providing all education in English so as to give students the broadest opportunities particularly in developed countries, and this has served her very well. In contrast, my father attended an Indian school that provided instruction in his native language, and he struggled (as a speaker of English as a fifth language) greatly in becoming an American science student, applying for jobs, and just living in the U.S. That struggle is now greatly exacerbated by his fading hearing as he ages.

While there is great romanticism to preserving the diversity of human language, there is also much practicality in everyone having access to the same (or one of a very few) primary language(s). Had my mother not been educated in English, her life - and mine - would have been much different, and in my judgment much worse.

[Primula Baggins]

I agree that a common language is immensely valuable to the world, and I don't cop to cultural imperialism in suggesting that that language is apparently going to be English. I've spent a large part of my career helping people who don't speak English well communicate in English, and it is clearly necessary and helpful work.

The cue to me that this process was inevitable was when the main world chemistry journal, which had always been published in German first, began to publish in English far in advance of the German edition; the papers in the English version are the ones that get cited, because they are published first.

It is just so logical that there be one language for essential communication (flight traffic control is in English all over the world for that exact reason). That doesn't make English a better language than the rest (although I would argue that it's a rich, gorgeous, resource-packed language and I will always be grateful that it's my native tongue, so there).

[Frelga]

Not to mention that it's one of the easier languages to learn. Simple grammar, small alphabet. Spelling is crazy, but American English is working on that.

[River]

The cue to me that this process was inevitable was when the main world chemistry journal, which had always been published in German first, began to publish in English far in advance of the German edition; the papers in the English version are the ones that get cited, because they are published first.

Angewandte Chemie? They of the notoriously cheesy taglines on papers?

A lingua franca, like the metric system, is useful for communicating results around the world without losing things in translation. However, languages reflect the cultures of their speakers and that in turns reflects ways of thinking and behaving. Humanity as a whole loses something when languages expire.

[Frelga]

The Jewish people have probably done the best job of it, all things considered, and their history isn't exactly a cavalcade of joy, nor have they remained unchanged.

And we did it by placing a premium on education and giving an elite status to the most prominent thinkers. Those in turn were able to meet, confront, and adapt ideas from the best thinkers from other cultures. Maimonides, for instance, the author of some of the most influential legal and philosophical texts, was himself influenced by Aristotle. Because of men (and an occasional woman) like him, the culture that originated among tribal, nomadic herders is still relevant to modern urban dwellers, and so it endures.

Had Jews insisted on sticking to the "lovely rural" ways, you probably would never have heard of us.

[Impenitent]

A lingua franca, like the metric system, is useful for communicating results around the world without losing things in translation. However, languages reflect the cultures of their speakers and that in turns reflects ways of thinking and behaving. Humanity as a whole loses something when languages expire.

This, primarily. I think immediately of those beautiful Greek and Yiddish turns of expression which simply cannot be translated into English. The words can be translated, and the metaphorical or allegorical meaning can be re-expressed, but thought/feeling combination is lost in the process.

[axordil]

The Jewish people have probably done the best job of it, all things considered, and their history isn't exactly a cavalcade of joy, nor have they remained unchanged.

And we did it by placing a premium on education and giving an elite status to the most prominent thinkers. Those in turn were able to meet, confront, and adapt ideas from the best thinkers from other cultures. Maimonides, for instance, the author of some of the most influential legal and philosophical texts, was himself influenced by Aristotle. Because of men (and an occasional woman) like him, the culture that originated among tribal, nomadic herders is still relevant to modern urban dwellers, and so it endures.

Had Jews insisted on sticking to the "lovely rural" ways, you probably would never have heard of us.

Thanks for expanding on and shoring up my hastily drawn point! I absolutely agree with your conclusion.

[axordil]

A lingua franca, like the metric system, is useful for communicating results around the world without losing things in translation. However, languages reflect the cultures of their speakers and that in turns reflects ways of thinking and behaving. Humanity as a whole loses something when languages expire.

This, primarily. I think immediately of those beautiful Greek and Yiddish turns of expression which simply cannot be translated into English. The words can be translated, and the metaphorical or allegorical meaning can be re-expressed, but thought/feeling combination is lost in the process.

Most idioms and metaphorical language are like that, and I would hate to lose anything...but we know of hundreds of dead and extinct languages, and there are likely many, many more we have no idea ever existed. At least now ones on the brink can be recorded. Beyond that what can be done that doesn't attempt to freeze people in amber?

[narya]

Here's a very sad account of what is going on in rural Alaska. In the United States. One small part of the puzzle is the abuse the grandparents received when they were educated.

http://news.msn.com/us/rape-culture-in- ... -1#tscptmf

[Nin]

I have not watched the movie so far, but about the language issue: Matthias has worked the major part of the last two years on this exact issue and the question of the place of native languages in teaching at any level.

There are several problems: if you don't teach in the native language, you automatically exclude a huge fringe of the population, those who only speak the native language and will keep on living in rural areas. Teaching at elementary level in the local languages is necessary to gather as many persons as possible in a first time to go to school and to learn to read and write. And for that it is important to start to write the local languages. But in order to accept that teaching in local languages is valuable, it must continue to university level, or those who are bound to teach tend to look down at their students learning in the local languages. Most persons who will go to school in developing countries will need to read and write in their own language first, they will not emigrate. And, a functioning school system can easily teach you several languages. Most of the people I know speak three or more languages fluently - wit exception of many native speakers of English who often even after twenty years in Geneva live in their own, english-speaking world. Many native speakers of French also speak only French, which is okay when they don't move away from here. As soon as you try to live in a country with another language it is a disadvantage.

Being taught in another language than your own is a difficult thing and while it may bring economic advantages to some in the short run, it means a cultural loss of huge proportions for the entire country in the long run. Many african countries suffer from the fact that their languages are not taken into account in the scholar system. I also think it is a pity to give up on the native culture in order to adopt what was finally the culture and language of the colonizing nation.

In Guatemala, in the schools in which Matthias worked, it was, on the contrary, the re-use of Maya languages that gave a new collective identity and the desire to preserve and promote their culture that decided many parents to send their children to school.

[Griffon64]

Haven't watched the video yet, but I wanted to chip in with regards to what Nin said, since I did grow up in Africa, and have a native language other than English.

From my experience, she hits the nail on the head.

Now, my experience is less valuable to this discussion because my native tongue was used extensively in the business world in South Africa when I entered the workforce, but that lessened with each year I lived there. That said:

My entire education up through high school was taught in Afrikaans, but I also started taking English as a second language in fourth grade. Once I started in on tertiary education, about a third of the classes were taught in English, two third in Afrikaans, and all the text books were in English. Isn't that a curious way to take courses? You take the course in a language other than the text book, meaning you end up translating everything in your head as you study.

Tests were sometimes Afrikaans, sometimes English ( we had at least two lecturers who spoke only English ), and sometimes bilingual, and we could usually answer in either language. I recall sometimes for the Afrikaans only tests the handful of students ( 1 or 2% of the class ) who didn't have Afrikaans as a primary language would ask for translations for some of the more complex questions, and that was written on the chalkboard by the lecturer. Quite informal. It was a bit trickier if we ever encountered a question on the English only tests that was hard to understand since the lecturer didn't know our language to translate, but they would try to explain any questions that we had trouble with, in English, and that solved the issue.

I'd say from my experience most value is found if the education in that language continues at least up to university level, hopefully further, and alongside learning a more universal language that can be used for advanced study and work. I had no problems taking some classes in English from that point onwards, since my command of English ( at least on paper, by which I mean, my ability to read it, write it, and listen to it. Speaking is another matter ) was strong enough.

For me, that approach worked well. But, I also benefited from a stronger education system that much of the rest of the third world had. I lived in a first world-ish enclave in a third world country, after all.

I still sometimes have trouble with my education not having been in English, for instance, when I encounter accounting terms at work, all my accounting education was in Afrikaans so the terminology is alien to me since I never had the opportunity, or for that matter reason, to learn it. In general, my domain knowledge from domains I didn't pursue a career in ( Maths, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Geology, Accounting, Business Economics ) but encountered while in school or tertiary education suffers from the fact that I don't know the English terminology and have to rely on similarities in the terms to the language I do know, or context, to figure them out. ( Forget about coming up with them - I'm only talking about understanding them when they're mentioned! )

I do believe that I benefited from having my primary education in my mother tongue, though, while learning a more universal language that I could switch to for advanced learning.

In South Africa at least university level education in everybody's native tongue is not feasible - 11 official languages. I had a big advantage that my native tongue was one of the previous two official languages and thus I had access to some tertiary education in that tongue.

It is not a simple matter. I think preserving culture - no, I don't like that word. Preserving sounds condescending to me somehow. What then? I can't think of a good word right now. But I think it is very important. The beauty of people, of the world, lies in our diversity.

Narya - that article is frightful. I wanted to add an asterisk to the paragraph above to address that kind of heritage, for lack of a better word, but I think your article does that better than I could.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It is not a simple matter. I think preserving culture - no, I don't like that word. Preserving sounds condescending to me somehow. What then? I can't think of a good word right now. But I think it is very important. The beauty of people, of the world, lies in our diversity.

Well said, Griffy.