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Built
on a whirlpool of theories and methods, modern education systems have evolved to
project an image of knowledge and objectivity, but how much of it is really
acknowledging the student and how much of it is simply a form of enculturation?
Acknowledged as such by Native American and African educators, these systems of
learning are now gaining momentum in Islamic schools in the United States.
Teaching
Methods
At
a recent workshop for Muslim schoolteachers, a professor of education spoke at
length on the theories of learning, with particular reference to Dewey,
Kohlberg, and Vygotsky. Of Arab Muslim background, the professor received his
PhD from an American university and now teaches at a university in an Arab
country, which has begun to seek collaborations with its local public and
private schools. The professor lectured on many other topics as well:
-
The
effective teacher
-
Verbal
and non verbal communication
-
Instructional
technologies
-
Instructional
groupings
-
Seating
arrangements
-
Large
and small group and individual work
-
Teaching
methods
-
Objectives
and planning
-
Simulations/role
playing
-
Problem
solving
-
Classroom
management and discipline
-
Testing
and assessment
-
Performance
and portfolio based assessment
-
Professional
growth
-
Reflective
teaching
-
Active
research.
The
teachers dutifully took notes and asked questions drawn from their own
experiences with teaching various subjects to a wide range of local school
children.
A
fairly representative sample of contemporary American thinking on modern
schooling, the professor’s topics would typically be spread out over an entire
semester course on the foundations of education, with somewhat more depth and
several assigned readings. But the gist would be the same. Contemporary
educational theory treats most problems as either technical or personal. It
borrows from psychology—especially from Skinner, Pavlov, Piaget, and
Freud—in its tendency to objectify students in a way similar to how Western
medicine treats patients. Building on this foundation, recent educational
thinking has added a host of notions on human development drawn from humanistic
philosophy. While no doubt offered with honesty and good intentions, the good
professor's presentation contained the usual contradictions that one finds in
such discussions: talking about “critical thinking” without actually
practicing it, or emphasizing “constructivist” or “cooperative” learning
in a strictly didactic format. It seems that if professors of education want to
be taken seriously with all of these theories—some of which may at times be
meaningful and useful—then they ought to use them in practice in their own
seminars and workshops.
Void of Social or Cultural Awareness
However,
a more severe omission from such standardized presentations is that they lack
any social or cultural awareness and they exist in a world without context.
There seems to be a general belief that theories are not born of any particular
social setting and are applicable anywhere, or that the “objective sciences”
(i.e., the social sciences such as psychology or sociology, or even the “hard
sciences” like biology and physics) are neutral, universal, and value free.
This is not the place to unpack these problems; suffice to say that there is a
growing literature clearly suggesting that the various sciences are just as
socially constructed and culture bound as anything else, and therefore learning
them is a form of socialization and enculturation. Educational theorists often
ignore this, and in a cross-cultural setting such as teaching American theories
to Arab Muslim teachers, the problems become more acute and warrant careful and
extended study.
In
order to help understand how Western theories of education might or might not be
applicable to the daily practices of schools in Muslim communities, one would
have to spend considerable time working with administrators, teachers, and
students in both Western and Muslim contexts. One consistent theme that would
emerge is a growing realization that schooling is a form of (implicit or
explicit) socialization. This is observable in American schools (i.e., the
phenomenon of what Native and African American educators call “internal
colonization”), but it is intensified by the multiple marginalities and
cultural border crossings at work in many Muslim schools, and not necessarily
only those operating in non-Muslim societies. One of the fundamental sites of
socialization and enculturation is in the meaning, role, and purpose of
education itself.
In
the West, and in America particularly, there is a very broad definition of
education, especially that which is undertaken in a formal, institutional
setting. Contemporary American education is rooted in Greco-Roman,
Judeo-Christian, scientific, humanist norms. Originally founded to educate
Protestant ministers and the ruling elite of colonial America, the Ivy League
universities of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton emerged as the epitome institutions
for a liberal education, whose norms are embedded to this day from kindergarten
to advanced graduate study. To be considered “educated” in such a system,
one is assumed to have taken an array of courses in the humanities, arts, and
sciences. But American education does not end in curriculum. There has always
been tension between liberal and vocational education, and, partly in response
to this tension, vocational schools have proliferated during the late 20th
century. Some of this is also evident when secondary schools and colleges track
students into vocational courses with various professional certificates, as is
general practice in many European educational systems. In America, the tracking
is not so rigid, but the tensions are no less acute. Some American schools
expand even beyond the liberal and vocational norms, offering instruction in
athletics and health, or in something as basic as learning to drive a car.
Oddly, and despite its roots in the Protestant mission, most modern schooling is
entirely secular.
Background
The above-mentioned theories of education developed to serve this Western
educational system, and they embody all of its contradictions and assumptions.
No matter how educators fine-tune them, in the end the theories of education are
Western theories that rely on a host of Western assumptions about human nature
and how the world works. But before this corpus emerged at the end of the
Christian 19th century and into the 20th century, what guided teaching and
learning in the West? More significantly, how did non-Western peoples and
societies engage in teaching and learning before Western norms became universal
norms? Or, more fundamentally, what does it mean to be “educated” outside
the norms of the modern Western system?
Self-Assessment
It
seems prudent, if not necessary, that Muslims step back and away for some time
to evaluate their own schooling and education. Such evaluation includes careful
assessment of their community needs and aspirations before adopting wholesale an
educational system from the West. At best, introducing the Western system is
like laying a thin socio-cultural membrane over indigenous society and norms,
creating a sort of cultural schizophrenia. At worst, imposing the Western system
of education builds a support mechanism for direct colonization, which has
dogged non-Western peoples for several centuries. Ignoring any serious
consideration of these issues cannot be seen as simply remaining “neutral”
or “objective.” Rather, in the present aggressive climate of American
triumphalism, ignorance or passivity can amount to self-degradation and indirect
colonization.
Any
meaningful program of education for decolonization and rejuvenation has to take
into account the damage already done by colonialism, and must take steps to undo
that damage, heal the wounds, and especially avoid repeating its reprehensible
and destructive characteristics in a new guise. Such a prospectus requires a
two-pronged approach, which will simultaneously dismantle the destructive
tendencies and institutions built upon them, and assemble more constructive
beliefs and practices in light of human and ecological needs.
Process of Decolonization
The
colonial powers gained some hegemonic control over three crucial areas:
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Cosmology
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Epistemology
-
Methodology
A
successful program of decolonization and rejuvenation will need to weave these
three together, not further compartmentalize them, into a program of study whose
goal is a sustainable, peaceful, and just life for as many humans as possible
living in full awareness of their role in the biotic community. In particular,
since modern bodies of knowledge are intertwined with the modern scientific
method, it is necessary to come up with new methods. Otherwise, Third World
systems may merely add some exotic frills to otherwise essentially modernist
systems. Modern methodologies will probably be the most difficult to overcome,
since many people who are talking about decolonization are doing so from within
former colonial institutions.
A
necessary step away from this hegemonic system is to legitimize those peoples
whose cosmological, epistemological, and methodological lives are not based
solely on their having passed through the hierarchical system of modern
schooling, the highest award from which is the PhD. Difficult though this may
seem, any program of decolonization and rejuvenation will need to start by
downgrading the PhD and similar colonial certificates from their places of
highest privilege. Even a cursory look at the history of colonialism will bear
this out, as the colonialists systematically worked to set up institutions to
legitimize themselves and their own knowledge base, along with their
institutional rewards and punishments, and these colonial systems supported
their bodies and frameworks of knowledge.
Transition
Where does this leave institutions of higher education? Clearly some will adjust
and others will not. The ones that do adjust to the program of decolonization
and rejuvenation will survive in a world driven by peace, justice, and
sustainable living, and the ones that cannot do so will wither and fade away.
The danger lies in forming alliances, because of economic or political
expediencies, with existing institutions, because their colonizing habits will
severely limit progress in the kinds of projects most needed for genuine and
meaningful decolonization and rejuvenation.
From
agriculture and handicrafts to child-rearing and medicine, and within the realms
of politics, economics, and science, wide-ranging efforts need to persevere on
two fronts, by revealing the nature of the destructive and violent colonial
institutions and replacing them with more sustainable and peaceful networks.
Much of this effort will entail looking at workable models already in place and
functioning on the ground, keeping in mind that the best workable models of
peaceful and just sustainable survival are context and bioregion specific,
worked out within the means and locales of specific cultural and ecological
settings, while wary of universalized, standardized and modernized systems.
As
one of many workable models, the Project on Andean Technology (PRATEC) deserves
careful study. Its developers created a workable program of decolonization and
rejuvenation that evaluated modern knowledge systems and methodologies from
within a baseline Andean cosmological framework. The designers and practitioners
of PRATEC speak of “eating, digesting and excreting” the modern knowledge
systems and modern methodologies, in an interesting twist on the usual rigid
dichotomy of acceptance or rejection found in Westernized oppositions to
colonization, such as within Marxism and Liberalism. Once the Andean
cosmological system was understood, it became a matter of evaluating a variety
of knowledge and methodologies in terms of a baseline set of assumptions.
In
this scheme, academics holding the Western PhD found they could best play the
role not as guides and vanguards of new knowledge, but as rear-guard mediators,
where they used their expertise to face off and challenge the modernist
development experts, disputing their plans and projects in their own language,
having digested the modern way of seeing and being able to explain them back to
their designers in ways that could not be easily written off, before rejecting
them in light of local needs and beliefs. In this light, there is still a role
for the PhD, though it is more of a mediating role than an authoritative role.
Similar
workable alternatives could be found and studied as well, and especially those
noted for the ways in which they combine a two-pronged approach to the
decolonization and rejuvenation project, with respect to locally relevant
knowledge and experience. Any meaningful form of education in this sense will
require a field-based component, which will have to undermine another tenet of
modern education: book learning. This is not to reject books, but only to say
that their knowledge needs to be worked out by people, and so studying the ways
people apply and enact their knowledge systems, for better or worse, is a
necessary part of the project. With these cautionary remarks in mind, some
aspects of a program of decolonization and rejuvenation might include the
following:
-
Civilization
and sustainability. This aspect will explore the ways in which civilizations
have collapsed once they strayed too far outside the bounds of their
bioregions. Such study will need to treat the modern notion of civilization
as problematic in light of traditional cosmologies, and look at what might
count as being a “civilization” in a more ecologically sustainable
framework. Studying the relationships between mental and environmental
ecologies is necessary to develop a conceptual framework for this aspect,
and will have to carefully consider the role of institutions in perpetuating
unsustainable thought and action.
-
Comparative
studies in cosmology, epistemology and methodology. This aspect can evaluate
modern and traditional views in these three areas, in light of the findings
from the above-noted studies of civilization and sustainability.
Cosmological studies can look at the three-part relationship between human
beings and the unseen world, human beings within and among themselves, and
human beings within the cosmos. Knowledge studies can look at indigenous
definitions and applications of knowledge, and evaluate various knowledge
systems as an antidote to the colonial-derived modern schooling that has
insisted on a singular definition of knowledge as that which benefits the
colonized way of life and its beneficiaries. Studies in comparative
methodology can proceed from the above grounding in epistemology and
cosmology by looking at how viable methodologies must embody traditional
cosmologies and epistemologies.
-
Explorations
in other-than-human sovereignty. Here the basic question must be asked: What
happens when human beings are not the sovereigns of the land? Whether it be
a sovereign deity and spiritual entity from within the framework of
religion, as in for example the Islamic sense of sovereignty, or whether
nature be the sovereign entity, as in many indigenous people's cosmologies,
this aspect will pose major challenges to the humanist and modernist systems
of thought and practice, which place the human being at the center of a
rational universe. In order to avoid reproducing past pathologies, however,
this project will need to look at how many belief systems—such as
contemporary forms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—have embraced
humanism at the expense of their deeper cosmological teachings. This in
itself will also complicate efforts at purely relativistic studies and
conversations, such as in the fruitless interfaith dialogues.
-
Psychology
of consumption. This program of thinking, intertwined with a new way of
living, but perhaps at the risk of being further colonized by the jargon and
norms of modern psychology, will need to take to task the electronically
mediated environment of modern consumer culture and evaluate its effect on
local cultures. Fieldwork, internships, and counseling programs are
necessary here, with the intention of drawing connections between
consumerism and non-sustainability, and asking questions about how much is
enough and what people need to be happy.
Learning Environment
The
above can provide only a beginning towards a focused attention on some crucial
and necessary aspects of decolonizing education. However, these should not be
construed or even offered as college and university courses. In fact, the most
meaningful work in these areas will likely have to be done outside the
institutions of modern schooling and higher education, and will perhaps find a
home nestled among families and communities living in specific bioregions.
At
the same time, given the addiction to institutionalized schooling and higher
education that many people face, if they are truly honest, it becomes necessary
to work within some institutions that are willing to allow these perspectives
and willing to allow an activist-oriented program of study. Within such
institutions, courses can be proposed with an eye toward a new kind of
education, perhaps involving an institution with a new name, a
“multiversity” of sorts, which may not even meet the modern criteria of an
educational experience with its campuses, certificates, and hierarchies. If
working in an institutional setting is the only option, the question remains how
to develop an institutional system that will have as one of its goals its own
demise, no matter how ironic or paradoxical this may seem, because the structure
of colonized knowledge is just as important to recognize and remove as the
content of colonized knowledge. In the end, this will only remain a paradox for
as long as the modern norms of thought and action form the basis for knowledge
allegiances, which can only be made clear once a program is developed with a
clear sense of simultaneous decolonization and rejuvenation in view.
Yusef Progler
(yusefustad@hotmail.com) is a professor, teacher, and writer of
culture, politics, and education. He is manager of the Multiversity
Group (groups.msn.com/multiversity), co-creator of the Multi-world
Network (www.multiworld.com), and editor of the Radical Essentials
Pamphlet Series (www.citizensint.org).
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