Learning to Help: The importance of education in supporting ethical volunteering

This post was originally published on www.globalsl.org as part of a month-long spread of articles aimed at raising awareness around the issues of orphanage volunteering

Once upon a time there was a volunteer. They were full of good will, a zest for life and a desire to travel, and wanted more than anything to be able to do something meaningful in their gap-year: to give something back. One day, they went to an assembly held at their school and soon were inundated with options: volunteering in an orphanage in Thailand; teaching English to students in Cambodia; working with street children in Tanzania. What would they gain? A challenging month helping a local community that would look great on the CV/Resume. Qualifications needed? “Good will, a zest for life and a desire to travel.” Bingo! They’re off!

And so the story goes. The global boom in volunteering over the past ten years has impacted young people across the world; with corporations selling volunteer-travel packages directly into schools. Throughout the western world, organizations are working closely with schools, delivering lectures, workshops and promotions to advertise the myriad ways that students can channel their “good will” with their desire to travel – and it is fast becoming the norm to have a program partnership offering international voluntourism packages within a school, college, or university. However, although companies are going into schools to educate about the “good bits” of volunteering, they often do not support student learning about the bad, nor help them to make ethical, critically assessed choices.

How are we teaching Global Citizenship?

In schools, colleges, and universities across the world, we are educating our young minds to become global citizens, encouraging good will, a zest for life and a desire to travel and to grow in the world. We are actively encouraging voluntary service – it is fast becoming an expectation on a CV or resume. However, we are not yet (for some reason) teaching our students how to carefully choose their voluntary service; nor about the importance of choosing ethically, sustainably and critically.

Voluntourism is not always a good thing; in fact it is fairly often a very bad thing for communities impacted (most significantly for vulnerable children in orphanages). However with the industry primarily set up as profit first, people second, local communities last, it is not surprising that the most damage is happening within the communities receiving the volunteers. We are not educating our young people to make the right volunteer choices, but are instead simply blaming them when they make the wrong ones.

What needs to change?

We need to educate our young people to make the right choices for everyone, not just for themselves. There are certain red flags to look out for, and asking crucial questions before entering into a placement can help to avoid pitfalls. Some of these questions might be:

• What will I be doing in my placement?
• Am I actually qualified to do this? If not, should I then be doing this?
• Will I receive training? If not, why not?
• Is my organization working with a partner organization on the ground? If so, are they actually in need of my help?
• If I am paying, where is this money going and what am I paying for? Am I encouraging profiteering from poverty?
• Is the organization ethical? Are they supporting local community employment and local needs first? Is this a bottom-up project, asked for by the community?

One of the most crucial educational tools that we need to encourage in young people is the importance of critical thinking. Asking questions allows the volunteer to understand just what, why and how the project is working and whether they really are going to be doing something good for the community they are entering into, rather than just for themselves.

Thinking beyond the self is a vital tool encouraging empathy building. Although the very notion of volunteering is the act of caring for and giving to others, it can also fast become a self-serving venture if we are not trying to understand the impact onto those we serve. Encouraging young people to put themselves into the shoes of the local community and think about the impact from that angle is a vital tool to teach. For example, it may seem that working in an orphanage is a wholly positive experience on the surface, yet by drawing back the curtain and learning about the impact of the volunteer experience upon the vulnerable children within these care homes, it soon becomes apparent just how emotionally damaging this sort of volunteering can be.

Unlearning assumptions and stereotypes is also crucial to ensure an ethical, positive volunteering role. The criticism of the “white saviour” complex, or profiting from poverty is often justified in many cases of overseas volunteering, primarily because of the stereotypes and assumptions about development aid that are being taken with the volunteers. Understanding that aid can be both positive and negative is a hard but vital lesson to learn; as is the understanding that aid can so often patronize, reduce or disempower; thus unlearning is a vital tool for students to practice.

How are educators starting to support this?

There are a growing number of education projects on the ground working with schools to support positive, ethical volunteering. Research by Globalsl.org has been collated in a database of Top 50 Global Learning Education Resource List, all supporting ethical global citizenship and positive global learning.

This is a growing community, with more organizations coming on board to support these core educational needs every day. Here is a partial list:

• ThoughtBox is an online education curriculum for schools encouraging critical thinking, empathy and unlearning. Covering the topic of Voluntourism within a bespoke curriculum, ThoughtBox also works with teachers and students within a range of other global issues; allowing the core skills of “think, feel, and unlearn” to be practiced by students to support positive, ethical global citizenship.
• Bright Green Enterprise offers workshops to UK schools supporting an understanding of ethical volunteering and grass-roots development; learning about some of the negatives that come with international aid and supporting positive choice and ethical, sustainable practice.
• Individuals such as Chloe Sanguinetti andDaniela Pappi who have learned first-hand the potential for negative impact in volunteering are working in schools to offer lectures and seminars, sharing their experience and supporting a re-thinking culture when it comes to Voluntourism.
• At the university level, a growing network of higher education institutions and nongovernmental organizations hosts theInternational Service-Learning Summit every 18 months. The next summit will take place October 23 – 25, and will critically consider ethical partnerships for global learning and cooperative development.

Good intentions are no longer good enough when it comes to volunteering and we owe our young people a rounded and critical education in learning the whole story: the good, the bad, and the ugly – of what it means to be a volunteer.

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Orphanage Tourism:  What can you do to help?  

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This post was originally published on www.globalsl.org as part of a month-long spread of articles aimed at raising awareness around the issues of orphanage volunteering #StopOrphanTrips. The campaign ended on June 1st, International Children’s Day, with a call to volunteer travel organizations to remove orphanage trips from their product offerings. Get involved by:

• Signing the Avaaz petition calling for travel operators to remove orphanage volunteering placements from their websites
• Sharing this post on the hashtag #StopOrphanTrips.
• Visiting the Better Volunteering Better Care Network
• If you are an educator, exploring the resources mentioned and educating your students in the whole story of volunteering.

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Rachel Musson is Founding Director of ThoughtBox education: an online learning resource for schools to encourage critical thinking, empathy, and unlearning.

How do you challenge a stereotype?

This post was originally published in 2013 on www.nomadicmusson.blogspot.co.uk as part of a series of writings about voluntourism and cultural stereotypes.

How do you challenge a stereotype? Let’s start with sarcasm and wit.

(Click the picture to watch a spoof video on stereotypes across Africa)

This video campaign’s mockery of so many stereotypes is subtly evocative in its attempt to challenge a global perception of Africa. The students that made it (and many other provoking videos and blogs) accompany the clip on their website (www.africafornorway.no) with the question: 

Imagine if every person in Africa saw the “Africa for Norway” video and this was the only information they ever got about the country. What would they think about Norway? 

Obviously their video has an angle of challenging stereotypes, and their direct mockery of the videos from Band Aid and USA for Africa is being used for a range of effects, but their question above is a good one to ponder.

I recently re-watched, for the first time in a long time, the Band Aid charity single. Before even dissecting the lyrics, was reminded of the controversy of the album cover. I had forgotten just how provocative and somewhat inappropriate the front cover of the original single was:

I also listened closely to the lyrics for the first time. I had never really listened analytically to the words before (being drowned out, I suppose, by Boy George’s incessant high-pitched wailing and a diatribe of eighties rockers begging me to stop tucking into my Christmas dinner and care about others.) Some of the lines really are unbelievable though.

*NB. Before I begin my dissection of the merits of one of the biggest campaigns in this country’s history, please bear with me: I am not for a second berating the undeniable work that this single achieved in helping to financially support one of the most appalling famines this modern world has ever seen, happening for several years across Ethiopia during the mid eighties. Far from it. As a campaign, it proved unparalleled in the financial aid that was created for one country’s support of another. What I am berating is firstly the stereotype that this single managed to cement in the psyche of our country and secondly the generalised use of the word Africa in the song.) The stereotypes seen here continue to live so freshly in our minds because the song still lives on, every Christmas, for eternity.

Let’s start with these lyrics:

Where the only water flowing is a bitter sting of tears…

Where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow…

There was a famine happening in Ethiopia when this song was released during the winter of 1984. There were also many countries in Africa during that time struggling with the annual effects of the dry season on their crops and harvests. However, the rivers of the Nile, the Congo, the Zambezi, the Niger, the Ubangi, the Senegal (I could go on) were still merrily flowing into1985. And they’re all in Africa. Plus, it rained a heck of a lot in the rainforests of the Congo, Uganda, Gabon and Madagascar to name but a few countries. All of which are countries in Africa. Furthermore, I suspect the majority of other African countries whose climates house a prolonged period of precipitation annually or biannually also grew puddles and crops that Christmas.

And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas.

Really? Well, tell that to the ski resorts and the chilly locals of the Atlas Mountains of Morocco; to the climbers on the top of Kilimanjaro; to the snowmen being built in South Africa and the folks in the region of Mount Kenya, or Uganda’s Rwenzori mountains who shivered a wee bit that winter.

Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?

Possibly, yes, but why should they care, considering that 35% of Ethiopians are Muslim. And the Orthodox Ethiopians (43% of the country) practise Ganna (Christmas) on the 7^th January (not in December) by fasting the night before. Plus, with literally hundreds of religions being practiced across the continent, it is very likely that many people did not know that it’s Christmas time. “At all”. After all, how many of us would know when it’s Eid, or Diwali, or Vesak or Vaisakhi or Passover? I’m just saying…

I know I’m being provocative here in my dissection of this song and that I’m taking some meanings far beyond their intention. But I’m not being fickle when I examine the impact that this charity song and so many other elements of “charity” and “development” are having in reinforcing stereotype.

Having worked with UK Education organisation Bright Green Enterprise on their enterprise challenge days across a large number of British schools, it has been fascinating for me to see what students come up with when considering ways to allow their made-up business to be ethical and have a positive social responsibility angle. Many decide that they are going to donate a percentage of their profits to charity; most of them want to “send money to Africa”. When questioning them on which particular country in Africa they want to donate to, I have often been met with a confused look saying something along the lines of, “What do you mean which country? Africa of course.”

The premise of Africa being a country is not just something that children think (or confuse themselves with); it sadly seems to be a confused thought that a large number of people have; people who should certainly know better. I was recently reading the back of a charity leaflet (sent out by a very large and well known organisation) asking for donations for a project supplying malaria vaccinations to be handed out in, I quote: “India, China, Africa and other similar countries…”

Sadly, the stereotypes surrounding “Africa” continue far beyond this one gross misnomer within our subconscious vernacular. Just recently, when teaching in a school in South London, working with some very bright girls and questioning about the ethical model of their business plan, they told me that they were going to donate some of their profit from their Solar-Headphones company to Africa to buy them shoes. Holding back my irony-filled smirk, I firstly asked whereabouts in Africa (to be met with the usual looks of confusion and consternation) and I secondly asked why. The answer they gave was that none of them (“the Africans”) had shoes and therefore it would help them all to be happier if they were sent shoes using a British company’s financial profit.

“All Africans are poor and needy” somehow seems to be a standardised view that the world is given, namely by the powerful media sources of the West. From documentary, to film, to charity to news, the message is the same: Africa is all the same.  I read an interesting document by The World Bank (called Projection of Development) recently, looking at how films touching on “development issues” are still presenting a neo-colonial Whites in Shining Armour version; often confirming stereotypes that the media flourish with daily; stories told (completely extracted from context) through the eyes of a western outsider. From Blood Diamond to Avatar to The Constant Gardener, the essay dissected the power of the lens to promote stereotype.  

Think about this for a second: Botswana is one of the top thirteen achievers in the world when it comes to sustained economic growth. It has been democratic and peaceful since its independence. It is an African country. South Africa (which, by the way, is NOT the capital of Africa) houses some of the richest people in the world. It is an African country. Nigeria is on course to becoming one of the twenty largest global economies across the world within the next five years: it is also in Africa. Despite the fact that some of the wealthiest people on the planet are residing across the continent, all fifty four African countries worlds are constantly being tarnished by the same brush painting them as “needy Africans” that need saving. Sadly, stereotypes reign across our global media and disparity or context are simply not part of the story.

Poverty and hunger, natural disasters and disease are real issues affecting millions of lives across the continent and the wider world; they call for action, empathy and support. However, understanding and aid require engagement built on knowledge, understanding and context, not on stereotypes.

How do you challenge a stereotype? By facing them full on for a start. By talking; by dissecting the truth and by taking responsibility for your own thoughts and your individual impact on the world. We are responsible for a great deal more than we know in our words about the world and each other; and can choose to do something right now to challenge the single story of Africa.

A Question of Trust

A few days ago, I took a bus to London. I used to take this bus a lot when I was at university, but haven’t been on it for a while. The minute the engine started, I was startled by a loud announcement that starting telling us all “the rules of the bus”. The bellowed information (which went on for about ten minutes) ranged from the blinking obvious to the absurd; from the mundane to the ridiculous.

Instructions included:

• telling us that it was against the law to not put our seat belts on
• telling us that we may be in danger of bags falling on our heads if we went round a corner fast
• telling us that the bus station was a “dangerous place” as it is full of moving buses (!) and we should watch our backs
• telling us what to do if we felt hot or cold (including to add or remove clothing layers!)
• telling us how to walk down the bus if we wanted to use the toilet (apparently because it is a long bus, there is danger of being thrown about near the back…)
• telling us to be nice to people behind us if we wanted to lean back on our seat
• telling us what to do in an emergency.
• telling us (well, telling the gentlemen folk) to sit down on the toilet so they don’t wee on the seat (I kid you not)
• telling us to have a nice journey and to enjoy the views from the windows (!)

Add to this regular announcements every time we stopped; advice on “how” to get off the bus when we stopped; updates on the progress and eta and you can perhaps see why I came away from the journey a little exhausted (it was, midst all of this madness, only a two and a half hour bus ride with not a child in sight (an addition which could maybe (but actually, not) have excused the indoctrination…)

My point (other than just writing to share banal information about London buses) is my musings about the question of trust. It seemed to me that all of the utter nonsense that came with this bus ride was derived from a total lack of trust in people. Not only a total lack of trust in our ability to “behave” whilst taking the bus, but also a lack of trust in our courtesy to other people, our ability to look after ourselves and our basic common sense as humans. 

It strikes me as somewhat sad that this is the state of progress that we are currently living in; a society so terrified of ramifications that it covers all possible outcomes; a society so distrustful of its members that it nannies them in every element of their lives to keep them safe from harm (or more importantly to keep themselves safe from being blamed for anything, as we are also encouraged to take no responsibility for our own actions, but to blame others for our failures. More and more, we are breeding societies that are indoctrinating and enforcing rule-following from every angle (I went to a public toilet a few days ago with detailed instructions on the wall of “How to wash my hands”…hmm, thanks for that essential life wisdom).

(On a side point, London transport has long distrusted us to know how to behave, and posters such as this one:

have started to be replaced with "poetiquette":  using (you could,and I would, argue butchering) some of the finest poems of old to teach people how to behave(because we're not to be trusted to just know).

Tfl tackles tube etiquette with poetry

Beyond blatant distrust from authorities, I feel more and more that we are being bred to feel a distrust of each other; to find fault in, or to fear one other. Reading the news always reminds me of the negativity and vindication that sells stories in this country (and so many others). Rather than approach anything that happens with a sense of empathy or understanding, we are constantly encouraged to judge, to fear or to ostracise. It is interesting, in the light of the Paris attacks, to read and listen to the myriad responses to the tragedy; the blame, the fear, the finger pointing and an “us versus them" sentiment that many people seem to house a great desire to fuel. I have heard so much negativity about other people over these past few weeks (beyond recent occurrences in France): people blaming others for things, writing off and generalising swathes of people as failures or outcasts because of the actions of a few. Empathy is about as far away from what we are being taught to nurture in our press and in our society as unicorns are. This push away from empathy more and more seems to be breeding a sense of distrust in those around us that we do not know; pushing us as a society further in to a fearful isolation away from each other, rather than into a collective society.

If only John Lennon was in charge (a cheering little comic strip that I came across this morning) ...

A friend recently responded to some of my musings on this topic with a reminder of the McDonalds incident (the woman who sued the golden arch owners for burning her lips ‘cos the coffee was hot…hmm, wouldn’t really take Sherlock to work that one out… )and how people always love to find loopholes and to sue. The sentiment expressed was that we should just accept it and cover our backs.

This coffee example is one that is used in a lot of guises – the stupidity of common sense; the importance of warnings; the ability to pass blame and void responsibility. I think it is a great example to consider when questioning trust, but I strongly disagree with the idea that we should accept it as a good example for progress. Through this (and the myriad cases of “consumer rights” now being washed through the courts, including someone suing Red Bull for “not giving him wings”…and winning…) we have created a system of bypassing responsibility and placing it onto the shoulders of others; of those who have more power/money/authority. Yet we have made this system, it hasn’t made us. I don’t think we should accept things and work with them just because they are there; I think we should question why they are there and the purpose they are serving us and wonder whether it is the right system

The culture of suing, born ironically in the Land of the Free (aka America) is, in my opinion, somewhat absurd. It is fast growing too; and slowly seeping its way into other cultures and countries. Equating social responsibility with a price tag; making people feel that if something goes wrong they can get some money out of it – what sort of message is that sending us all for a start? And what sort of responsibility is it encouraging any of us to take about how we interact with each other, if we can blame someone else for everything?

What worries me a great deal is the lack of questioning that seems to accompany this distrust that is being encouraged from all angles; replaced instead with a blithe acceptance that this is just the way of things: we don't trust people so we legislate against them, sue them or just refuse them point-blank.  When trying to rationalise a few days ago with a potential employer (who was refusing to process my application because I hadn’t got any document with a UK address on it from the last three months) as to why this document was necessary for me to get the job, she refused to answer my question; just kept reiterating, “It is the law. I can’t trust you unless I have this piece of paper, as I don’t know what you might have been doing without it. I don’t know the reasons for these laws, that’s not for me to think about, I just enforce them”.

Well, if we are not supposed to think about why these laws are being brought into existence, then who is thinking about them? I mean, if all of these policies of distrust are being created from somewhere up high, why are we not all wondering more about why they are there and what they are there for? Why are we not questioning the absurdity of some of the things we’re being told to do, rather than blithely accepting that this is simply the way of the world?  Why is the world increasingly and somewhat desperately embracing a total lack of logic and a growing distrust of common sense and human goodness (plus endless paperwork and constantly germinating new policies) to allow us to trust each other? Since when did the whole world’s inhabitants become so dishonest? (or have I just missed a policy document somewhere along the way ascribing this logic whilst I’ve been out of the country?) Hmm.

Respect for others – giving everyone the chance to earn trust – is that not a better way than expecting the worst; expecting to be screwed over and so covering our backs in advance? Human beings are flawed in many ways; we all have mischievous little demons inside of us that want to scamper out every now and then. If those little demons are expected, then they have free reign to scamper. If they are not invited, it is harder for us to wreak havoc and more likely we wish to earn that trust given to us.

I know an idealistic view of the world is somewhat naïve, but I also think that we can build trust that is meaningful to allow a sense of worth and a sense of responsibility to grow; whether in the workplace, in a relationship or in our daily interactions with others. I always choose to see the good in people; and if they want to show me their little demons (no sexual pun intended) then that is a decision that they have chosen and they will have to live with that choice.

Your life...according to Us

Britain's new Education minister has surpassed herself. In her first big campaign speech yesterday, not only has she simply copied an educational revolution that has been happening for a long while across the pond (with rather troublesome ripple effects), she has also written off as meaningless the talents, skills and interests of nigh on half of the population.

In her speech introducing the government’s new hair-brained “Your Life” scheme, according to the Rt.Honorable Nicky Morgan MP (our Big Boss of UK Schools) if you don’t “Do science or maths” you’re pretty much of no use to the country. If ever there was any doubt that Britain’s education was doing anything other than breed worker-bees for the factory systems of corporate business, this settles it.

Launched yesterday through an embarrassing speech pretty much condemning any arts and humanities graduates as utterly worthless to society, Ms Morgan told the world that STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) is the future.  (The future of money making, that is.)

In a relatively brief speech lasting just a few minutes, the minister referenced the link between the importance of STEM education and money making over eleven times, with fluffy statements such as:

•  “the young people of today have the skills to turbo-charge the economy of tomorrow”
• “Did you know that people who work in careers related to science and technology earn more? The top ten highest paying jobs for graduates all involved maths and science skills. Fact.”
•  “Pupils who study Maths to A level will earn 10% more over their lifetime...”  (More than what, I have to ask? More than whom? I studied Maths to A-level and right now I am earning 10% more than no-one.)
•  “… that’s 50% more highly qualified and skilled young people equipped to take their place in modern Britain… to win the top jobs and reap the rewards. An increase that benefits not just them, but our whole country.”

Once again, we have a national education system promoting money making over everything else in life. What about creativity, passion, growth, curiosity, skill-acquirement, socialisation, self-discipline, awareness of others, empathy, friendship, the pleasures of learning? Nope. School is not for those things, duh. School is there simply to teach you (or should I say, to train you) to make oooodles of money and be a big fat cat.

Take, as a further example, the “role models” given to children on the Your Life campaign website. Firstly, the fact that the section is entitled “People and Role Models / Celebrity Stories” is a worrying starter. What is the difference between a person and a role model by the way? Why are they separate? Are animals better Role Models? (at the end of the day, probably very much so!) Plus if Celebrity is what we are giving our children as a Role Model to aspire to be, well then god help us all.

The role model selection for a nation’s children is:

• Ron Dennis (Executive Chairman of McLaren) who I am assuming is sponsoring this new educational reform, as there are puns relating to motor racing all over the website and a competition, called Formula 100, to bribe children to take part in the initiative with “dazzling prizes”.
• The Secretary of State (What a great role model she’s proving to be, writing off half of the population that didn’t do Maths or Physics at A-level. Bravo Nicky).
• Real People ( Hmm, this is a bit of a puzzler. Quite who Ron, Nicky and the Celebrity world are, or what they all have running through their veins that keeps them out of the “real people” category, I’m not quite sure. Green dollar bills I suppose).

The companies supporting the Your Life initiative are:

·         BAE Systems

·         Shell

·         Visa

·         Carillion

·         Ford

·         Johnson & Johnson

·         Nestle

·         Rio Tinto

“When I grow up, teacher, I want to work for a giant global corporation that values ethics and morality as much as it values pennies and people.”

“That’s great news, little child – welcome to the new, exciting British Education System”.

In the brief 250 word rhetoric on what the Your Life programme is, the command:  “DO SCIENCE AND MATHS AT A-LEVEL” is given three times – subliminal brainwashing taken to a whole new level.  One again we’re discriminating against anyone who is not taking A-levels; ignoring all vocational training, skill acquirement and non-academic children of the country. Once again, we are channelling young people into a world built purely around Subjects; not learning for pleasure or interest, for the development of critical thinking, for the nurturing of ideas, creativity, expression or freedom. Once again, we are placing a hierarchical value on learning – you’re somehow going to be a better person or more successful if you study Maths or Science than you are if you study English, Art or Music.

There are two statements in Ms Morgan’s speech that really grate. She starts off by saying: “Let’s be honest - it takes a pretty confident 16-year-old to have their whole life mapped out ahead of them” and then goes on to say, “These figures show us that too many young people are making choices aged 15, which will hold them back for the rest of their life.”

I totally agree. Making decisions about what you want to do with your life aged fifteen (actually it starts aged thirteen in the UK, when you have to start choosing and dropping subjects – an age of rampant hormones, high-level emotions and very little concept of your own self, never mind your future) is ridiculous. I’m in my thirties and I still don’t really know what I want to do with my life. And why should I have to know?  But I digress. The solution to the problematic scenario of life-choice aged fifteen, dear Britain, is not to choose to study Maths and Physics rather than the humanities. The answer (forgive me for my simplistic logic here) is to CHANGE THE SYSTEM!

Why do we force young people to make decisions at the peak of adolescent eruption? We know it doesn’t work, we know that it brings great failings to our children and their futures, we know adolescents are more interested in their nether regions than what they plan to do for the rest of their lives. So why do we continue to carry on with the same system year on year?

 Because, it seems, government policy is quite simply: “If it didn't work last year, do it AGAIN this year (and if possible do it MORE).

Give it a fancy new name – something catchy like “Your Life” (oh the irony of ownership and choice is so delicious in that one, Ms Morgan); build a fancy website, get a rich celebrity to endorse it and bobs your uncle – that’ll keep them quiet for the next few years whilst I’m in power. She’s even using the same, tired old rhetoric in her vitriolic launch speech, saying “it marks the start of a campaign that will make a real difference, not just to young people’s lives, but to the future of our country.” Hmm, now where have we heard that one before?

To borrow a phrase from philosopher Mr John Gray: 

If there is anything unique about the human animal, it is its ability to accumulate knowledge at an ever increasing rate while being chronically incapable of learning from experience. 

Too true.

I’ll end with my favourite quote from the Rt Hon. Ms Morgan’s dazzling speech yesterday; a quote that in my opinion really shows the worth and merit, the potential and the possibility for this new campaign that is going to “make a real difference” (a real one this time, Real – like those people). She started the speech by saying how delighted she was that morning because she had seen “not one, but three "Your Life" posters adorning bus stops over the past weekend”. Well Nicky: that really goes to show what a life-changer this campaign is bound to be.

Bravo, Britain. Bravo.

Thoughts...

I spend most of my days right now thinking, writing, talking and musing on many issues surrounding education and development. Many of my thoughts are discussed in my book, but I also enjoy challenging my own thoughts by sharing and discussing with others. Thus here are a few blog-posts of my current thoughts on a few topics to share with you all. Comments, ideas, questions back are greatly encouraged J

...On Poverty

To what extent has “Poverty” become a brand?

The term itself is, after all, a social creation; judged and assessed purely through fiscal comparisons. It is not a self-created identity, but a derogative imposed upon a person, community or country - a label that is given rather than chosen.

The branding of “poor” comes (according to the powers that be) when someone is “failing” to earn $2 per day – the global marking of a poverty level. Therefore, as a branding, it leaves little for a country or its people to aspire to other than fiscal development; ultimately tying progress firstly into dependence, then subsequently into a singular direction in order to lose the branding.

As a generalised label, “poverty” has almost served to create a categorised subspecies of humanity: people classified as failing in the game of life. For a community, a culture or a nation to be thus branded implies an inherent sense of failure; that somehow you are “failing at life” and therefore need to change your ways. Yet the branding only focuses on one thing: money. Poverty does not consider happiness, quality of life, emotional well-being, community engagement and support, skill-capacity, sustainability, growth-potential etc. It is simply a judgement of how much money somebody has in their pocket and endorses deep-seated assumptions of a lack of self-worth.

Here’s a question: If someone has an abundance of material wealth but houses no love in their heart, no joy in their soul, no happiness in their smile, are they not the ones that are Poor?

Current practices of poverty-alleviation through development have been modelled around a foundation of comparison; the construct of developmental aid infiltrating a psyche of superiority and inferiority across the world. If you have money (or the promise of it) you are a Success; if you don't, you are a Failure and dependent upon the Successful to help you to follow in their footsteps. Thus, in this system, one side is forever the loser. Everything within the processing of aid support-systems categorises progress through models of comparison: all of the diction surrounding development using terms of contrast, denoting one way as either inferior or superior to the other:

Rich versus Poor

Developed versus Developing

Modern versus Traditional

The First World versus the Third World

The West versus the Rest of the World

OECD versus the Rest of the World

Industrialised versus Emerging Economies

The Fortune versus the Bottom of the Pyramid

A psyche of western thinking lies behind many aid initiatives being infiltrated across non-western environments, yet the processing and infiltration of projects on the ground will never work in the same way they did for those setting the initiatives (for many reasons, about which I will write further anon). The problems of trying to homogenise evolutionary progress through a single-minded dictation of directional change is that it so frequently ignores the absurdity of an immeasurable comparisons of habit, environment or lifestyle; instead removing contextual fundamentals from the equation and focusing simply on one thing: Money.

Poverty is a branding that cannot be eliminated by The Poor; it is an assumed derogative put upon a nation from outside and, as such, leaves little room for manoeuvre beyond a reliance on aid to support growth; restricting its people to a subservient role and a permanent backseat position within the game of progress.

So how do we remove the branding? 

Thoughts...

I spend most of my days right now thinking, writing, talking and musing on many issues surrounding education and development. Many of my thoughts are discussed in my book, but I also enjoy challenging my own thoughts by sharing and discussing with others. Thus here are a few blog-posts of my current thoughts on a few topics to share with you all. Comments, ideas, questions back are greatly encouraged J

...On Education

What is an educated person? Is it somebody that has a degree? Is it somebody that has been to school? Is it somebody that has a skill or something of value to offer the world? Is it somebody that can think?

The value of education is something I consider a great deal, as more and more we are being led to believe that only if someone has jumped through the hoops and spent time in an educational institution are they Educated. By this rationale, we are calling half of the world “uneducated”. Absurd as a notion and failing to recognise how much value there is in an education system outside of school.

Here’s a little clip to demonstrate.

Schooling the World

Formalised education systems are hierarchical – there are many reasons for this (and the history of formal schooling shows how this structure has evolved), yet we now seem to have an elitist system within our societies that brands “an educated person” above “a non-educated person” (the former meaning somebody who has been given the golden tickets gained through the process of formal education). 

Yet why are we being told to see someone with a degree as “better educated” than someone who has, for example, never had formal schooling, but has learned valuable skills through experience and informal educators? (for example, somebody that has learned to grow their own food, build their own house, make their own clothes, tend their own crops and animals etc.)

Within formal schooling systems themselves exists a hierarchy that values people’s brains over their bodies. For example, if you have been educated in a “brain subject” you are systematically deemed as being “better educated” by our society than someone who has perhaps learned a craft or a skill. Why is this? Why do we think that educating the brain is somehow better, more valuable, more worthy than educating the body? Why is vocational training so often seen as inferior to academic training? After all, the world only works with a balance (in fact, our world would simply fail to work without skilled workers, but would manage to sustain itself readily enough without academics).

There is also now an inherent global belief or faith that education is the solution to the world’s problems (albeit causing many more problems in its current structure, about which I’ll write another time) whilst “fighting poverty through education” is a maxim bandied around the modern psyche. But what is the real value of education? If somebody spends six, nine, twelve, sixteen years within an education system that trains them how to think in a particular way (national systems are, after all, being channeled and chosen by a higher power; the material within curriculums processing a particular view of the world),  are they “better educated” than someone who has acquired their own knowledge through myriad of self-directed systems and has learned to critically think as an independent, creative self?

What, fundamentally, is Education? Is Education thinking? Is Education Wisdom? Is Education knowledge? Is Education Information? Is any sort of formal school education categorically better than no education? (By no education, I mean someone not going to a school).

What is the value of education?