Schooling the world

I've watched the documentary "Schooling the World" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnzVNO_J6sk) and felt a huge sigh of despair welding up in my chest. I identified with this documentary in so many ways. Each scene that progressed brought on another thought or experience that seemed so relevant to the point being made in the film. Yet, the reoccurring topic for many of the people who provided testimonials, was that people (everywhere) use school to make money. And for once, I wanted to be the sociologist, anthropologist, NGO owner who says, "money isn't everything". But I can't do that. It saddens me because I know for nearly my entire life, all I have ever considered a reasonable goal was to make money. It is only recently that I decided to explore my passions, part of the reason why I enrolled in this class was to discover what it is I love to do.

Passions are a privilege of the wealthy. In my family we've done many of the things mentioned in the film, except maybe on a smaller scale. I grew up in Brooklyn, NY; and it is true that this is the place that shaped my culture and my education about my ancestors. I was lucky that I was allotted the opportunity to even learn about my culture, because so few people are. When I got old enough, I began going to school in Manhattan because a) Manhattan is a production capital and b) schools in Brooklyn did not produce graduates.  There are many things to say about getting educated in Manhattan as opposed to Brooklyn but to stay on topic I'll fast forward to moving even farther out and attending college in Pennsylvania. All these decisions, essentially, were based on the idea that the farther I can move away from poverty, the less likely I will be sucked into it. If I could see professionals, if it became a tangible entity than there is no reason I can't one day be in a Manhattan sky-rise and eating at every fancy restaurant on the upper west side. My father, for a long time, warned me against my propensity to have material goals. He told me that I was being naive in my ideas of what makes a good life and though I now agree that he was right, that truth is still very hard to swallow. How do you survive if you are not making money? and a lot of it? Did I go to college, did I move away, did I sacrifice just to end up just like my parents? In some ways I feel that is exactly what will happen, and not because I made the decision to pursue higher education, but because I did it with the intent to live someone else's life without yet, discovering my own.

This resonated so much with me as it was portrayed in the film. The burden of education is not that it includes sacrifice, but that it is consistently geared to produce students who want to live someone else's life. There is no room for internal reflection, or personal growth in today's education system and global economy. What there is room for is greed, power, and fear. So much of today's problems, including problems within the global market itself, is the loss of values and the diversity of values. Studies have shown that people would rather spend time at work, then time at home. Family life is now a burden to the average professional who is much more conditioned to structure, regulations, and productivity. I appreciated the statements made by some of the women in the film, that talked about the value of earth and water. How parents taught children to preserve and respect these resources, and how to develop a relationship with their environment. I wonder, if we could all just wear a pair of glasses that would allow us to withdraw from the material values that are plastered in every area of modern society, would really be able to "see" what is around us. By that I mean, If I had the ability to look around Manhattan, and instead of being in search of fame, fortune, big apartments, and pride; I saw art, creators, culture, things that inspire me as an individual. Wouldn't that be the most popular thing on the market!

But that is always the compromise.  To spend time on yourself means to waste time, to be less productive, and to lose opportunity, that is what we are taught. At the end of the day, if you do not want to work in McDonalds, you have to live life by these rules.

In psychology we talk a lot about stories. How telling stories is so extremely powerful in human understanding and development. In English we talk about different ways stories are told, different vehicles for communication other than language. And I see a vital part of global education being wasted. The opportunity to be an individual and the opportunity to share your story. That is how you preserve culture, that is how you develop self-understanding, and that is how you share knowledge. Before we are taught to compete, we should be taught to understand. A life lived without an understanding of the world and your specific function in it, is a life that ends in corporate drones or hapless merchants.

I'd like to believe in humanity, and I'd like to believe in change. So maybe that starts here, with how we provide education to those who have none. Maybe we do teach philosophy instead of engineering, and theatre instead of programming. Maybe we teach people how to value themselves and each other for what they have to offer before applying it to modern societies standards of what it means to be successful and to have "made it". Or maybe that is idealistic and impractical and a luxury of higher education that I have now adopted. Am I turning into the far removed, helping hand? For now? No, just a dreamer.