Category Archives: Introduction

Commentary on Bartlett

Lesley Bartlett (2007) The comparative ethnography of educational projects: youth and adult literacy programmes in Brazil, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 37:2, 151-166, DOI: 10.1080/03057920601165421

Having lived and worked in Brazil this article interested me in how closely the findings mapped onto my own experience. I had previously learned languages at school over long periods using traditional “autonomous” methods. I started learning Portuguese in this way but rapidly found that I could not understand or communicate with only this base. To enable communication in the real world required idioms and conversational speech in relevant contexts. I realised I had to make an initial choice – to be accurate or to be fluent. Because I had little requirement for formal written output, I (implicitly) chose fluency, to be able to be understood and to influence people.

This created interesting reactions. My well educated staff would frequently correct my grammar. After I had talked to staff as a group people would confide “we knew what you meant”! However, people in the local community could understand me reasonably well and taught me lots of idioms which certainly would not reach the textbooks! This highlights the significant contrast between language as a badge of education and status and language as a means to communicate – very much Bartlett’s point.

Interestingly however, the traditional method is the one which has persisted better. I still remember more French vocabulary and grammar than I do Portuguese – which may say more about the structured way in which my particular brain works than anything to do with the better way to teach and learn language.

Film clips

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Reactions to film clips

Finance
Dilemmas: Poor students vs. needs of teachers to be paid
Hidden Actors: Government, inadequate teacher base salaries. Policy of requiring part-payment for secondary education.
Resonance: Similar conflict with special education funding in UK

Displaced
Dilemmas: Repressed, destabilised students, uncertain class sizes/funding, no parental support
Hidden Actors: Government, refugee policies and support, designation/funding of displacement destinations
Resonance: Closure of deaf school in UK, loss of specialist provision

English medium
Dilemmas: Perpetuation of hierarchy via English fluency, double learning load of language and subject
Hidden Actors: Government, policy re language, authors of education materials only in English
Resonance: Problem of trying to work abroad between English and local language.

Caste
Dilemmas: Perpetuation of hierarchy via caste, limited solution of quotas cf. full solution of more equal quality in schools
Hidden Actors: Government, policy re caste, residual social attitudes
Resonance: Failure to get into Oxbridge

Commentary on Chambers and Freire

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Chambers, R. (1997) ‘Normal teaching’ and ‘Normal (successful) careers’, Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First Last, London, Intermediate Technology Publications, pp. 59–63.

Freire, P. (1998) Pedagogy of Hope. Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York, Continuum. pp. 18–27.

Both pieces came from a similar point of view, though in different styles. The idea that education, in its style and hierarchies, tends to produce a reproduction of society, such that education becomes an imposition of old, elitist values on the young, needy or impressionable.

This fits well with some of the views of development read earlier, the concern that development becomes a colonial, normalising exercise of cultural and societal hegemony.

What is worse is that development education risks being a dialogue of the deaf. The messages provided are not contextually relevant so are not heard or the process of transmission does not accept the reality of an education culture which requires a “spoon feeding” approach, at least at first, because of lack of experience of anything else. Africa generally has little experience of constructivism and challenge in many cultures is seen as insubordinate.

It comes back to the same themes of taking note of cultural and practical demand, not just an imposition of supply however well intentioned.

Commentary on Sen 1999

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Sen, A. (1999) Development as Freedom, Oxford, OUP, pp. 3–12.

Sen 1999 is a philosophical approach; the core tenet is that the provision of freedom – economic, social, public facility – enables development opportunities to be taken. More fundamentally, the level of development can be measured by the level of enhancement of freedoms.

Freedom is equated with the ability to have opportunity – which does not necessarily map to development if people choose not to take such opportunity.

The linkage between freedom and values is discussed – freedoms enable choice of values which may then act to constrain freedoms by imposing social mores.

Freedom is both the means and end of development. Freedoms are linked – political with personal/social with economic. Freedom replaces the patient with the agent.

Reflecting on how this impacts education it seems to imply that freedom will generate demand for education and outlet for the economic benefit of education, hence promote a positive link between education and well being. However, people who haven’t had freedom do not necessarily know what opportunities they have been missing. If they are used to being enslaved to primitive social or political realities, they may not have the knowledge or confidence to take the benefit of freedom.

Hence, there is a case for fundamental education on the choices a free person may make before the development benefits of freedom can be realised. This will be inhibited by embedded societal values (religions, tribes, traditions, prohibitions) which enlightened development (as opposed to missionary development) will not primarily target to change,

Can supply-side enablement of freedom actually generate demand for the benefits of freedom?

Commentary on Thomas 2000

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My process of commentary is first to highlight and extract those parts of a paper which “speak to me” and seem most likely to be the parts I will retain and may use for future reference. Then, based on those extracts, I will publish my own reactions to the paper in this blog – which reactions may be subjective (whether I like the paper or style) or objective (commenting on particular points made or views taken).

Thomas, A. (2000) ‘Meanings and views of development’ in Allen, T. and Thomas, A. (eds) Poverty and Development into the 21st Century, Oxford, OUP and The Open University, pp. 23–48.

Thomas 2000 is a sobering return to study. As the first paper in a new module it is long, complex and somewhat intimidating in attempting to define development through multiple perspectives. I guess my main takeaway is that development reflects at least as much about the developer as the developee. I retain most strongly the (negative) ideas of development being a way to manage the disorder arising from development of capitalism (spontaneously or intentionally) or the colonial attempt to impose established European (class system) or US (money = class) attitudes on the rest of the world, as if such attitudes were automatically aspirational.

Various cuts of development definition are presented –

A vision, an historical process, explicit actions. Of these I relate most to the concept of actions to realise a vision (but whose?) rather than a longer, more passive historical process.
Market interventions, humanitarian interventions, enabling interventions. Ignoring the market for education, I would choose enabling interventions over direct humanitariam interventions because this allows the inherent cultural influences and limitations to influence the direction and destination of travel. This encompasses Trusteeship – to be working on behalf of beneficiaries, not imposing upon them.
Interventionism vs people-centred development. My problem with the people-centred approach is (like communism) it is idealistic rather than practical. Progress is not achieved one person or one village at a time, it has to be part of a larger process, supported by resources at regional/national level. So I guess I am an interventionist but with sufficient research and consultation to ensure that the intervention is needs/demand driven rather than idealism/supply driven.