Violence and education

Some reflections......
I don't think we have to explain our children what terrorism is, it exists and children are seeing it be it live commentaries on TV, newspapers, emails etc. The only thing we can do as parents/educators/curriculum developers is not to hide terrorism and the ugliness that life offers. We generally present the good/ positive side of life undermining children's cognitive capacity. What we need is a balanced curriculum, sensitive teachers to handle this chaos. Speak to children, let them express their views, also show them the horrible side amongst all positives we show them. They understand everything and are witnessing everything.

I remember an year back when I was teaching at The Heritage school, Gurgaon, one of my student class three, had visited Wagha border (as told by his parents). He sat on his father's shoulder and peeped across in Pakistan and said,"Papa I see all men, women there are same, then why India and Pakistan fights?" This is a real incident told to me by the parents who had a very peaceful family and no violence. Children are reading and growing up in violence, we need to acknowledge that in texts too and help them integrate peace in their lifestyles. Meditation in schools has been replaced by drills on drum beats. There is dearth of activities that help children focus inwards. Moreover our curriculum developers want to stay clear of controversies while publishing and teachers do not take it up as they simply do not have time. The whole issue remains unaddressed and this creates inner conflict in children?

Where is PEACE? What is left is only VIOLENCE and CONSUMERISM. If we do not join hands today, tomorrow we shall see our own children with guns. Feel really disturbed due to all this chaos. To agree to violence, or submit to terrorism is again not PEACE. WE are equally guilty.......

Do not ask what to do, just think that what can I do and then what can WE do to change this scenario. Why all this mess around elections and the blame game? We accept violence in most forms. Terrorism and blasts are only the most visible, perverted forms of this chain. How many women have rebelled against male dominance be it their father, brother, husband in their family, how many of us have felt irritated with women being subjugated and portrayed as weaker sex in serials, how many of us have not felt happy when India won a match against Pakistan, how many of us have not dominated our maids, helpers etc. In workplaces, schools, homes, communities everywhere there is domination and the child is observing all this. What we need to only help the child is with to deal with these conflicts and focus inside. Introspect and love oneslf and then the environment. This will not come to the child if our very home is replica of a power- struck, authoritative society.
ELIMINATE violence in homes before one really needs to wonder about our kids.

Education for peace

It is indeed sad to witness terrorist attacks in India and most metropolitan cities being targeted one after the other. But what are we doing to change the scenario. We feel unhappy, talk about issues and still remain consumers of knowledge. As an educationist I feel a strong need to integrate education for peace in curriculum. What is this , a new marketing mantra that can be comfortably used to sell a product to most people out there who are not reading. I read in my childhood about the Boycott movement where Indians had joined hands and said no to British products. I see education still colonized and no torch bearer like Gandhi to conscientize our souls and make us understand that what we need is freedom from information, examination systems and closed pedagogy. Today we are being attacked and India facing crisis in face of this mass destruction. But we continue to be business oriented and be pawns in the system. How can we overpower this crisis. I see education that liberates what Gandhi or Paulo Freire ever dreamt of. 'Freedom from Content' and 'Feel Good Factor' what most textbooks offer- a world of make belief where these terrorism, caste/ class conflicts, religious intolerance, sensitive issues are kept outside the books because that builds in conflict within our inner selves, are radical, and are not best sellers. Its high time we need to awaken from this deep slumber and say no such education. Let our children construe a real world and be well equipped to handle such crisis.

EDUCATION – CONFORM OR TRANSFORM

Education for peace forms an integral part of education. A close look at our educational system reveals an overemphasis of the cognitive functions resulting in weaning of the affective functions. Competition, academics and examinations have assumed centre stage in child’s education. This has given rise to an inner conflict within the child who operates under the shaping influence of biased texts and pedagogy that accentuates a break between the intellect and the heart.

• Most textbooks for primary construe a lively world view for children translated through the content and the illustrations. Rarely an attempt is made to make children aware with the realities and challenges of daily life. For example: a rainy season is depicted with children sailing paper boats and eating pakoras. It is difficult to find texts that depict rainy season associated with floods, overflowing drains, transport troubles, leaking roofs, power failure, epidemics, etc. This dimension is completely overlooked and texts remain exclusive of wide social reality.
• Textbooks too have an implicit writer’s bias that stems from their personal, subjective experiences. Usually a textbook writer belongs to a literate, urbanized strata of society and this gets unequivocally focused through the content, language, context and illustrations of the book.
• Exclusion or marginal representation of different social groups based on caste, class, and culture is also visible in textbooks. Rarely an attempt is made to incorporate different languages and cultures in the text. Imagine the impact of such exclusive text on the child’s psyche in a classroom which is not a homogenous group. Thus he/she feels indifferent, humiliated and develop negative identity due to such impersonal texts.
• Another pervasive effect is that of westernization. Westernized style of eating, celebration, education, greeting, dress up has overshadowed indigenous culture and customs in texts. There is a need for textbooks to break away from the tyranny of westernization and represent our rich, heterogenous culture. Alienation through texts has a negative impact on the child and is certainly not the premise of education for peace.
• Gender stereotyping is also explicit in textbooks. The illustrations remain heavily male dominated and embody men in constructive roles like engineers, architects and women as teachers, doctors, nurse etc. Sexist language like mankind, chairman, postman are still an essential component of our textbooks. Some stories like Sania Mirza or Kalpana Chawla are included as exceptions but hardly are able to mitigate the effect of gender stereotyping. Children are not able to relate to these exemplary women due to their distance from their social context. They need more community specific examples as their role models.
• Value based-textbooks draw stories from religion, philosophy, fables, folk literature etc. These perpetuate values of patriotism, secularism, democracy with a marked degree of impersonation where the agency of the child is lost. He or she becomes the object of education but never the subject. There is no space for subjective personal stories that explore the myths, values and attitudes implicit in the text.
• Textbooks preach values with a didactic, informative and regulating tone. Rationality, critical thinking, questioning, analysis are completely missing. Further such unquestioning obedience to value based texts is legitimized by society that conforms to unquestioned values. J. Krishnamurti, an educational thinker, articulated that ‘education should help us to discover lasting values so that we do not merely cling to formulas or repeat slogans; it should help us to break down our national and social barriers, instead of emphasizing them ,for they breed antagonism. Education should encourage the individual to discover the true values which come with unbiased investigation and self-awareness.’
  The question is whether our texts indoctrinate us in values or nurture a spirit of inquiry?
  
  Possible Solutions
• It is important to present a holistic perspective through texts and not undermine the cognitive capacity of children. Textbooks need to integrate social reality and be inclusive in nature. This is possible through integrated and thematic curricula that transcends subject boundaries. Ironically, what is visible is a gush of value education textbooks that undermine the fundamental premise of education for peace.
• National Curriculum Framework 2005 suggests that children need to be equipped with peace skills like ability to distinguish between facts and opinions, handle information in an unbiased way, analyze problem from different points of view, reflect and arrive at new solutions.
• Efforts should be made to invite authors belonging to different communities and regions as they enliven the cultural diversity of the text. It is important at this point to break away from the hegemony of dominant social groups that might affect the texts. Texts ought to be unprejudiced and not a mirror of wider social order.
• Children need a variety of linguistic input in primary as these being the formative years. No single textbook or a value education book can ever substitute the richness, variety and diversity of cultural story books and picture books. Children need exposure to a variety of children’s literature that incorporate the local language, customs and ethnicity. More children handle different picture books, it strengthens their concepts about print, ushers them into the world of reading with a positive self esteem that stems from identification with these texts.
• Special attention needs to be paid to the language and illustrations of inclusive texts that it should nurture the local customs and cultural practices. It shall be worthwhile to collect oral folk stories that exist in various regions and cultures and publish them.
  Inviting grandparents, helpers in the school, people belonging to different states to share their cultural stories makes the classroom inclusive. It prizes the cultural capital of community and sets an equation for dialogue in classroom. Children can be involved in retelling or writing these stories, making picture books and can be encouraged into writing.
• National Curriculum Framework advocates the use of strategies like questions, stories, anecdotes, games, experiments, discussions, dialogues, value clarification, examples, analogies, metaphors, role-plays etc to promote peace through teaching and learning.
• It is important that education for peace forms the shaping vision of education .Thus it is important for texts to be inclusive. Textbook writers need to evaluate the psychological, sociological and pedagogical impact of exclusive texts on children. Textbooks wield the power to alter the social order. It is difficult to publish inclusive texts that are culturally sensitive, devoid of power influences and are unprejudiced. This is the choice we have to make. Do we want our children to be the pawns in the system and fit into the patterns of society or do we want them to be agents of social change?
  
  http://www.ncert.nic.in/html/focus_group.htm ( A must read for all educators and parents to know about what actually does NCF 2005 say)
  
  {By Meeta Mohanty, Has taught in both mainstream and alternative schools. Currently editing children’s books at Ratna Sagar P. Ltd.}.