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LIBERATING EDUCATION

NANAYAKKARA

Luis Segundo in his book 'Grace and the Human Condition' refers to Rodo's book 'The Farewell of Gorgias'. In the book it is related that before he died one of his disciples wanted all his other disciples to swear an oath of absolute fidelity to each and every word of their master.

Gorgias responds to this by telling them about a dream his mother had.

Luis Segundo relates it thus: 'In the dream Gorgias' mother was greatly attached to her baby boy's innocence. So she obtained magic potion from a sorceress that would ensure his continuing innocence. They worked many years, and his mother kept going back to the sorceress for a fresh supply.

Then one day the supply ran out. She returned home empty-handed to find herself confronted with a bitter old man. He reproached her fiercely "Your savage egotism has robbed me of ennobling action, illuminating thought, and fruitful love .... Give me back what you have taken away. But now it was too late. It was time for him to die. All he could do was to despise and curse his mother".

I have quoted this story at length because it exemplifies and signifies the meaning of true freedom. True freedom is the possibility of deciding our own actions. And there can be no true education unless it be education for freedom. Authentic human education is an education in liberty.

This to my mind has to be at two levels.—

1. At the level of the individual's liberty that urges him to fashion his own personal being.

2. At the level of the individual's total human condition (social context).

1. At the Level of the Individual.

In order to educate the individual to true freedom, it should open up a broad range of human interests so that the person who is being educated can combine them and balance them off in a more complete and fuller way.

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This presupposes that he chooses freely to be an active participant in his education.

This leads us to the question of a critical attitude, needed for an education that liberates. In fact liberty, to be real, must call into question human security where it is devoid of commitment and decision making. A critical attitude refuses to accept a situation that one finds himself in as something that cannot be overcome. Generally this is due to the fact that some people are classed as the people who know and others as those who do not know. And the ones who do not know disclaim responsibility for the present situation and even refuse to take responsibility for their own lives.

The transition from motives based on personal security to motives based on personal responsibility will normally take place in the more demanding sphere of the urgent problems of life. This is a pre-requisite for self-reliance. It is education to participate in, to take sides i.e., to make an option or to take a decision concretely in a given situation, despite the possibility of being wrong.

It is in this context that the other element of liberating education viz. Creativity must be mentioned. The whole point of true education is to train the individual to exercise his creative faculties. Where this is wanting the individual is less a man and is easily manipulated. He is then made more an object than a subject in whom dwells the possibility of self-determination, of true choice, and of fashioning his own existence, which is the whole meaning of life. It is the business of true education to equip the individual to fashion his own life into a mature fully human existence, without which he never become self-reliant.

2. At the Level of the Individual's Total Human Condition. (Social Context).

By social context I mean that every individual from the very start is influenced by a system of human reactions and inter-relationships that constitute him and form part of his total human condition. The individual is confronted with a pattern of society, values, inter-relationships that are not of his own creation but form the "given" or "datum" in his life, and which he suffers or undergoes. The individual normally is not conscious of these and is influenced by them inadvertently. They are ready made and therefore hinder man's freedom to create values meaningful and relevent to a given situation. From the very beginning the individual is prejudiced in favour of, what we may call 'vested interests' within society.

These interests are generally institutionalised for the sake of the ordering of society and the trend is then for individuals to become unthinking cogs in a wheel, objects that are manipulated. Yet they have within them the natural urge to fashion their own lives, creatively and freely.

The main area of liberating education is to make the individual conscious of those elements that hinder his personal liberty, and vitiate his human personality. It is in this regard that educationists speak of:

Awareness building

Conscientising

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Politicising

De-schooling society, etc.

Many educationalists of the Third World in particular have shown that formal education in Schools and universities help very little in, or what is more, is a positive hindrance to true education to freedom. It is interesting to note at this point that Mao during the Cultural Revolution closed all schools and universities to one whole year and sent all the students to the villages — to dialogue with the peasants and the workers and to learn from them.

The techniques for an education that will free the individual from these disabilities that hinder his personal growth and maturity are many, but none is fool proof. Perhaps the most efficacious method would be involvement in the day to day life of society and reflection on same (Praxis). This is not above or beyond the peasant and the worker. Society has perpetuated a myth that considers only those who learn from books as teachers, and those who have not learnt from books as the 'taught'. It is in the context of every one becoming teacher and taught that the individual learns to be self-reliant.

The challenge to society today is to face the desire of the youth to be critically free to mould their own life. It is the business of education to guide this critical freedom to be a critical responsible freedom.

SEMINAR GRQUP

1. What is Liberating Education?

The history and realities of our society today consist of a series of enslavement of the people in hunger and oppression and their struggle to overcome them. It is along this inhuman condition of bondage that liberating education plays a very significant role.

Liberating Education is a process in which there takes place different stages of development of man's attitude, behaviour and values moving towards critical consciousness. These stages are as follows: a) Awareness; b) Responsiveness; and c) Effectiveness. Therefore, this type of education develops man's ability to become conscious of the realities of oneself and society, and to be able to criticize them constructively for the common good. As a response to these realities, man is impelled to execute appropriate actions that require a specific structure and definite methods either for adjustment or manipulation of the environment. This structure refers to different channels or mediums for more effective social functioning. The methods are strategies and tactics for change and freedom. That is, a change brought about by breaking down the structures of poverty and exploitation whereby people, both the oppressed and oppressor are liberated in order to exercise their inherent freedom with responsibility and discipline. In this context, there are two dimensions of liberating education, namely:

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A — CONTENT : Man in relation to society and the brutalities of the existing social systems;

B — GOALS : i) For man to be able to defend himself against these systems;

ii) The development of "Man" for others.

2. Existing Educational Systems.

In the early periods, the Asian countries had a self-reliant economy, with rich culture and tradition. The then educational system was geared towards the strengthening of this self-reliant community, and was related to the needs of the people as a whole — whether social, economic or cultural. The Buddhist Monastaries of Sri Lanka, and the Universities of Nalanda and Takshila in India are a few examples.

We witnessed death of such a self-reliant educational system after the entry of the colonizers in Asia. With the exploitation of the self-reliant economy of Asian Societies, the colonizers transformed the cultural, social and political systems in Asia to suit their goals. The Educational system was no exception to this rule. From this time onwards, an educational system was thrust upon the Asian societies which would fulfil the needs of the colonizers, such as producing bureaucrats, technocrats, scientists and clerks, who would, in turn, provide the bullwork to their colonial and imperialist policies to rule over the people of Asia. In this process, the educational system helped alienate such people both from the realities in the Asian socieites and the masses, building a loyalty pattern around the colonizers.

Some of the characteristic elements .of this educational system are:

a) It is individualistic and injects self-centred satisfication to those who go through it;

b) It breeds a sense of competition based on materialistic values;

c) The content of the education is geared towards promoting capitalistic mode of production;

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d) It alienates people from their own cultures, surroundings and people;

e) It covers a very small minority of people;

f) It is irrelevant to the life of the people;

g) It makes one dependent on development models of the imperialistic countries.

3. EXPERIMENTS IN LIBERATING EDUCATION OF CHRISTIAN GROUPS.

Liberating Education takes many forms but the goal is always the same for members of the group. The goal is to raise the level of awareness among the people in order to solve their problems by bringing about fundamental change in society.

In Sri Lanka, the Christian Workers' Fellowship (CWF) works among the workers to educate them on the ownership of the means of production, their basic rights and so on.

In Hong Kong, there is a growing awareness among the students and the people that the educational system should be aimed at the liberation of the oppressed from social injustice. Great concern has been put by the students to the understanding of the revolutionary education in China, in particular, the practice of going down to the countryside and learning from the people. Some of the students in Hong Kong are striving to learn from the masses, by living and working with the slum dweller and factory worker.

In Philippines, Thailand, India and other places, politicisation of the people such as farmers, have been successfully achieved through use of the cultural media, e.g. dances, humorous skits, drama, slides, movies and songs.

Whether political education is conducted through the cultural media, the workcamp method or the seminar-cum-live-ins, they share a common factor, namely, working among the oppressed people.