Humanizing education

 

Humanizing education

In our last blog we described how the growing dehumanization of education is link to the  fact that grades are more important than learning. We also explained that  today educational system conceived the human being as a rational being, attributing to the intellectual function a greater importance than that of the emotional or motor functions. Unfortunately this educational model blocks emotional expression and produces various type of inner fragmentation which continually inhibits some fundamental aspect of the human being.   Later in our blog we propose a new educational paradigm that would allow social and individual transformation.  In this blog we are giving some explanation on the "humanizing education" meaning. 

Today whether we like it or not, we must realize that there been a divorce between the economic model and the need for education. The result is that every announcement of improvement in education is a hypocrisy if we don't tackle the basic issues, which are not only a problem of resources, but an existential problem and a problem of meaning.

 

Humanistic ideal and education in history
The notion of humanism and education first appear in ancient Rome during the period of the Republic : with the ideal of humanitas, which is the Latin translation of the Greek word  paideia means ''education''. 

It was the Roman who incorporated Greek learning and it was in Rome were human were educated in contrast to the uneducated barbarian. At that time, the Roman humanism link education imparted to the philosophical schools of late Greek civilization. Roman Emperors such as FrederickII (1194-1250) promote sciences, languages, Arts and played a major role in disseminating knowledge from the West and the Arab world. During Middle-Ages humanity was nothing and could to nothing of itself; knowledge and learning where kept 'hidden' from humanity. The social organization mirrored this vision of a closed and hierarchical universe. 

Toward the end of the Middle Ages, Italian humanism reestablish the connections with the same humanistic ideal of Greece and Rome. During that time humanism was aimed toward the exaltation of humanity and the reaffirmation of human dignity, in opposition the devaluation of the human being in the Christian Middle Ages. It was the recovery of faith in the creativity of humankind and in humanity's capacity to transform the world and to forge its own destiny. But by the end of the Renaissance and with the birth of experimental sciences and the development of rationalist and mechanistic philosophies, the human being is interpreted as a purely natural phenomenon. How is't possible that a purely natural phenomenon forge its own destiny? How is't possible that a purely natural phenomenon create physic, biology, chemistry and psychology ?  

By the 19th century, the traditional concept of paideia and the humanistic ideal - the vision affirming a central position or uniqueness for the human being in the world of nature - has rapidly being left behind by history.

In Today world, in this new century people have once again begun to speak, and with more frequency, of humanism, and of manifestation of new meanings and the outlines of this new planetary moment.

Education and meaning 

For the last decade we are witnessing that education become more and more meaningless. If education is understood as the goal of instructing and transmitting knowledge, its obsolescence is obvious, since there are many more efficient means of accessing information that offer a broader scope such as numerical book, databases, video conference, MOOC, online training, community network, etc...

The educational institution as it is 'currently conceived' no longer make sense for society, it does not fulfill the objectives for which is was created. Our school system was originally conceived in the context of industrialism - the school was a sort of replica of the factory - it was understood that the school was 'producing' workers, while the university was 'producing' professionals. But with this kind of education, the intention was to objectify the human being, to cut off his or her intentionality and subordinate the intentions of the many to the designs of a few.

Shopping .. meaning in life? Really?

Education and universal values
On the other hand, if education is understood as a transmitter of values, the question immediately arises : which values are we are taking about? This is especially true in a society that is becoming more and more planetary, and in which cultural relations are producing crisis, conflicts and wars. But we are also seeing various forms of solidarity risen of communities bases. Never the less It is clear that the traditional concept of education is losing its meaning because it is unable to respond to the new realities and social necessities. Still today are we seeing certain concepts of values that are presented as unarguable truth. This generates great frustration in many educators, who see how their work is losing influence among the youth at the same time that the youth are being influence more and more strongly in other ways.

It's time to give education real and profound meaning and to redefine its goal. It's time to make explicit and precise the universal values and universal rights that it could proclaims and promotes. But it means that education must take a categorical commitment to social improvement and development. This new education would need to be committed to the following : affirming the human being as the central value, affirming the equality of all human beings and recognition of personal and cultural diversity. This new education most be moving toward and developing of knowledge beyond what is accepted as absolute truth and reaffirming freedom of ideas and beliefs and finally repudiating all forms of violence. These universal values have the merit to bring forward a great deal of agreement, without smothering the personal and cultural diversity inherent in the distinct communities which coexist in today's complex society.

Today most teachers and educators believe that the function of education most be elevated. The Active Nonviolence educators believe that teachers must be the voice and the action of the best in the human being and must show in practice that a new and better way of learning is possible.

Education for Active Nonviolence

Education for Active nonviolence is base on the Universal humanism perspective which sees human being as active consciousness. We define the human being as an historical and social being and not simply a social being. Therefore the new education that is needed must assume as its principal goal human development and social change. Thus putting aside the reductionist concept that puts education at the service of groups in power. Many are needed to push in this direction, but it is the educators who will play the central role of giving orientation and reference to such meaning for a new education.

Because today must teachers agree that we have arrived at the time to built a new education for the new generation. We think it is appropriate to bring forward this question: "Can the human being have evolved for thousands of years simply so that the school produce workers and consumers? As educators we believe that the time has come to change this ideal and to build the education to which we aspire for the 21st century.

We need an education that is truly liberating for the women and men of our time. An education that does not condition the individual to expect a limited future, that effectively grants equal opportunities for everyone and above all recognizes the personal and cultural diversity and the rights of all without any exception for a free and quality education. 

We are clearly far from an education system appropriate for this historical moment. But of course the application of such a change is not fully feasible when the macro-social context continues to be strongly influenced by values and principles that are clearly based on economics and dehumanization. Therefore is it inevitable that theses kind of educational proposals can't be sustained without a strong connection with the existing social context. In others words, a humanizing educational proposal must place itself necessarily within the perspective of social and cultural change, which will allow the constitution of a coherent and broad-based proposal.

Coherent relations versus authoritarian relations - relations of power

Human being seek happiness they aspire to personal fulfillment. Because they are social being they are fulfilled by relating to others when they assure an active attitude. That is today they act reciprocally in terms of giving others what they would like to receive from them. Therefore in the issue of pedagogical relationships we affirm that equality of all human beings who relate to each other through the experience of education.

Here the issue that must be discussed is how relationships of power and domination are established within the school. In the first place there is the political system that is in power and controls the institution of the school. In the school itself are the administrators who have power and control over the teachers and parents. The teachers and parents in turn have power and control over their students and offspring, respectively. Finally, on the bottom rung, the older students have power over the younger. In this way a whole system of relationships of power and domination is established, whose basic result in so many cases is the development of repetitive violence and discrimination over decades.

This system of relationships is subtly of explicitly being incubated within the educational system. Many undesirable practices - such as - passing over the individual in favor of other interests, exercising unequal rights and discrimination of all kinds, imposing absolute truths, persecuting individuals for their ideas, beliefs and behaviours, exercising psychological violence - are practices which exist in today's educational system, hidden in large part within the curriculum, and which in a new education would have no justification whatsoever.

Social and personal ethic 

We are therefore talking about a new personal and social coherence and a new personal and social ethic. By ethic we mean that which has to do above all with the concern for the consequences of ones own actions. This ethic must emanate from the school to influence everything that is done in society. The point is that education should propose a system in which relationships are subject-to-subject and not subject-to ''object''.
 
We are clear that this will demand a high level of ethnics and morality from teachers, more than in a conceptual way, regarding their attitude toward practical life. But it seems to us that this demand is pertinent, given the magnitude of the work and responsibilities it implies. These principles and values are not something to declaim or formulate theoretically ; they must be above all an attitude that the whole educational system puts into practice, in such a way that it operates as a model for the child and young person, because they see it in action, not because they hear their teachers talking about it.

The education authority must be gained by virtue of ones knowledge, by the wisdom with which one uses this knowledge, by the coherence of ones relationships, by the human quality that one transmits. We must arrive at an educational practice that can help students feel referenced to work which brings them together, enlightens them, orients them and attracts them. Education must have this quality, because it offers meaning, and not because the teacher has the power to grant grades or punishment.

It is from this perspective which we see the student having an active consciousness, we propose the participation of children, youth and parents in the management of educational acts. 

 

Educational management shared by teachers students and parents

We propose an educational management shared by teachers, students, young people and their parents. For example, the active participation of children and youth through representatives, who participate along with representatives of adults in regular meetings of what we called 'cooperative Assembly', which is a formal space for listening and exchange. 

This is an ideal space for the “building citizenship,” learning respect for others, committing to doing what one says one will do, proposing constructive initiatives, expressing ideas, listening and accepting dissent, working in a team, joining others in developing a shared vision of the community and institution, conceiving of projects and bringing them into being, etc. All of this can be incorporated as learning through action, by simply doing it. And where else should this happen, if not in a school where learning in preparation for the future is supposed to be taking place?

A core team in school could also creates conditions for daily study and work within the framework of service learning, where interdisciplinary knowledge is put to use in the transformation of reality in the direction of caring and cooperation for the good of the community. The guiding principle is the overcoming of inequality of opportunity, not as charity but as social development.

The training of parents through the “Nonviolent Families” course, could also be carried out by teachers, staff, or other trained adult volunteers, aiming to build nonviolent relationships of caring and cooperation in the family environment, this kind of training ground is decisive for the direction the new generations.

But the process for this kind of change begins at the Institutional and at Community level and not in the classroom. Unfortunately what is happening today in schools is very far from these proposal. But we know that once this process of change is launched in the institution, the institutional management will begin to adjust to this new direction and later on teachers and students will have a favorable situation for classroom development of students’ subjective experience.  So than it will be possible to advance in the building of a new education for the human being of the 21st century.
 

Traditional education versus education for Active non-violence

What we have ...the current global model	What we want..
Passive education - base on passivity of the consciousness	Active education - base on the active consciousness
Instruction	Construction of knowledge
Naive vision of reality	Active vision of reality
Absolute truth	Plural vision of reality
Social repetition	Social construction
Teaching, repeating, memorizing and imposing	Empowering, enabling, qualifying and transforming
Submission, obedience without criticism or judgment	Humanization, personalize to ones own 'look'
Fragmented thinking	Coherent thinking
Captured attention	Practiced attention
Competition	Collaboration, emotional contact with others
Education based on separation – pure intellect	Emotional contact with oneself, government of ones own body
Competition, low self-esteem, devaluation of oneself	Respect of oneself and respect for others
Uniformity	Diversity
Accepting violence; unequal rights and discrimination	Reputing violence and denouncing discrimination promoting human rights and equality

Obviously there are school that have implemented various ways that are aiming of more individual freedom such as creative pedagogy programme and others approaches. But the fundamental problem is for most educational system and programme student and teacher are 'passive consciousness' and should to be managed by external structure of power. 

In our next blog we will explored the pedagogy of intentionality and introduce elements from various project that were implemented in school to introduce Active Nonviolence activities.

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Credit: 

1- High school in Mendoza, Da Vinci Fundation, program for youth and Active Nonviolence 

2- Born to shop picture (Born to shop-700x700.jpg penny-farthing-gifts.com)

3- School project 'Save world peace' Run This Way project with Ireland, Iraqi and canadian students in 2014:  What will I bring in 2046 in a World without wars and without violence, picture Des Draveurs school board, Gatineau, Canada.

4- My Way or Highway, hudpages.com. 

  

Reference:

The Pedagogy of intentionality, Mario Aguilar and Rebaca Bize, Chile.

 

Toward a culture of solidarity and nonviolence, An Active Nonviolence Training Manual for Individuals, Organizations and Networks, Argentina Juan José Pescio and Patricia Alejandra Nagy, Argentina.

For more information on  Universal Humanist pedagogical current visit website:
http://en.copehu.org/

To download book:
"Towards a culture of solidarity and nonviolent" please visit website:
 www.consejosnoviolencia.org