Many times, when people talk about education, they relate it to the matter of politics and economy, but mostly and most importantly humanity. This is because education is the most fundamental building blocks of human development. It is a formative process of passing on the knowledge, skills, and values from one generation to the next. An impact of education is greatly. When given the opportunity to learn, people tend to contribute to the development of their lives. Once their lives are improved, people can then contribute to their communities and their countries, which finally affects in the betterment of this world. Therefore, it is essential to look at this matter on a global context.



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Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Culture and Education

By Kalyakorn Naksompop
Written on February 12, 2010
Last edit on September 7, 2010

It’s undeniable that culture heavily affects the design of curriculum, which affects the education as a whole. In fact, a curriculum always emerges as a reflection of a culture. But when we say “culture” here, it doesn’t necessary refer to only culture of “Thailand” or “America”. The culture that affects a curriculum can be referred to culture of today, whether it’s culture of the school itself, the culture of that particular community that the school is located in, or the regional culture, in combination with the future culture that the community and the country want. Therefore, when looking at a curriculum, you can learn about the characters of people within that culture as well as how they think about themselves now and how they want the next generation to be like.

When talking about curriculum design, one thing needed to be brought up is the impact that a government has on its country's education. I must admit that I used to only think about education as in students, teachers, textbooks, and parents; and that is as far as I would go. However, as I get to know more and more about education, I cannot overlook the power of the authorities and how it greatly affects education of each country. This makes me somehow wonder what the true meaning of education is.

We always talk about how we educators are so important that we are the people who significantly affect the future of this world. We also talk about various educational philosophies – saying that what we believe will change the face of the world. But from history, we know for a fact that the curriculum is designed by the government. Somehow, the government, in a way, literally uses education as a tool for propagandization to pass on the belief in which government wants people to believe to the next generation. For example, even with scientific proof that Columbus was not the first to discover America, yet American teachers are still teaching that he was because they have to. That is how it's written in the textbook.

Another example, which I found truly interesting, probably because it's close to my background, is the history of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. When I was in primary school, I learned the history written by Thai, which refers to Laos as our sister or brother while Myanmar is our enemy because they burned down our old capital, Ayutthaya. When I visited Laos, it was the first time in my life to learn about the other side of the history, where Laos calls us the devil who burnt down their capital, Vientiene. Likewise, Myanmar chose to skip its some of its history, particularly on the part when they attacked Thailand and burned Ayutthaya down. So, it seems that each country has its own version of history depending on how they want the later generations to perceive the history. This is where the authorities play the biggest role in education.

With that being said, it is probably even more critical to rethink about our role as educators. Don’t get me wrong. I still believe that we do carry a big responsibility. What we do will eventually affect our world one way or another. However, in the system, we are one of the smallest bodies in education, yet we are the ones to directly practice the curriculum on our students. But even when we are the smaller bodies, is it possible for us to do something so that our students do not have to become the victim of propagandization? Are there any ways to hint students that there is another side of the truth? That I can’t really tell you but maybe Columbus did not discover America? That maybe Laotians don't love us as much as we thought they do?

I would say yes.

This is why we have also been talking about the new kind of education, where critical thinking is emphasized and where students are encouraged to become learning persons. For this very reason, we need to really pay attention in our instruction whether it helps students or not and in what way. It is exactly why teaching students how to think by and for themselves is even more essential than ever.
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  1. ChristianJanuary 19, 2011 at 4:30 AM

    You are absolutely correct! In fact, Columbus did not discover America. The Vikings of Denmark had been there a few hundred years earlier and they called it Vinland. To be completely honest, the first to discover America were the Siberian-Asians that crossed Bering's Straight some 100,000 years ago (not sure about the time). They are closely related to the Inuit people (commonly referred to as Eskimos) and now compile the Native Americans. History has always been written by a small part of the population, and even more so in the past, when power was often concentrated on a single person or a handful of people. Even more so, literacy was very uncommon and the privileges of recording history was rare.

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THE SUN IS GREEN

If I say the sun is green, what would you say?

Of course, if you have seen the sun, you would probably think I'm crazy because the sun is supposed to be red or yellow. But if you really look at it, you would probably see the same thing I'm seeing. It's not the sun that is green, but it is my imagination that made it green. It is not the fact, it's just a thought.

However, that is not the way we run the classrooms, isn't it? It is obvious that the education now is developed out of knowledge of today. We we made assumptions of how education should be using researches and philosophies, not to forget about traditions of the education. Nonetheless, what we found today will become history as soon as the sun sets, which basically means that we developed the system of education based on history and beliefs. Yet, what we are doing as educators is to prepare our students for the future. The future that is yet to come. The future that even we are uncertain of. The future where what is right today maybe wrong then. Who knows, the sun may really turn green tomorrow.

Thus, the question is, what knowledge do we have to pass on to our students?

Brutally, the answer is probably no, we don’t actually have any of today knowledge that we are sure to be relevant 30 years from now. Then, what is our job? What is our role as educators, particularly as teachers? Is teacher a lecturer? Is teacher an instructor? Is teacher a facilitator? Well, if we don't have absolute right knowledge to teach, what can we lecture them about?

In this case, being a facilitator seems to be a little more appropriate for our job description. The key is probably to facilitate the learning for learning. In other words, we should equip our students with foundation for their life as a whole, where learning can continue throughout life in a self-directed manner. “The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people,” Ayn Rand. Our job is to facilitate students to develop their motivation in learning as well as their abilities to process the learning.

As mentioned above that the task is to implant the facility for learning, what is it that we have to do to facilitate the learning? Allow students to develop the personal growth, perhaps? Yes, there is the system where we still have to provide information and facts from text books, but do you think we should also leave some room for students to be themselves, express their thoughts and play with it a little bit? Meanwhile, they may have time to look back at themselves, learn about who they are, know what they want, and would eventually learn by themselves that learning is one way to achieve their goal.

As reading this, some people may start to nod their heads as educators around the world are also starting to appreciate the thought of educating the whole child. Not only we have to focus on literacy, we also need to focus on creativity, as Sir Ken Robinson said, "creativity now is as important in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status." Unfortunately, though many schools and teachers are aware of this fact, the accentuation of creativity is yet not widely practiced. In 1999, a report on the importance of promoting creativity and culture in schools were sent to English government. A year later, a response made by the government, agreeing with the report. Today, "there has certainly been cultural activity in schools but even the strongest champions of creative and cultural education would have to admit that the report - called All Our Futures - has not dominated schools policy" (Baker, 2009). This is just one example of how the idea is already out there but has not been practiced.

Now, a much simpler example. We sure do provide enough time for students to practice on reading, writing, calculating and all those, but do we leave enough space for students to practice their creativity in classrooms? Do we have enough room for them to think and practice their imagination?

I remember an art class I had in kindergarten. The teacher taught me to paint the sun with red, water with blue, and mountains with green. I don’t remember if anyone asked why, but we were told it is what is it. This is the simplest example of how we are taught to be so limited in our imagination. A lot of times, education does not leave room for the learners to see what “it” can be because they were told what it is or what it should be even before they can start thinking about it. I was told the sun is red even before I could think about what color the sun could be. Once information is given by someone you believe to know more, in many cases, you just assume that it is the fact. No more questions needed to be raised, no more thinking needed to be processed because the answer is already there for you.

But even if I really thought the sun was green, do you think I would dare not to paint the sun red? The funny thing is we often hear someone says, "everyone is born creative." Isn't that true? Don't you agree that children are always creative? They always find ways to be so imaginative. Is it possible that because they "know less"? Since children know less, they see less boundaries when it comes to thinking or imagination. We were probably used to be as creative and as imaginative when we were smaller. Somehow, through education, we were put into, as Robinson said, right-or-wrong system and all the capability of being creative just seemed to fade away as we became someone who's afraid of being wrong. "If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original" (Robinson, 2006). Nonetheless, that is how the education is until these days. We were told what is right and what is wrong. We were told the sun is red and the water is blue. What happens if you do the wrong things, you know that teacher can deduct your points and you would fail. And you if you keep on doing the wrong things, you would keep on failing and failing until you can become a failure. That is scary. It is always scary to be a failure. Then, it becomes a loop of not being able to think freely and be creative because you're afraid to fail. And what will happen to your creativity?

Well, if painting the sun green should make me be a failure, then I would always use red and only red.


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By Kalyakorn Naksompop
Written on December 6, 2009
(original article)

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