My interest in global poverty has grown out studies in our third and fourth year globalization, pedagogista, ethics and social justice classes. I have spent a great deal of time thinking about my relationship with a teacher at my children's school who travels each summer (at her own expense) to a small, extremely poor village in Nicaragua. Marely Haller lives there for 10 weeks each year, helping villagers replenish school and medical supplies, teaching math classes to the children and working with a local relief program to build permanent homes for families. Back in North Vancouver,each year "The Nicaragua Committee" (a volunteer group of students in grades 4-7) meets with Marley's sponsorship to raise funds and educate schoolmates about Nicaragua's poverty. Marley uses video, journals and real situations to teach Canadian children about the daily living conditions and challenges families living in poverty face. Ms. Haller teaches her grade six class through her lived experiences; the chidlren study Canada's relationship with developing countries in curriculum areas such as current events, humanities, language and math. Her students complete written and oral projects on developing countries and the effects of and possible solutions to worldwide poverty. Students participate in the 30 Hour Famine and Vow of Silence to better understand the harsh realities faced by children living outside the Western World. Marely Haller sees her role as a way to spread knowledge about the need for "universal recognition of others" (Hanson, 2000). She holds herself responsible for caring about others and takes this further by teaching it to the children who will soon lead our country.
I consider Marley Haller a brave woman. She is vocal about what she feels is the wealthy Canadian citizens' moral obligation to act in response to the conditions of poverty many children live in. (Not just those in Nicaragua, but throughout Canada and the world.) She feels ethically bound to educate "the rich child" about poverty and act to create change. For this, she has been openly criticized by some. I find this reaction to her dedication frustrating as she uses her passion about children in Nicaragua as a method of teaching children curriculum lessons as well as to care for their world and the people in it. Her leadership has led to students creating posters about pollution and energy conservation, school-wide garbage reduction, furdraising to purchase fresh water wells in Africa, relief money to Haiti, and clean up of our local oceans and beaches to list a few recent school initiatives. Is this not what Levinas and Kearney meant by "investing our everyday actions of generosity or goodwill towards the other..bearing witness to the ethical"...this concern for the other"? (Levinas and Kearney, 1986; 32)
Dahlberg, Gunilla and Moss, Peter (2005) Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood Education. RoutledgeFalmer; New York, USA
Moss, Peter et al (2000) The 'child in need' and 'the rich child': discourses, constructions and practice, Critical Social Policy 20:(2) 233-254
Hello,
ReplyDeleteYour story about Marley Haller reminded me of the following quote. While I believe she is doing extraordinary work, this quote adds a different perspective on teaching to know the other.
“The explicit hope is that the more we know about Others, the better we are able to understand how to respond to them, and how to be more responsible.
Yet, when we think of our ethical attention to difference as a question of knowledge, teaching often falls into a form of rhetoric, an influential device for getting students to learn about how people came to be designated as Other and what needs to be done in order to change this. And it is this rhetorical dimension of education that calls into question the ethical benefits in learning about Others; for if educators seek to persuade, convert, or cajole students into adopting certain attitudes, no matter how desirable those attitudes may be, then is education performing the very violence it is seeking to remedy?” (Todd, 2001, p. 68)
On a different note, you mentioned programs such as Mother Goose that intend to support families who are at risk. You started questioning if these programs actually perpetuate the rich/poor dichotomy. I believe that Universal Childcare can offer a new lens under which all families, rich & poor, are able to benefit from childcare.
References:
Todd,S. (2001). On Not Knowing the Other, or Learning from Levinas. Philosophy of Education, pp. 67-74.
In addition to your post and Antje’s responds, I also thought of Sharon Todd (2001) and her idea inspired from Levinas on how we should learn ‘from’ the other in contrast to learning ‘about’ the other. Marley Haller's story of her experience in Nicaragua and what she does in the classroom with her students surely speaks a lot about what it means to be reflective and responsible to the other.
ReplyDelete“Yet, the specifically ethical possibility of education, this possibility for non-violent relation to the Other, can only ever emerge when knowledge is not our aim. Instead, learning from as opposed to about allows us an engagement with difference across space and time, it focuses on the here and now of communication while gesturing toward the future, it allows for attentiveness to singularity and specificity within the plurality that is our social life. It is only when we learn from the stories that Others have to tell that we can respond with humility and assume responsibility. When we teach with ignorance, we create a path toward an ethical horizon of possibility rather than a fixed destination. And it is Levinas’s work that has taught me to live and teach in the impossible space between what is now and what is not-yet.” (Todd, 2001, p. 73)
When I travelled to Mongolia 3 summers ago and I too witnessed and encountered people suffering from poverty. While I was there, I learned about the people, their culture and beyond and never thought of learning from them and their culture. However, after I came back from the trip, my moments in life has been transforming, slowly but surely. It started with the littlest things - I see things that I was never able to see before, I feel things that I have never thought of feeling and I hear things that I have never care to hear. I see myself express thankfulness not with my words but with my gesture, show my passion not with my knowledge but with my presence. I know in my heart such changes don’t come from my head or from what I learned ‘about’ them but from my heart and what I have learned ‘from’ them, from that land. I sometimes envy person like Marley Haller whose work is physically visible in the classroom however I believe that my daily transformation is also visible and reflective, in a very different way. I am still taking small steps to share that there is always something to learn from the other regardless of one's position.
Todd,S. (2001). On Not Knowing the Other, or Learning from Levinas. Philosophy of Education. Retrieved from http://ojs.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/pes/article/viewFile/1871/582