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The School is the Community: Building Respect Between Generations
By James Wilson
Ask Raúl Collazos about the fruits of Maestra Vida, his groundbreaking educational experiment in the villages of El Tambo, and he may tell you that one of the
biggest successes is precisely that: the delicious fruits that peasants now grow here in an impoverished corner of southwest Colombia.
Their kitchen gardens and orchards, sown at the instigation of Collazos and the other teachers of Maestra Vida, are evidence of the group's radically different approach to education. It has replaced the rather irrelevant one-way process that normally takes place in a classrooms here with a broader, community-based experience that invites and rewards co-operation between parents, teachers and children.
"The school is not just four walls," says Esperanza Montaño, an education supervisor in Colombia who has known Collazos since 1992. "The school is life. You cannot talk about a relationship between the school and the community, because the school is the community."
Maestra Vida is building respect between the generations, and creating a space for new types of knowledge within the educational system by encouraging projects, such as orchards, that involve all family members. By filling stomachs as well as minds, it also is improving the quality of life in the poor peasant communities of Cauca, Collazos' native province, home to Colombia's largest indigenous population.
Building a New Model of Democratic Participation
There is richness in peasant's experience as they seek to win small successes from life's daily struggles in El Tambo. But Collazos found the educational system's strict hierarchy – which passes information from teachers to children without involving parents – was failing to reflect or value local people's lives and experiences.
He set out to create a more fluid interchange of ideas and solution-seeking between parents, children and teachers. This takes learning far beyond the classroom so that it pervades and enriches many aspects of community life – and it is even beginning to have positive social and political effects on this troubled country.
Raul Collazos with children and parents of Maestra Vida
"Democracy in Colombia, if you can call it democracy, is very exclusive, on various levels of society, including schools, communities and hamlets," Collazos argues. "The school is a country in miniature, with all its crises, contradictions, and problems. The question is: 'How can we build another model – of democratic participation – from the school?'.
"What we want to do is focus on how to build a new participation, based on having people thinking and doing. It is about giving them a real chance to think – and from that, to decide and to do. That is a big difference from traditional education."
Maestra Vida's project is to build this new type of school. One dozen staff at Maestra Vida, including Collazos, run the organization's school in El Tambo. They also work with other schools in different districts of this rural community.
Their experience has not always been easy, because it is built on the shifting sands of Colombia's long-running and brutal armed conflict, which is fuelled by profits from drug production. Local conditions are worsening as rival guerrilla groups and paramilitary squads battle for control of Cauca's territory. The war is waged by targeting civilians who may be supporting, however reluctantly, one band or another.
Making Education a Strategy for Community Development
Cauca has quickly become one of Colombia's most troubled provinces. To be identified as any type of social leader can be deadly, because repressive forces are gathering strength. But Collazos and his fellow teachers are sticking to their task, believing that educational development is necessary for other advances to follow.
"If we want to develop the community, then education is strategic," Collozos says.
His commitment to El Tambo is a long-term. He was born here and moved 30km with his family to Popayán, Cauca's main town, when he was five. But he always kept his connection to El Tambo.
Collozos met his wife Clarissa at university, and the couple became teachers in the area. Clarissa was appointed a teacher in El Tambo while Collazos worked at a school in Popayán for the children of trade union members.
Collazos began seeking ways to change the educational system when be became frustrated with the rigid
curriculum that he was forced to teach. He left the school in 1988 to study social and cultural research for a year in Caracas, Venezuela under a grant from the Organisation of American States.
"When I came back, I had complete conviction that I would not work in a regular college," he said. "I began to put together a project of cultural development for peasant communities." Working with Clarissa, El Tambo became the focus of his efforts.
They founded Maestra Vida in 1992 in collaboration with other teachers who sought change in Colombia's education system, and wanted to use that change to bring more development to places like El Tambo. It was a time when some of the more progressive teachers were beginning – with success – to push for changes in an educational system that had become very stale.
They commenced a process of community-building. The Maestra Vida school was constructed from a delapidated property donated by Colombia's national agrarian reform agency. It was funded by friends and other supporters. The Canadian embassy in Colombia provided some funds, as did the Christian Children's Fund (CCF), which has supported Maestra Vida for the past five years.
Jorge Velásquez, director of CCF's Colombia office says his organization liked Maestra Vida's community work. It was building a rural education system that is rooted more in the land, and can help halt the drift of rural youth to the cities.
Reviving the Culture of the Small Family Garden
"We think sustainability of development begins with education," he said. "In this country migration is very high, but there is high unemployment in the cities. It was necessary to generate alternatives within the country, to meet expectations."
Collazos's idea to encourage creation of what he calls "bio-orchards," where communities can grow fruits and vegetables, is an example of how to generate such alternatives. The terrain around El Tambo rises from 600m above sea level to about 3,000m, allowing production of a wide range of Colombia's myriad tropical fruits and vegetables.
Yet despite this, diets are poor, consisting of mostly yucca, potato and rice. Collazos noticed that the culture of maintaining a small family garden had been lost. One quarter of childen were malnourished. Extensive coffee production had reduced biodiversity.
So, he promoted orchards as a way to supply school shops. Last year Maestra Vida helped establish about 150 gardens, and it hopes to plant 300 next year. The orchards already are demonstrating that local produce can replace unhealthier, manufactured snacks, while simultaneously improving the local economy.
Workshop on farm planning in a rural community "la Cuchilla"
"Postobon [Colombia's largest soft drink company, owned by one of the country's wealthiest industrialists] is not going to go broke if ten schools are not drinking sodas," Collazos said. "But if we buy the fruits from the peasants, the money begins to circulate within those communities. Also, the diet of the children is improved."
Collazos stresses how such efforts improve the interaction between parents and children. Simply gardening to increase self-sufficiency and the variety of food production is providing better nutrition for children, and teaching parents to be more aware of their children's requirements. "If we educate the parents about this, we are contributing to more understanding between parents and children," he says.
Maestra Vida's enthusiasm for improving the local diet has extended to culinary workshops for teachers and parents that teach how to prepare foods, bringing food into the learning environment. Maestra Vida hired a nutritionist and culinary expert to give classes and workshops, attended by representatives from different communities, on how to cook soups and sweets.
These representatives have, in turn, passed the knowledge along to their own communities, and have become leaders in the process, as Collazos likes to say.
Using Positive Reinforcement to Link with Other Schools
The Maestra Vida school enrolls about 60 children from some 30 families, its limit. An accord with another local school allows children at the Maestra Vida school to obtain their official government school-leaving certificate, which allows further study, such as at a university.
The Maestra Vida project also links to ten other schools in the district, which help spread its methods to some 280 families. Creating these links was a difficult process that taught Collazos and his group a lesson. Collazos recalls it was a key moment that caused them to reassess their approach.
Initially, Collazos's collaborators were strongly critical of teachers in the state system. Not surprisingly, their blunt criticisms generated a lot of resistance.
Recognizing their error, they softened their approach and now give more recognition to state teachers' accomplishments. They find that highlighting the potential for change produces a better response from state teachers, who were needed as allies to promite Maestra Vida's methods.
Another experience demonstrated that some problems are best approached indirectly rather than head on. Collazos found it was helpful to get parents committed to his process of change because they could exert influence on teachers. And he found local NGOs were useful allies when drawing-up local development plans in which the schools linked to the Maestra Vida project were made a central focus.
But at times this backfired when teachers reacted with hostility to such calls for change. For this reason, Maestra Vida withdrew from working with one school.
Reversing the Roles for Teachers and Parents
Maestra Vida has placed much emphasis on diagnoses, including surveys of the environment, crops, diet, etc. in order to create a picture of achievements and needs. This can be presented to teachers to encourage their participation. It has also helps make parents conscious of the communities' development needs, cementing support for, and input to, local development plans.
The overarching aim is to strengthen education through the involvement of parents. The kitchen gardens have been one of the most successful examples of interaction between parents and children, Collazos said.
Another success is a printing project that uses a simple printing press to allow children to print their stories, or whatever else they wish to express. Distributing these publications to the community gets everyone involved – children, parents and teachers.
"Festival of magic, color, and happiness" at the Maestra Vida headquarters
Parents' involvement is exemplified by a father named Heriberto, Collazos said. He gives classes to the teachers on environment, land and soil management from the point of view of a peasant with long-term knowledge of such issues. "He has managed to win respect in his community from the teachers," Collazos said.
Another example of showing that traditional knowledge can be valued as a part of education: a woman who is skilled at weaving fibres from a locally-grown palm tree goes to schools to give workshops on her craft. "We say to the teachers, 'In all these communities there are people with a lot of wisdom and experience'," Collazos said.
Parents – who at first were skeptical about this process – have learned from it, Collazos said. Now, a workshop can consist of a parent giving a class to group of teachers. Such a reversal of roles has substantially changed the relationship between parents and teachers.
"Five years ago, the parents would not have gone into a classroom to give a workshop. Now they do this a lot," Collazos said with pride. "It used to be impossible. This relationship has become valid."
New Respect Between Parents and Children
Parents can attend a program to be trained in alternative health and homeopathy, organized by Maestra Vida. They then replicate this in the school in their own community, in front of the teachers, children, and other parents.
In one such parent-led class, a teacher told the children they didn't need to take notes, Collazos recalls. This triggered a debate among the parents about what education should be about. It demonstrated that parents were gaining confidence that their own knowledge was just as valid for education as facts and figures handed down by a professional teacher. Not surprisingly, new respect has also blossomed between parents and children, who see that their parents' experiences and knowledge is worthwhile and worth seeking.
Children also get more respect. They are encouraged to lead processes and strengthen their community roles.
In one community called La Laguna, Leider, a 14-year old, has become the community's expert on homeopathic medicines. He was trained with other parents during a six-month course.
Leider is considered the "doctor," and parents, elders consult him with their ailments. He has given workshops in his community, gaining credibility and winning trust. He also visits other communities to train people.
"We identified that he had an important capacity for leadership," Collazos said. "These cases show what is possible. There are many youngsters who have come forward because of this process."
Cases of abuse of wives and children can be frequent in peasant communities. By encouraging community participation, and through shared attendance at events like culinary courses, Maestra Vida has reduced the number of abuse cases, Collazos said. It is clear that family relations have improved because family members spend more time learning about each other, and they learn to respect each other, he said.
A Future Priority: the Floating Population
Maestra Vida encourages all family members and teachers to increase their participation in meetings. Entire communities discuss development plans for their schools and communities.
Prior to this, adults did not think children could take part in such discussions, Collazos said. "These things seem very simple and subtle, but they have helped to democratize school and community life," he said. "I think parents are seeing the clear benefits in their families."
Still, Collazos fears for one age group: adolescents, about 14 or 15 years of age, who may not have a chance to continue their education, and can find nothing else to do. They are a high-risk sector – a floating population that nobody is attending to, Collazos said.
Armed guerrilla and paramilitary groups are recruiting children of this age. Many end up working in the illegal drug fields of the region."We have been very worried about what to do with this population of young people," Collazos said.
Collazos said he hopes the answer is contained in a new project the promotes generational change by combining elements of leadership formation, lessons in civics and human rights, and training in crafts like building, woodworking, and designing community buildings. The idea is to inculcate these vulnerable youths with the idea of "honest work" and make them leaders ready to take responsibility.
Because Collazos's methods are helping build respect for parents – by giving them a role as teachers of the knowledge they have accumulated – they can help younger community members learn to respect these "honest skills." It is clear that Collazos' concerns for this age group will make this one of the priorities for Maestra Vida's work with teachers and parents in coming years.
School for Life as a Social Investment
Funding remains a problem. Heavy guerrilla influence in the region is being challenged by rightwing paramilitary groups, and both sides are seeking control of lucrative drug crops. This has heightened conflict sharply in Cauca, and few dare to travel into disputed rural areas such as El Tambo.
Visits to attend workshops at Maestra Vida school and exchange ideas by groups from colleges and universities have all but dried up as the security situation in Cauca has deteriorated dramatically. This has deprived Maestra Vida of a valuable source of income: two years ago it was earning about $15,000 a year.
Collazos has cut his own salary by 50 percent to help to make the organization's ends meet. "We have always had to be very creative to survive," Collazos said. "We live in need, like the peasants. I am going everywhere on a bike because we have no money for transport. There are very steep hills, but . . . I have a good bike."
Having seen Collazos's project flourish during the past decade, Montaño says
Maestra Vida's success is its ability to reach out to other schools, and the permeation of its ideas. She said she believes Collazos, a sunny yet sensitive person who is dedicated to the service of others, has made a big impact.
Maestra Vida demonstrates how a program that starts as an educational project can find ways to solve other problems, says CCF's Jorge Velásquez. "It is not a teacher trying to show he is the fount of all knowledge. Knowledge is built, with the children."
Collazos said he knows there is enormous resistance to change in troubled Colombia, and to alternative projects. He believes he and his companions are offering hope, although he is realistic about the political opposition they face.
Despite all this, Cauca is showing signs of change. Its voters have kicked out the traditional political groups and have elected the country's first indigenous governor. Collazos believes Maestra Vida can become part of this needed democratic change in Colombia.
"It is a democratic example for the country, which the country should recognize and propitiate," he said. "There will not be another opportunity.
"Our proposal of a school for life fits in with this alternative plan for Cauca's government, and with the needs of the country. In meetings with business people, we have the chance to tell them about our experience. We say, 'You have great administrative experience and resources: invest them socially. It is profitable, because if we can create an alternative to the conflict, we will all benefit'."
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