|
|
|
|
Teaching Teen-Agers
to Really See Society,
and How to Fix It
by Julia Sommer
Some years ago several elite schools in New Delhi added a community service
component to their graduation requirements. The deal went like this: If a
high school student taught one illiterate Indian to read and write by
springtime of the final year, he or she could graduate and go on to
college. This forced act of good Samaritanism was supposed to prove that
the student was a socially responsible young adult.
In April, throughout the city, herds of 17-year-olds appeared at school
with street children or their domestic help in tow, each of whom would sit
down to a rudimentary reading and writing exam. With heavy irony, the
students' fates lay in the hands of their newly literate servants.
Supposedly newly literate: Many students prided themselves on having beaten
the system by bringing in servants who had long been literate, even if only
barely. Among themselves, these wealthy teen-agers sneered at the minority
of goody-goodys who actually bothered to educate someone less fortunate
than themselves.
Community service, internships, service learning, school to work, moral
science – all jargon born in the idea that youth should develop a social
conscience and act on it. The importance of cultivating social awareness
(look at every major religion!) has bounced around from continent to
continent at least since the Golden Rule. But only recently has the concept
caught fever in the institutions where most youth spend the single largest
chunk of time: schools. Nurturing values and providing opportunities for
youth to "do good," once the domain of the family or spiritual institution,
have now entered secular institutions of learning, although not always
successfully, as students in New Delhi could smugly confirm.
A Clearer Path to Understanding
On the other hand, in the same city, an organization called Pravah
advertises its activities in the same sort of prestigious private schools,
and droves of high school and college students voluntarily give up their
Saturdays and holidays to attend leadership and sensitivity-building
workshops, eager to discuss and act on their nascent social awareness.
Confused by the injustice and prejudice they see pervading society, these
adolescents first work with Pravah – which means "flow" – to clarify
their own values, then move on to internships where they offer their skills
to rural nonprofit organizations. Two-thirds of the high school students in
this program say they gain the skills to bring change in their society.
Why, with the same population of affluent urban teens, does one program
fail and another one pass with flying colors? This issue of the
Changemakers journal, the last in a series of four on Youth as Partners for
Social Change, explores social entrepreneurs and institutions that develop
in youth the habit of understanding and responding to social needs. The
three entrepreneurs profiled here have built unique alliances with schools,
governments and the various stakeholders within these institutions.
The very fact that organizations in their countries – Poland, Bangladesh
and India – can turn young people into active civic participants is new.
In post-Communist Poland and in Bangladesh (where democracy is only seven
years old), the political systems have only recently allowed people from
all sectors the chance to change society. Class no longer dictates one's
every waking moment (especially true in South Asia), and using idealism to
defeat cynicism has become possible.
Raising awareness of social needs is not only possible, but imperative. As
the gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots" widens, many privileged
youth see less reason and opportunity to engage in their societies'
worrying problems. Moreover, the bombardment of conflicting messages, each
carrying some sort of value-ridden undertone, leaves youth all over the
world more unclear than ever about which values they believe in and which
are worth believing in. Without a moral compass to guide their own lives,
youth can hardly be expected to act responsibly for the good of their
societies.
Catalysts Bred in the Schools
In helping adolescents develop social responsibility, the three
entrepreneurs act as catalysts. Students learn valuable social and academic
skills; communities, schools and non-profit organizations come together in
partnerships, and teachers gain the opportunity to teach in new ways and
bring basic reforms into the schools.
Most notably, these three programs work directly with schools, a concept
less obvious than one might guess. In Bangladesh, India and Poland, as in
many countries, schools have traditionally been bastions of conservatism.
Students, of course, have traditionally cried out for change; such student
activism is described well by Mostafa Shiblee in Bangladesh. But
government-run schools – especially in unstable societies – have always
defended the predictable, orderly way of things, probably out of fear of
revolt. In the process, these schools have backed further and further away
from encouraging involvement in political or value-laden activities.
The result is often a curriculum lacking relevance to the passion of
adolescence. Education is sterilized to such an extent that it is
mass-produced in the government bureaucracy, and even teachers – the
direct link to the students – lose control over what they teach and how
they teach it. As this centralized education spreads throughout the
country, schools do not merely discourage activism, but they fail to
encourage students to make connections between learning and values. This is
why the programs highlighted here, all of which work directly with schools,
are particularly exciting.
Different Societies, Common Problems
Only in the past five to ten years have changes in the political climate
made it possible for schools to serve as a conduit for cultivating social
responsibility. In Poland the public schools are at last controlled by
local rather than central government, which makes change more likely. In
South Asia, less privileged students are attending school in greater
numbers than ever before, forcing governments to come up with new models of
education that respond to the needs of the poor.
Humphrey Tonkin, president of the University of Hartford in Connecticut,
found the same phenomenon in 1960's America: "The assumptions and methods
of elite education were out of place in the new environment of mass
education. The new breed of students had not been given the script, not
been socialized into this traditional education in which a narrow band of
experiences was judged relevant to formal programs and a great deal of life
was simply left out." As long as governments already recognize the need for
school reform, they are receptive to the idea of adopting curriculums and
extracurricular programs that social entrepreneurs present. In the United
States, learning through community service has caught the imagination of
school reformers throughout the country.
While the social entrepreneurs profiled here achieve their social goals by
working through the schools, they also help the schools change themselves
on a nationwide scale by altering the roles of teachers. Now that teachers
are expected to help teach civic education (in Poland), or run debates (in
Bangladesh) or sensitize students to social issues (in India), they are
learning skills that may influence their techniques in all subjects. And
teachers are gaining the autonomy and self-confidence to deal more
aggressively with school administrators and ministries of education.
Educational reform suddenly has less to do with changes in policy than with
empowerment of teachers. As the social entrepreneurs alter the roles of
teachers, the relationships between teachers, schools and governments must
be recalibrated.
Forcing Governments to Take the Long View
Some tensions are inherent in this process. For example, Jacek Strzemieczny
insists that his Center for Citizenship Education cannot successfully
interact with the Polish government. How can Jacek teach youth about the
importance of being active citizens if even he cannot find a way to work
with the central government? Clarifying one's values is highly personal;
how can a program with this agenda ever go large-scale? The tension for
Ashraf Patel lies in asking donors to help affluent Indian youth develop
leadership skills and social awareness. Why should backers support a
program that works with private elite schools and which cannot guarantee
that the teen-agers will act on their newfound sense of social responsibility?
-
Though there is no recipe to ensure that youth will make the connection
between social consciousness and action, the entrepreneurs use some common
tactics:
-
-
Bring students physically out of the classroom and into the community.
-
-
Using debates and discussion to clarify values.
-
-
Reducing the competitive air that students normally encounter in school.
-
-
Emphasizing the emotional power of personal convictions.
-
-
Helping young people see that their influence is much broader than they
may think. When one shows teen-agers how closely their actions are
connected to the world outside them, they tend to take themselves more
seriously and act responsibly.
-
-
Taking advantage of peer pressure, so that youths "on the fence" work in
groups where the initiative of their friends compels them to join in the
activities.
-
-
Taking advantage of the leadership position that teachers in schools
already enjoy.
-
-
Stressing the importance of facilitators. Though teachers play active
roles in each program, they inspire and motivate rather than merely
transmit knowledge.
-
-
Paying close attention to smoothing the many transitions in adolescents'
lives. The programs here help teen-agers make the leap from taking
responsibility for oneself to taking responsibility for one's society,
moving from high school to college, graduating from college and becoming a
professional, or visiting a rural site and seeing how it relates to one's
urban environment.
These three organizations have not yet stood the test of time; none is more
than five years old. More important, the young people who have passed
through the programs are still, indeed, young. Will they contribute to a
workforce that recognizes the social needs of all citizens and prizes the
act of giving to society through community service or civic participation?
With teachers as allies and institutional backing, these three social
entrepreneurs and others like them can expect greater and greater returns.
All of us – even the smug teen-agers in New Delhi and their literate
servants – will be lucky enough to share in the profits.
|
|
|
September 1998 Journal Home Page