Schooling The World, Documentary Film

by designs 7 Replies latest social current

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  designs

  Schooling The World. The film looks at Colonialism and its effects on Indigenous peoples and also looks at the Colonizers and their progeny.

  http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/schooling_the_world_2010/

  Do you know the people whose land you live on.

  The Payomkawichun people lived in the valleys I call home. The Spanish named them the Luiseno. They speak the Takic language, now only 30-40 speak their native tongue. Across the road in front of our home and a hike of less than a mile down into the raven below us is one of their ancient villages. The grinding stones, where acorns were ground for food, are still there.
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  LoveUniHateExams

  designs - that was quite an interesting, thought-provoking video. I'd like to make a few points, if I may. First, we must be careful not to make the mistake of conflating culture and race. People have no control over their race/ethnicity, neither can they change it (Michael Jackson excepted). Culture can be changed and improved so it must not be considered sacred. This would give it undue protection from criticism. Second, whenever you see me on other threads posting about how great Western culture is, it doesn't mean that I view all other cultures as worthless. The cultures of aboriginal peoples must have something right for those peoples to survive for millennia. I read a while ago about a tribe from the Andaman Islands who've decided to completely reject the Western World and carry on as hunter/gatherers. Good for them - I wish them all the best. The only issue I would take is the view promoted by the sandal-wearing, fairtrade coffee-sipping Western professors in the video that other forms of education are equal to Western higher education. Sorry, don't know what happened to the font. F**king ridiculous
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  LoveUniHateExams

  Sorry about my last post - I did use paragraphs but I don't know what the f**k happened when I submitted it. Just another thought: the blonde/grey haired madwoman said 'Western aid creates poverty'. She has failed to consider the responsibility of 3rd World politicians to spend Western aid on what it was intended for.
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  designs

  We live in an area where some 26 Tribes once lived. Some 6-8 of the Tribes have worked deals with investors and developed Casinos while others have kept their Reservations for housing and farming.

  When my son was young I would take him and his buddies from the Kingdom Hall camping on the La Jolla and Cuyamaca Reservations. I built some Off-Grid solar systems on homes on the Rincon Reservation. Many there have never wanted to be connected to the Utlity company. Old meets new.

  I hope the Tribal Leaders retain the knowledge of their history and pass it on to the young, it could all be lost in a single generation. Children from the Pala Reservation were bussed in to our Schools in town. I wondered what they thought of the version of American history they were reading in the textbooks.
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  LoveUniHateExams

  I hope the Tribal Leaders retain the knowledge of their history and pass it on to the young - I hope so, too. Do they teach the history and culture of First Nations people in schools in the area so that outsiders can know more about them?
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  designs

  No the School District uses the State approved ciricullum and textbooks.
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  fulltimestudent

  Is it ever different with the west?

  

  This cartoon is from the Detroit Free Press circa 1900, is an ironic comment on Rudyard Kipling's White Supremacist poem, The White Man's Burden. The cartoonist had a problem though, he had (apparently) never seen a Filipino, so portrayed one as a sort of African. Roosevelt's excuse for the invasion, and the nasty war that followed, was that the Filipinos needed to be taught how to live like white men. In the verse Kipling licks Roosevelt's rear parts:

  Take up the White Man's burden--
  Send forth the best ye breed--
  Go bind your sons to exile
  To serve your captives' need;
  To wait in heavy harness,
  On fluttered folk and wild--
  Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
  Half-devil and half-child.

  The poem was written to support Theodore Roosevelt's attempts (which have succeeded) to build an American Empire, which these cartoonistssaw clearly.

  

  

  In the Philippines war, the American army used the same tactics that they had used in their Indian wars - Exterminate, Exterminate.

  The result was however, quite different to what Roosevelt thought he would get, as the USA's attempt to control Asia led eventually to the Communist victory in China in 1949, despite the USA's support for Jiang Jiesi (Chiang Kaishek), in fact the USA has not won a war in Asia since the WW2 victory in 1945.
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  fulltimestudent

  By chance, I spent some time this past semester, looking at 19th century Ladakh a border region of Tibet under British control, as a contrast to the eastern border regions which had been incorporated into the Chinese province of Sichuan for a considerable time.

  I find the presentation (in the film) of Tibetan people in Ladakh interesting (starts about 4:50). We are not told (or, at least, I did not 'see' it) who the group of women discussing modern education are. They are however, well-dressed, so I can imagine them as members of an elite group, which could be an older aristocracy. We can be reasonably sure that most people in ethnic Tibetan lands did not dress well, likely only having the clothes they wore. And they may well talk of how good it was when everyone lived by Buddhist principles. But investigation does not show that such a state ever existed.

  I believe that there is a lot wrong with the concept of modernity, but I do not have an answer as to how whatever is wrong can be fixed (a rightly vague comment) simply because I cannot describe perfection. (been there, attempted that).

  So yeah! I finish up in the same place as Love Uni Hate Exams.

  The only issue I would take is the view promoted by the sandal-wearing, fairtrade coffee-sipping Western professors in the video that other forms of education are equal to Western higher education.

  Western Higher education has things wrong also, but there is no consensus as to what is wrong, or how to fix it.