Schooling the World

In order to learn about Indian culture,you can watch this documentary. When I watched this, I noticed that almost in all countries, state schools try to decide and change people's opinions. Sometimes, some parent want and allow what government do it.

There's something to be said for the point being made, that people should be more involved in what their charitable donations support. Of course education programs should be sensitive to the cultures of the countries that they are in.

However, this ridiculous hour long argument with a straw man from the white guilt overcompensation crew is just a straight up disservice to that cause. It almost totally ignores everything good about the myriad of achievements of western society. Just constant shots of L'Oreal billboards interspersed with poor kids that treats western culture like it's the great Satan. It's not the only way to do things, but to say that there is little merit in the education system that (for example) put people on the moon is just bad documentary making.

The reality, if you've ever traveled and taught in developing countries around the world, is that there is demand for a modern education. In fact, the mass rote learning that they display so much is something that you rarely see anymore in modern schooling systems in the developed world. It's ironically the foreigners overseas who are the most put off by the Orwellian rote learned techniques applied in those schools The problems are probably more of a product of poverty. A teacher to student ratio of 1:60 really limits the style of teaching you can employ. That (for example) would of been a really great angle to explore, or just the question "Hey, why do you send your kid there?" or "What would you change about the school that these foreigners made?" but they just had absolutely 0 interest in making this informative.

This documentary ironically taught it's viewers exactly the same way as the education system it sought to disparage. "This is how it is. This is the right way to think. That's it."

Humanity has a very long and sad history of forced cultural change dating back to the church delegations that roamed the New World in the 15th and 16th centuries who sought to "save" the so-called savages and pagans of the world by introducing them to Christianity. Erasing indigenous culture is not saving them. It is instead indoctrination. It is erasing their culture and belittling their contributions to the history of humanity. It is persecuting them for being different. Instead of support the people and coming to their need, such efforts burden them with other problems.

The documentary, in my opinion, aims to present a stark contrast between traditional and modern education. Traditional education, briefly, is described as a form of education that incorporates the skills, values, and language required to survive in one's own culture, whereas Modern education is manifested as a deviation from these aspects. With this, the documentary creates a platform to reveal the downside of Modern education and its impacts in Indian society (specifically Ladakh). The purpose comes across as an intent to spread awareness regarding the potential loss by altogether declining traditional and blindly adopting the modern ways of education.

Instead of focusing education around the world on Western values, such as the pursuit of money and climbing the corporate ladder, it should be focused on the local beliefs, culture, and economic background. Global education should not be the beliefs of one dominant country, as that limits our ways of thinking and solving problems. It is important for anyone who is going into education understands the issues brought up in this documentary. It was executed in an impressively artistic way. My views on education in developing countries completely twisted and expanded. This documentary provided insights on many Western educational flaws. "Those who are branded as failures have a wide variety of capacity to think in different ways, that's being suppressed and lost. While those who think in one-dimensional ways are being supported." This quote from the documentary says a lot about the flaws in our education system. If we educate the world with one single pedagogy, then how are we going to get anything done? How are we going to find new and innovative solutions?