The Professional Mentality

From a string of recent, excellent articles from The Atlantic, a line from "Gods Surgeons in Africa," discussing the training and equipping of surgeons in Sub Saharan Africa, and the immediate connection to the areas of all civil servants, and the strong cross-disciplinary connections to incentives, both on the surface level, and their deeper, psychological connotations:

""The professional mentality that you and I talk about is a luxury that exists only if you have enough money to allow people to dedicate themselves to certain things and certain principles."

Pritchett, Scott, and Bureaucratic Reality

From Lant Pritchett's "The Illusion of Equality: The Educational Consequences of Blindingly Weak States," a parallel to the reality of bureaucratic function here in West Africa:
What Scott terms "bureaucratic high modernism," according to Pritchett, "...blinds the state to the many observable social characteristics on which localized social processes had historically depended...to produce equal treatment of all citizens by the state's bureaucratic apparatus." I would add that in the reality of bureaucratic function, or nonfunction, the equal treatment so referred to is, in fact, a collective inability create and administer administrative outputs for these mentioned citizens. The differing organizational structures that have been implemented in the developing world, I would argue, are in fact the very "zombie" apparati that Pritchett, himself, earlier references. Organizational structures actively dissolving incentives for outputs through completely regimented, top-down decision making, restricted to those at the very top of the hierarchal bureaucratic pyramids. The end result: structures with no inherent meaning other than to mimic the functions in the Western world; function without actual output. 

Education as Liberation

Education as Liberation? 

The powerfully liberating effects of education have been well-documented by progressive educationalists over the years. Education, "As the practice of freedom," has encouraged participatory, progressive thinking, modeled around a foundation of collective critical analysis. However, we must be prepared, as progressive educationalists, to accept altering views of liberation, as our concepts, just as with our pedagogy, itself, are not necessarily grounded in the realities of our students' lives. 

In a recent working paper by Kremer, Friedman, Miguel, and Thornton (2011), the authors discovered that in Kenya, increased educational opportunities, and their related improvements in human capital (Schultz, 1961), does not necessarily translate into  "developmentally positive" outcomes, such as increased democratic participation and female empowerment, as expected, theorized, and modeled for decades. The trials held in Kenya were shown to increase political awareness of the young women, and decrease their propensity for early marriage and acceptance of domestic violence. As the authors concede, "…in our Kenyan context, this rejection of the status quo did not translate into greater political efficacy, community participation or voting intentions. Instead, the program increased the perceived legitimacy of political violence (1)." 

This unexpected outcome shatters the idealized image of education as necessarily leading to the "freedom" that we would expect; instead, the definition of "freedom" itself is subject to the same participatory reflection and pressures in ethnically divided societies with weak governing institutions. 

Thus, how to reconcile the popular drive towards critically reflective educational systems, which act to empower both educators and students in critically resource-deficient regions of the world, and the unintended consequences of critical reflection. Is it the role of a third party/outsider/expert group to make judgments on the outcomes of critical education in specific contexts that are not our own? Education empowers at the individual level; this is the great promise, but also the critical factor that undermines national, uniform standardization. 

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/kremer/files/GSP-tracking-politics_2011-04-04-CLEAN.pdf 

The Path Through the Fields

An important article in this week's Economist on poverty alleviation and social development in Bangladesh, "The Path Through the Fields," (http://tinyurl.com/azttbnl) which has debunked some of the common myths of developmental economics, such as the primary fallacy that growth brings poverty alleviation (since disproved by such economists as Pranab Bardhan, who has shown that in India and China, most poverty alleviation occurred, in fact, not as a result of increased economic opening, but in fact, as a result of agricultural policy changes and other social factors). We must examine the analysis through an enlightened lens, that of social development over economic development, that of understanding the myth of economic growth as the end all for development, that of understanding the role of a functioning government as a mechanism for redistribution, not for wealth creation for the entrenched few.
What Bangladesh has, indeed, shown, is that poverty alleviation can occur with strong grassroots institutions, with the crucial role of a bold and innovative civil society, and with a focus on women's empowerment and women's advancement playing a fundamentally key role.

A fundamental question that I have raised previously that goes unanswered, however, is just how important the makeup of these civil society organizations is, and how this makeup effects their role in a country's transformation. 

South Asia is home to the largest, best organized, and most progressive indigenous NGO's on the planet, which have pioneered the route of social development for millions. Organizations such as Pratham in India and BRAC and Grameen in Bangladesh have developed incredible breadth and depth, and have acted as true agents of change for their nations. My question is: why have the majority of African nations  NOT developed their own transformative"super-NGO's," and what is the connection between host country ownership/development of NGO's and their actual, on-the-ground effectiveness? 

Slowness

Slowness, listlessness, so easy to get trapped into the quicksand of time, stepping outside, sitting, waiting, listening, open.....

"The end of suffering is achievable...through the unconditional freedom of the enlightened mind."
-Mark Epstein

The Pedagogy of Human Development

"Critical Internalization"

If people are being asked to change, if change is suggested as the superior option to one's current standing, and regardless of the positive developmental virtue/value of this change, a mindset needs to shift, a certain critical reflection and self-actualization must be implemented to determine the value of this change in personal, individualized life circumstances. No circumstance is alike.  This is the central, frustrating, indomitable tenant of all developmental economics. Thus, for all of the planning, for all of the technology, the ideas, the meeting, the finance, the "last yard" of developmental planning is always the hardest, and the most prone to oversight due to its complexity and individualized nature. Critical internalization is this last, fundamental step.
Critical internalization, though daunting, is not complex; it is amazingly simple, yet impossible to model, and impossible to clone. It is not costly; the sums demanded are only for the necessary human capital which foments viable human response. Critical internalization is not contingent upon fungible goods, depreciating and falling into disrepair, disuse, as currently litters so much of the developing world. Great intentions, poor connections. It is dependent upon only machinations of the human mind; virtue, value, judgement, reflection, and finally/ultimately, acceptance, rejection, modification.
How can we standardize developmental linkages to the individual, how can we measure the internalization of change, how can we observe individualized judgements?

Poverty and Power

The basic tenant of poverty is a lack of power.  A lack of power, of control, over the external circumstances of one's life. This lack of power is systemic, not individual, in nature. To gain power
is to lose poverty; to lose power is to become deeper entrenched into the physical and mental depravities that plague so many in the world. First, we need to define "depravity;" in this context, I refer
to a simple lack of comfort. Comfort as human development, if you will. This simple definition can be extended to all walks of life, and forms the cornerstone for greed and lust for power and control. We, as human beings, simply want comfort, and wish to avoid pain and unpleasantness. This is the human condition. This is also the situation that plagues so many of the systems designed to help alleviate the powerless conditions in the developing world. Once people get comfort, they are loath to give it up; our thirst for comfort becomes paramount, and clouds our judgements, our duties, and our capabilities to truly perform altruistic work. Only those few, who have done the near-impossible, and have overcome the addiction to comfort, have had the power to lead-by-example and truly influence change for the powerless. The list of these people is extremely short; the normal suspects, Mahatma Gandi, Mother Theresa, His Holiness The Dalai Lama; those who have transformed their own addiction to comfort, and have succeeded in breaking down the walls that the comfort divide builds between the powerful and the powerless. So much of our thirst for comfort, which controls out motivations and actions, also depletes the resources intended for the powerless. Again, this can be seen in the macro-level, through environmental resource depletion and trade barriers, down to the micro, individual level, as NGO workers power around town in air conditioned, new SUV's, basking in comfort that the powerless can not even imagine.
Power and comfort are intoxicating; this is the drug of inequality.


“Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects which must be saved from a burning building; it is to lead them into the populist pitfall and transform them into masses which can be manipulated.”"
-Paolo Freire

A Break and Some Reflections from Senegal

I have been away from this space for quite some time, moving, traveling, exploring, experiencing, but being unable to consolidate these experiences with the written word. There are certain times in life where experiences lend themselves to sharing, and certain times in life when a more nuanced, introspective tone dominates. It is not that thoughts, tribulations, pleasantries and discontent are not stirring the soul; but rather, that these movements are meant to only be contained within.

Some thoughts on current ideas and projects here in Senegal, Saint-Louis, where I will be posted for some time as an educational fellow.....


The Power and Dominance of Language

We commonly cite language as a developmental tool, a forger of opportunity, a bridger of wealth divides. For so many in the developing world, the great impetus for English language development is the chance, the opportunity for self-betterment, an individualized incentive that is perhaps the most powerful of all. 
However, we must be aware of the power of language as a tool for domination, as well. 

Bell Hooks notes, "Standard English is not the speech of exile. It is the language of conquest and dominance...it is the mask that hides the loss of so many tongues, all those sounds of diverse, native communities we will never hear."    -Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

Wade Davis further notes, "Language is not just vocabulary and grammar. It’s the flash of human spirit, it’s the vehicle by which the soul of a culture comes into the world. Every language is an old growth forest of the mind, a sort of watershed of thought, an ecosystem of possibilities.”

How can we measure progress from a stance of inherent domination? How can we assure that our efforts for development are not masked attempts at cultural colonization? How can we assure that language and education is, in fact, a liberating tool of self-actualization, a tool of freedom, and not a binding contraint, a cultural prison cell?

The Pedagogy of the Oppressed....

Re-reading Freire's historical account of learning, of critical thinking, of awareness, and the power of education to create reflection and true development....the words are so dense, yet there are  a few that truly stand out.....

“It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained…the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness.” –Hegel

“The radical, committed to human liberation, does not become the prisoner of a ‘circle of certainty’ within which reality is also imprisoned. On the contrary, the more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can better transform it. “ 

“It is a rare peasant who, once ‘promoted’ to overseer, does not become more of a tyrant towards his former comrades than the owner himself. This is because the context of the peasant’s situation, that is, oppression, remains unchanged.”

“A real humanist can be identified more by his trust in the people, which engages him in their struggle, than by a thousand actions in their favor without that trust.”

“Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects which must be saved from a burning building; it is to lead them into the populist pitfall and transform them into masses which can be manipulated.”

“Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, and with each other…In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing.”

“The banking approach to education, for example, will never propose to students that they critically consider reality. It will deal instead with such vital questions as whether Roger gave green grass to the goat, and insist upon the important of learning that, on the contrary, floger gave green grass to the rabbit.”

“Students, as they are increasingly posed with problems relating to themselves in the world and with the world, will feel increasingly challenged ad obliged to respond to that challenge. Because they apprehend the challenge as interrelated to other problems within a total context, not as a theoretical question, the resulting comprehension tends to be increasingly critical and thus constantly less alienated. Their response to the challenge invokes new challenges, followed by new understandings; and gradually the students come to regard themselves as committed.”

Uganda Reflections

Day 3 Education…Reflections

The disillusionment of working within the confines of a corrupted macro-level climate is palpable when speaking with local and, more-so, international NGO’s. What, then, I always ask, is the answer for the students, the most vulnerable citizens who lack political voice (primary and secondary level students), when changing the governmental-level inclusive/extractive political institutions is a long term project? What is the role of outside organizations? To give voice, to raise the level of collective action of the marginalized, and to lower the opportunity cost for these citizens in doing so. Keefer’s “voice surrogates” is a fitting term; how, then, do we act as surrogates within the confines of disillusionment? Is there a role for micro-level debate?

Disagreement with published figures, according to figures I interviewed yesterday, have meant that the literacy rate in this nation for students has actually decreased 10% in the last year (inflated initial figures, to appease international donors, are the culprit). Who is to blame for this preverbal dog and pony show? One thing that we can surmise, for sure, is that basic education is, indeed, a heavily politicized issue in the developing world;  and this politicization is an active engagement; and those who actively partake in the politicization of education have no interest in education, itself; it is merely a power struggle, and the issue at hand is inconsequential to those involved.

“…there are many who share our basic premise-that it is possible to make very significant progress against the biggest problems in the world through the accumulation of a set of small steps, each well thought out, carefully tested, and judiciously implemented.” Banerjee/Duflo, Poor Economics

“In Africa, for the first time, I got a glimpse of the sort of pattern my life would take...that it would be dominated by writing and solitariness and risk...I learned what many others have discovered before me, that Africa for all its perils represented wilderness and possibility...School teaching was perfect for understanding how people lived and what they wanted for themselves. I never wanted to be a tourist. I wished to be far away, as remote as possible, among people I could talk to.”
-Paul Theroux

Yet another adventure beckons. An entire year passed in the blink of an eye. I sit and reflect on the moments, which have faded into a fondness, a nostalgia, a hankering for more; yet, we cannot accumulate experiences, only have them; only understand their transience, appreciate their beauty, and then, let them go. 

I will be moving to Senegal in September for what promises to be yet another interesting chapter in this mosaic quilt of a life that I have been weaving over these years. Back to teaching, back to the engagement with students, the critical reflection, the exhausting, demanding beauty of facilitating knowledge, not for oneself, but for others, a striving for selflessness. 

But first, 6 weeks in Uganda, traveling, writing, photographing, living, breathing, experiencing. People ask, "why are you going?" and the answer I give never quite matches what is moving in my heart..."Life." 

Educational Diagnostics

     What is needed to progress the aims of primary and secondary school education in the developing world is an anthropological approach, complete with the same expert intervention, analysis and diagnostics that have been recommended for programs in the health field, as well as with macro-level economic policy.
     The tools currently exist to improve schooling outcomes; what is needed now is diagnostics to see where exactly the stumbling points lie (as these are extremely context specific), which needs to be undertaken through a participative, anthropological, diagnostic approach. Innovation has been occurring in this area, through the proliferation of educational randomized control trials; however, these trials are not firmly embedded and do not become entrenched or scales once completed. Shining the light is very important; actually implementing change, scaling change, and sustaining change is another matter all together.
     Change is possible. As Banerjee and Duflo state in their masterpiece, "Poor Economics," "...concrete, measurable programs can be implemented to improve the lives of the poor, even in areas with poor institutions."

The Moral Limit of Markets

“This issue goes to the heart of fairness in our country. There has been much discussion recently about economic inequality, but almost no conversation about the way the spread of markets nurtures a broader, systemic inequality."-Michael Sandel, The Moral Limit of Markets, 2012

 

     The issue of fairness, of social justice, of equitable redistribution, the core rationales for modern,  liberal societies has been percolating in my mind; as I ride through West London on my way to tutor, the numbers of Ferraris and Lamborghinis is startling both in their excess and their symbolism in this great bastion of free market liberalization. And thus, the issue that Sandel brings to public light, of fairness. Is is fair that some should be driving $250,000 cars, when there are plenty of $20,000 cars which are perfectly capable of performing the same function, and people starving to death in other nations, and multitudes of homeless and destitute in this same city? What is the appropriate balance of free markets, governmental restrictions on personal liberties, private property rights, and moral excess? 

     Economic inequality is a fundamental feature of liberal economies. However, the gap continues to widen; and as this gap continues to widen, and societies are increasingly polarized, we must ask as a society, as a modern experiment in social relations, what kind of world is it that we wish to live in? What is fair? What is responsible? What is just? What is fairness in both the eyes of the rich and the poor (as well as the middle)? What is the point of excess, and what is the redistribution that must be enacted, at this point, to further our aims of basic social justice and equity? 

      How can this market economy, with its excesses, be legitimized in the eyes of the masses? As Dani Rodrik asks, how can a functioning market economy be "...compatible with social stability and cohesion?" 

 Nick Kristof, commenting on Sandel's work, concludes succinctly, “Market fundamentalism,” to use the term popularized by George Soros, is gaining ground. It’s related to the glorification of wealth over the last couple of decades, to the celebration of opulence, and to the emergence of a new aristocracy. Market fundamentalists assume a measure of social Darwinism and accept that laissez-faire is always optimal. "

The Limitations of Participation

The Limitations of Participation: What Else Needs Consideration? 




In being a proponent of a particular ideology, it is vital to understand the negative ramifications of overtly positive thrusts in development. Thus, a fantastic critique of participatory design that I have encountered before, but not so succinctly.....the dangers of local "duplicitous agendas." which was also highlighted in Banerjee et all's "Can information campaigns spark local participation and improve outcomes"(2006), in which localized participatory integration was neither effective nor truly egalitarian in nature; in dealing with human beings, at the local level, we must also understand the negatives of human/power relations that are intrinsic to us all, regardless of socioeconomic development,  and not look at the poor as simple, innocent recipients of our developmental agendas. Vogt and Clemons explain:


"On the other hand, what Chambers' (1994) failed to anticipate was Kapoor's (2002) concerns that "local controls" may not be without their own duplicitous agendas. Arguably, village politics often mimic the gross inequalities at the global level. Therefore, as researchers and practitioners, if we accept that globalization combined with decentralization of nonformal education introduces a complex phenomena, we must further agree that site specific research must be dependent upon localized social and political contexts of reform as much as on specific national or global directives (Crook & Manor, 1998)."
- Vogt and Clemons, 2004

Global Education Program?

"Harvard Offers New Global Health Program"

-Today's New York Times (5.14.12): a fascinating article on the scale and scope of rural health care delivery in Rwanda; "...the country provides health care and insurance to more than 90% of its population, inspiring medical leaders from across the globe to visit the African country to study its transformation." 
The new program at Harvard, which analyzes public health through this local context, "...is one of the first that focuses exclusively on the challenge of delivering health care. It encourages students to think about politics, economics, and other social factors effect health....

Thus, putting great minds together, both in Rwanda and in the academic world, to highlight local innovations, local solutions, and the causation to these local realities.  My question, of course, is why is this not being done in education, and how can we implement this same mode of thought into educational development?

Resource scarce environments demand a delicate level of social understanding and analysis/diagnosis into service delivery blockages in basic education, just as health services; however, in education, quality and efficiency is taken as a given; enrollment rates, instead of educational outcomes, the yardstick. What would the analysis reveal if health centers were judged on their intake of patients, alone, and no attention was paid to mortality rates or levels of care they were receiving once in the clinic? This is exactly what is occurring with most of the world's educational systems.  And this is the mindset that needs to be changed, through innovative, diagnostic, local projects such as this new Global Health Program.

Chambers on Participation

Absolutism in the Song Dynasty, leading to a critical lack of decentralized creative destruction and absolutist control, perpetuating macro-scale decline...the summation of the last chapter of Why Nations Fail. While absolutely fascinating for a student of development theory, and certainly encompassing the rigor and depth of extraordinary insight, there is something fundamental lacking in this tome, as well as in so many others: the people. Where are the stories of the lives of the people, the poor, the disenfranchised, those affected by these macro-scale struggles? We only hear the stories of the rulers, of the kings, of the absolutist leaders and of the pioneers; what about the lives of those held in sway, those struggling to survive, failing to survive?
I come back often to the words of Robert Chambers, to ground the theory in reality; it can be difficult to incorporate the incredible depths of knowledge, the specializations, with the situations that simple people survive in every day, untouched by this maddening institution that is developmental academia. And most lives in the developing world will continue to never be touched by our PHD's, our scholarly articles, our governance projects and our World Bank partnership deals; the creme is skimmed off of the top, and all those below will never even know of its sweet existence.
What of the lives of the "others?"

I comes back to the words of Chambers (1995: "Whose Reality Counts?")

One may speculate on what topics the poor and powerless would commission papers if they could convene conferences and summits: perhaps on greed, hypocrisy and exploitation. But the poor are powerless and cannot and do not convene summits; and those papers are rarely written. It is not surprising: we do not like to examine ourselves. To salve our consciences we rationalize. Neo-liberalism paints greed as inadvertent altruism. The objects of development are, anyway, the poor, not us. It is they who are the problem, not us. We are the solution. So we hold the spotlight to them (from a safe distance). The poor have no spotlight to hold to us.

But poverty and deprivation are functions of polarization, of power and powerlessness. Any practical analysis has to examine the whole system: - “us”, the powerful as well as “them” the powerless. Since we have more power to act, it is hard to evade the imperative to turn the spotlight round and look at ourselves. ..

Our views of the realities of the poor, and of what should be done, are constructed mainly from a distance, and can be seen to be constructed mainly for our convenience. We embody those views in the words and concepts which we use.

Why Nations Fail on Sachs

Having spent a good deal of time in the last few years following the work of Jeffrey Sachs, and his theoretical arguments that poor geography is the chief determining factor for poverty (and, inversely, if we tackle the geographic limitations, such as disease and land productivity burdens, we can eradicate poverty), it has been interesting to see his research dismantled by the duo, Acemoglu and Robinson, in Why Nations Fail:

" Tropical diseases obviously cause much suffering and high rates of infant mortality in Africa, but they are not the reason that Africa is poor. Disease is largely a consequence of poverty and of governments being unable to undertake the public health measures necessary to eradicate them."
Certainly a valid point, yet, the authors do not fully address the issue of poverty traps, a central theory in Sachs' work. And although I do agree with Acemoglu and Robinson on this point (something about Singapore being malaria-free while remaining in the tropics raised an initial red flag in my mind), they do not address the practical steps that need to be taken to address the current state of affairs in many of these nations. If nations are stuck in cycles of poverty and disease and incapacity in handling public health measures, how do we create the inclusive economic and political structures needed to then address the institutional change necessary for country-wide shifts? 

Why Nations Fail

I am currently reading the excellent new book, "Why Nations Fail," by Acemoglu and Robinson. First introduced to this trio earlier in the year with their colonial/settler theories on development (extractive colonies vs. inclusive colonies as being the key predeterminant for future economic success), this book has been impressing at every step with its clarity and purpose....

A comment, on their views on failing educational systems:
"The low education level of poor countries is caused by economic institutions that fail to create incentives for parents to educate their children, and by political institutions that fail to induce the government to build, finance, and support schools and the wishes of parents and children." 

While I agree that inclusive economic institutions are vital to a nation's (and individuals) prosperity, schooling incentives can often be decoupled from the reality of the immediate economic climate, or better yet, inverse to the broader economic climate; desperation or struggle  in one's current situation will lead to an increased hope in the power of education as a "savior" for the next generation, a though and wish echoed constantly in the developing world.
The "incentives" for schooling, thus, often fall under the familial desire for the next generation to prosper, and an often misguided hope in the individual economic rewards that can be reaped by sending children to school (see: Poor Economics). Thus, I would argue, the above proposition regarding economic institutions (though I agree with the political institutions necessity) is much too broad and general to render valid, in the area of education, as proposed.

A Moment of Hope, Dashed.

"Robert Mugabe battling for his life in a Singaporean hospital..." The news wires rang out yesterday morning here in London, the second bout of hopeful (for the citizens of Southern Africa) news to come out of the region in a week (the first being the demise of the Malawian Autocrat, President Bingu wa Mutharika). 


I do not celebrate the demise of other human beings, (being a humanist), but when individual's actions have enormously devastating repercussions for other human beings, and when these individuals become entrenched into power through their own subversion of institutions, then often, death is the only release. 
What we witnessed in Malawi this week was political institutions, in the wake of the death of the President, wobbling and shaking, but not crumbling; an ultimate test for political stability and openness in a desperately poor nation. However, in a nation such as Zimbabwe, equally ransacked economically and politically, this ransacking has been so much more complete in nature, that the hopes of a legal transition, a constitutional transition after the death of Mugabe seems extremely unlikely. Just as in Malawi, where the President's brother was set to step in, unconstitutionally, in the power vacuum, it seems predetermined that Mugabe's feared security chief will be the next in line to hold the reins of power in Zimbabwe. Thus, if legitimate political transition is to be seen as almost impossible in the political climate of Zimbabwe, what is the other option? I would argue, in this case, rebellion, awakening, a Zimbabwean Spring, is the only answer, the only hope. 
As Mugabe walked off the gleaming white private jet back into a nation that he has ruled as a vampire for the last 30 years, a breathe of hope vanished. When will it return?