I recently read a book on ancient Greek history, and the author asserted that in the early days literacy was used as a tool of oppression. I had to think about that for a few minutes. But it does make sense.
The early alphabet was used as an accounting system. Prose and poetry as we know them today did not exist in a written form. The only thing written were entries about who owed who how much, or what weight a specific load of grain was. It was all kept by officials to record financial transactions and, presumably, keep track of taxes.
The elites of a society received training in this financial record keeping system. If you knew the system, you had an edge over those you traded with. And if somebody had an edge, sooner or later they would take advantage of it in an unethical way. In essence, it was a way to oppress those who did not understand the system.
Later, the alphabet grew and the written word was used for laws, history, research…all the things we now sum up as knowledge. But again, only the elites of a society who had the time and opportunity to learn how to read and write could access this knowledge. There was no effort to train the rest of society on how to read because, from the elites perspective, there was no advantage in empowering them this way. So again, literacy could be used as a tool of oppression.
Obviously, all of that has changed.
Or has it? I began to wonder…what is the intellectual tool we have now that we use as oppression? Has literacy become standardized and widely accepted as something we all need, but some other intellectual tool been kept in reserve that we refuse to share? If in the ancient days the minimum requirement for functioning was the ability to speak the native language, has literacy become the new minimum, and anything beyond that withheld because it is a useful tool of oppression?
I ask the question because there is strong consensus that providing children in a developing country an education is a good thing. But the education seldom goes beyond the basics in reading, writing and math. Students graduate without the skills necessary to compete in a globalized workplace. Rarely do I see a computer science class or any kind of technology class. The arts are completely neglected. Philosophy, political science, and economics are usually ignored. Chemistry, biology, history, health, sociology, physics….almost non-existent in the curriculum.
Now, I’m not suggesting that there is a conspiracy of oppression to keep students in a developing country in this situation. But it does make me stop and ponder…are we becoming oppressors without even knowing it?
One time I was involved with a role playing game that focused on bias and prejudice. People were broken into teams, and each team was given different levels of authority and power within the games “society”. My fellow players were thoughtful, generous, and wanting to do the right thing. Thus the people who were given special advantages wanted to share those advantages with the team who did not have them. Their hearts wanted to make sure that the playing field was level. But….only to a point. If the team without the advantages began to win at the game, or began to excel beyond the other team, then those advantages were often taken away. It was a great lesson on how we treat the less priviliged in our society.
Are we doing the same, without knowing it, when we satisfy ourselves that we are providing the basics of education to a child in a developing country? Are we instinctively not going beyond that basic level because we want to make sure we can use our special gifts for our advantage?
This is one of the concerns that drove my vision for PathLight. All of us at PathLight want to give the students in Belize every advantage and to stretch them academically. We want to see rural kids with minimal opportunity become scholars, leaders, and agents of transformation in their communities. Yes, they get the basics of reading, writing and math. But we want them to learn much more than that. Education becomes more than just the mere delivery of basic content; it becomes an opportunity to explore, to think, to rationalize, and to fully develop our understanding of the world around us. For students in the PathLight program, it becomes an opportunity to see the world as God sees the world.
Idealistic? Absolutely. I have no delusions that such a goal is difficult in the best of situations. But almost any goal worth striving for is going to be idealistic. And while striving for that ideal, I can rest assured that those boys and girls in the PathLight program are not being intentionally or unintentionally oppressed in their educational pursuits.