OPINIONS
Wed 26 Jul 2023 10:02 am - Jerusalem Time
Good education is the way to liberation and emancipation from oppression
Civilization, scientific progress, and the well-being of people are measured by their educational educational system. The supreme role of education is to provide life, freedom, peace, achieve social justice for all, and create responsible citizens who benefit the society to which they belong, trained to defend the homeland and establish security and justice in it, and to enable them to live luxuriantly and aspire to a better life. better.
However, good education requires good governance, as it is necessary for sustainable social and economic development. Requiring certain competencies for lifelong learning. Skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and digital literacy represent an urgent and great necessity for those entering the labor market, whether local or global. However, most of the current Arab systems are unable to adequately educate students in these vital areas.
The prevailing education in our Arab countries reflects a deteriorating reality that does not achieve self-realization or the slightest ambition. Rather, it has become an issue of national security. Most of the problems of the educational system are due to the instability of policies in it. The philosophy and vision of the ruling regimes (dictatorship) are governed by their ideologies, and by repressive laws that are imposed on the educational system. Education, education is transformed into a part of the security system of the ruling regime, which aims to secure the security of the regime with a disciplined system and the upbringing of the submissive, submissive and oppressed citizen, so the educational institution is transformed into a coercive institution, robbed of rights and freedom, what takes the form of the political system itself, and what is meant by oppression are those standards and procedures , and the laws that shape people and adjust their nature, then put pressure on their minds so that they believe, for example, that poverty and social injustice are two natural facts that cannot be avoided in human existence, and this is only done when influence and power are with a few people, and the illusion is in the minds of everyone.
In order to increase the power of the influential person and to ensure his continuity and control over his weak people, the first thing he controls and is in his grip is an education decree that does not encourage thinking and analysis, in addition to the existence of gaps between theory and practice in the field of educational policy, so education suffers from many disturbances, as the systems have adopted education Traditionally, its method of indoctrination is to disable the latent energies of the learner, as schools develop study plans based on an imposed curriculum that requires each student to study according to a specific system, certain subjects that cannot be tampered with, and the student has no opinion, participation, or room to criticize or influence this system.
The policy and teaching of schools creates a student who hates the school and its academic subjects and is committed to a reprehensible commitment, and he has to retrieve what was deposited and not what was digested and analyzed, and after that comes the assessment of the specialized teacher, who in turn determines the student’s entitlement to success or failure, or classifies him as smart or has limited capabilities, and what will be His university specialization and what work he will work in later, which will frame his social classification and his intellectual and mental level under this system.
Brazilian thinker Paolo Febrere mentioned in his book "Educating the Oppressed" that education under these systems aims to adapt students to adapt to a world in which they are forced to obey its decisions without thinking or discussion. He called it Banking Education, in which the teacher deposits the information it contains. Courses that the system wants in the minds of learners, and the student is only a recipient of information and not a producer of it. The success of this science is measured by the efficiency of the teacher in filling in and the efficiency of the students in filling in.
This type of education is developed among the learners, called the “Culture of Silence”. Always need their administrators. Strict regimes that educate submission, as the (oppressive) ruler only sees in these groups that they are minorities and fragile, weak and worthless groups, and the issue of educating the (oppressed) people weakens the oppressor's view of himself. Therefore, their goals are achieved by making the education process a banking process, which enhances and increases their exploitation and domination over the oppressed groups. He needs his surrender and his will to change the bitter reality in which he lives. This guarantees the production of repeated templates of people that contribute to adaptation to the existing situation, and do not seek to change it, no matter how compelling it may be. This is evident in Freire's vision of education, where he considered education as a political process.
The education system in this case is under threat. It is unidirectional, even if it is of great quality. It educates and appoints recipient students. Their success or failure is based on their ability to adapt within the set standards system despite their intellectual differences. Hence we see that education cannot be Never a neutral process, the decision to educate the people is a political decision, and it has a political purpose, if it is indoctrination, then it entrenches oppression and subjugation, or a tool to change the status quo and create a more democratic and inclusive state that enables them to live in peace and prosperity if it is through the dialogue method.
Education is the way to liberation:
Therefore, there is an urgent need to reform education in order to make education a tool for change and an entry point for revolution, and a path to liberation by creating critical awareness. And instilling confidence in the hearts of the learners and teaching them hope, and this is done through the presence of the revolutionary teacher (educator) who has the ability to present the problems and issues a participant requested and is able to integrate them with real knowledge and skill so that the students (who are no longer submissive listeners) become researchers, critical participants in a dialogue with the teacher, and he By raising awareness using methods that develop thinking outside the box, due to his confidence in his students and their ability to change and create.
And their participation in exchanging information and benefiting from each other's experiences using the dialogic method based on solving problems and conducting discussion and dialogue away from memorization, indoctrination and traditional methods. This is a stage of struggle for the learner to obtain what he wants. The task of the teacher is to highlight life issues that make them feel their reality and the injustice practiced against them.
Encouraging them to acquire knowledge on their own. By turning them into actors in the educational process, and in this way, authoritarianism and intellectual tendency are overcome.
The essence of the educational reform that we want is manifested in the presence of emancipatory education that creates humanization and removes the veil from the eyes of the (oppressed) learners to see the reality as it is, so that they have the task of struggling to liberate themselves from dependence and reception, so it begins to liberate itself by itself, and when they liberate themselves, they can liberate others. It is a revolution in the field of education and the struggle for national progress, freedom and participation in development. There must be a struggle to eliminate corruption through education so that societies can obtain their rights.
The teacher is no longer just the person who teaches, but also the person who learns because of his dialogue with the students, who play their role in teaching at the time they learn. They become responsible for a process in which they grow and grow. And it enhances the confidence of each of them in himself because of his ability to perform his role creatively, and this will lead him to a free process in which he finds himself before he finds knowledge, and takes it out to the compulsive reality to liberate him, which is what Freire has demanded since he developed his theory on education.
In sum, the only tool in the process of liberation is that education is a tool for change and reform using dialogue. It requires love as well as humility, and trust between teachers and learners in what deals with their creative and critical ability. It is a common hope to know and comprehend the world and facts. Education is a process of social change and liberation and a path to freedom, which begins when the teacher asks himself about the issue that he will make a topic for dialogue with his students so that the material becomes the subject of treatment and dialogue in its formulation and construction between the teacher and the learner. Awareness and critical outlook are the keys to education, understanding the world, and changing it.
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Good education is the way to liberation and emancipation from oppression