My study of Kiswahili has provided me with an “aha” moment.
Among the things I have used in my in my scholarship on teaching and learning has been the metaphor of wayfarer. The work of Tim Ingold, a British anthropologist, has been especially important in this regard.
The wayfarer has no final destination: “Wherever he is, and so long as life goes on, there is somewhere further he can go” (Ingold, 2007, p. 77). Ingold (2007) distinguishes the navigation associated with wayfaring from transport, an activity that is destination-oriented. As it relates most especially to transport, navigating concerns carrying people and goods across from one place to the next in such a way that they remain unaffected. With transport every destination is a terminus, a point of re-entry after having been temporarily “exiled” while in transit from the last port. For the wayfarer on the other hand, the journey is the end as well as the means: Wayfaring is a development along a way. It is not that wayfarers never use the efficient means of travel associated with transportation but that they never allow their perception of the environment to be decoupled from their traveling through it. The wayfarer, “watches, listens, and feels” while proceeding through everyday life, with his or her “entire being alert to the countless cues that, at every moment, prompt the slightest adjustments” in his or her position relative to the surroundings” (p. 78).
The difference between these two ways of proceeding through the world has to do in large part with the traveler’s bond with the moment-to-moment perception of the world as it unfolds. The wayfarer actively engages the emergent world that reveals itself along the path, monitoring it for what might be useful. Transport dismisses the skills of the wayfarer, relying instead on fixed points within a system of coordinates and the instrumental calculus of point-to-point navigation; in its concern for destination, transport pays little attention to the path as it relates to the unfolding world.
One of Ingold’s points is that the travel between destinations is judged as secondary, being on the way is really being on the way to somewhere and is itself a kind of being nowhere.
(If you’re wondering what wayfaring has to do with teaching and learning, you might enjoy reading this piece I wrote for Catholic principals and teachers.)
Let me explain how this relates to my current study of Kiswahili. Nouns concerning place can take on prepositional form. So, for instance, nyumba (house) becomes nyumbani (at the house, in the house, around the house, etc.), and mji (town) becomes mjini (in the city), etc. Now here is where it gets interesting for me: Guess what happens to the word for trip – the best-known Kiswahili word in English, I’m betting – safari? It becomes safarini. Travel is not a sort of time out between places; it is considered in and of itself a sort of place.
An aha, yes; but it has led to all sorts of new questions – a lot to think about when I need a break from studying yet another infix: the relative clause.
This is cool stuff. Consider the clause “the clothes that I will wear”: Nguo nitakazozivaa…
nguo = clothes
ni = I
taka = will
zo =relative
zi = object
vaa = verb stem: wear
So: “the clothes that I will wear” is accomplished with two words in Kiswahili (but one of those words has seven syllables! – no dipthongs in Kiswahili, so the “aa” at the end counts as two syllables).
And here’s another: Fimbo aliyoichukua kiongozi inafaa sana
fimbo = stick
a = subject prefix for animate 3rd person singular
li = past tense infix
yo = relative
i = object
chukua: verb stem: carry
kiongozi: leader, guide
i = subject prefix agreeing with “fimbo”
na = present tense infix
faa = verb stem: to be suitable
sana = adverb: very
Thus: The stick that the leader carried is very suitable. (Notice that the subject of the sentence – kiongozi – actually follows the verb in this sentence.)
Pretty amazing stuff. Of course, one can be both amazed and struggling to learn to actually use these constructions at the same time. (Oh, one = I!)
So now – at least in my head – I can return to where I began: If there’s no direct causal relationship between education and development, why start a school in a developing country to help its development?
Why? Because we’re not starting a school founded on the progressivist myth. Instead, we’re starting a school founded on a commitment to faith and justice. Let me explain – and I’ll return to N.T. Wright in a moment to help me to do so.
I mentioned above that the progressivist myth has a hard time dealing with the reality of sin. What if a school’s aim was not to churn out folks to be used as objects for progress but instead had as its aim the formation of virtuous people who are knowledgeable about the world they live in, capable of analyzing situations, and ready to address the needs of society as they encounter them? And, again echoing what I wrote in the earlier post, what if its other equally important goal was to form men and women to behold God’s grace?
I don’t think these two goals can be separated. We Jesuits talk a lot about the service of faith and the promotion of justice; usually – to be honest – we talk around them. (I’m mostly talking about myself in this regard, but only mostly because I know how much we struggled at Loyola Marymount University to clearly articulate the relationship between the two in ways that were meaningful.)
A passage from Wright has helped me clarify the relationship between them. Wright writes about idolatry and its social implications (again, I don’t have the exact page reference – shame on me for not taking better notes):
When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what’s more, you reflect what you worship not only to the object itself but also outward to the world around. Those who worship money increasingly define themselves in terms of it and increasingly treat other people as creditors, debtors, partners, or customers rather than as human beings. Those who worship sex define themselves in terms of it (their preferences, their practices, their past histories) and increasingly treat other people as actual or potential sex objects. Those who worship power define themselves in terms of it and treat other people as either collaborators, competitors, or pawns. These and many other forms of idolatry combine in a thousand ways, all of them damaging to the image-bearing quality of the people concerned and of those whose lives they touch.
Issues of morality and justice cannot be disentangled from issues of faith; or to put it slightly differently, a commitment to justice is a commitment against idolatry, a commitment to the worship of the one true God (or in still another way: orthopraxis and orthodoxy implicate one another – involve one another in a necessary way). (And unless Jesuit institutions are willing to speak of faith in terms other than the comfortable, therapeutic ones designed and defined for our use by late modern industrial society, any attempt to describe the relationship between faith and justice in any meaningful way will continue to elude them.)
It is no secret that corruption is a huge issue in here Africa. This rampant corruption has deleterious effects on development. President Obama spoke about it during his visit; the pope spoke about it during his visit; the African bishops spoke about it during the recent synod in Rome, and I read about it every day in the newspapers here. Corruption is the result of a sort of idolatry that combines the worship of power, riches, and glory with an attitude of invincibility. (I might add here that the colonizers were certainly not paragons of virtue in this regard! They held sway over the colonized oftentimes in the most ruthless ways, enriched themselves to the detriment of native populations, and “collected” territories as signs of national prestige.) The formation at OLQP of virtuous citizens concerned about the common good rather than their influence on people and processes, their own wealth, and their own fame will help a great deal in the development of this country and this continent, I am certain.
A final, related quotation from Wright in this regard (this time with a page citation!):
We have traditionally thought of knowing in terms of subject and object and have struggled to attain objectivity by detaching our subjectivity. It can’t be done, and one of the achievements of postmodernity is to demonstrate that. What we are called to, and what in the resurrection we are equipped for, is a knowing in which we are involved as subjects but as self-giving, not as self-seeking subjects: in other words, a knowing that is a form of love. (p. 239)
(As one kind elderly lady at Our Lady Gate of Heaven [“The Gate,” as it was called] in Detroit used to remind me when I went too long in my preaching, “Bring it home, Father.”)
So…
The Society of Jesus is not starting a school in Dodoma to hasten the way to development as popularly conceived. We are starting a school with a very particular purpose in mind, to form young men and women “to learn, to love, to serve” (the school’s motto) – for the improvement of their own condition, yes, but also for the welfare of others and the common good of all to the greater glory of God. This approach has been tried (though not so frequently since the modern era, really); and I think this way is true.
(29 September 2009. The Internet hasn’t worked in over twenty-four hours, so I don’t know when it will be that this will get posted.)
In my last post, I mentioned that folks shouldn’t fall into the progressivist fallacy that there is a necessary causal relationship between formal education and development. That is, it’s pretty clear that formal education does not necessarilycause economic development, contrary to popular believe. It doesn’t necessarily even contribute to it. It can contribute to it, but not necessarily so.
[Barbara Rogoff in her study of cognitive development, Apprenticeship in Thinking: Development in Social Context, writes the following about this issue:
It is easy for middle-class American and European researchers to focus on skills that are important in our own daily lives and in our community no only because as humans we all tend to be ethnocentric, but also because in many other nations, skills such as literacy (and the arbitrary skills associated with a particular form of literacy and schooling) are adopted as national priorities in the attempt to change the countries’ economic position. Researchers’ judgments of the importance of literate (or other technological) skills for intellectual development can be misled by the worldwide export of these tools to other nations…and by attempts to convert their inhabitants to a Euroamerican view of the natural world and literate ways of thinking and acting. We must be careful not to confuse the specific uses of the skills with the economic power of their users. The point is clearer when we consider the respect that is now given to socialization practices and cognitive processes of the Japanese, apparently because to their success in beating Americans at their own game (i.e., economic power and excellence in mathematical and technological skills). (pp. 106-107; emphasis added)]
But here’s the kicker: This is the very reason that this country needs the sort of education provided by the Society of Jesus. That seems a contradiction, I know, but bear with me: I hope it is less so at the end of this post.
We are enthralled by the myth of progress. The myth of progress simply states that the human project necessarily (there’s that word again!) can and will continue to march toward utopia, step-by-(more/better/improved)-step. A certain sort of functionalist and technical rationality serves this myth in our present era, and it informs what we now think is the purpose of schooling. In Surprised by Hope(which I read some months ago and which informs some of what follows), N.T. Wright notes the following about this myth (I’m sorry I don’t have the exact page reference in my notes):
The world is ours to discover, exploit, and enjoy. Instead of dependence on God’s grace, we will become what we have the potential to be by education and hard work. Instead of creation and new creation, science and technology will turn the raw material of this work into the stuff of utopia.
Here’s the problem with the myth, however: It can’t deal with the existence of evil in the world. It is powerless to deal with evil and the problems it wreaks in any meaningful way.
Education does not inevitably have to serve the myth. What if we structured education in ways other than those proposed by the progressivist myth, in ways that serve other purposes than the creation of cogs and levers for the gears of the capitalist vehicle making its way through time to some neo-liberal Utopia?
What if education were, instead, considered in terms of liberation? In this regard Mwalimu Nyerere got it right (again!):
The purpose of education is therefore liberation through the development of man as a member of society. The purpose is not the development of objects – whether they be pyramids, or irrigation ditches, railways or palaces. The development of things – what is usually called economic development – can be used in the development of man. It is so involved in Africa. But the purpose of education is not to turn out technicians who can be used as instruments in the expansion of the economy. It is to turn out men who have the technical knowledge and ability to expand the economy for the benefit of man in society.
The care for/of the individual student as a human person, as an end in herself or himself, is the starting point. We refer to this as cura personalis in Jesuit-speak. We would be doing the opposite if we began to see our students as commodities, if we believed that the mission of OLQPwere to convert students “into objects – into repositories of knowledge, like rather special computers.”
One important goal education is to help students engage what it means to be human; we Christians would its purpose is to help them engage what it means to bear the very image and likeness of God. In this regard, education is liberation/celebration because it engages what genuinely and authentically makes us who we are, who we are meant to be. At its best, education frees not only the intellect but also each student’s talents, creativity, energy, etc.
We are concerned with the care of each individual, but the goal of Jesuit education is to form “men and women for others.” This theme simply recognizes that education is a social activity, with a social purpose. Again, Nyerere:
The first essential of the liberated person is an awareness of two things: his or her own humanity, and the power of the human person to use circumstances rather than to be used by them. He or she must overcome any ingrained feelings of inferiority, or superiority, and therefore be able to cooperate with other people, on the basis of equality, for their common purposes. (language changed re: gender; emphasis added)
In my two months at language school I have had numerous conversations with Tanzanians about these “ingrained feelings of inferiority,” a vestige of colonialism (as are the “ingrained feelings of superiority” wazungo feel, if we’re going to be honest, no?). The answer is not to educate for selfishness, though; education has to be at the service of the community, “common purposes,” as Nyerere calls them.
We haven't had Internet for a week, and we still don't have wireless. I'd written an email to friends about the blog on my iphone, waiting for the time when wireless returned. It must have "slipped out" when I passed wifi somewhere in town! I have some new posts waiting for when wireless returns.
I’ve been reading more of the writings on education of Mwalimu (Teacher) Julius Nyerere, Baba wa Taifa (Father of the Nation). I wrote about my initial reading of him some months ago. I continue to be moved by what he wrote and continue to think that what he wrote about education (formed in great part by his Catholic faith and his devotion to the social teachings of the Church) should inform what we do at OLQP. The words of Pedro Arrupe, a beloved former superior general of the Society of Jesus who died in 1991, echo through the halls of Jesuit schools. He counseled the alumni of our schools to be “men and women for others,” thus urging our schools to be places of formation of young people to be such. Nyerere had the same vision (though as president of Tanzania Nyerere could not complete Arrupe’s thought: “Be men and women for others modeled after the man for others, Jesus Christ).
An English poet, Hillaire Belloc, expressing the power of the colonizer against the powerlessness of the victim penned the couplet: “Whatever happens we have got/The maxim gun, and they have not."
The maxim gun or its modern equivalent will still be used by those who have it against those who do not; and some of those who do not have it will try to acquire it. But increasingly most nations will tend to leave the competition in acquiring the maxim guns to the very rich or to the very foolish. The instrument of domination of the future is going to be education. Fortunately, in the acquisition of that instrument, we can compete and all win with honour.
If, therefore, we do not want to be the permanent source of the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the educated of this world, we must seriously enter this honourable competition for knowledge. So I want to use this opportunity to stress once again, a few points about our education generally…
First our education should be universal…
Secondly our education should be of good quality…
Thirdly, our education should be relevant…
Finally our education should be socially responsible. Education for Self-Reliance is not education for selfishness. Yes it is also for the Self-Reliance of our country. I believe that the community has a responsibility to educate its members. But a poor country like Tanzania cannot afford to educate the selfish. It invests in the education in a belief that such investment is good for both the individual concerned and for the community as a whole. In the language of yesterday: Education for Self-Reliance should be Education for Service.
Not all of us will have the same concept of community, but all of us have a need to belong. However socially insensitive we may be, we have a need to belong to a community of fellow human beings. No human being can make it alone.
The causal factors between education and development are not clear – and even questioned among many very reputable scholars. I think maybe Nyerere gives us a way out so that we aren’t too frustrated in this country when the effects of education are not seen immediately re: development. The first step is to provide an education for a greater measure of self-determination.
However many characteristics of Jesuit education that we list, one is always featured among our graduates: “The Jesuits taught me how to think; how to argue, and how to see the holes in other people’s arguments.” This very sort of education will provide great benefit to the citizens of this great country. We will be educating men and women for others; our graduates will apply their sharp analysis to the problems and proposals faced in this country. Our prayer and expectation is that they will do so not so much simply to benefit themselves, but for the common good of all.
That isn’t the only important characteristic of Jesuit education, of course. We want to form our students not only to be keen analysts of social situations able to act prudently on their analysis for the benefit of the least among us but also to be beholders of the grace of God.
Folks have asked me about mail. I’ve hesitated to answer until I had a better sense.
What follows is what I’ve come to understand, both from others and from reading.
My friend Nancy Brewer sent me some CDs of the talks she went to at Chautauqua this summer, and they reached me in ten days time from Los Angeles (thanks, Nancy!).
The mail service in Tanzania is not as efficient as the U.S. Postal Service. I mentioned how quickly mail arrived from Los Angeles, but from what I understand it can take a bit longer from here to the US.
People have asked in particular about sending care packages. From what I understand, such can be a frustrating experience for all involved due to not infrequent theft and heavy customs taxes. So please, don’t send any costly items through the mail.
I understand that packages sent in padded envelopes do better than boxes.
I apologize for this long post. Folks might appreciate reading some of the items from the Synod on Africa, just coming to a close in Rome. Here is a link to the full text (still in draft form).
I: LOOKING AT AFRICA TODAY
Rich in human and natural resources, many of [Africa's] people are still left to wallow in poverty and misery, wars and conflicts, crisis and chaos. ... [These] are largely due to human decisions and activities by people who have no regard for the common good and this often through a tragic complicity and criminal conspiracy of local leaders and foreign interests.
There is much good news in many parts of Africa. But the modern media often tend to emphasize bad news and thus seem to focus more on our woes and defects than on the positive efforts that we are making. ... Signals abound of many initiatives seeking to bring effective solutions to our problems.
II: IN THE LIGHT OF FAITH
True pardon promotes the justice of repentance and reparation, leading to a peace that goes to the roots of conflict, making friends, brothers and sisters out of former victims and enemies. Since it is God who makes this kind of reconciliation possible, we must give adequate place for prayer and the sacraments in this ministry, especially the Sacrament of Penance".
III: TO THE WORLD CHURCH
The Church in Africa thanks God for many of her sons and daughters who are missionaries on other continents. ... Special thanks go to those who have remained with their people even in times of war and grave crisis. Some have even paid for their fidelity with their very lives.
IV: THE CHURCH IN AFRICA
We are convinced that the first and most specific contribution of the Church to the people of Africa is to proclaim the Gospel of Christ. ... In this regard, all members of the Church, clergy, religious and lay faithful, must be mobilised to work together in the unity that brings strength.
As bishops, we challenge ourselves to work in unity in our various Episcopal Conferences. ... The unity of the episcopacy is a source of great strength, while its absence wastes energies, frustrates efforts and gives room for the enemies of the Church to neutralise our witness. An important area where such national cooperation and cohesion is very useful is in the media and social communications.
Each bishop ... should ensure the establishment of a Justice and Peace Commission at all levels. We should continue to work hard on forming consciences and changing hearts, through effective catechesis at all levels.
Our dioceses must be models of good governance, transparency and good financial management. We have to continue to do our best to tackle poverty, which is a major obstacle to peace and reconciliation. Here suggestions for micro-finance schemes deserve careful attention.
In this Year for Priests, dear brothers in the priesthood, we address you in particular, who occupy a key position in the apostolate of the diocese. ... Catechesis, formation of the laity, the pastoral care of people in high office; none of these will go far without your full commitment in your parishes and different places of assignment. ... Your fidelity to the priestly commitment, particularly to a life of celibacy in chastity, as well as detachment from material things is an eloquent witness to the People of God.
Africa in recent years has also become very fertile ground for religious vocations: priests, brothers and sisters. We thank God for this great blessing. ... In particular, the Synod congratulates you, women religious, for your dedication and zeal in your apostolate of health, education and other areas of human development.
This Synod turns with deep affection to the lay faithful of Africa. You are the Church of God out in the market places of society. It is in and through you that the life and witness of the Church are made visible to the world. ... Allow your Christian faith to permeate every aspect and facet of your lives; in the family, at work, in the professions, in politics and public life. This is no easy task. That is why you must assiduously access the means of grace, through prayer and the Sacraments.
The Synod has a very important and special message for you, our dear African Catholics in public life. We commend the many of you who, not minding all the dangers and uncertainties of politics in Africa, have generously offered yourselves for the public service of your people, as an apostolate to promote the common good and God's kingdom. ... Africa needs saints in high political office: saintly politicians who will clean the continent of corruption, work for the good of the people, and know how to galvanize other men and women of good will from outside the Church to join hands against the common evils that beset our nations. ... Many Catholics in high office have fallen woefully short in their performance in office. The Synod calls on such people to repent, or quit the public arena and stop causing havoc to the people and giving the Catholic Church a bad name.
Dear Catholic families of Africa, we congratulate you for doggedly remaining true to the ideals of the Christian family and retaining the best values of our African family. We alert you to be on your guard against some virulent ideological poisons from abroad, claiming to be "modern" culture. You should continue to welcome children as gift from God, and train them in the knowledge and fear of God, to be people of reconciliation, justice and peace in future. ... Poverty often makes parents unable to take good care of their children, with disastrous consequence. ... Most families are asking for just what is enough for survival. They have a right to live.
The specific contribution of women, not only in the home as wife and mother but also in the social sphere should be more generally acknowledged and promoted. The Synod recommends to our local Churches to go beyond the general statement of EIA, and put in place concrete structures to ensure real participation of women "at appropriate levels".
We feel the need to pay particular attention to you, young adults. You are often neglected, left adrift as targets for all kinds of ideologies and sects. You are the ones most often recruited and used for violence. We urge all the local Churches to consider the apostolate to the youth a high priority.
V: AN APPEAL TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
To the great powers of this world, we plead: treat Africa with respect and dignity. Africa has been calling for a change in the world economic order, with unjust structures piled heavily against her. Recent turmoil in the financial world shows the need for a radical change of rules. But it would be a tragedy if adjustments are made only in the interest of the rich and again at the expense of the poor. Many of the conflicts, wars and poverty of Africa derive mainly from these unjust structures.
A change is called for with regard to the debts burden against poor nations, which literally kills children. Multinationals have to stop their criminal devastation of the environment in their greedy exploitation of natural resources. It is short-sighted policy to foment wars in order to make fast gains from chaos, at the cost of human lives and blood. Is there no one out there able and willing to stop all these crimes against humanity?
VI: AFRICA, RISE UP!
We commend the efforts to liberate Africa from cultural alienation and political bondage. ... On the economic front, Africa has tried to fashion for herself a strategic framework for development called NEPAD, New Economic Partnership for African Development. ... The Synod commends these efforts, because these programmes clearly link economic emancipation of Africa with the installation of good governance. Here, unfortunately, is the sticking point. For most African nations the beautiful documents of NEPAD are still a dead letter.
The Synod happily congratulates the few countries in Africa which have started on the route of genuine democracy. ... The Synod is sad to note that the situation in many countries is a great shame. We think in particular about the ... situation in Somalia, ... in Northern Uganda, South Sudan, Darfur, Guinea Conakry and other places. ... Whatever may be the responsibility of foreign interests, there is always the shameful and tragic collusion of the local leaders: politicians who betray and sell out their nations.
VII: JOINING OUR SPIRITUAL FORCES
The Synod calls for ever greater ecumenical collaboration with our brothers and sisters of other Christian traditions. We also look forward to more dialogue and cooperation with Muslims, the adherents of African Traditional Religion (ATR) and people of other faiths. Religious fanaticism is ... causing havoc in many parts of Africa. From our traditional religious culture, Africans have imbibed a deep sense of God, the Creator. ... When this religious fervour is misdirected by fanatics or manipulated by politicians, conflicts are provoked that tend to engulf everyone.
The Synod heard the testimony of many Synod Fathers who have successfully walked the road of dialogue with Muslims. ... The issues of reconciliation, justice and peace generally are concerns for entire communities, irrespective of creed. Working on the many shared values between the two faiths, Christians and Muslims can contribute greatly towards restoring peace and reconciliation in our nations.
Freedom of religion includes also freedom to share one's faith, to propose, not impose it, to accept and welcome converts. Those nations which by law forbid their citizens from embracing the Christian faith are depriving their own citizens of their fundamental human right to freely decide on the creed to embrace. ... This Synod warns that such restriction of freedom subverts sincere dialogue and frustrates genuine collaboration. Since Christians who decide to change their religion are welcomed into the Muslim fold, there ought to be reciprocity in this matter. Mutual respect is the way forward.
