- The filmShare| var addthis_config ={“data_track_clickback”:true}; If you wanted to change an ancient culture in a generation, how would you do it? You would change the way it educates its children. The U.S. Government knew this in the 19th century when it forced Native American children into government boarding schools. Today, volunteers build schools in traditional societies around the world, convinced that school is the only way to a ‘better’ life for indigenous children. But is this true? What really happens when we replace a traditional culture’s canon of knowledge with our own? Does life really get better for its people? SCHOOLING THE WORLD takes a challenging, sometimes funny, ultimately deeply troubling look at the role played by modern education in the destruction of the world’s last sustainable indigenous cultures. Beautifully shot on location in the Buddhist culture of Ladakh in the northern Indian Himalayas, the film weaves the voices of Ladakhi people through a conversation between four carefully chosen original thinkers; anthropologist and ethnobotanist Wade Davis, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence; Helena Norberg-Hodge and Vandana Shiva, both recipients of the Right Livelihood Award for their work with traditional peoples in India; and Manish Jain, a former architect of education programs with UNESCO, …
- StoreAll profits from sales of “Schooling the World” will be donated to nonprofit organizations concerned with cultural survival and rethinking education. But we don’t want money to get in the way of your seeing the film, so we’re adopting an “honor system” pricing structure. If you can pay our standard rate, we greatly appreciate it; if you’d like to pay our supporter rate, that’s fantastic; if you’re a student, nonprofit cultural or educational group, teacher buying classroom materials out of your own pocket, or just a private individual trying to survive in tough economic times, please feel free to select our sliding scale rate for DVD purchase. If you don’t have a credit card and you’d like to buy a DVD, email us at info@schoolingtheworld.org. SCHOOLING THE WORLD DVD NTSC R-O 65 min. “Powerful, effective, direct, clear… and at the same time poetic, subtle, delicate, tender.” – Gustavo Esteva, education activist and co-founder, Universidad de la Tierra, Oaxaca, Mexico “An important and fascinating movie.” – Sir Ken Robinson, author, The Element Rate options Standard rate $15.00 Supporter rate $25.00 Sliding scale rate $5.00
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- faq1. I was traveling in Africa / Asia / South America, and the people I talked to there all wanted modern schools for their children. Are you saying they’re wrong? No. But there’s an important context in which we need to view this phenomenon….. 2. Isn’t it equally paternalistic to say that people shouldn’t have schools if they want them? Of course. It’s not our job to decide how the peoples of the world should raise their children…. 3. If you don’t think schools are the way to end poverty, then what do you think we should do? Schooling the World is addressing the impacts of education programs on relatively intact traditional cultures…
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Wow. Incredible. I teach these texts and critical events to my highly privileged college students, and at first they are skeptical. This is so much more powerful. Thank you and I will spread the word. Visually, also stunning.
Thanks, Kirsten. I love your book, “Wounded by School.” I think STW is really about one more form of school wounding.
Thank you so much… it is a great work! it invites to think about education, colonizing, and “knowledge.”
Fantastic! Simply brilliant and such a needed message for the so smart “developed” world
Thanks for such great perception and dedication that widens one’s views in our instituted education system and its affect worldwide.
Wow. I can’t wait to watch this film. I really think that once again it highlights magnificently the fact that there most certainly is a very big difference between schooling and education. They are, absolutely, NOT synonymous.
Oh, the hubris of the well-schooled.
Stunning. Intense. Can’t wait to see this film released. Many questions though arise while viewing. Perhaps this film will indeed open yet another dialog for change.
There are also educators who would undo the malicious bent of the school system. Those of us who would help our students speak from their experience and question the “truth”.
It is a good thing to learn about other cultures to grasp a better understanding of relativity. I am part Chactaw, Indian from Mississippi and I do not know much about my cultural background being black indian.
This is what happened in South Africa but the purpose of the education was to dumb down the local population so that they would serve the work force
An interesting collection of slides and it is detestable what the USA & Canadian Governments did to native Americans in taking their children from them forcibly and beating their cultural heritage out of them. The imagery presented in the slide show is old. I would argue that the governments in question have recognized the wrong committed and are working – albeit slowly – to fix it. Give ‘em credit for at least now moving in a better direction.
The really interesting thing is that all the structures set in place during this period — legal compulsion, grading and failure, a state-mandated curriculum that reflects the values of the dominant society — are still intact. They were intended to wipe out cultures then, and they continue to do so now, whether we intend it or not.
This is so powerful. Thanks for continuing to pull the veil from our eyes and the dust from our deeds.
Heaven help us all if those who follow in a hundred years choose to judge our actions now by their standards. The documentary may be factually accurate yet lack perspective or balance.
One can only hope that those who find US government actions of the past so appalling are not blind to the totalitarian bent of the current administration.
It’s a very interesting thought experiment — and one recommended in our Discussion Guide for the film — to try to imagine how people will look back on our education system in a hundred years. Some values, you always find, are perennial — compassion never goes out of style — and others are of brief duration historically. I think there are a number of contemporary educational practices that we know in our hearts are either inhumane or just foolish and ineffective, but which we persist in because it’s the norm in our time and place. Imagining how our descendants will view these can be a useful stimulant to change.
Which do you think is a better curriculum for ladahki people? Which would you personally find usefull?
Powerful.
Birds comments about actions of the past show an ignorance of the fact that the attitudes, values and beliefs which underpinned those ‘actions of the past’ are still strong today.
Where does indigenous knowledge sit in your mainstream schools and universities. Is is still the ‘other’ something separate and optional or does it sit alongside, as a part of the ‘we’ the ‘us’. Is it considered as valid as your knowledges?
Great work and a great and necessary film. Thanks.