the journey
Being Becoming?
Transformation?
Pedagogy and Power ?
Neutrality? Ownership? Criticality? Imagination? Dialogue?
Values? Ethics? Rights?
what is this world in which we make our journey?
From what I am now to what I will become. That is the journey of Transformation.
So what is Change? What is Transformation?
If we are on a journey – what conditions and determines it? Where does our road go? Whose path is it? Is it a path of liberation?
it is a world of change and constant transformation
Who is with us on our journey? What is our goal? It is a world of change and constant transformation.
Our world is in change and transformation, so is education and power.
So what is Change? What is Transformation?
If we are on a journey – what conditions and determines it? Where does our road go? Whose path is it? Is it a path of liberation?
Who is with us on our journey? What is our goal?
If we are collectively engaged in a journey, then it is with others. The others and ourselves must engage dialogically in taking our decisions that guide our path to our chosen destination.
. We could call this making sense of otherness in self-determination. The ideas of self and other are about human identity .
When children play they are making a journey to make sense of their world. They test it and they test themselves, experimenting with their being in the process of becoming. They test and share self and otherness to build understanding and knowledge. In their play and through their imagination, they seek out what works, is trustworthy, dependable and sustainable. They transfer their understandings to the context of the real world.
what are we becoming?
Who or what creates the context of OUR journey? Who and what powers the real world in which our journey will occur? What are our realities and restraints on this journey? How do we know?
what are we being
What is the nature of the world in which we make our Journey?
It is a world with Histories and a present in which a future is being determined.
IT IS A GLOBALISED WORLD.
It is a world with many peoples, many histories.
It is a world controlled by few and endured by many.
Is it a world controlled by oligarchies who control the masses?
It is a world of identities and differences, of values, of ethics and of very few rights.
Is it a world of division and fear, of marginalized hopes and dreams?
Is it a world of greed which places profit and not people at its center?
Is it a world of conformity and schooling – not of liberation and education?
Is it a world of conformity and schooling – instead of liberation and education?
Is it a world of consumption powered by the control of communication?
Is it a world of lies, of power in which death itself is a profitable commodity.?
Is it a world of lies, of power in which death itself is a profitable commodity.?
It is a world of hunger and pain for most of the world's people. A world of being in need. And it is becoming harder.
It is a world of disrespect and, distrust. A world that leads to a fear of ‘becoming'. A world which places ‘otherness' in opposition to the ‘self' and breeds loathing and war.
It is our world.
It is our world.
A world with pathways and roads created by others and
upon whose surfaces millions have trudged, marched or dragged their bones.
A world where identities have been consigned to the rubbish bins of the
victors.
Peoples, histories, languages, cultures,
knowledge, visions, understandings
all in disposable black plastic bags.
A world in which comedians speak
truth while world leaders speak lies.
It is a world where the men who create destruction and death have defined their own devils and re-invented the Gods on whose behalf they claim to act.
It is world in which the human-ness of humanity itself
is marginalized, devalued, disregarded,
cruelly tossed aside and wasted.
A world in which our ‘goodness' and ‘kindness',
our ‘sympathy', our ‘empathy'
and belief in the rightness of our own identity requires us to shed a
tear,
say a prayer,
walk away believing
that it may be unfortunate,
but
that it is unalterable.
If this is our world then it must be transformed.
The process of self-transformation,
of metamorphosis,
of ‘becoming' from this ‘being' is the first step on
our journey .
To remain neutral in such a world and on such a journey is to take the side and the role of the oppressor, the liar, the manipulator and to join quietly the apparatus of the real ‘ axis of evil'.
There is no neutrality and there can be none if it is to become our world. This ownership is about life itself.
The actions we take,
the criticality
we own and share,
the imagination we generate,
the interconnections we
discover,
the communications we develop,
the identities and histories
we contribute,
the dialectic which springs from the contradictions we
perceive – these are the tools of the action of ‘becoming'.
So how do we prepare for our journey?
If there is a raging river in our way,
a broken bridge,
a huge mountain, a war machine,
a monolithic world bank, a trans-national
corporation,
a government,
a World Trade Organization, a series of laws,
if there
is a set of conditions,
a series of mind-police roadblocks,
inclusive
or exclusive schooling systems in which we must teach our young,
then what is
to be our course of action?
Do we reclaim and recreate our democracy, our ways of hearing and listening, our abilities in seeing, perceiving and judging, our ability to participate, our capacity to lead?
We are citizens, collectively we are world citizens in a world of transformation. So, individually and as a community, where and how should our journey begin?
We must begin by understanding and seeing our world for its reality as “only through reality may reality be changed'' in the words of Bertolt Brecht.
It is said that ‘'we are the clay in which the footprints of our age are cast''.
Are we?
I for one am tired of being trodden on.
Do we now
as citizens, as educators and artists, tread on the dreams and imaginations
of our children in order that our ‘self'
and our world view will prevail?
So that the power of
the dominant will be maintained at their cost and at
the cost of their dreams and their potentials? Who will
make the decision and who will fix
the price ? Whose values will predominate? Whose ethics will
shape our collective future, and whose rights will prevail and whose will
be ignored?
These questions are not new; what is new is the context against which they are posed - the globalised world.