Commentary on ‘Schooling the World’ by Carol Black

The Carol Black documentary "Schooling the World" focuses on the role played by formal
institutionalized education in legitimizing one form of knowledge, habits, language, etc. as the
correct and appropriate one. This legitimization causes people to believe that their own
respective cultures are inferior and that the only path to a better life is adopting the culture that
these formal schools promote. This is demonstrated by the filmmaker by juxtaposing the native
cultures of Leh and Ladakh with the culture being taught in the classrooms, which is largely
Eurocentric in nature.
The documentary highlights several issues with and consequences of contemporary education.
The issues that Carol Black brings out are not unique; there are related worries. Thinkers and
authors like Ivan Illich and M.K. Gandhi has also advocated for modern schooling systems.
Similar sentiments are echoed in Vineeta Sood's preface to Gatto's Weapons of Mass
Instruction, which describes how traditional education offers no room for innovative individual
and small-scale alternative learning efforts.The following are some of the different issues and
worries that the movie brings up: The movie aims to highlight how modern education distances
youngsters from their culture and makes it seem inferior in their eyes, as was said in one of the
preceding lines. One of the Ladakhi ladies in the movie describes how the modern educational
systems neglect to discuss some components of their indigenous culture, which emphasizes
Buddhist principles like compassion and kindness. The virtues of compassion, generosity, etc.,
among students appear to be deteriorating as a result of the emphasis on competitiveness,
prizes, and material achievement in our contemporary educational systems.
Another feature of contemporary schooling highlighted in the video is how it neglects self-
reliance in areas like agriculture, food, and other essentials.The Ladakhi women in the movie
are shown to be unhappy with how indigenous held resources like water and land in high
esteem and carried this value on to their offspring, who continued to be cognizant of its
usefulness. The women assert that although the locals were not exposed to this knowledge
through formal institutions like schools, it nonetheless persisted in children's thoughts in the
past. In his ground-breaking book Deschooling Society, Illich draws parallels between the
concerns and problems related to the institutionalization of educational systems.The true
meanings of these realities are now defined within the institutions that carry it out; these
determine the standard meaning of health, welfare, security, and education. He discusses the
transformation of realities (health, community life, national security, and education) into services
and treatments (medical care, welfare schemes, military poise, and formal schooling). He
contends that the institutionalization of values has caused modernized misery and worldwide
deterioration, which results from the conversion of non-material needs into consumer desires for
commodities. He compares education and schools in the same way. But in his writing, he mostly
contrasts the economically wealthy and the destitute, the developed and the underdeveloped.
Both the wealthy and the needy, the developed world and the developing world rely on schools.
Both believe that learning independently is reckless and will not produce any useful outcomes.
Additionally, the idea of what education is now only refers to reading and writing as modern
schooling is being practiced in these conventional settings. Illich also discusses how the school
systems certify only what is measured and evaluated, leaving no room for originality or
inspiration.
If one looks back at the goals and objectives of both civilizations, it becomes clearer how the
ideals of Leh-Ladakh and those promoted by modern schooling systems differ from one
another, as depicted in the documentary. Being a collectivist culture, Leh-people Ladakh's strive
to live in peace, harmony, and a sense of community, making the virtues of cooperation,
compassion, kindness, etc., vital. However, the major goals of contemporary educational
systems are economic. These systems want students to be as productive and efficient as
possible, and one method to do so is to put them against one another in a competitive
environment. M.K. Gandhi also criticized this element of modern education in his book Hind
Swaraj, where he discussesHow modern education doesn't actually make people happier;
rather, it makes people unhappy with their civilization and further distances them from nature.
He insists that it strips us of our humanity and does not make us into men.

In my Opinion
The homogenization of cultures through formal school systems, which results in making one
way of being, knowing, learning, and behaving as the right way, is detrimental for other cultures
because it pulls people—in this case, students—away from their own respective ways of being,
knowing, learning, and behaving and how that leads to inferiority complex in the students with
respect to their own cultures. I completely accept and agree with what the documentary is trying
to show. However, I wasn't completely persuaded by the way some of the issues were
presented. I believed that the documentary's comparison of the Leh-Ladakh culture to Western
culture was done in an excessively exaggerated way.I didn't agree with the documentary's
perspective on the economic objectives of contemporary institutionalized schools because it
seemed to view the desire for material success—in the form of jobs, rewards, and other things
—as inherently evil and failed to acknowledge the possibility that these successes might be
emancipative for some.
I agree that providing equal access to education does not guarantee that everyone will have a
job, but formal education might occasionally open doors to emancipation for some. I also
thought that some money was necessary for survival, so I couldn't look down on people
celebrating their financial success.
I agree with the first paragraph of this section when it says that the documentary discusses how
formalized educational institutions participate in the eradication of marginalized cultures, but I
believe it leaves out any mention of the potential benefits or advantages of student socialization
(in schools). Last but not least, I observed how Wade Davis, Vandana Shiva, Helena Hodge,
and Manish Jain, all graduates of Western Scholarship, engage in discourse to highlight the
voices of the Ladakhi locals.
They have all received widespread fame in their various industries as a result of the accolades
this scholarship brought them, therefore I find their harsh critique of modern schooling systems
to be a little excessive. Even the Ladakhi women who were criticizing modern schooling look
influential and capable of meeting their demands, in addition to these four speakers. If their
economic and social circumstances had been different, I wonder what their view on modern
schooling would have been.
In conclusion, I am not against the idea that current education favors one type of knowledge
while demeaning other types in their own eyes. However, we can't imagine that modern
education has no benefits. So what might be in agreement with me is an amalgamation of both
forms of knowledge, i.e., borrowing the benefits from both forms of knowledge. For example,
imagine a system where modern schools in their institutionalized form had teachers who were
trained to introduce their students' cultures through a variety of means, such as activities like the
recitation of folk songs, calling parents to discuss their occupations - whether indigenous or not,
etc. This would help to integrate all the systems a youngster is a member of, among other
methods.

References

- Gandhi, M.K. (2009). Education. In Hind Swaraj. New Delhi: Rajpal Publishing - Grossan,

M., Hurst, J., Marlens, N.(Producers), & Black, C.(Director).(2010). Schooling the world

:The White Man’s last burden [documentary].Retrieved from

http://carolblack.org/schooling-the-world/

- Illich, I. (1995). Deschooling Society. London: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd. - Sood, V.

(2012). Foreword for Indian edition. In J.T. Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction : A school

teacher’s journey through the dark world of compulsory schooling. Indore: Banyan Tree