DRAFT

 

Learning Only Lasts A Lifetime: Education, The Internet and Nations with Crises

Maureen W. McClure

University of Pittsburgh

 

 

Crises as Events, Systems and Alliances

The Internet has not only allowed education professionals working internationally make rapid strides towards more efficient communications systems.  The development of virtual learning communities within and across organizations working in crises is also beginning to reframe education not only as primary literacy and numeracy, but also as a process of communications within and across generations. This process is central to the continuous transfer of generational responsibility inherent in self-governing democracies and markets. US foreign policy needs to enlist the American people in building and sustaining grassroots virtual learning communities to provide mentoring and peer coaching to generational cohorts learning to assume the responsibilities of sustainable civil societies.

 

Crises situations are too complex to be easily contained by one commonly agreed upon framework for thinking about them.  During the Cold War, US organizations tended to frame thinking about crises using two metaphors: events and systems.  First, disasters were thought of events, like wars, that needed to be contained, controlled and abandoned.  Resources were rapidly mobilized and deployed in some place often far from home.  Like the military after a war, once the event was contained, relief organizations needed to move on to the next crisis.  Literacy programs for primary school children could not compete with physical and food security as an urgent international event.  Education was justifiably ignored because schooling was a development activity. 

 

Events

In the post-Cold War period, the Internet developed sophisticated new ways to help mange crises as events. International crises are increasingly media events.  Both public and private resources flow according to the level of general public interest, which often occurs within a narrow time frame.  There is fierce competition for media attention, so many international crises must, by definitions languish in the dark with no camera lights. 

 

The Internet has helped to offset this problem as relief organizations have developed websites that let others, especially donors, partners and the press, know about their activities in the field.  Within days of a major international disaster, hundreds of websites spring up.  Here are a few of them:

Ø      CARE (http://www.care.org/info_center/notes.html ) - personal notes from the field

Ø      GINIE (http://ginie1.sched.pitt.edu/referencedesk/ ) –countries, materials, guides

Ø      ICRC (http://www.icrc.org/eng/operations_country )- Red Cross International in 50 countries

Ø      InterAction (http://www.interaction.org/disaster/index.html )- coordination of US non-profits

Ø      ReliefWeb (http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/vLND )- primary website for relief coordination

Ø      Save The Children US (http://www.savethechildren.org/crisis/ )- learn about children in war

Ø      UNESCO (http://www.unesco.org/education/emergency/index.shtml ) -emphasis on education

Ø      UNICEF (http://unicef.org/emerg/country.htm)- focus on children

Ø      USAID (www.usaid.gov/hum_response/ofda/)  - US government coordination of relief efforts

 

Systems

Second, disasters during the Cold War were thought of not only as events, but also as physical systems that needed to be fixed, like machines. This engineering approach focused on short-term projects to restore collapsed physical infrastructure: food, sanitation, and housing.  One these systems were back on line, there was a handoff to other systems needing engineering approaches for rehabilitation: energy, transportation and banking, for example. 

 

Education projects, when they received attention, often focused on the restoration of physical infrastructure (schools, furniture, textbooks, etc.).  This engineering approach relied on short-term projects aimed at the restoration of physical systems.  Schools were rehabilitated, furniture built and textbooks produced to jumpstart local economies, and to give work to demobilized soldiers and unemployed fathers.  Once these systems had been rehabilitated, it was time to move on to fix systems in the next crisis.  Maintenance and continuity was assumed or ignored because they lay outside their scope of responsibility. 

 

The Internet has also been very helpful in the development of professional networks that engineer systems during relief efforts by providing rapid global access to highly specialized knowledge and expertise in emergencies.  For example:

 

WEDC – The Water, Engineering and Development Centre is one of the world's leading institutions concerned with the planning, provision and management of physical infrastructure for development in low- and middle-income countries.

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/cv/wedc/specialist-activities/er/index.htm

 

WFP – The World Food Program WFP is the frontline United Nations agency whose mission is to provide: Food for LIFE to sustain victims of man-made and natural disasters; Food for GROWTH to improve the nutrition and quality of life of the most vulnerable people at critical times in their lives; and Food for WORK to help build assets and promote the self-reliance of poor people and communities, particularly through labor-intensive works programs.  Hunger afflicts one out of seven people on Earth. http://www.wfp.org/

 

Alliances

US foreign policy during the Cold War placed its priorities on disasters as events and systems that needed containment, control, and an exit.  Foreign policy alliances to sustain multi-generational development and trade networks that emerged from disasters were often left largely to chance, the Europeans and the Japanese.  Resources flowed accordingly, often with little regard for the resource flows needed to generate and maintain civil infrastructures. 

 

State, USAID, some NGOs and some US businesses worked in countries before, during and after crises, creating ad hoc, multi-generational sustaining relationships with local communities.  These activities usually did not, however, create a coherent foreign policy strategy for a sustained multi-generational US presence for aid and trade in the country.  Indeed, embarrassing public interagency rivalries among US field offices sometimes made a US presence to instead appear to be fragmented, incoherent and unsustainable.   The competitive, project-based, short-term results oriented structures for funding and activities simply could not engineer a sustaining US presence that helped the next generational cohort in crises countries learn how to responsibly manage their own civil economies.  Not even the Internet could help overcome this lack of organizational coherence and attention to generational cohort issues.

 

Neither the event nor the systems approach emphasized national foreign policy interests in multi-generational sustainable development.  Sustainable development implies three things.  First, it lasts longer than an event.  Second, it cannot be engineered. Third it must be learned or lost by the next generation. 

 

Sustainable development not only means engineered systems that create a physical infrastructure; it also means sustaining lasting respectful relationships among people.  Civil societies need more than physical infrastructures.  They also need trust, knowledge and skills.  These are fragile because they must be learned and that learning can only last a lifetime. They must be renewed by the next generation. Democracies and market economies rest on the interactions of millions of individual choices and organizational decisions made every day.  They require a well-educated public capable of individual informed consent. US foreign policy to sustain democracies and market economies requires a coherent and credible generational presence.  This presence encourages other nations to accept responsibilities for helping the children that comprise next generation learn to be responsibly informed and skilled in both their political and economic choices. 

Crises and Genenerational Alliances

Nowhere is the need for a generational presence more evident than in crisis countries. Crises countries may have large youth populations, some (Sierra Leone, Guinea) with one half or more of the population under the age of eighteen.  In the US only one fourth of the population is under eighteen, and the proportion is even lower in Europe.  These bulges create ‘youthquakes’ that threaten traditional US foreign policy for humanitarian assistance.  Event planning and infrastructure systems management tend to ignore the relatively narrow windows that generational cohorts have to learn how to inherit, construct and sustain civil economies in increasingly technologically complex urban and environmentally fragile rural economies.

 

For example, as mentioned earlier, educational investments in refugee and post-conflict conditions tend to focus on demobilizing soldiers, encouraging enterprise and providing primary school literacy.  School reconstruction and job training programs for unemployed soldiers discourage local crime and political instability.  Textbook and furniture production help jumpstart the local economy.  Primary school literacy programs are popular with private sector donors concerned about the welfare of children.  These approaches lead to both short-term and long-term investments in education.  Both ignore the powerful need for mid-term investments in generational cohorts of youth who are rapidly entering the marketplace.  Without skills, jobs, or even the experience of a civil society, they and the country’s fragile peace are both vulnerable to political and economic predators.  Youth are not only the primary source for the recruitment of soldiers, they are also of child-bearing age, and susceptible to diseases that can be transmitted to yet another generation. 

 

US foreign policy in crisis countries must increasingly turn to the problems of learning to sustain civil development. It must not only manage events and fix systems, it must also create generational alliances within and across civil societies.  Most of all, it needs to create a sustaining ‘generational presence’ that clearly stands with local civil societies after the CNN lights have gone out.  Governments must act where private markets cannot.   Market economies are helpful in mobilizing and distributing resources.  They are limited by their lack of generational authority.  They cannot ask young citizens to lay down their lives for the common good. They are not called to act in ‘loco parentis’ for the next generation. They are not accountable for the peaceful transition of power from one generation to the next. 

 

It is the role of governments to ensure that the next generation has safe places to learn to inherit civilization.  Democracies in market economies are particularly charged with these responsibilities because self-governing societies rest on the choices that each generation has learned to make.   From its earliest stages, crises policy and planning needs to be assessed in terms of its impact on the learning of generational cohorts.

 

US foreign policy also needs to turn toward telecommunications and the Internet to help enlist the American people in the work of building and sustaining safe learning places for the next generation in crises countries.  This means moving humanitarian assistance policy toward systematic generational cohort impact statements.  Governments cannot act alone; the task is too great.  It needs to help support the development of international learning communities based on grassroots networks of schools, professionals, businesses and local communities.  Public and private partnerships are needed to provide mentoring and peer coaching opportunities for today’s youth in both crisis countries and in the US.

 

New inter-agency working groups, coordinated by USAID and State need to reach out to Education, schools, the telecommunications industry, relief organizations, as well as state and local governments.  Actual and virtual safe learning communities can begin to provide the next generation with the support they, their teachers and their communities need to build and sustain civil economies. This will not be easy.  It may not even work.  It is worth trying, for even if we fail, we have fulfilled out duty to create a protective generational presence.

 

The media and the Internet can help.  Public advocacy for generational learning is critical.  Today’s youth in crises countries need to rapidly engage in the spirited and colorful debates about learning the responsibilities of just self-governance, innovation and trade. There is so much to learn.  There are so many types of literacy:  text, numerical, information, media, technology, visual, cultural, political, economic, language and work-related.  There are no many different generational experiences that need to be bridged through the improved quality of communications.

 

Us foreign policy for humanitarian crises needs strategic planning that includes longer-term programs for:

 

Ø      Multilateral networks for emergency education, health, and other systems

Ø      International grassroots networks for teaching and learning

Ø      In-country, distance education and US-based educational opportunities

Ø      Youth education-based Internet and community radio and webcasting stations

Ø      Curriculum reform to support information and media literacy

Ø      Curriculum reform to support the development of communications skills

Ø      Multinational regional centers for generational learning in civil economies (includes community-based crises prevention, planning and peace building)

 

Reducing the Experience Gap

Much has been made about the digital divide growing between the have and have-nots with technology.  Another gap that is growing with globalizing economies is the experience gap.  The experiential divide between donors and beneficiaries continues to grow.  Media coverage now allows fewer donors to spending time directly engaged with beneficiaries.  Media reports on the South also are chronically bad, leading both to donor fatigue and to growing distortions in donor/donee relationships.

 

The field can be a humbling place. Many discover that they receive as much as they give, learning how some people respond to tragedy with creativity.  Without this direct interaction, much of the soul of humanitarian assistance can be easily lost to duty.  No material possessions can substitute for the power of simple human interaction. 

 

The development of virtual learning communities within and across organizations working in crises expands US foreign policy thinking about the relationships between relief and development. Complex crises are not only events to be managed or systems to be fixed, but they are also increasingly generational relationships that need to be sustained.  Crises countries usually have large youth populations.  These bulges create relatively narrow generational cohort windows for educational opportunities.  Foreign policy needs to expand its understanding of national interest to include a ‘generational presence’ that raises a torch of hope for those seeking the shelter of responsible self-governance and trade.