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.
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/
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.