Whether we recognize it or not we live in a capitalist world where everything from food to education has become a commodity. Capitalism, as described in the film “Schooling the World”, serves the few at the expense of the many [1]. The film “Schooling the World” is an exposé of education and how capitalism and it’s partner in crime, globalization, has imparted Western education on the rest of the world.
The film highlights the ways in which modern Western education is a “cultural steam roller” replacing a culture’s traditional way of education with the Western idea of education. Students begin to lose their own sense of culture in this shift from skill education (agriculture and other trade skills) to modern education; one scholar in the film highlights that students begin to forget their own language and traditions [2]. In large part the transfer of Western education has come from North Americans and Europeans traveling to the global South. This done by people themselves and, with all good intentions, believing they can help by teaching English or restructuring a developing nation’s education system.
Ivan Illich, an outspoken Austrian scholar, delivered a speech titled “To Hell With Good Intentions”, which he delivered to the Conference on InterAmerican Student Projects in Mexico in 1968. His speech went much like the title; critiquing North American students who travel to third world countries as volunteers or as he says “dogooders.” His speech bluntly raises an important conundrum that I often struggle with being a student of international studies, and a conundrum I found while watching the film. That struggle being: what right do I have to go into a third world country and help them “develop” their own identity? In his speech Mr. Illich directly says, “By definition, you cannot help being ultimately vacationing salesmen for the middle-class ‘American Way of Life,’ since that is really the only life you know” [3]. Our good intentions are over powered by our way of life and culture that is, subconsciously or not, imparted on those we intend to help but, as seen in the film, we end up disrupting. While the film and Mr. Illich both bring up a crucial realization, neither legitimately offer ways to which we can abolish this cycle.
To begin, at the end of his speech Mr. Illich asks that we “voluntarily renounce exercising the power which being an American gives you…Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help” [4]. Now I believe the goal of studying other cultures and traveling should be to gain a greater world view and multifaceted story of other places, but I must admit that I am one of those “dogooders” Mr. Illich can not stand. So how do we attempt to “do good” without transmitting our Western culture?
Many “dogooder” agencies take on a mantra that they will not send agency members to countries without an invitation from the host place and community; the host community also specifically requests the fields in which they would like agency members to enhance. A friend recently returned from a trip where she also struggled with the idea of entering a rural community to teach on women’s health when she was hardly a professional. She took comfort when she realized that she was not solely there to teach but to facilitate a discussion with women in her community, where the women could use each other as resources. I very much appreciate this mentality and hope that I myself can become a facilitator rather than a “dogooder.”
[1.Carol Black. (Director) Schooling the World: The White Man’s Last Burden. 2010. Web.]
[2.Carol Black. (Director) Schooling the World: The White Man’s Last Burden. 2010. Web.]
[3.Ivan Illich. To Hell With Good Intentions. 1968. Web.]
[4.Ivan Illich. To Hell With Good Intentions. 1968. Web.]
[5.Carol Black. (Director) Schooling the World: The White Man’s Last Burden. 2010. Web.]