This film perfectly put into words and images the ideas I have been searching to understand and describe in the last two years: Western education is not the only solution or path to live life contentedly and sustainably. One of the critiques of education in this documentary which I personally agree with is how Westerners think Western education is superior to other forms of learning, but it is not. Learning is and should be an exchange of skills and ideas, and a dialogue between people rather than formal lecture style. Modern schooling is focused on the measure of material success. However, there is more than one way to educate children and people.

Henry David Thoreau described the process of schooling as: “Education…makes a straight-cut ditch out of a free, meandering brook”. His profound insight is startlingly true. The Western system of education creates a hierarchy of knowledge, which therefore brands people who have not gone through the system as failures. One of the problems with formal schooling is the desire to create cookie-cutter versions of what is valued as knowledge. Social injustice and hierarchy are created through modern education. The film documented many cases around the world where adults and elders believed themselves to be disappointments who knew nothing because they did not go through formal schooling.

The Lamdon Model School in Ladakh, India was founded by a European (I believe she was German) woman named Heidi. Heidi’s view on education regards that children always gain something positive from school, hence the reason she helped start the Lamdon Model School. Heidi also added that the school was exactly what the community needed to “overcome poverty”. She came to Ladakh and fell in love with the people and their way of life, and decided that it needed to be improved through education. In this regards, Heidi concluded that the Ladakh people were impoverished and needed to be helped. Thus, education was linked with development where it was automatically assumed (by a foreigner) that schooling would have a progressive impact on the community. In Heidi’s eyes as an outsider looking in, the slow-moving, agricultural way of life in Ladakh did not meet their standards of adequate living.

The film interviewed several teenagers and young adults who had gone through the Lamdon Model School. All of their reactions to the impact of Western education on their community agreed that many, if not all, the children who went through the school forgot their Ladakh traditions, language, and culture. Furthermore, schools in Ladakh result in families being separated because parents believe they must send their children to school in order for them to get ahead in life: their belief is that education results in higher paying jobs. In many cases around the world this is true because education allows access to better opportunities. However, the Western system of education also changes the structure of the familial unit in many cultures. In Ladakh, several mothers described their feelings of loneliness and missing their children who had gone to the cities to find work because that was the necessary step after they received their education. They wished their children were back at home. This is an example of Western education changing the community’s concept of familial togetherness towards separateness and individuality (which are celebrated in the West, especially in America). There is a connection with becoming educated and wanting to leave to obtain work and other opportunities elsewhere. The way many Americans view education is similar to that of Heidi’s perspective. The majority of Americans believe any community can be bettered with formal education. I used to agree, however, “Schooling the World” challenged this assertion and changed my opinion.