Since the class is now officially over, a more natural reflection process is beginning to take the place of where I have been Mondays and Wednesdays at 10am.

The final days of class revealed several things for me: education spans far across the realm of the living. The broad horizons of the participants of this class proved that to me, of all the people I met this term, you people were the among the greatest!  I cannot fully express how impressed I am to have been part of such a group of well traveled people. The areas of the Earth we have walked have already seen our footfalls, and not to mention, oh the places we all will go. Surely, this age of humanity is destined to experience the effects of modern travel.

And after we have witnessed the world’s maganimity, there will come a time when the education of our children (maybe its now) becomes the foremost topic in our minds. The approaches to education may appear more clear to us now, how do communities take the approach? Are our children subject a school system impressed only by standardized test scores or the prospect of future economic returns on our children?

One of the greatest challenges of mine in this course was in becoming too philosophical on this subject. And while it seemed that many writers and classmates took preference to Sen’s human capability theory, it takes a level of honesty to look at the historical perspective and say “hey maybe all that human capital theory was necessary to get us where we are,” hard work pays off in the end.

If I remember correctly, and I often do, then one of our definitions of Education, was its equivalence to “empowerment.” After a few weeks of disintegration, I hope that feeling of empowerment through the forms of education we explored in INTL 399, will set in.

Upon summoning my creative inspiration (-al juices) to determine the intent of today’s blog post, I confess my ability to become side-tracked amidst a myriad of information as provided by the research capability of the internet. I must ask, how grateful is my generation for the technological revolution we began to witness at primary school age or before?

I can still remember the initial sessions of “Computer Lab” and its positive correlation to my position in the world today, at Columbus Elementary during my 4th and 5th grade school years at the ages of 9 and 10. Such a ripe learning age, with the safety of a warm-hearted computer lab teacher, the room warmed by extensively heat-producing ’90s Macintosh computing technology, the rhythmic humming of dozens of computer’s fans to still the chatter of our little bodies… Yes, it was a very warm, safe, and pleasant way to learn the basics of computer skills. And, without these learning experiences in my primary school, surely I would be even further behind in the technological revolution that I am already now.

Whats that?? There’s just been a discovered a gaping hole in the time and space continuum and the lab sessions I attended as primary schooler are being interrupted by the Second American Civil War, the ’90s are now a time of rebellion and the use of various weapons of war by the US government against its own people are now part of my personal history??… Hang on! This hypothetical situation was created by me (KP the blogger) to instill sensations of terror into my peaceful memoires so that I may better understand the context of the Reality for the young primary school age children of Syria in present time.

After allowing space for introductory prose, there is now a need to concern my 2nd blog post with updates of the effects that the Civil War in Syria has upon the development of education within Syria and in regional context. Following the Brooking’s Institute’s education and development blog, the article “Responding to Syria’s Education Crisis for the International Community,” posted on Oct. 24th by Xanthe Ackerman, has inspired me to seek awareness of the effects that conflict has upon the individual’s ability to develop their own personal faculties. The article primarily concerns itself with the inability for Syria’s regional neighbors to respond to burgeoning flow of Syrian war refugees, especially in terms of educational capacity.

There seems to be no end in sight to the conflict, but as time passes, Syrian refugees are falling further behind in the globalized context of today’s competitive world economy. How is this disparity (whose effects for the 2.5 million refugees will be experienced in the coming future at a level of Nation-State proportion, as is the nature of a civil war to permeate the entire nation-state across multiple levels of human existence, education and development in this context)

The facts are as thus:

Before the conflict began, 93% of children were enrolled in primary school, and 67% in secondary school. Following the conflict, 90% of Syrian children ages 6-17 are estimated to be Out of School… That leaves us with a current 3% operational efficacy of Syrian schools.

3,000 Syrian schools have been damaged or destroyed since conflict began in 2011.

Lebanon is harboring 1/4 of Syrian Refugee children in its schools, thus reducing the learning capacity of Lebanese school age nationals due to the influx of neighboring refugees.

UNICEF and other organizations are responding to the crisis, but the number refugees exceeds the quantity of basic and educational resources, especially in the border-towns. For example, in Turkey’s border towns, refugees outnumber Turkish nationals 2-1.

Gender differences are also playing a pivotal role in the provision of education for Syrian refugee children, reportedly, as displaced Syrian families are restricting the movement of young women especially for fear of their safety amidst their status of refugia.

The UN Syrian Regional Response Plan 4 is coordinated to provide for 1.1 million, but projections for refugees is expected to exceed 3.4 million by the end of this year.

These facts being introduced, there are great concerns for regional stability in the short run, as well as for the learning capabilities in the long run for the many Syrians displaced by the conflict.

The international community and especially the Middle East is again facing a war-crisis whose effect’s will echo throughout the currents of time and space, and in my particular interest, the loss of learning potential for the many young people ages 4-24 which will harbor socioeconomic restraint against them as they struggle to rise out of refugee status.

My question is—How will refugees, who have already their homes, belongings, and localized ability to obtain a livelihood through social connections and trade, be assured to provide for themselves and their families without the guardians of knowledge to guide them? I apologize if that question is unclear, but as anything associated with the Middle East proves to be thus, there is indeed no simple question, nor answer to be associated with the recent developments in the Syrian Conflict.

In conclusion, the article by Ackerman includes several bulleted points which are to be kept in mind by the readers and international community. I highlight this one:

• 5. Youth voices provide important input for policy…. There are many Syrian youth leaders.

Corresponding with the nature of revolutionary crisis’, the interest of the youth (because they represent the future and are the direct inheritors of the choices of the present) should be kept in consideration for policy making organizations during and following the Syrian conflict. The international community would be wise to hear from the viewpoints of these displaced youth, those who are willing to speak up and then, hopefully we can see a new dawn for the future of the Syrian people. Until then, there is much to heed attention to.

K. Purdy on the status of education for 2.5 million Syrian refugees, 11.3.2013

A viewing of the documentary “Schooling the World” offers a critical perspective on the development of international educational policy from its present framework as practiced in the globalizing world community. The film’s cinematography offers time for the viewer to reflect on the discourse while shots pan across the beautiful Himalayas, invoking a cinematic sentiment that education is to be taken in a place of reflection upon the natural world.  From a journalistic perspective, the film portrays aspects of various educational policy such as the transition of traditional peoples in the developing world from a lifestyle of multi-generational sustenance farming to that of uniform adherence to an institutionalized education and a disparate economic system. The economic, social and environmental issues that the global community faces can be traced back to an ideology of economic imperialism, a resounding faith in systemic industrial, chemical, and genetic engineering systems. Many of these systems are being staunchly challenged by activists in the global community, including Vandana Shiva, a highly facultative Indian born woman who is now active in movements concerning agriculture, climate change and systemic educational policy.

Shiva critiques the educational policy in her home region:

“I came from the central Himalayan region of Garwal. The woman of Garwal worked very hard to make sure the kids would have schooling, but of course the schooling was the institutionalized schooling of the kind that doesn’t teach you anything about your local ecology, your local culture, your local economy or your ability to be productive, it basically teaches you to be a semi-literate for another system to which you have no entry because you don’t belong to the right class, you don’t belong to the right privilege, etc. I now go back to the same villages and the woman say that the worst mistake they made was to think that that kind of education would help. We have saying in Hindi: It’s the washerman’s dog that belongs neither to the place where the washing is done nor to the home. They are in between people and they are falling through the cracks of an in-between world.” –Vandana Shiva, “Schooling the World”

There are many examples of the inequitable distribution of capital and labor resources in the current structure of the world economic order. Less Developed Countries seem to remain underdeveloped while bearing the various costs of their natural resources being plundered by international corporations under the banner of 21^st century economic imperialism. An example of structural adjustment policy enacted in the agricultural sector is to be found in the Punjab Region of India beginning in the 1970s and under the directorship of Norman Borlaug and USAID. This industrialized model of agriculture has criticized for its negative social and ecological impacts. Chemical intensive agriculture, generally recognized as a monoculture with a heavy focus on using expensive machinery to add chemical inputs in the form of macronutrients like N, P, K, Ca, Mg and S, and it has been proven that with consistent intensive application of these inputs, the soil becomes less nutrient-rich, and the vast majority of life supporting microorganisms including bacteria and fungi which retain water in the soil are killed off.

Unfortunately the impact of the Green Revolution, which in mainstream media is hailed to have saved the lives of billions in the short run, has in the long run created vast debt for thousands of Indian farmers who cannot make payments on their Western tractors, chemicals and bio-engineered seed because of the desertification of their fields, driving a significant portion of them to developing inferiority complexes or suicide. In addition, the ecological impacts of chemical intensive agriculture include genetic mutations and unbalanced pH for organisms in contact with the regional ground water. Many of the projections (SAPs, GEPs, etc.)  from the developed world to the developing world have caused multi-faceted crisis following their implementation, especially in the long run.

             Realizing that both education and agriculture belong to the foundation of human life, Shiva identifies a solution and calls the international community to readdress these issues with a progressive frame of mind:

“We can now only go forward by picking up the threads of our broken histories and nature’s broken evolution, its only through that that we can build the bridge to the future, because a century of breeding for industrial agriculture has been a breeding for uniformity and uniformity is a guarantee for very high risk and very high vulnerability…”

–Vandana Shiva

Works Cited

“Schooling the World,” publisher unknown, additional citing req.

Verger, Novelli et Al. Global Education Policy and International Development, Bloomsbury, 2012.

www.youtube.com /search Vandana Shiva