[Author's Note: My apologies to the readers! Part II was published before Part I. This post was the one you should have read first. Cyberspace is not always kind to the creative effort.]
A Story To Tell....
In 1982, I was a classroom teacher in Calgary, Alberta, Canada at the grade 8 level. It was September, the beginning of a new school year and my assignment was to instruct students in the area of Social Studies and Current Events for several grade 8 classes. All the students were bubbling over with excitement. Okay, some were lukewarm. I was informed that I would be receiving a new student, whose family had just arrived from the country of Lebanon. Since I was a current events teacher, I knew that Lebanon had been involved in a civil war with a number of factions still fighting there. Nothing could prepare me for what I was to experience that day when Ali entered my class.
A class assignment was given that day to describe having students describe what a typical daily schedule was like for them at home and then share what they wrote with the rest of the class. This is what Ali read to us:
"..In Lebanon, early in the morning before breakfast my father would gather me and my younger brother together in another room. My father would then blindfold each of us and then place an AK47 automatic rifle in front of us and tell us to take it completely apart and he would time us. After recording our times, he would then then tell us to reassemble it while blindfolded and again he would time us. He would always say that we need to get quicker and more efficient. After our tests we would eat breakfast. Then we would pick up our freshly cleaned weapons and father would tell us to follow him and we would go out quietly and pick spots under cover so that we could kill members of the Christian militia. After doing that we would gather up weapons and ammunition and then go among the ruins to scavenge for things that my father thought we could use..."
A class assignment was given that day to describe having students describe what a typical daily schedule was like for them at home and then share what they wrote with the rest of the class. This is what Ali read to us:
"..In Lebanon, early in the morning before breakfast my father would gather me and my younger brother together in another room. My father would then blindfold each of us and then place an AK47 automatic rifle in front of us and tell us to take it completely apart and he would time us. After recording our times, he would then then tell us to reassemble it while blindfolded and again he would time us. He would always say that we need to get quicker and more efficient. After our tests we would eat breakfast. Then we would pick up our freshly cleaned weapons and father would tell us to follow him and we would go out quietly and pick spots under cover so that we could kill members of the Christian militia. After doing that we would gather up weapons and ammunition and then go among the ruins to scavenge for things that my father thought we could use..."
After hearing the story, a couple of students asked a question:
Student: " Didn't your mother try to stop you from killing people?"
Ali: "No, my father said that we had to do this or they would kill us. My mother went along with whatever, my father said."
Student: "Why did you come to Canada?"
Ali: "My mother was killed by the militia. My father, with many tears, said that we must leave this place and go somewhere where he could grow old and see his children go to school, get an occupation, get married and have many children. He heard that Canada was a safe place for such things and a beautiful country."
That day many of us grew up after spending most of our young lives taking much for granted.
The Power of Education to Change the World
The power of education to change the world for the better has been an ideal that has been debated through the ages but no more has it been most valued than when a country has lapsed into difficult times brought on by poverty and war. It is at these times when the access to education is removed that we see the growth of injustices, persecution, and that which is morally abhorrent in the eyes of humanity.
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| Credit: www.edopt.org.uk |
Education in Conflict Zones
Most rational individuals would agree that if young people had the opportunity to grow up and be educated free from an atmosphere of hate, mistrust, war and civil instability, that we would see the rise of doctors, lawyers, engineers,..etc dedicated to improving the quality of life of their people in their own countries and perhaps also contributing to the quality of life of peoples on a global scale. Given the truth of such a statement, we are faced with a sobering question:
"How many generations are we willing to sacrifice who have the potential to become nation builders?"
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| Credit: www.Pinterest.com |
Looking at the current conflict zones, the statistics and conditions speak to the frightening answer to that question:
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| Credit: www.un.org |
For those children who survive but remain in a conflict zone surrounded by hate and destruction and with no access to education, they become part of the violence in order to survive.
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Those who don't survive do not just become statistics but become a nail in the coffin of hope for a country.
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| Credit: www.faculty.fordham.edu |
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| Credit: www.baodatviet.un |
The Case of Syria
In a recent newspaper series titled: "The Great Exodus of Our Time" by Michael Petrou, the journalist meticulously highlights individual cases of children who as a result of the devastation in their homelands and the need to labour in order to support their families because their parents have been physically incapacitated or even killed, have no hope for an education in any form. As he points out:
"...What chance does a 12 yr. old boy---who was six when the Syrian war began and has never been to school---have of catching up to his peers elsewhere or even learning to read?.."(Petrou, 2017)
For girls, early marriage, robs many Syrian refugees of an education. As one female student by the name of Safa Zreiqi points out:
'Some of us don't want to get married. We didn't go to school for nothing. What's a shame is that we studied and got degrees and can't get work.'
As Petrou very aptly points out:
"These boys and girls, an entire generation of Syrians, will one day be men and women who will shape Syria and the Middle East. They will have a far more consequential impact on the region than now." (Petrou, 2017)
My question to you, as educators, is one that is daunting to our souls:
" Given the state of lack of education for thousands of refugee children in Syria and abroad, will the cycle of hate and destruction continue to grow with no end in sight or will it finally be broken so that the coming generations will be peace builders?"
Global E-Learning and Nation Building
Coming back to Nelson Mandela' s statement that education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world, as an educator you either believe this to be a true statement or you write it off as just another cute meme.
The numbers of refugees from the Syrian conflict have overwhelmed the resources of the countries taking them in. For example Jordan, a country of 6.5 million people is host to 1.5 million refugees whereas the country of Canada with a population of approximately 36 million people has taken in 40 000 refugees since 2015. We could look at the different European countries and the numbers of refugees that they have taken in but that is not the point of this article.
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| Credit: Filippo Grandi-UNHCR |
As Filippo Grandi points out, how we educate refugee children will determine what the future Syria, Iraq, and other conflict areas in Africa, South America, and Asia will look like. What we are talking about is developing nation builders or re-builders who will break the perpetual cycle of violence found in their home countries. On reading this your response might be:
"Noble sentiment! But how?"
Global E-Learning and Empowering Generations to Be Nation Builders
The nation of Canada just celebrated 150 years as an independent and free nation on July 1, 2017. When we look back to the sacrifices made by past Canadians we recognize that it took real nation builders to unite a land into the second largest country in land mass in the world and yet with a comparatively small population compared to our powerful neighbours to the south. People of those times said that what we were attempting was impossible. Our fathers of confederation built the Canadian Pacific Railway that would unite our land from west to east coast. At the time all bets were against accomplishing such a feat given the varied terrain but we accomplished in 10 years what others said would take 25 yrs.
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| Credit: www.LinkedIn.com |
We know that the key to developing nation builders is to provide an environment where hope for the future of a country can be nourished. Obviously, this can not be done in a war zone.
What I am going to propose to you is an unorthodox solution, a solution as impossible as building a railway across a sea of mountains using only equipment from the 19th century and yet it may spark other thoughts because it has become the moral imperative of our time to counter those who have spent the last generation as nation destroyers with a new generation of nation builders.
Global e-Learning is part of this solution that I will describe in Part II.
What I am going to propose to you is an unorthodox solution, a solution as impossible as building a railway across a sea of mountains using only equipment from the 19th century and yet it may spark other thoughts because it has become the moral imperative of our time to counter those who have spent the last generation as nation destroyers with a new generation of nation builders.
Global e-Learning is part of this solution that I will describe in Part II.
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