3 questions to help us shape schools and society for the better
Young changemakers share their vision for the future of education
Faye Simanjuntak, Midria Pereira
Faye is a young woman building a safehouse for children in Indonesia. Midria is a Brazilian spoken word poet making her community more diverse. In India, our friend Garvita is reducing water waste across the country, while Aaryani is spreading awareness about mental health.
Our lives are different, but our stories have much in common. We found inspiration in school and our communities. Education, for each of us, was a catalyst for the change we hoped to make in the world.
Between the four of us, we’ve spent over two decades mobilizing youth in the fields of anti-trafficking, mental health, water access, and education access. We have excitedly watched the world slowly adjust to give young people more opportunities to take on the reins of a better future.
However, there is a truth we cannot deny: the change is not yet enough.
Many of the places in which we worked had inherent structural issues we could not hope to fight, such as Indonesia’s subtle authorization of underage marriages under the religious court. Culturally, we were dismissed and disregarded, rarely given the opportunity to speak, much less act.
Young people often lack the facilities and funds to make a difference. Our voices are not just ignored, but frequently dismissed. We have campaigned for years only to see little long-term or structural change. We each have our stories of being put down or unable to access the resources we need.
We will soon spend more than half our lives dedicated to the causes we care about, and we can’t continue without the help of our leaders.
We need to support more youth, and create more spaces where everyone can make change.
We need to emphasize unity and collaboration, encouraging critical thinking and problem-solving among young people.
How? One of the most powerful paths is education — and education may come from formal or informal contexts. What we learn in school shapes a certain vision about the world. Often the first step towards change is questioning why things are the way they are.
As we seek to use education to shift our societies, here are three questions we can all ask:
What kind of society do we want to build through education?
…and how did we get where we are today?
If we understand the society we have now and our education system as interconnected, we may face many uncomfortable facts.
For example, we can look at the issue of migration, affecting many countries. Countless people are now refugees due to widespread humanitarian crises — whether social, political, or ecological in nature. Refugees leaving their home countries take their skills and knowledge with them (creating a “brain drain”). To go deeper, many of the causes that created these crises are rooted in colonialism — the history of invasion and spoil that Africa, Asia and South America countries have gone through.
Education systems were not necessarily designed to deal with the paradox that there are not enough planets to continue on adopting the same universal narrative of progress over people that colonialism and capitalism sold for so long. We need something different.
That brings us to our second question, since we urgently need to change the system:
What are our real needs?
We keep perpetuating a failed education system that focuses on success as an individual achievement via professional life. That old well-known storyline — to go to school, graduate, get married, buy a house, buy a car, have children, be eternally happy with your family — was never a path available to everyone, especially when we look at inequalities around the world.
What is another path we can take instead?
There will not be a universal solution to fix life for everyone (because creating universality is part of the problem). Each community knows better than anyone what their real needs, challenges and possible solutions for those are. Discussions should be based on empowerment and community sovereignty. We should draw upon ancestor knowledge. And youth like us can play a big part.
How can we connect education with the reality facing young people?
First, we know that education is a critical tool — one that can help youth and their communities to see their biggest challenges and find solutions to them. (While still holding the government responsible to do its part, too).
If you’re looking for a place to start finding solutions, take some time to reflect. Try asking these questions to find a place where you can make change.
- Think about a community you care about: where were you born? What’s your neighborhood? What collectives are you a part of?
- Think about three major problems that touches this community
- Think about three major solutions that might solve these problems
- Choose one over these three problems
- List your resources to help with that cause
- Build an initial engagement plan around it: check if are already initiatives working on this or call some friends, family or neighbors to start acting.
Within schools, young people can help shift education systems through simple debates on issues that affect our lives. When young girls are leading feminist movements, for example, demanding their right to walk freely in the world, at the end the message they’re sending out is that they realize they’re “owners of their bodies, lives and futures.” The same applies for teachers and other community organizations.
The kind of future we want to build is much more diverse, potent and pluralistic than the one we will have if we allow the plastered thinking from centuries ago to dictate our ways. Trusting young people to lead will make all the difference.
