Education and Social Change
The town Pamplona is situated in the hills of Lima. This area is rated a letter D, which makes it one if the poorest areas in Lima. Many people moved for various reasons, such as the price to live in other areas of Lima became too high, they wanted to move out of the highlands to becomes closer to Lima for more opportunities for jobs for example, etc. The problem with people living in the hills is that they are in danger of having their homes and towns destroyed, and they are even at risk for being killed because there are earthquakes in Peru. However, Lima is overpopulated, so there is not enough space for everyone, so people are “forced” to move to the hills. The overpopulation problem is not an easy problem to solve, so it will take a multitude of trials and errors and over a long period of time for this to be helped. Overpopulation is something that all of Lima deals with, and another problem is water supply. Lima in general has a water shortage, but towns in the hills, such as Pamplona is negatively impacted the most. Water supply is so little up there that a lot of people do not even have access to water, so water needs to be brought in by trucks, which ends up making the cost of water rise tremendously for the people of Pamplona and areas alike. There is social action that is being done to help with the water issue however.
One of the best has to do with toilets that do not use water. The ways these toilets work is by instead of flushing waste with water, the waste is mixed with sawdust, and then after a certain amount of time, (maybe 6 months), the bin of waste and sawdust gets turned into compost and is used to fertilize plants. This solution not only helps the people of Pamplona by allowing them to have actual toilets, but not use water, but this solution is also very eco-friendly. This is only one solution towards social change, and since there are many other problems that need solutions there is a lot of room for more brainstorming and implementing solutions.
A second action put towards social change in the hills, such as Pamplona is fog catchers. The article “Peru’s Fog Catchers Net Water Supplies,” it explains how these fog catchers are nets that catch moisture in the air in order to allow the people in the town to have access to more water. This water can’t be consumed however because of the pollution in the air, but it can be used for other things such as watering plants and washing dishes and clothes. Both the fog catchers and the no-water toilets are great solutions toward social change, but what about educational change?
In Pamplona the people say that education is the most important thing to have in one’s life, however in this town, there is only one school- Fe y Alegria, but that school has its own problems, with not having enough teachers, and not having access to many resources. Resources are not everything though. Students can receive education without having quality or a large quantity of resources. This is because the direction/ focus of the education is what matters. Neuman states that, “children who come from disadvantaged circumstances will often lack rich opportunities to learn, not the ability or motivation to learn.” This lack of rich opportunities, makes people think that these disadvantaged students will struggle in life and won’t be successful, but this is far from the case. Wagner says in his work, “The Global Achievement Gap,” that “Schools need to let kids be much more curious instead of learning to pass tests. They need to learn the inquiry process.” This is similar to Freire’s idea of problem-posing learning. Teachers should move away from banking learning to problem-posing learning in order to allow students to engage in the inquiry process. When this is the focus of education, it doesn’t require there to be a lot of resources. Kids are curious in nature, so teachers can encourage that and steer that curiosity into analyzing the world around them, but maybe first looking at their community. The big step towards educational change is to shift the focus from test scores to the ability to think critically and use that skill to help one personally and one’s community. This focus would impact the education and lives of students in Pamplona. Like states before, Pamplona has problems that need solutions for, so if students from the town are learning to think critically and using the context of their home to aid them in this, then both the students benefit, and the community benefits because there may actually be good ideas that come from kids. Many times, people underestimate children’s abilities to analyze and think critically about controversial topics, social justice problems, etc. but in reality, children are most definitely able to handle those topics. In addition to having the students think critically about ways to improve one’s community, there should also be a focus of pride. Children should never feel ashamed from where they come from, so if educators are able to teach the students about the great things about one’s community and then talk about ways to enhance, not fix the community, then the education becomes positive and meaningful. Social change and educational change can be connected in the way that when there is educational change, there can be social change. Social change involves first being educated about something by being curious and asking questions about the topic. This questioning is apart of the inquiry learning that is now starting to be the focus of education in schools.
