fPcN interCultural:

defenders of free tribal life

Prof. Dr. David Poeppel maintains that in a child the conditioning of ideas and the strategies for overcoming and perceiving problems is formed by school education through the reduction of the variety of all the connections of the synapses drawn up in childhood. That is to say that school education influences the thoughts and emotions of a child in a certain direction through curricula and an institutional evaluation.
All social thoughts accumulated in the brain, views of the world and of nature, built up by parents and as a result of other social relationships are systematically changed and in the end reduced. The first military academies in Europe made use of this and educated their soldiers accordingly. This system of state conditioning was then, even at the time of the Enlightenment, applied to all citizens in the form of compulsory school attendance.

Besides material destruction, mental influencing is an essential element of ethnocide. This can be found in all regions where schools have been introduced among indigenous people. School education – especially in combination with proselytizing- is just the prerequisite for the change in views about norms and values of traditional culture. Through its function of exerting influence on the consciousness, it supports the behaviour desired in order to achieve and strengthen specific reactions. School education is often a substantial step towards removing from indigenous children – and from our own children – their "childish” view of nature. With the rationalization of "consciousness”, intuitive knowledge of the "oneness” with creation is pressed into a world of emotions controlled by the brain. Intuitive knowledge is the prerequisite for communicating with nature. A certain inner confidence in the impressions of nature is also necessary to prevent one from being completely taken over by emotional and "mental” imagination. The development of man is, therefore, an important orientation point. The adolescent person is manipulated by his school education to give up most of his autonomous feelings, his wishes, and his own free will.
He is educated by a system of winning and losing, rewarding and punishing, to accept opinions and feelings, and to articulate these himself, although they are not his own but forced upon him by society. School rationalizes these "feelings”, gives them expression, and a ” meaning”. The result of this manipulation is that most people believe they are following their own free will, without being aware that their will was formed and disciplined from without. School teaches us that according to a supposedly generally valid natural law, capable people are rewarded and useless people punished. And so fear of the future and aggression towards ones fellow men, selfishness and lack of respect become widespread, since it is no longer understandable that one can exist in and with nature.. Thus school bears the responsibility for man´s behaviour towards the environment.
Yet it is the indigenous people who possess that form of education which has been "educated” out of us, like, for example, the ability to communicate with the environment, and to exist in it without exploiting it to any great extent, or even eliminating it for purely economic reasons. Nowadays it is generally considered legitimate in industrial countries to discriminate against knowledge acquired out of school, and to make a criminal offence of refusing to attend school. Is school education supposed to be the solution to poverty in the countries of the southern hemisphere?
The same teaching subjects, the same behavioural patterns and constraints which are connected with our school system, are successfully exported into other cultural areas. Still today, especially in dealing with peoples who are in their own cultural identity, the dogma is repeated again and again that school education in developing countries raises chances for the future. Is this form of argumentation conclusive? What school education cannot do is to remove dependence and social injustice or to prevent exploitation. The reason for this is the economic framework, which, in our era of unleashed globalisation is always dictated from outside through investments and trade agreements. The aim of western school education is to function in this environment dictated from outside.
From a dualistic point of view, western school education is the prerequisite for the two target groups to enter their respective dependency. It cannot, for example, be proved that school education has removed poverty from Africa. On the contrary, since the 50´s, that is since the introduction of development aid and school programmes, the economic situation there has continually deteriorated. An important reason for this is the systematic elimination of subsistence economy through a massive propaganda drive towards world – market production and thus to integration in the global economy. Moreover, indigenous peoples are confronted by crises of identity through school education. The old tribal members, who still live fully in their own traditions, suffer less, since they orientate themselves towards their own ethnical community and often reject adjustment to the technical civilization. They are rightly considered as stubborn upholders of their former tradition. It is the subsequent generations who suffer from this conflict because they are confronted by this secondary socialization process, which has often been forced on them by school and church. They are forced to move between these two cultures. This leads to orientation crises between their own traditional culture and the new civilization with its authoritative mechanisms. Those reared in this form of duel cultural challenges are confronted with two different worlds, with different behavioural forms and systems of rules. Added to this, there is the socio-legal and the politico-economic prevention from taking part in public life due to national racial discrimination. Cultural crises, identity conflicts are thus, as in many so-called transitional societies, a matter of course. The western form of school education is not an alternative to global poverty and certainly not a means of protecting cultural diversity.

New answers must be sought after. School in developing countries, especially among ethnical groups which have retained their autochthonous culture must not encourage contempt of traditions and competencies, and thus degrading of vital solidarity. Education must aim at retaining the autonomy and identity of the ethnic groups concerned, instead of distancing them from their own cultural roots by taking on foreign values, norms and educational aims .The prerequisite for this is propagating the equal values of traditional forms of socialization and competence, and carefully chosen elements of modern school education which must be carefully weighed up against each other, and must try new ways to evaluate performance. In drawing up suitable forms of education it is essential to co-operate with representatives of the respective ethnological groups, and to consider the concrete results of robbing people of their own culture, and the probable results of this.
FdN will try to go this new way and carefully evaluate the results of this alternative education. The symbiosis between the rudimentary forms of western school education and an inherited education can enable indigenous people both to survive in a majority society trying to assimilate them and to maintain their identity as a cultural people. This is inseparable from the survival of their own language and their inherited knowledge, because an assimilated person is also determined by history. He lives in the tension between past and present. He can also withstand conflicts when he can integrate his past with his experience of the present.. If he is not able to do that, or if it is even forbidden, then he worms his way into the cul-de-sac of cultural conflict. Identity is the basis of inner security; it is not a question of age or education.. Identity makes out the distinctiveness of a person, and above all it enables him to be recognized with his very own specific characteristics and differences. If these are connected exclusively to an imported belief, to a foreign and assumed way of living including untruths and taboos about his own culture, this will always give rise to conflicts. The retention of the native culture is the prerequisite for combining these two poles.
Note: By:
Steffen Keulig
Daniel Habenicht
www.naturvoelker.org

Topic

• Exploitation