Empowering Fiji’s future “crap detectors”

courtesy of EnufDictatorship..... a suggestion for a long term solution.

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“The solution of adult problems tomorrow depends in large measure upon the way our children grow up today. There is no greater insight into the future than recognizing that, when we save children, we save ourselves.”
Margaret Mead

In the past weeks and month, either in Fiji or around the world citizens have in some ways acknowledged and celebrated our children and our youth. In Fiji, celebrations have included clean-up campaigns (the garbage kind), games, mini lectures on community policing, training on developing an understanding of union rights, etc.

We all believe and support the idea that our youths of today are the leaders of tomorrow. Therefore, if we have to consider our current problems as a country, we also have to consider how we are preparing those we believe to be the future leaders of our country. We have to ask ourselves are we providing the best skills, knowledge, characteristics and attitudes that will develop these children and youth into wise, successful and responsible leaders. In short, are we really empowering our children, in order, for them to be able to lead our country to a prosperous future?

No one disputes that education starts from home. On the other hand, we also believe that “it takes a village to educate a child.” To this end, we believe and support the idea that schooling contributes to this education. Therefore, we have built schools where we hope that our children and youth will further develop the necessary lifelong skills, knowledge, characteristics and attitudes they need to prepare themselves for their future whether it be gracing the corridors of parliament, government offices, educational institutions, hospitals, financial institutions or toiling the land and sea. Most importantly to consider as well is that the decisions these youths will make in their future will affect those of us who are currently middle-aged or approaching old age.
Is our school system empowering children and youth?
Ernest Hemingway in one of his early interviews was asked to identify the characteristics required for a person to become a “great writer.” After Hemingway disparaged a few possibilities provided by the frustrated interviewer, the interviewer finally asked, “Isn’t there one essential ingredient that you can identify?” Hemingway replied, “Yes, there is. In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in, shockproof crap detector.”

As I reflect on the current situation at home, I can honestly say that Fiji has suffered enough “crap” for so long. The “crap” I am referring to here includes all the wrong, inconvenient, intolerable financial, cultural and political mistakes, which have allowed our country to “run down”, to reduce to chaos and uselessness. These include amongst other things nepotism, corruption and coups. Norbert Wiener calls this “entropy.”

I then wonder is the schooling system, which is seen as the second most important institution assisting in the children/youth’s education dynamic, interesting and “new” enough to contribute in the promotion of empowering them to become experts at “crap detecting.” By “crap detecting”, it means “people who have been educated to recognize change, to be sensitive to problems by change, and who have the motivation and courage to sound alarms when entropy accelerates to a dangerous degree.”

How can we empower children then?
When children are empowered, not only are they aware of their freedom but also they develop a will to exercise it, and the intellectual power and perspective to do so effectively. Therefore, our children have to be encouraged to question, question, and question. That is, empower them to be active inquirers and problem solvers.

These questioning skills are developed through inquiry teaching and learning. A review of the methods of teaching currently used in schools and the content should be undertaken. The traditional didactic, textbook only, chalk and board, teacher-knows-all approach should be changed to transformative inquiry, all different sources, teachers-and-students-are-all-learners approach. The content of what to be taught should be relevant, significant and up-to-date.

Children bring into the classroom a wealth of knowledge from their own experiences. These have to be taken into account when teaching them. They are not empty vessels waiting to be filled-up. In addition, beginning from early childhood education (kindergartens), children have to be encouraged to take action. Modest things that are already in place in schools like picking up rubbish, cleaning classrooms, etc have to be extended to school/class/group/individual projects, whereby children research issues that affect them like poverty, illiteracy, truancy, children’s rights, animal rights, health, etc. Then they should make plans to take action in their community either to raise awareness of these issues or to combat them.

Moreover, the development of attitudes like respect, tolerance, empathy, etc and personal characteristics like caring, open-mindedness, etc have to be specifically targeted when teaching academic and non-academic lessons either inside or outside of the classroom boundaries.

Finally yet importantly, parent education have to be encouraged and promoted because after all parents are partners in education.

To conclude, I leave you youths of Fiji with a quote from the late US President Ronald Reagan,
“We (Fiji) need you; we (Fiji) need your youth, your strength and your idealism, to help us make right what is wrong.”

God bless our youths! God bless Fiji!