the impossibility of empathy?

In a teacher program, I was in a conversation with a teacher from one of these elite schools about issues with govt schools and the need for an equally if not more rigorous development programs for rural schools and govt school teachers.

I was trying to make a point about the need to empathize with them, need to see things from their point of view and she was completely in agreement...with the caveat that the discussion and decision should be based on logic! "I can talk to anyone so long as they are logical!".

that we should address any such issue of disparity through a supposedly universal and objective frame of reference "we" call logic!how patronizing and indulgent we are to the simplicity, earthy spirituality, naive common sense of our rural counterparts. how we enjoy intellectualizing about this; how we indulgently smile at their naivete and inability to deal with larger complex issues even if they are related to "rural development"; addressing their very existence and livelihood; and maybe making an ever so slight dent in our pay packets by virtue of a slight increase in taxes.

But how rigid we are in our definitions of logic? How clear we are of what is acceptable and what is not? And how we are so clear (almost adamant) in expecting that everyone in the world irrespective of cultural, economic differences or with differences in experiences and world view conform to our definition of logic.

this is the point of contention for me (and this does confuse me no end). how we have our own notion of what is logical, what is rational, what is efficient, what is efficacious and what people in "those villages" need. We determine what basic needs are and what luxuries are. We do this based on our frame of reference, our world vision driven by material acquisition, desire for choice, efficiency in service delivery, consumer rights. We use these criteria to determine what development should ultimately mean and what the poor should really be asking for...

would we ever be able to empathize with the struggle a dalit community has gone through for centuries and how big a deal it is for them to be able to draw water from the same well as an upper caste family does? choice is a far removed and alien concept for them. luxury is a complete unknown, our definition of efficiency is something he will not relate to...he doesn't even know how the heck "good education" is going to give him all these opportunities that we speak of...and he couldn't care less. he wants food, clothing, shelter, dignity and respect a human being deserves!

and some of them have forgotten to ask for even that. You just have to look into the eyes of the people begging in the streets of Bangalore. They are not ashamed or worried...they don't even know they are deprived!the kind of decisions we make on behalf of society even if they are in casual beer conversations or in serious arguments are appalling to say the least!

- a stable job is far better than independent farming which is so risk prone...let the large corporates deal with risks; the rural poor imprisoned in un-ventilated, crowded garment factories do earn a regular stable income don't they? good accomodation, respectable work hours and a decent living standard is higher in Maslow's hierarchy. now they need to work harder for it!
- development means urbanization; what is wrong in a poor man aspiring for a car ? or admission for his children in an elite urban school. Of course not, nothing is wrong. but yeah it will take them centuries if at all they achieve this state and personal dignity can wait until then! no matter if in the process we create a multi-layered society and a clear economic hierarchy!
- equity means doing things to put the poor on the path to a lifestyle equivalent to ours...look at Dhirubhai Ambani, he was a gas station attendant. didn't he make it???? of course there are less than a 100 people who are allowed and capable of achieving this given the circumstances they come from.
- reservation for a generation of the underprivileged is really more than enough, now the next generation is already on the path to progress, the Khairlanji massacre and huge dropout rates caused due to lack of relevance in education notwithstanding.
- of course I want my maid servant's son to get the same education my child does...but why in the same school??? why can't "their" schools be improved to make it like my son's? I pay my taxes don't I?

at risk of this sounding like a digression (but its my blog isn't it :) I am reading Kancha Ilaiah's "Why I am not a Hindu?" It deals with this same point in a completely different context. an underlying point one can not deny. how definitions of rationale, frames of reference, perspectives on social norms can vary, and how respecting diversity really means looking at different things and being accepting within a framework that has to be far more basic than logic and rationale. a fundamental framework that demands human dignity, human rights and freedom as a basis!

why education!

extract from "Schooling: the hidden agenda" - by Daniel Quinn.

Within our cultural matrix, every medium tells us that the schools exist to prepare children for a successful and fulfilling life in our civilization (and are therefore failing). This is beyond argument, beyond doubt, beyond question. In Ishmael I said that the voice of Mother Culture speaks to us from every newspaper and magazine article, every movie, every sermon, every book, every parent, every teacher, every school administrator, and what she has to say about the schools is that they exist to prepare children for a successful and fulfilling life in our civilization (and are therefore failing). Once we step outside our cultural matrix, this voice no longer fills our ears and we're free to ask some new questions. Suppose the schools aren't failing? Suppose they're doing exactly what we really want them to do--but don't wish to examine and acknowledge?

Granted that the schools do a poor job of preparing children for a successful and fulfilling life in our civilization, but what things do they do excellently well? Well, to begin with, they do a superb job of keeping young people out of the job market. Instead of becoming wage-earners at age twelve or fourteen, they remain consumers only--and they consume billions of dollars worth of merchandise, using money that their parents earn. Just imagine what would happen to our economy if overnight the high schools closed their doors. Instead of having fifty million active consumers out there, we would suddenly have fifty million unemployed youth. It would be nothing short of an economic catastrophe.

Of course the situation was very different two hundred years ago, when we were still a primarily agrarian society. Youngsters were expected and needed to become workers at age ten, eleven, and twelve. For the masses, a fourth, fifth, or sixth-grade education was deemed perfectly adequate. But as the character of our society changed, fewer youngsters were needed for farm work, and the enactment of child-labor laws soon made it impossible to put ten-, eleven-, and twelve-year-olds to work in factories. It was necessary to keep them off the streets--and where better than in schools? Naturally, new material had to be inserted into the curriculum to fill up the time. It didn't much matter what it was. Have them memorize the capitals of every state. Have them memorize the principle products of every state. Have them learn the steps a bill takes in passing Congress. No one wondered or cared if these were things kids wanted to know or needed to know--or would ever need to know. No one wondered or ever troubled to find out if the material being added to the curriculum was retained. The educators didn't want to know, and, really, what difference would it make? It didn't matter that, once learned, they were immediately forgotten. It filled up some time. The law decreed that an eighth-grade education was essential for every citizen, and so curriculum writers provided material needed for an eighth-grade education.