Schooling the World

Which part of the video did you find most powerful (either positively or negatively)? Why?

First, the video of students marching and swinging their arms military fashion was terrifying. Not only did it have all the undercurrent of conformity (loss of identity, loss of choice, loss of thought), but the militant element suggesting child-soldiers made me physically ill. It's bad enough to be raping these young people of their language, their culture, their beliefs, their family, to indoctrinate them in an Anglo-centric, commodified global economy, but the threatening undertones of militarization was something else completely.

I've always been strongly affected by the way the Native Americans were treated. The systematic physical extermination, followed by spiritual and cultural extermination. The images in this documentary just pulled those to the surface again for me.

This might be strange, but the "Little Boxes" song at the end was another moment of connection for me. It has been my theme song for American education for a while now, more so with the implementation of NCLB and then the Common Core movement. My own education at UVU, even. I know that I'm in a system that is like a factory for producing identically molded children. I just hope that I am made of resilient enough stuff that, after I've been stamped by academia, I can regain some semblance of my former moral identity, able to use the tools I believe to be beneficial, and strong enough to reject those that stand at odds with my sense of individuality..

Do you agree or disagree with the message of the film? Why?

I do agree, generally, with the message of the film. I think western cultures are incredibly egocentric, bordering on megalomaniacal. I do not think that western society is innately better than other cultures. I don't think a global consumer economy is the way this planet was meant to be inhabited. I feel like I am too deeply embedded within it to ever get out, but I certainly don't believe that other cultures should be dragged into it with us. I also agree that most of western interference and colonialization in general probably didn't/doesn't come from a place of meanness, but a general (albeit wildly misguided) sense of altruism, love, and a desire to help.

How does this documentary relate to Vygotsky's theory of sociocultural development? Use vocabulary and be specific.

In terms of Vygotsky's theory, in the situations outlined in the documentary, the role of the more knowledgable other is being outsourced. In most of these cultures, learning took place within family units, and the skills necessary for survival were learned. However, that role is being subsumed by westernized institutions. The skills and ideas being taught do not prepare students to like in their homelands, but to become a part of the global economy. Even private speech is affected, because in many of these schools, students are required to think aloud in English, being fined for using their native tongue. As I have learned (by virtue of studying English, and it was repeated in this documentary) languages are more that just words and grammar. They contain the cultural assumptions, traditions, beliefs, morals, etc, of the places they are spoken. By depriving children of their native language, they are deprived of their cultural identity. When self-talk changes, learning changes.