Introduction by Andrew Venter

  • As a development practitioner and conservationist has been drawn into the conversation around sustainability and education.

  • Coming from a place of white, male privilege and interested in challenging the apparent self-perpetuating elitism around accessing the ‘best’ education.

Prompt by Paul Lavlani

  • Personal journey: son of migrants who moved to India post-partition, educated in Indian private schools, English boarding school, US college-educated.

  • Education in India reflects the post-imperial continuities, although the current government is reworking what needs to be taught in schools.

  • Working in the public health sector: a supply chain issue

    • Access to medicine addresses: vaccines, medicine, diagnostics, and devices, at scale, quality and low cost.

  • How could we apply the supply chain perspective in the educational setting?

    • We need to understand the market: it is estimated that children between 4-18 years constitute around 25% of the world’s population

    • Disproportionately higher ratio of young people living in slum conditions.

  • Public health & education: Empower School of Health https://empowerschoolofhealth.org/en/company

    • Aiming to inform and educate approximately 60 millions health professionals.

    • Incorporating technology to enhance the supply chain: blended learning proved to work better than face-to-work or purely online teaching.

  • Access to technology still presents a huge barrier.

  • Education is at a premium: similar to healthcare, people will drop below the poverty line to pay for the best education.

  • It is possible to blend the world of great thinking and the world of great doing.

Prompt Questions

What kind of education should we deliver? How do we facilitate this? Why is this not already being done? How can we change the model? What ideas can we put on the table moving forward? Is good education the preserve of the elite? Is it possible to embrace technology moving forward?

Debrief

Supply Chain Model

  • Does this imply a one-way flow? What are the potential problems of using this type of language when referring to education?

  • Products and services sold through the educational supply chain must be culturally relevant and rooted in a local environment.

  • How can we use the supply chain concept to subvert the educational system?

  • “Deschooling society” critiquing the production line of education.

  • Product/services must be relevant, quality-assured, available and acceptable (to students, teachers, employers, education standards boards...)

Alternative Concepts

  • Since we are so clearly embedded in a system, the World’s System Theory (Wallerstein) might be an appropriate tool for critique.

  • What are the existing systems that are working, and what can we learn from them?

  • Who decides what ‘good’ education looks like within this mode of thinking?

  • How can private sectors have a positive/negative impact on promoting local education and sustainability?

Elite Institutions

  • Do we need a Marxist intervention in elite schools? Or do we need to join up as a global network and work on how we can reinvent education?

  • Unlikely that elite/private institutions have the answer: we should concentrate on a two-way learning flow between institutions and local communities.

  • Question of privilege difficult to negotiate: how to see outside our own skins?

Technology

  • Technology defined as the human interface to the material world (Ursula K. Le Guin). Rethinking technologies may open up other possibilities.

  • Is technology reinforcing existing systems of privilege- is there a way of rethinking

  • How can we use technology to subvert the schooling supply chain?

  • When using technology, it’s important to apply principles of supply chain (relevance, quality, availability, and acceptability).

Alison Wood, Concluding Remarks

  • Collective action is required: How do we - as a multi-disciplinary group - now ‘weave’, for the road ahead?

  • COVID-19: Thinking about transformation while living times of huge transformation.

  • Numerous case studies have been brought together through the Circle.

  • Conference planned provisionally 13-14 October at the Hawkwood Centre.

  • What possibilities for keeping momentum going, allow for a certain level of introspection and keeping the network open to act on what has been discussed?

Reminder that initiatives, resources and inspirations that are discussed during sessions are available on the Hawkwood Circle Padlet: https://padlet.com/ajew3/klq8pxj5ph7qeibq